Part 66 (1/2)
”Oh, mamma--mamma--I'm so sorry--so sorry--you had to see.” The proud woman looked up from her work and sniffed:
”That whippersnapper--that--that--” she did not finish. The Doctor drew his daughter to him and kissed her. ”Oh, my poor little girl--they wouldn't have done that ten years ago--”
”Father,” interrupted the daughter, ”is Kenyon all right?”
”Just one little bone broken in his leg. He'll be out from under the ether in a second. But I'll--Oh, I'll make that Calvin outfit sweat; I'll--”
”Oh, no, you won't, father--little Joe doesn't know any better. Mamma can just forget to invite his wife to our next party--which I won't let her do--not even that--but it would avenge my wrongs a thousand times over.”
Lila had Kenyon's hand, and Mrs. Nesbit was rubbing his brow, when he opened his eyes and smiled. Laura and the Doctor, knowing their wife and mother, had left her and Lila together with the awakening lover. His eyes first caught Mrs. Nesbit's who bent over him and whispered:
”Oh, my brave, brave boy--my n.o.ble--chivalrous son--”
Kenyon smiled and his great black eyes looked into the elder woman's as he clutched Lila's hand.
”Lila,” he said feebly, ”where is it--run and get it.”
”Oh, it's up in my room, grandma--wait a minute--it's up in my room.”
She scurried out of the door and came dancing down the stairs in a moment with a jewel on her finger. The grandmother's eyes were wet, and she bent over and kissed the young, full lips into which life was flowing back so beautifully.
”Now--me!” cried Lila, and as she, too, bent down she felt the great, strong arms of her grandmother enfolding her in a mighty hug. There, in due course, the Doctor and Laura found them. A smile, the first that had wreathed his wrinkled face for an hour, twitched over the loose skin about his old lips and eyes.
”The Lord,” he piped, ”moves in a mysterious way--my dear--and if Laura had to go to jail to bring it--the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away--blessed be--”
”Well, Kenyon,” the grandmother interrupted the Doctor, stooping to put her fingers lovingly upon his brow, ”we owe everything to you; it was fine and courageous of you, son!”
And with the word ”son” the Doctor knew and Laura knew, and Lila first of all knew that Bedelia Nesbit had surrendered. And Kenyon read it in Lila's eyes. Then they all fell to telling Kenyon what a grand youth he was and how he had saved the Doctor's life, and it ended as those things do, most undramatically, in a chorus of what I saids, and you saids to me, and I thought, and you did, and he should have done, until the party wore itself out and thought of Lila, sitting by her lover, holding his hands. And then what with a pantomime of eyes from Laura and the Doctor to Mrs. Nesbit, and what with an empty room in a big house, with voices far--exceedingly far--obviously far away, it ended with them as all journeys through this weary world end, and must end if the world wags on.
CHAPTER XLVIII
WHEREIN WE ERECT A HOUSE BUILT UPON A ROCK
That evening in the late twilight, two women stood at the wicket of a cell in the jail and while back of the women, at the end of a corridor, stood a curious group of reporters and idlers and guards, inside the wicket a tall, middle-aged man with stiff, curly, reddish hair and a homely, hard, forbidding face stood behind the bars. The young woman put her hand with the new ring on it through the wicket.
”It's Kenyon's ring--Kenyon's,” smiled Lila, and to his questioning look at her mother, the daughter answered: ”Yes, grandma knows. And what is more, grandpa told us both--Kenyon and me--what was bothering grandma--and it's all--all--right!”
The happy eyes of Laura Van Dorn caught the eyes of Grant as they gazed at her from some distant landscape of his turbulent soul. She could not hold his eyes, nor bring them to a serious consideration of the occasion. His heart seemed to be on other things. So the woman said: ”G.o.d is good, Grant.” She watched her daughter and cast a glance at the s.h.i.+ning ring. Grant Adams heard and saw, but while he comprehended definitely enough, what he saw and heard seemed remote and he repeated:
”G.o.d is good--infinitely good, Laura!” His eyes lighted up. ”Do you know this is the first strike in the world--I believe, indeed the first enterprise in the world started and conducted upon the fundamental theory that we are all G.o.ds. Nothing but the divine spark in those men would hold them as they are held in faith and hope and fellows.h.i.+p. Look at them,” he lifted his face as one seeing Heavenly legions, ”ten thousand souls, men and women and children, cheated for years of their rights, and when they ask for them in peace, beaten and clubbed and killed, and still they do not raise their hands in violence! Oh, I tell you, they are getting ready--the time must be near.” He shook his head in exultation and waved his iron claw.
Laura said gently, ”Yes, Grant, but the day always is near. Whenever two or three are gathered--”
”Oh, yes--yes,” he returned, brus.h.i.+ng her aside, ”I know that. And it has come to me lately that the day of the democracy is a spiritual and not a material order. It must be a rising level of souls in the world, and the mere dawn of the day will last through centuries. But it will be nonetheless beautiful because it shall come slowly. The great thing is to know that we are all--the wops and dagoes and the hombres and the guinnies--all G.o.ds! to know that in all of us burns that divine spark which environment can fan or stifle--that divine spark which makes us one with the infinite!” He threw his face upward as one who saw a vision and cried: ”And America--our America that they think is so sordid, so cra.s.s, so debauched with materialism--what fools they are to think it!
From all over the world for three hundred years men and women have been hurrying to this country who above everything else on earth were charged with aspiration. They were lowly people who came, but they had high visions; this whole land is a crucible of aspirations. We are the most sentimental people on earth. No other land is like it, and some day--oh, I know G.o.d is charging this battery full of His divine purpose for some great marvel. Some time America will rise and show her face and the world will know us as we are!”
The girl, with eyes fascinated by her engagement ring, scarcely understood what the man was saying. She was too happy to consider problems of the divine immanence. There was a little mundane talk of Kenyon and of the Nesbits and then the women went away.