Part 26 (2/2)
The Doctor squinted up his eyes thoughtfully and said slowly, ”Well, that seems kind. I don't suppose you need read her the whole letter.
Just tell her he is going to ask for a divorce--tell her it's incompatibility. But his letter isn't important.” The Doctor sighed.
”Grant ought really to stay here another week--maybe we can stretch it to ten days--and let her have all the responsibility she'll take. It'll help her over the first bridge. Kenyon is taking care of Lila--I suppose?” The Doctor rose, stood by his wife and said as he found her hand:
”Poor Laura--poor Laura--and Lila! You know when I had her down town with me yesterday, in the hallway leading to Joe Calvin's office, she met Tom--” The Doctor looked away for a moment. ”It was pretty tough--her little heartbreak when he went by her without taking her up!”
The wife did not reply. The husband with his arm about her walked toward the door.
”You can't tell me, my dear, that Tom isn't paying--I know how that sort of thing gets under his skin--he's too sensitive not to imagine all it means to the child.” Mrs. Nesbit's face hardened and her husband saw her bitterness. ”I know, my dear--I know how you feel--I feel all that, and yet in my very heart I'm sorry for poor Tom. He's swapping substance for shadow so recklessly--not only in this, not merely with Laura--but with everything--everything.”
”Good Lord, Jim, I don't see how you can agonize over a wool-dyed scoundrel like that--perhaps you have some tears for that Fenn hussy, too!”
”Well,” squeaked the Doctor soberly--”I knew her father--a lecherous old beast who brought her up without restraint or morals--with a greedy philosophy pounded into her by example every day of her life until she was seventeen years old. There's something to be said--even for her, my dear--even for her.”
”Well, Jim Nesbit,” answered his wife, ”I'll go a long way with you in your tomfoolery, but so long as I've got to draw the line somewhere I draw it right there.”
The Doctor looked at the floor. ”I suppose so--” he sighed, then lifted his head and said: ”I was just trying to think of all the sorrows that come into the world, of all the tragedies I ever knew, and I have concluded that this tragedy of divorce when it comes like this--as it has come to our daughter--is the greatest tragedy in the world. To love as she loved and to find every anchor to which she tied the faith of her life rotten, to have her heart seared with faithlessness--to see her child--her flesh and blood scorned, to have her very soul spat upon--that's the essence of sorrow, my dear.”
He looked up into her eyes, bent to kiss her hand, and after he had picked up his cane and his hat from the rack, toddled down the walk to the street, a sad, thoughtful, worried little man, white-clad and serene to outward view, who had not even a whistle nor a vagrant tune under his breath to console him.
That day, after her father's insistence, Laura Van Dorn changed from the night watch to the day nurse, and from that day on for ten days, she ministered to Grant Adams' wants. Mechanically she read to him from such books as the house afforded--Tolstoi--Ibsen, Hardy, Howells,--but she was shut away from the meaning of what she read and even from the comments of the man under her care, by the consideration of her own problems. For to Laura Van Dorn it was a time of anxious doubt, of sad retrogression, of inner anguish. In some of the books were pa.s.sages she had marked and read to her husband; and such pages calling up his dull comprehension of their beauty, or bringing back his scoffing words, or touching to the quick a hurt place in her heart, taxed her nerves heavily. But during the time while she sat by the injured man's bedside, she was glad in her heart of one thing--that she had an excuse for avoiding the people who called.
As Grant grew stronger--as it became evident that he must go soon, the woman's heart shrank from meeting the town, and she clung to each duty of the man's convalescence hungrily. She knew she must face life, that she must have some word for her friends about her tragedy. She felt that in going away, in suing for the divorce himself, her husband had made the break irrevocable. There was no resentment nor malice toward him in her heart. Yet the future seemed hopelessly black and terrible to her.
The afternoon before Grant Adams was to leave the Nesbit home he was allowed to come down stairs, and he sat with her upon the side porch, all screened and protected by vines that led to her father's office.
Laura's finger was in a book they had been reading--it was ”The Pillars of Society.” The day was one of those exquisite days in mid-June, and after a cooling rain the air was clear and seemed to put joy into one's veins.
”How modern he is--how American--how like Harvey,” said the young man.
”Ibsen might have lived right here in this town, and written that,” he added. He started to raise his right arm, but a twinge of pain reminded him that the stump was bound, so he raised his left and cried:
”And I tell you, Laura--that's what I'm on earth to fight--the whole infernal system of pocket-picking and poor-robbing, and public gouging that we permit under the profit system.” The woman's thoughts were upon her own sorrow, but she called herself back to smile and reply:
”All right, Grant--I'm with you. We may have to draft father and commandeer George Brotherton, and start out as a pirate crew--but I'm with you.”
”Let me tell you something,” said the man. ”I've not been loafing for the past two years. I've got Harvey--the men in the mines and smelter, I mean, fairly well unionized, but the unions are nothing--nothing ultimate--they are only temporary.”
”Well,” returned the woman, soberly, ”that's something.”
The man made no answer. With his free hand he was ruffling his red hair, and she could see the muscles of his jaw working, and she felt his great mouth harden as he flashed his blue eyes upon her. ”Laura,” he cried, ”they may whip us this year. For a while they may scare the men into voting for prosperity, but as sure as we both live we shall see these times and these issues and these men who are promoting this devilish conspiracy eternally d.a.m.ned--all of them--the issues, the times and the men who are leading. And I don't want to hurt you, Laura, but,” he added solemnly, ”your husband must take his punishment with the rest.”
They sat mute, then each heard the plaintive cry of a child running through the house. ”She is looking for me,” said Laura. In a moment a little wet-eyed girl was in her mother's arms, crying:
”I want my daddy--my dear daddy--I want him to come home--where is he?”
She sobbed in her mother's arms and held up her little face to look earnestly into the beautiful face above her, as she cried, ”Is he gone--Annie Sands' new mamma says my papa's never coming back--Oh, I want my daddy--I want to go home.”
She continued calling him and sobbing, and the mother rose to take the child away.
”Laura!” cried Grant, in a pa.s.sionate question. He saw the weeping child and the grief-stricken face of the mother. In an instant he held out his bony left hand to her and said gently: ”G.o.d help you--G.o.d help you.”
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