In the Heart of a Fool Part 69

"Tell me, then. I ought to know," he demanded.

"There is just one right by which you can ask," she began. "But if you refuse me this--by what other right can you ask? Oh, daddy, daddy," she sobbed. "In my dreams I call you that. Did you ever hear that name, daddy, daddy--I want you--for my sake, to save this man, daddy."

The Judge heard the words that for years had sounded in his heart. They cut deep into his being. But they found no quick.

"Well, daughter," he answered, "as a father--as a father who will help you all he can--I ask, then, who is Kenyon Adams's father?"

"Grant," answered the girl simply.

"Then you are going to marry an illegitimate--"

"I shall marry a n.o.ble, pure-souled man, father."

"But, Lila--Lila," he rasped, "who is his mother?"

Then she shrank away from him. She shook her head sadly, and withdrew her hands from his forcibly as she cried:

"O father--father--daddy, have you no heart--no heart at all?" She looked beseechingly up into his face and before he could reply, she seemed to decide upon some further plea. "Father, it is sacred--very sacred to me, a beautiful memory that I carry of you, when I think of the word 'Daddy.' I have never, never, not even to mother, nor to Kenyon spoken of it. But I see you young, and straight and tall and very handsome. You have on light gray clothes and a red flower on your coat, and I am in your arms hugging you, and then you put me down, and I stand crying 'Daddy, daddy,' after you, when you are called away somewhere.

Oh, then--then, oh, I know that then--I don't know where you went nor anything, but then, then when I snuggled up to you, surely you would have heard me if I had asked you what I am asking now."

The daughter paused, but the father did not answer at once. He looked away from her across the years. In the silence Lila was aware that in the doorway back of her father, Margaret Van Dorn stood listening. Her husband did not know that she was there.

"Lila," he began, "you have told me that Kenyon's father is Grant Adams, why do you shield his mother?"

The daughter stood looking intently into the brazen eyes of her father, trying to find some way into his heart. "Father, Grant Adams is before your court. He is the father of the man whom I shall marry. You have a right to know all there is to know about Grant Adams." She shook her head decisively. "But Kenyon's mother, that has nothing to do with what I am asking you!" She paused, then cried pa.s.sionately: "Kenyon's mother--oh, father, that's some poor woman's secret, which has no bearing on this case. If you had any right on earth to know, I should tell you; but you have no right."

"Now, Lila," answered her father petulantly--"look here--why do you get entangled with those Adamses? They are a low lot. Girl, a Van Dorn has no business stooping to marry an Adams. Miserable mongrel blood is that Adams blood child. Why the Van Dorns--" but Lila's pleading, wistful voice went on:

"In all my life, father, I have asked you only this one thing, and this is just, you know how just it is--that you keep my future husband's father from a cruel, shameful death. And--now--" her voice was quivering, near the breaking point, and she cried: "And now, now you bring in blood and family. What are they in an hour like this! Oh, father--father, would my daddy--the fine, strong, loving daddy of my dreams do this? Would he--would he--oh, daddy--daddy--daddy!" she cried, beseechingly.

Perhaps he could see in her face the consciousness that some one was behind him, for he turned and saw his wife standing in the doorway. As he saw her, there rose in him the familiar devil she always aroused, which in the first years wore the mask of love, but dropped that mask for the sneer of hate. It was the devil's own voice that spoke, quietly, suavely, and with a hardness that chilled his daughter's heart. "Lila, perhaps the secret of Kenyon's mother is no affair of mine, but neither is Grant Adams's fate after I turn him back to the jailer, an affair of mine. But you make Grant's affair mine; well, then--I make this secret an affair of mine. If you want me to release Grant Adams--well, then, I insist." The gray features of his wife stopped him; but he smiled and waved his hand grandly at the miserable woman, as he went on: "You see my wife has bragged to me once or twice that she knows who Kenyon's mother is, Lila, and now--"

The daughter put her hands to her face and turned away, sick with the horror of the scene. Her heart revolted against the vile intrigue her father was proposing. She turned and faced him, clasping her hands in her anguish, lifted her burning face for a moment and stared piteously at him, as she sobbed: "O dear, dear G.o.d--is this my father?" and shaking with shame and horror she turned away.

CHAPTER L

JUDGE VAN DORN SINGS SOME MERRY SONGS AND THEY TAKE GRANT ADAMS BEHIND A WHITE DOOR

After arguments of counsel, after citation of cases, after the applause of Market Street at some incidental _obiter dicta_ of Judge Van Dorn's about the rights of property, after the court had put on its tortoise-sh.e.l.l rimmed gla.s.ses, which the court had brought home from its recent trip to Chicago to witness the renomination of President Taft, after the court, peering through its brown-framed spectacles, was fumbling over its typewritten opinion from the typewriter of the offices of Calvin & Calvin, written during the afternoon by the court's legal _alter ego_, after the court had cleared its throat to proceed with the reading of the answer to the pet.i.tion in habeas corpus of Grant Adams, the court, through its owlish gla.s.ses, saw the eyes of the pet.i.tioner Adams fixed, as the court believed, malignantly on the court.

"Adams," barked the court, "stand up!" With his black slouch hat in his hand, the pet.i.tioner Adams rose. It was a hot night and he wiped his brow with a red handkerchief twisted about his steel claw.

"Adams," began the court, laying down the typewritten ma.n.u.script, "I suppose you think you are a martyr."

The court paused. Grant Adams made no reply. The court insisted:

"Well, speak up. Aren't you a martyr?"

"No," meeting the eye of the court, "I want to get out and get to work too keenly to be a martyr."

"To get to work," sneered the court. "You mean to keep others from going to work. Now, Adams, isn't it true that you are trying to steal the property of this district from its legal owners by riot and set yourself up as the head of your Democracy of Labor, to fatten on the folly of the working men?" The court did not pause for a reply, but continued: "Now, Adams, there is no merit to the contentions of your counsel in this hearing, but, even if there was mere technical weight to his arguments, the moral issues involved, the vast importance of this ease to the general welfare of this Republic, would compel this court to take judicial notice of the logic of its decision in your favor. For it would release anarchy, backed by legal authority, and strike down the arm of the State in protecting property and suppressing crime."

The court paused, and, taking its heavy spectacles in its fingers, twirled them before asking: "Adams, do you think you are a G.o.d? What is this rot you're talking about the Prince of Peace? What do you mean by saying nothing can hurt you? If you know nothing can hurt you, why do you let your attorney plead the baby act and declare that, if you are not released to-night, a mob will wait on you? If you are a G.o.d, why don't you help yourself--quell the mob, overcome the devil?"

The crowd laughed and the court perfunctorily rapped for order. The laugh was frankincense and myrrh to the court. So the court clearly showed its appreciation of its own fine sarcasm as it rapped for order and continued insolently: "See here, Adams, if you aren't crazy, what are you trying to do? What do you expect to get out of all this glib talk about the power of spiritual forces and the peaceful revolution and the power greater than bullets and your fanatical ranting about the Holy Ghost in the dupes you are inciting to murder? Come now, maybe you are crazy? Maybe if you'd talk and not stand there like a loon--"

Again the crowd roared and again the court suppressed its chuckle and again order was restored. "Maybe if you'd not stand there grouching, you'd prove to the court that you are crazy, and on the grounds of insanity the court might grant your prayer. Come, now, Adams, speak up; go the whole length. Give us your creed!"

"Well," began Adams, "since you want--"

"Don't you know how to address a court?" The court bellowed.

"To say 'Your honor' would be a formality which even your friends would laugh at," replied Grant quietly. The crowd hissed; the court turned purple. Grant Adams stood rigid, with white face and quivering muscles.

His jaws knotted and his fist clenched. Yet when he spoke he held his voice down. In it was no evidence of his tension. Facing for the first few moments of his speech the little group of his friends--Dr. Nesbit, George Brotherton, Captain Morton, Nathan Perry and Amos Adams--who sat at the lawyers' table with Henry Fenn, Grant Adams plunged abruptly into his creed: "I believe that in every human adult consciousness there is a spark of altruism, a divine fire, which marks the fatherhood of G.o.d and proves the brotherhood of man. Environment fans that spark or stifles it. Its growth is evidenced in human inst.i.tutions, in scales and grades of civilization. Christ was a glowing flame of this fire." The court gave a knowing wink to Ahab Wright, who grinned at the court's keen sense of humor. Adams saw the wink, but proceeded: "That is what He means when He says: 'I am the resurrection and the life,' for only as men and nations, races and civilization by their inst.i.tutions fan that spark to fire, will they live, will they conquer the forces of death ever within them."

Thus far Grant Adams had been speaking slowly, addressing himself more to his friends and the court stenographer than the crowd. Now he faced the crowd defiantly as he let his voice rise and cried: "This is no material world. Humanity is G.o.d trying to express Himself in terms of justice--with the sad handicap of time and s.p.a.ce ever holding the Eternal Spirit in check. We are all G.o.ds."

Again Market Street, which worshiped the G.o.d material, hissed. Grant turned to the men in the benches a mad, ecstatic face and throwing his crippled arm high above his head, cried aloud:

"O men of Harvey, men with whom I have lived and labored, I would give my life if you could understand me; if you could know in your hearts how pa.s.sionately I yearn to get into your souls the knowledge that only as you give you will have, only as you love these men of the mines and mills, only as you are brothers to these ginks and wops and guinnies, will prosperity come to Harvey. 'I am the resurrection and the life'

should ring through your souls; for when brotherhood, expressed in law and customs, gives these men their rightful share in the products of their labor, our resurrected society will begin to live." He stopped dead still for a moment, gazing, almost glaring, into the eyes of the crowd. Ahab Wright dropped his gaze. But John Kollander, who heard nothing, glared angrily back. Then leaning forward and throwing out his claw as if to grapple them, Grant Adams, let out his great voice in a cry that startled Market Street into a shudder as he spoke. "Come, come, come with us and live, oh, men of Market Street, you who are dead and d.a.m.ned! Come with us and live. 'I am the way and the life.'" He checked his rising voice, then said: "Come, let us go forward together, for only then will G.o.d, striving for justice in humanity, restore your dead and atrophied souls. Have faith that as you give you will have; as you love, will you live." His manner changed again. The court was growing restless. Grant's voice was low pitched, but it showed a heavy tension of emotion. He stretched his hand as one pleading: "Oh, come with us.

Come with us--your brothers. We are one body, why should we have different aims? We are ten thousand here, you are many more. Perhaps we are only dreaming a mad dream, but if you come with us we shall all awake from our dream into a glorious reality."

Market Street laughed. John Kollander bawled: "He's an anarchist--a socialist!" Grant looked at the deaf old man in his blue coat and bra.s.s b.u.t.tons adorned with many little flags, to advertise his patriotism.

Taking a cue from John Kollander, Grant cried: "I am moving with the current of Heavenly love, I am a part of that love that is washing into this planet from the infinite source of life beyond our ken. I am moved, I know not how. I am inspired to act, I know not whence. I go I know not where--only I have faith, faith that fears nothing, faith that tells me that insomuch as I act in love, I am a part of the Great Purpose moving the universe, immortal, all powerful, vital, the incarnation of Happiness! I am trying--trying--ah, G.o.d, how I am trying, to bring into the world all the love that my soul will carry. I am--"

"That's enough," snapped the court; and turning to Joseph Calvin, Judge Van Dorn said: "That man's crazy. This court has no jurisdiction over the insane. His family can bring a proceeding in habeas corpus before the probate court of the county on the ground of the prisoner's insanity. But I have no right to take judicial notice of his insanity."

The Judge folded up his opinion, twirled his heavy gla.s.ses a moment, blinked wisely and said: "Gentlemen, this is no case for me. This is a crazy man. I wash my hands of the whole business!"

He rose, put away his gla.s.ses deliberately, and was stepping from his dais, when up rose big George Brotherton and cried:

"Say, Tom Van Dorn--if you want this man murdered, say so. If you want him saved, say so. Don't polly-fox around here, dodging the issue. You know the truth of the matter as well as--"

The court smiled tolerantly at the impetuous fellow, who was clearly in contempt of court. The crowd waited breathlessly.

"Well, George," said the suave Judge with condescension in his tone as he strutted into the group of lawyers and reporters about him, "if you know so much about this case, what is the truth?" The crowd roared its approval. "But hire a hall, George--don't bother me with it. It's out of my jurisdiction."

So saying, he elbowed his way out of the room into his office and soon was in his automobile, driving toward the Country Club. He had agreed to be out of reach by telephone during the evening and that part of the agreement he decided to keep.

After the Judge left the room Market Street rose and filed out, leaving Grant standing among the little group of his friends. The sheriff stood near by, chatting with the jailer and as Brotherton came up to bid Grant good-night, Brotherton felt a piece of paper slip into his hands, when he shook hands with Grant. "Don't let it leave your pocket until you see me again," said Grant in a monotone, that no one noticed.

The group--Dr. Nesbit, Nathan Perry, George Brotherton and Captain Morton--stood dazed and discouraged about Grant. No one knew exactly what note to strike--whether of anger or of warning or of cheer. It was Captain Morton who broke the silence.

"'Y gory, man--free speech is all right, and I'm going to stay with you, boy, and fight it out; but, Grant, things do look mighty shaky here, and I wonder if it's worth it--for that cla.s.s of people, eh?"