Part 27 (2/2)
Slowly there mantled over the face of the prince the gray sc.u.m of a fear. And the scar on his forehead flashed crimson. The Captain saw that he had been antic.i.p.ated. He began patting his toes on the floor. Judge Van Dorn's face was set in a cement of resistance.
”Well?” barked the Judge. The little man's lips dried, he smiled weakly, and licked his lips and said: ”It was about my sprocket--my Household Horse--I says, Tom Van Dorn understands it if you gentlemen don't and some day him and me will talk it over and 'y gory--he'll buy some stock--he'll back me.”
The Captain's nervous voice had lifted and he was talking so that the clerk and Mr. Brotherton both in the back part of the store might hear.
The cement of the Judge's countenance cracked in a smile, but the gray mantle of fear still fluttered across his eyes.
”All right, Captain,” he answered, ”some other time--not now--I'm in a hurry,” and went strutting out into the storm.
Mr. Brotherton with his moon face s.h.i.+ning into the ledger laughed a great clacking laugh and got up from his stool to come to the cigar case, saying, ”Well, say--Cap--if you'd a' went on with what you started out to say, I'd a' give fi' dollars--say, I'd a' made it ten dollars--say!” And he laughed again a laugh that seemed to set all the celluloid in the plush covered, satin lined toilet cases on the new counter a-flutter. He walked down the store with elephantine tread, as he laughed, and then the door opened and Dr. Nesbit came in. Five months had put a perceptible bow into his shoulders, and an occasional cast of uncertainty into his twinkling eyes.
Mr. Brotherton called half down the store, ”Say, Doc--you should have been here a minute ago, and seen the Captain bristle up to Tom Van Dorn about his love affair and then get cold feet and try to sell him some Household Horse stock.” The Captain grinned sheepishly, the Doctor patted the Captain affectionately on the shoulder and chirped.
”So you went after him, did you, Ezry?” The loose skin of his face twitched, ”Poor Tom--packing up his career in a petticoat and going forth to fuss with G.o.d--no sense--no sense,” piped the Doctor, glancing over the headlines in his _Star_. The Captain, still clinging to the subject that had been too much for him, remarked: ”Doc--don't you think some one ought to tell him?” The Doctor put down his paper, stroked his pompadour and looking over his gla.s.ses, answered:
”Ezry--if some one hasn't told him--no one ever can. I tried to tell him once myself. I talked pretty middlin' plain, Ezry.” He was speaking softly, then he piped out, ”But what a man's heart doesn't tell him, his friends can't. Still, Ezry, a strong friend is often a good tonic for a weak heart.” The Doctor looked at the Captain, then concluded: ”That was a brave, kind act you tried to do--and I warrant you got it to him--some way. He's a keen one--Ezry--a mighty keen one; and he understood.”
Mr. Brotherton went back to his ledger; the Doctor plunged into the _Star_, the Captain folded up his newspaper and began studying the trinkets in the holiday stock in the show case under the new books. A comb and brush with tortoise sh.e.l.l backs seemed to arrest his eyes.
”Doc,” he mused, ”Christmas never comes that I don't think of--her--mother! I guess I'd just about be getting that comb and brush for her.” The Doctor casually looked through the show case and saw what had attracted the Captain. ”Doc,” again the Captain spoke, bending over the case with his face turned from his auditor: ”You're a doctor and are supposed to know lots. Tell me this: How does a man break it to a woman when he wants to leave her--eh?” Without waiting for an answer the Captain went on: ”And this is what puzzles me--how does he get used to another one--with that one still living? You tell me that. I'd think he'd be scared all the time that he would do something the way his first wife had trained him not to. Of course,” meditated the Captain, ”right at first, I suppose a man may feel a little coltish and all. But, Doc, honest and true, when mother first left I kind of thought--well, I used to enjoy swearing a little before we was married, and I says to myself I guess I may as well have a d.a.m.n or two as I go along--but, Doc, I can't do it. Eh? Every time I set off the fireworks--she fizzles; I can see mother looking at me that way.” The old man went on earnestly: ”Tell me, Doc, you're a smart man--how Tom Van Dorn can do it. What say? 'Y gory I'd be scared--right now! And if I thought I had to get used all over again to another woman, and her ways of doing things--say of setting her bread Friday night, and having a hot brick for her feet and putting her hair in her teeth when she done it up, and dosing the children with sa.s.safras tea in spring--I'd just naturally take to the woods, eh? And as for learning over again all the peculiarities of a new set of kin and what they all like to eat and died of, and how they all treated their first wives, and who they married--Doc? Doc?” The Captain shook a dubious and doleful head. ”Fourteen years, Doc,” sighed the Captain.
”Pretty happy years--children coming on,--trouble visiting us with the rest; sorrow--happiness--skimping and saving; her a-raking and sc.r.a.ping to make a good appearance, and make things do; me trying one thing and another, to make our fortune and her always kind and encouraging, and hopeful; death standing between us and both of us sitting there by the kitchen stove trying to make up some kind of prayer to comfort the other. Fourteen years of it, Doc--her and me, and her so patient, so forbearing--Doc--you're a smart man--tell me, Doc, how did Tom Van Dorn get around to actually doing it? What say?”
The Doctor waved his folded paper in an impatient gesture at the Captain.
”We are all products of our yesterdays, Ezry; we are what we were, and we will be what we were. Man is queer. Sometimes out of the depth of him a G.o.d rises--sometimes it's a beast. I've sat by the bed and seen life gasp into being; I've stood in the ranks and fought with men as you have, and have seen them fight and then again have seen them turn tail like cowards. I have sat by the bed and seen life sigh into the dust.
What is life--what is the G.o.d that quickens and directs us,--why and how and whence?--Ezry Morton, man--I don't know. And as for Tom--into that roaring h.e.l.l of l.u.s.t and lying and cheap parching pride where he is plunging--why, Ezry, I could almost cry for the fool; the d.a.m.ned beforehand fool!”
As the Doctor went whistling homeward through the storm that winter night he wondered how many more months the black spell of grief and despair would cover his daughter. Five months had pa.s.sed since that summer day when her home had fallen. He knew how tragic her struggle was to fit herself into her new environment. She was dwelling, but not living in the Nesbit home. It was the Nesbit home; a kindly abode, but not her home. Her home was gone. The severed roots of her life kept stirring in her memory--in her heart, and outwardly, her spirit showed a withered and unhappy being, trying to rebuild life, to readjust itself after the shock that all but kills. The Doctor realized what an agony the new growth was bringing, and that night, stirred somewhat to somber meditation by Captain Morton's reflections, the Doctor's tune was a doleful little tune as he whistled into the wind. Excepting Kenyon Adams, who still came daily bringing his violin and was rapidly learning all that she knew of the theory of music, Laura Van Dorn had no interest in life outside of her family. When the Adamses came to dinner as frequently they came--Laura seemed to feel no constraint with them.
Grant had even made her laugh with stories of d.i.c.k Bowman's struggles to be a red card socialist, and to vote the straight socialist ticket and still keep in ward politics in which he had been a local heeler for nearly twenty years. Laura was interested in the organization of the unions, and though the Doctor carped at it and made fun of Grant, it was largely to stir up a discussion in which his daughter would take a vital interest.
Grant was getting something more than a local reputation in labor circles as an agitator, and was in demand as an organizer in different parts of the valley. He worked at his trade more or less, having rigged up a steel device on the stump of his right forearm that would hold a saw, a plane or a hammer. But he was no longer a boss carpenter at the mines. His devotion to the men and in the work they were doing seemed to the Nesbits to awaken in their daughter a new interest in life, and so they made many obvious excuses to have the Adamses about the Nesbit home.
Kenyon was growing into a pale, dreamy child with wonderful eyes, l.u.s.trous, deep, thoughtful and kind. He was music mad, and read all the poetry in the Nesbit library--and the Doctor loved poetry as many men love wine. Hero-tales and mythology, romances and legends Kenyon read day after day between his hours of practice, and for diversion the boy sat before the fire or in the sun of a chilly afternoon, retailing them in such language as little Lila could understand. So in the black night of sorrow that enveloped her, Laura Nesbit often spent an hour with Grant Adams, and talked of much that was near her heart.
He was strong, sometimes she thought him coa.r.s.e and raw. He talked the jargon of the agitator with the enthusiasm of a dervish and the vernacular of the mine and the shop and the forge. But in him she could see the fire of a mad consuming pa.s.sion for humanity.
During those days of shame and misery, when the old interests of life were dying in her heart, interests upon which she had built since her childhood--the interests of home, of children, of wifehood and motherhood, to which in joy she had consecrated herself, she listened often to Grant Adams. Until there came into her life slowly and feebly, and almost without her conscious realization of it, a new vision, a new hope, a new path toward usefulness that makes for the only happiness.
As the Doctor went whistling into the storm that December night, he went over in his mind rather seriously the meaning and the direction and the final outcome of those small, unconscious buddings of interest in social problems that he saw putting forth in his daughter's mind. Above everything else, he was not a reformer. He hated the reformer type. But he preferred to see her interested in the work of Grant Adams--even though he considered Grant mildly cracked and felt that his growing power in the valley was dangerous--rather than to see her under the black pall that enveloped her.
It was early in the evening as the Doctor went up the hill. He pa.s.sed Judge Van Dorn, striding along and saw him turn into Congress Street to visit his lady love. The Judge carried a large roll of architect's plans under his arm. The Doctor nodded to the Judge, and the Judge rather proud that he was free and did not have to slink to his lady's bower, returned a gracious good evening, and his tall, straight figure went prancing down the street. When the Doctor entered his home, he found Laura and Lila sitting by the open fire. The child was in her night gown and they were discussing Santa Claus. Lila was saying:
”Kenyon told me Santa Claus was your father?”
Before the mother could reply the little voice went on:
”I wonder if my Santa Claus will come this year--will he, mother?--Why doesn't father ever come to us, mother--why doesn't he play with me when I see him?”
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