In the Heart of a Fool Part 30

"Heap o' steam for the size of the load and weight of your biler, Tom.

Better hoop 'em up!"

And with a laugh, shaking his little round stomach, he toddled out of the room into the corridor, and began whistling the tune that tells what will happen when Johnny comes marching home.

So the Doctor whistled about his afternoon's work and did not realize that the whistling was a form of nervousness.

That evening the Doctor and Laura began to read their Browning where they had left off the night before. They were in the midst of "Paracelsus," when the father looked up and said:

"Laura, you know I'm going to fight Tom Van Dorn for another term as district judge?"

"Why, of course you should, father--I didn't expect he'd ask it again!"

said the daughter.

"We had a row this afternoon--a miserable, bickering row. He got on his hind legs and snarled and snapped at me, and made me mad, I guess. So I got to thinking why I should be against him, and it came to me that a man who had violated the decencies as he has and whose decisions for the old spider have been so raw, shouldn't be judge in this district. Lord, what will young fellows think if we stand for him! So I have kind of worked myself up," the Doctor smiled deprecatingly, "to a place where I seem to have a sacred duty in the matter of licking him for the sake of general decency. Anyway," he concluded in his high falsetto, "old Browning's diver, here, fits me. He goes down a pauper and, with his pearl, comes up a prince."

"Festus," cried the Doctor, waving the book, "I plunge."

Thus through the pique of pride, and through the sting of scorn, a force of righteousness came into the world of Harvey. For our miracles of human progress are not always done with prunes and prisms. The truth does not come to men always, nor even, generally, as they are gazing in joyful admiration at the good and the beautiful. Sudden conversions of men to good causes are rare, and often unstable and sometimes worthless.

The good Lord would find much of the best work of the world undone if he waited until men guided by purely altruistic motives and inspired by new impulses to righteousness, did it. The world's work is done by ladies and gentlemen who, for the most part, are largely clay, working in the clay, for clay rewards, with just enough of the divine impulse moving them to keep their faces turned forward and not back.

Public opinion in the Amen Corner, voiced by Mr. Brotherton, spoke for Harvey and said: "Well, say--what do you think of Old Linen Pants bucking the whole courthouse just to get the hide of Judge Van Dora? Did you ever see such a thing in your whole life?" emphasizing the word "whole" with fine effect.

Mr. Brotherton sat at his desk in the rear of his store, contemplating the splendor of his possessions. Gradually the rear of the shop had been creeping toward the alley. It was filled with books, stationery, cigars and smoker's supplies. The cigars and smoker's supplies were crowded to a little alcove near the Amen Corner, and the books--school books, pirated editions of the standard authors, fancy editions of the cla.s.sics, new books copyrighted and gorgeously bound in the fashion of the hour, were displayed prominently. Great posters adorned the vacant s.p.a.ces on the walls, and posters and enlarged magazine covers adorned the bulletin boards in front of the store. Piles of magazines towered on the front counters--and upon the whole, Mr. Brotherton's place presented a fairly correct imitation of the literary tendencies of the period in America just before the Spanish war.

Amos Adams came in, with his old body bent, his hands behind him, his shapeless coat hanging loosely from his stooped shoulders, his little tri-colored b.u.t.ton of the Loyal Legion in his coat lapel, being the only speck of color in his graying figure. He peered at Mr. Brotherton over his spectacles and said: "George--I'd like to look at Emerson's addresses--the Phi Beta Kappa Address particularly." He nosed up to the shelves and went peering along the books in sets. "Help yourself, Dad, help yourself--Glad you like Emerson--elegant piece of goods; wrapped one up last week and took it home myself--elegant piece of goods."

"Yes," mused the reader, "here is what I want--I had a talk with Emerson last night. He's against the war; not that he is for Spain, of course, but Huxley," added Amos, as he turned the pages of his book, "rather thinks we should fight--believes war lies along the path of greatest resistance, and will lead to our greater destiny sooner." The old man sighed, and continued: "Poor Lincoln--I couldn't get him last night: they say he and Garrison were having a great row about the situation."

The elder stroked his ragged beard meditatively. Finally he said: "George--did you ever hear our Kenyon play?"

The big man nodded and went on with his work. "Well, sir," the elder reflected: "Now, it's queer about Kenyon. He's getting to be a wonder. I don't know--it all puzzles me." He rose, put back the book on its shelf.

"Sometimes I believe I'm a fool--and sometimes things like this bother me. They say they are training Kenyon--on the other side! Of course he just has what music Laura and Mrs. Nesbit could give him; yet the other day, he got hold of a piano score of Schubert's Symphony in B flat and while he can't play it, he just sits and cries over it--it means so much to the little fellow."

The gray head wagged and the clear, old, blue eyes looked out through the steel-rimmed gla.s.ses and he sighed: "He is going ahead, making up the most wonderful music--it seems to me, and writing it down when he can't play it--writing the whole score for it--and they tell me--" he explained deprecatingly, "my friends on the other side, that the child will make a name for himself." He paused and asked: "George--you're a hardheaded man--what do you think of it? You don't think I'm crazy, do you, George?"

The younger man glanced up, caught the clear, kindly eye of Amos Adams looking questioningly down.

"Dad," said Mr. Brotherton, hammering his fat fist on the desk, "'there's more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio'--well say, man--that's Shakespeare. We sell more Shakespeares than all the other poets combined. Fine business, this Shakespeare. And when a man holds the lead in the trade as this Shakespeare has done ever since I went into the Red Line poets back in the eighties--I'm pretty nearly going to stay by him. And when he says, 'Don't be too d.a.m.n sure you know it all--' or words to that effect--and holds the trade saying it--well, say, man--your spook friends are all right with me, only say," Mr. Brotherton shuddered, "I'd die if one came gliding up to me and asked for a chew of my eating tobacco--the way they do with you!"

"Well," smiled Amos Adams, "much obliged to you, George--I just wanted your ideas. Laura Van Dorn has sent Kenyon's last piece back to Boston to see if by any chance he couldn't unconsciously have taken it from something or some one. She says it's wonderful--but, of course," the old man scratched his chin, "Laura and Bedelia Nesbit are just as likely to be fooled in music as I am with my controls." Then the subject drifted into politics--the local politics of the town, the Van Dorn-Nesbit contest.

And at the end of their discussion Amos rubbed his bony, lean, hard, old hands, and looked away through the books and the brick wall and the whole row of buildings before him into the future and smiled. "I wonder--I wonder if the country ever will come to see the economic and social and political meaning of this politics that we have now--this politics that the poor man gets through a beer keg the night before election, and that the rich man buys with his 'barl.'"

He shook his head. "You'll see it--you and Grant--but it will be long after my time." Amos lifted up his old face and cried: "I know there is another day coming--a better day. For this one is unworthy of us. We are better than this--at heart! We have in us the blood of the fathers, and their high visions too. And they did not put their lives into this nation for this--for this cruel tangle of injustice that we show the world to-day. Some day--some day," Amos Adams lifted up his face and cried: "I don't know! May be my guides are wrong but my own heart tells me that some day we shall cease feeding with the swine and return to the house of our father! For we are of royal blood, George--of royal blood!"

"Why, h.e.l.lo, Morty," cut in Mr. Brotherton. "Come right in and listen to the seer--genuine Hebrew prophet here--got a familiar spirit, and says Babylon is falling."

"Well, Uncle Amos," said Morty Sands, "let her fall!" Old Amos smiled and after Morty had turned the talk from falling Babylon to Laura Van Dorn's kindergarten, Amos being reminded by Laura of Kenyon and his music, unfolded his theory of the occult source of the child's musical talent, and invited George and Morty to church to hear Kenyon play.

So when Sunday came, with it came full knowledge that most members of the congregation were to hear Kenyon Adams' new composition, which had been rather widely advertised by his friends; and Rev. John Dexter, feeling himself a fifth wheel, discarded his sermon and in humility and contrition submitted some extemporaneous remarks on the pa.s.sion for humanity of "Christ and him crucified."

A little boy was Kenyon Adams--a slim, great-eyed, serious faced, little boy in an Eton jacket and knickerbockers--not so much larger than his violin that he carried under his arm. His little hand shook, but Grant caught his gaze and with a tender, earnest rea.s.surance put sinews into the small arms, and stilled an unsteady jaw. The organ was playing the prelude, when the little hand with the bow went out in a wide, sure, strong curve, and when the bow touched the strings, they sang from a soul depth that no child's experience could know.

It was the first public rendering of the now famous Adagio in C minor, known sometimes as "The Prairie Wind," or perhaps better as the Intermezzo between the second and third acts of the opera that made Kenyon Adams' fame in Europe before he was twenty. It has been changed but little since that first hearing there in John Dexter's church with the Sands Memorial organ, built in the early eighties for Elizabeth Page Sands, mother of Anne of that tribe. The composition is simplicity itself--save for the mystical questioning that runs through it in the sustained sevenths--a theme which Captain Morton said always reminded him of a meadow lark's evening song, but which repeats itself over and over plaintively and sadly as the stately music swells to its crescendo and dies with that unanswered cry of heartbreak echoing in the last faint notes of the closing bar.

When it was finished, those who had ears heard and understood and those who had not said, "Well," and waited for public opinion, unless they were fools, in which case they said they would have preferred something to whistle. But because the thing impressed itself upon hundreds of hearts that hour, many in the congregation came forward to greet the child.

Among these, was a tall, stately young woman in pure white with a rose upon her hat so deeply red that it seemed guilty of a shame. But her lips were as red as the red of the rose and her eyes glistened and her face was wrought upon by a great storm in her heart. Behind her walked a proud gentleman, a lordly gentleman who elbowed his way through the throng as one who touches the unclean. The pale child stood by Grant Adams as they came. Kenyon did not see the beautiful woman; the child's eyes were upon the man. He knew the man; Lila had poured out her soul to the boy about the man and in his child's heart he feared and abhorred the man for he knew not what. The man and woman kept coming closer. They were abreast as they stepped into the pulpit where the child stood. By his own music, his soul had been stirred and riven and he was nervous and excited. As the woman beside the man stretched out her arms, with her face tense from some inner turmoil, the child saw only the proud man beside her and shrank back with a wild cry and hid in his father's breast. The eyes of Grant and Margaret met, but the child only cuddled into the broad breast before him and wept, crying, "No--no--no--"

Then the proud man turned back, spurned but not knowing it, and the beautiful woman with red shame in her soul followed him with downcast face. In the church porch she lifted up her face as she said with her fair, false mouth: "Tom, isn't it funny how those kind of people sometimes have talent--just like the lower animals seem to have intelligence. Dear me, but that child's music has upset me!"

The man's heart was full of pride and hate and the woman's heart was full of pride and jealousy. Still the air was sweet for them, the birds sang for them, and the sun shone tenderly upon them. They even laughed, as they went their high Jovian way, at the vanities of the world on its lower plane. But their very laughter was the crackling of thorns under a pot wherein their hearts were burning.

CHAPTER XXVII

IN WHICH WE SEE SOMETHING COME INTO THIS STORY OUTSIDE OF THE MATERIAL WORLD

"Life," writes Mr. Left, using the pseudonym of the Peachblow philosopher, "disheartens us because we expect the wrong things of it.

We expect material rewards for spiritual virtues, material punishments for spiritual transgressions; when even in the material world, material rewards and punishments do not always follow the acts which seem to require them. Yet the only sure thing in the world is that our spiritual lapses bring spiritual punishments, and our spiritual virtues have their spiritual rewards."

Now these observations of Mr. Left might well be taken for the thesis of this story. Tom Van Dorn's spiritual transgressions had no material punishments and the good that was in Grant Adams had no material reward.

Yet the spiritual laws which they obeyed or violated were inexorable in their rewards and punishments.

Once there entered the life of Judge Van Dorn, from the outside, the play of purely spiritual forces, which looped him up and tripped him in another man's game, and Tom, poor fellow, may have thought that it was a special Providence around with a warrant looking after him. Now this statement hangs on one "if,"--if you can call Nate Perry a man! "One generation pa.s.seth and another cometh on," saith the Preacher. Perhaps it has occurred to the reader that the love affairs of this book are becoming exceedingly middle aged; some have only the dying glow of early reminiscence. But here comes one that is as young as spring flowers; that is--if Nate Perry is a man, and is ent.i.tled to a love affair at all. Let's take a look at him: long legged, lean faced, keen eyed, razor bodied, just back from College where he has studied mining engineering.

He is a pick and shovel miner in the Wahoo Fuel Company's mine, getting the practical end of the business. For he is heir apparent of stuttering Kyle Perry, who has holdings in the mines. Young Nate's voice rasps like the whine of a saw and he has no illusions about the stuff the world is made of. For him life is atoms flopping about in the ether in an entirely consistent and satisfactory manner. Things spiritual don't bother him. And yet it was in working out a spiritual equation in Nate Perry's life that Providence tipped over Tom Van Dorn, in his race for Judgeship.

And now let us put Mr. Brotherton on the stand:

"Showers," exclaims Mr. Brotherton, "showers for Nate and Anne,--why, only yesterday I sent him and Grant Adams over to Mrs. Herd.i.c.ker's to borrow her pile-driver, and spanked him for canning a dog, and it hasn't been more'n a week since I gave Anne a rattle when her father brought her down town the day after the funeral, as he was looking over Wright & Perry's clerks for the fourth Mrs. Sands--and here's showers! Well, say, isn't time that blue streak! Showers! Say, I saw Tom Van Dorn's little Lila in the store this morning--isn't she the beauty--bluest eyes, and the sweetest, saddest, dearest little face--and say, man--I do believe Tom's kind of figuring up what he missed along that line. He tried to talk to her this morning, but she looked at him with those blue eyes and shrank away. Doc Jim bought her a doll and a train of cars. That was just this morning, and well, say--I wouldn't be surprised if when I come down and unlock the store to-morrow morning, some one will be telling me she's having showers. Isn't time that old hot-foot?"

"Showers--kitchen showers and linen showers, and silver showers for little Anne--little Anne with the wide, serious eyes, 'the home of silent prayer';--well, say, do you know who said that? It was Tennyson.

Nice, tasty piece of goods--that man Tennyson. I've handled him in padded leather covers; fancy gilt cloth, plain boards, deckle-edges, wide margins, hand-made paper, and in thirty-nine cent paper--and he is a neat, nifty piece of goods in all of them--always easy to move and no come backs." After this pean to the poet, Mr. Brotherton turned again to his meditations, "Little Anne--Why, it's just last week or such a matter I wrapped up Mother Goose for her--just the other day she came in when they sent her off to school, and I gave her a diary--and now it's showers--" He shook his great head, "Well, say--I'm getting on."

And while Mr. Brotherton mused the fire burned--the fire of youth that glowed in the heart of Nathan Perry. When he wandered back from college no one in particular had noticed him. But Anne Sands was no one in particular. And as no one in particular was looking after Anne and her affairs, as a girl in her teens she had focused her heart upon the gangling youth, and there grew into life one of those matter-of-fact, unromantic love affairs that encompa.s.s the whole heart. For they are as commonplace as light and air and are equally vital. Because their course is smooth, such affairs seem shallow. But let unhappy circ.u.mstance break the even surface, and behold, from their depths comes all the beauty of a great force diverted, all the anguish of a great pa.s.sion curbed and thwarted.

In this democratic age, when deep emotional experiences are not the privilege of the few, but the lot of many, heart break is almost commonplace. We do not notice it as it may have been noted in those chivalric days when only the few had the finer sensibilities that may make great mental suffering possible. So here in the commonplace town of Harvey, in their commonplace homes, amid their commonplace friends and relatives, two commonplace hearts were aching all unsuspected by a commonplace world. And it happened thus:

Anne Sands had opinions about the renomination and reelection of Judge Van Dorn. For Judge Van Dorn's divorce and remarriage had offended Anne Sands.

On the other hand, to Nathan Perry the aspirations of Judge Van Dorn meant nothing but the ambition of a politician in politics. So when Anne and he had fallen into the inevitable discussion of the Van Dorn case, as a part of an afternoon's talk, indignation flashed upon indifference and the girl saw, or thought she saw such a defect in the character of her lover that, being what she was, she had to protest, and he being what he was--he was hurt to the heart. Both lovers spoke plainly. The thing sounded like a quarrel--their first; and coming from the Sands house into the summer afternoon, Nate Perry decided to go to Brotherton's. He reflected as he walked that Mr. Brotherton's remarks on "showers," which had come to Anne and Nate, might possibly be premature.

And the reflection was immensely disquieting.

A practical youth was Nathan Perry, with a mechanical instinct that gloried in adjustment. He loved to tinker and potter and patch things up. Now something was wrong with the gearing of his heart action. His theory was that Anne was for the moment crazy. He could see nothing to get excited about over the renomination and election of Judge Van Dorn.

The men in the mine where the youth was working as a miner hated Van Dorn, the people seemed to distrust him as a man more or less, but if he controlled the nominating convention that ended it with Nathan Perry.