Part 52 (1/2)
For the consciousness of these things seemed to spend his soul in joy.
The blazing eyes of Tom Van Dorn, squinting down upon the couple under the tree, could see the grace that shone from a thousand reactions of their bodies and faces. He opened his mouth to voice something from the bitterness of his heart but did not speak. Instead he yawned and cried: ”And so we rot and we rot and we rot.”
Now it matters little what the lovers chattered about there under the elm tree, as they played with sticks and pebbles. It was what they would have said that counts--or perhaps what they should have said, if they had been able to voice their sense of the gift which the G.o.ds were bestowing. But they were dumb humans, who threw pebbles at each other's toes, though in the deep places of their souls, far below the surface waves of bashful patter, heart might have spoken to heart in pa.s.sing thus:
”Oh, Lila, what is beauty? What is it in the soul, running out glad to meet beauty, whether of line, of tone, of color, of form, of motion, of harmony?”
And the answer might have been trumpeted back through the deep:
”Maybe beauty is the G.o.d that is everywhere and everything, releasing himself in matter. Perhaps for our eyes and ears and fingers, the immanent G.o.d had an equation, whose answer is locked in our souls that are also a part of G.o.d--created in his image. And when in curve or line, in sequence of notes or harmony, or in thrilling touch sense, the equation is stated in terms of radiation, G.o.d seeking our soul's answer, speaks to us.”
But none of this trumpet call of souls reached the two fathers who were watching the lovers. For one man was too old in selfishness to understand, and the other had grown too old in bearing others' burdens to know what voices speak through the soul's trumpet, when love first comes into the heart. So the hammers hammered and the saws groaned in the pavilion, and a hard heart hammered and a soul groaned and a tongue babbled folly on the veranda. But under the elm tree, eyes met, and across s.p.a.ce went the message that binds lives forever. She picked up a twig longer than most twigs about her, reached with it and touched his forehead furtively, stroked his crinkled hair, blus.h.i.+ng at her boldness.
His head sank to the earth, he put his face upon the gra.s.s, and for a second he found joy in the rush of tears. They heard voices, bringing the planet back to them; but voices far away. On the hill across the little valley they could see two earnest golfers, working along the sky-line.
The couple on the sky-line hurried along in the heat. The man mopped his face, and his brown, hairy arms, and his big sinewy neck. The woman, rather thin, but fresh and with the maidenly look of one who isn't entirely sure what that man will do next, kept well in the lead.
”Well, Emma--there's love's young dream all right.” He stopped to puff, and waved at the couple by the tree. Then he hitched up his loose, baggy trousers, gave a jerk to his big flowing blue necktie, let fly at the ball and cried ”Fore.” When he came up to the ball again, he was red and winded. ”Emma,” he said, ”let's go have something to eat at the house--my figure'll do for an emeritus bridegroom--won't it?” And thus they strolled over the fields and out of the game.
But on another hill, another couple in the midst of a flock of children attracted by one of Mr. Brotherton's smas.h.i.+ng laughs, looked down and saw Lila and Kenyon. The quick eyes of love caught the meaning of the figures under the tree.
”Look, mamma--look,” said Nathan Perry, pointing toward the tree.
”Oh, Nate,” cried Anne, ”--isn't it nice! Lila and Kenyon!”
”Well, mamma--are you happy?” asked Nathan, as he leaned against the tree beside her. She nodded and directed their glances to the children and said gently, ”And they justify it--don't they?”
He looked at her for a moment, and said, ”Yes, dear--I suppose that's what the Lord gave us love for. That is why love makes the world go around.”
”And don't the people who don't have them miss it--my! Nate, if they only knew--if these bridge-playing, childless ones knew how dear they are--what joy they bring--just as children--not for anything else--do you suppose they would--”
”Oh, you can't tell,” answered the young father. ”Perhaps selfish people shouldn't have children; or perhaps it's the children that make us unselfish, and so keep us happy. Maybe it's one of those intricate psychical reactions, like a chemical change--I don't know! But I do know the kids are the best things in the world.”
She put her hand in his and squeezed it. ”You know, Nate, I was just thinking to-day as I put up the lunch--I'm a mighty lucky woman. I've had all these children and kept every one so far; I've had such joy in them--such joy, and we haven't had death. Even little Annie's long sickness, and everything--Oh, dear, Nate--but isn't she worth it--isn't she worth it?”
He kissed her hand and replied, ”You know I'm so glad we went down to South Harvey to live, Anne. I can see--well, here's the way it is. Lots of families down there--families that didn't have any more to go on than we had then, started out, as we did. They had a raft of kids--” he laughed, ”just as we did. But, mamma--they're dead--or worse, they're growing up underfed, and are hurrying into the works or the breaker bins. I tell you, Anne--here's the thing. Those fathers and mothers didn't have any more money than we had--but we did have more and better training than they had. You knew better than to feed our kids trash, you knew how to care for them--we knew how to spend our little, so that it would count. They didn't. We have ours, and they have doctors' and undertakers' bills. It isn't blood that counts so much--as the difference in bringing up. We're lovers because of our bringing up.
Otherwise, we'd be fighting like cats and dogs, I'd be drinking, you'd be slommicking around in wrappers, and the kids would be on the streets.”
The children playing on the gravel bank were having a gay time. The mother called to them to be careful of their clothes, and then replied:
”Nate, honestly I believe if I had two or three million dollars, and could give every girl in South Harvey a good education--teach her how to cook and keep house and care for babies before she is eighteen, that we could change the whole aspect of South Harvey in a generation. If I had just two or three million dollars to spend--I could fill that town just as full as Harvey of happy couples like us. Of course there'd be the other kind--some of them--just as there are the other kind in Harvey--people like the Van Dorns--but they would be the exception in South Harvey, as the Van Dorns are the exception in Harvey. And two or three million dollars would do it.”
”Yes, mamma,--that's the h.e.l.l of it--the very h.e.l.l of it that grinds my gizzard--your father and my father and the others who haven't done a lick of the work--and who are ent.i.tled only to a decent interest and promoters' profits, have taken out twenty million dollars from South Harvey in dividends in the last thirty years--and this is the result.
h.e.l.l for forty thousand people down there, and--you and I and a few dozen educated happy people are the fruit of it. Sometimes, Anne, I look at our little flock and look at you so beautiful, and think of our life so glorious, and wonder how a just G.o.d can permit it.”
They looked at the waving acres of blue-gra.s.s, dotted with trees, at the creek winding its way through the cornfields, dark green and all but ready to ta.s.sle, then up at the clear sky, untainted with the smoke of Harvey.
Then they considered the years that lay back of them. ”I think, Nate,”
she answered, ”that to love really and truly one man or one woman makes one love all men and women. I feel that way even about the little fellow that's coming. I love him so, that even he makes me love everything. And so I can't just pray for him--I have to pray for all the mothers carrying babies and all the babies in the world. I think when love comes into the world it is immortal. We die, but the sum of love we live, we leave; it goes on; it grows. It is the way G.o.d gets into the world. Oh, Nate,” she cried, ”I want to live in the next world--personally--with you--to know the very you. I don't want the impersonal immortality--I want just you. But, dear--I--why, I'd give up even that if I could be sure that the love we live would never leave this earth. Think what the love of Christ did for the earth and He is still with us in spirit. And I know when we go away--when any lovers go away, the love they have lived will never leave this earth. It will live and joy--yes, and agonize too at the injustice of the world--live and be crucified over and over again, so long as injustice exists. Only as love grows in the world, and is hurt--is crucified--will wrongs be righted, will the world be saved.”
He patted her hand for a minute.