Part 57 (1/2)

While Grant Adams and Margaret were talking, the two old men on the porch, who once would have grappled with the problems of the great first cause, dropped into cackling reminiscences of the old days of the sixties and seventies when they were young men in their twenties and Harvey was an unbleached yellow pine stain on the prairie gra.s.s. So they forgot the flight of time, and forgot that indoors the music had stopped, and that two young voices were cooing behind the curtains.

Upstairs, Laura Van Dorn and her mother, reading, tried with all their might and main to be oblivious to the fact that the music had stopped, and that certain suppressed laughs and gasps and long, silent gaps in the irregular conversation meant rather too obvious love-making for an affair which had not been formally recognized by the family. Yet the formality was all that was lacking. For if ever an affair of the heart was encouraged, was promoted, was greeted with everything but hurrahs and hosannas by the family of the lady thereunto appertaining, it was the love affair of Kenyon Adams and Lila Van Dorn.

The youth and the maiden below stairs were exceedingly happy. They went through the elaborate business of love-making, from the first touch of thrilling fingers to such pa.s.sionately rapturous embraces as they might steal half watched and half tolerated, and the mounting joy in their hearts left no room for fear of the future. As they sat toying and frivoling behind the curtains of the wide living room in the Nesbit home, they saw Grant Adams's big, awkward figure hurrying across the lawn. He walked with stooping shoulders and bowed head, and held his claw hand behind him in his flinty, red-haired hand.

”Where has he been?” asked Kenyon, as he peered through the open curtain, with his arm about the girl.

”I don't know. The Mortons aren't at home this afternoon; they all went out in the Captain's big car,” answered the girl.

”Well,--I wonder--” mused the youth.

Lila s.n.a.t.c.hed the window curtain, and closing it, whispered: ”Quick--quick--we don't care--quick--they may come in when he gets on the porch.”

Through a thin slit in the closed curtains they watched the gaunt figure climb the veranda steps and they heard the elders ask:

”Well?” and the younger man replied, ”Nothing--nothing--” he repeated, ”but heartbreak.”

Then he added as he walked to the half-open door, ”Doctor--it seems to me that I should go to Laura now; to Laura and her mother.”

”Yes,” returned the Doctor, ”I suppose that is the thing to do.”

Grant's hand was on the door screen, and the Doctor's eyes grew bright with emotion, as he called:

”You're a trump, boy.”

The two old men looked at each other mutely and watched the door closing after him. Inside, Grant said: ”Lila--ask your mother and grandmother if they can come to the Doctor's little office--I want to speak to them.”

After the girl had gone, Grant stood by Kenyon, with his arm about the young man, looking down at him tenderly. When he heard the women stirring above on the stairs, Grant patted Kenyon's shoulder, while the man's face twitched and the muscles of his hard jaw worked as though he were chewing a bitter cud.

The three, Grant and the mother and the mother's mother, left the lovers in such awe as love may hold in the midst of its rapture, and when the office door had closed, and the women were seated, Grant Adams, who stood holding to a chair back, spoke:

”It's about Kenyon. And I don't know, perhaps I should have spoken sooner. But I must speak now.”

The two women gazed inquiringly at him with sympathetic faces. He was deeply embarra.s.sed, and his embarra.s.sment seemed to accentuate a kind of caste difference between them.

”Yes, Grant,” said Mrs. Nesbit, ”of course, we know about Lila and Kenyon. Nothing in the world could please us more than to see them happy together.”

”I know, ma'am,” returned Grant, twirling his chair nervously. ”That's just the trouble. Maybe they can't be happy together.”

”Why, Grant,” exclaimed Laura, ”what's to hinder?”

”Stuff!” sniffed Mrs. Nesbit.

He looked up then, and the two women could see that he flinched.

”Well,--I don't know how to say it, but you must know it.” He stopped, and they saw anguish in his face. ”But I--Laura,” he turned to the younger woman and made a pitiful gesture with his whole hand, ”do you remember back when you were a girl away at school and I stopped writing to you?”

”Yes, Grant,” replied Laura, ”so well--so well, and you never would say--”

”Because I had no right to,” he cut in, ”it was not my secret--to tell--then.”

Mrs. Nesbit sat impatiently on her chair edge, as one waiting for a foolish formality to pa.s.s. She looked at the clumsy, bulky figure of a man in his ill-fitting Sunday clothes, and obviously was rather irritated at his ill-timed interjection of his own childhood affair into an entirely simple problem of true love running smoothly. But her daughter, seeing the anguish in the man's twisted face, was stricken with a terror in her heart. Laura knew that no light emotion had grappled him, and when her mother said, ”Well?” sharply, the daughter rose and went to him, touching his hand gently that had been gripping the chair-back. She said, ”Yes, Grant, but why do you have to tell it now?”