In the Heart of a Fool

Thus the watchers watched the fighting through the night, the child fighting so hard to live. For life is dear to a child–even though its life perpetuates shame and brings only sorrow–life still is dear to that struggling little body there under that humble roof, where even those that love it, and hover in agony over it in its bed of torture, feel that if it goes out into the great mystery from whence it came, it will take a sad blot from the world with it. And so hope and fear and love and tenderness and grief are all mingled in the horror that it may die, in the mute question that asks if death would not be merciful and kind. And all night the watchers watched, and the watcher who was absent was afraid to pray, and as the daylight came in, wan and gray, the child on the rack of misery sank to sleep, and smiled a little smile of peace at victory.

Then in the pale dawn, a weary man, trudging afoot slowly up the hill into Harvey, met another going out into the fields. The Doctor looked up and was astonished to see Henry Fenn, with hard drawn features, trembling limbs, hollow eyes and set lips. He too had been fighting hard and he also had won his victory. The Doctor met the man’s furtive, burning eyes and piped out softly:

“Stick to it, Henry–by God, stick hard,” and trudged on into the morning gloaming.

CHAPTER VI

ENTER THE BEAUTY AND CHIVALRY OF HARVEY; ALSO HEREIN WE BREAK OUR FIRST HEART

Towns are curiously like individuals. They take their character largely from their experiences, laid layer upon layer in their consciousnesses, as time moves, and though the experiences are seemingly forgotten, the results of those experiences are ineffaceably written into the towns. Four or five towns lie buried under the Harvey that is to-day, each one possible only as the other upholds it, and all inexorably pointing to the destiny of the Harvey that is, and to the many other Harveys yet to rise upon the townsite–the Harveys that shall be. There was, of course, heredity before the town was; the strong New England strain of blood that was mixed in the Ohio Valley and about the Great Lakes and changed by the upheaval of the Civil War. Then came the hegira across the Mississippi and the infant town in the Missouri Valley–the town of the pioneers–the town that only obeyed its call and sought instinctively the school house, the newspaper, orderly government, real estate gambling and “the distant church that topt the neighboring hill.” In the childhood of the town the cattle trail appeared and with the cattle trade came wild days and sad disorder. But the railroad moved westward and the cattle trail moved with the railroad and then in the early adolescence of the town came coal and gas and oil. And suddenly Harvey blossomed into youth.

It was a place of adventure; men were made rich overnight by the blow of a drill in a well. Then was the time for that equality of opportunity to come which the pioneers sought if ever it was coming. But alas, even in matters of sheer luck, the fates played favorites. In those fat years it began raining red-wheeled buggies on Sundays, and smart traps drawn by horses harnessed gaudily in white or tan appeared on the streets. Morty Sands often hired a band from Omaha or Kansas City, and held high revel in the Sands opera house, where all the new dances of that halcyon day were tripped. The waters of the Wahoo echoed with the sounds of boating parties–also frequently given by Morty Sands, and his mandolin twittered gayly on a dozen porches during the summer evenings of that period. It was Morty who enticed Henry Fenn into the second suit of evening clothes ever displayed in Harvey, though Tom Van Dorn and George Brotherton appeared a week later in evening clothes plus white gloves and took much of the shine from Henry and Morty’s splendor. Those were the days when Nate Perry and young Joe Calvin and Freddie Kollander organized the little crowd–the Spring Chickens, they called themselves–and the little crowd was wont to ape its elders and peek through the fence at the grandeur of the grown-ups. But alas for the little crowd, month by month it was doomed to see its little girls kidnaped to bloom in the upper gardens. Thus Emma Morton went; thus Ave Calvin disappeared, and so Laura Nesbit vanished from the Spring Chickens and appeared in Morty Sands’s bower! Doctor Nesbit in those days called Morty the “head gardener in the ‘rosebud garden of girls!’” And a lovely garden it was. Of course, it was more or less democratic; for every one was going to be rich; every one was indeed just on the verge of riches, and lines of caste were loosely drawn. For wealth was the only line that marked the social differences. So when Henry Fenn, the young county attorney, in his new evening clothes brought Margaret Müller of the Register of Deeds office to Morty Sands’s dances, Margaret had whatever social distinction her wits gave her; which upon the whole was as much distinction as Rhoda Kollander had whose husband employed Margaret. The press of the social duties in that day weighed heavily upon Rhoda, who was not the woman to neglect her larger responsibilities to so good a husband as John Kollander, by selfishly staying at home and keeping house for him. She had a place in society to maintain, that the flag of her country might not be sullied by barring John from a county office.

The real queen-rose in the garden was Laura Nesbit. How vivid she was! What lips she had in those days of her first full bloom, and what frank, searching eyes! And her laugh–that chimed like bells through the merriment of the youth that always was gathered about her–her laugh could start a reaction in Morty Sands’s heart as far as he could hear the chime. It was a matter of common knowledge in the “crowd,” that Morty Sands had one supreme aim in life: the courtship of Laura Nesbit. For her he lavished clothes upon himself until he became known as the iridescent dream! For her he bought a high-seated cart of great price, drawn by a black horse in white kid harness! For her he learned a whole concert of Schubert’s songs upon the mandolin and organized a serenading quartette that wore the grass smooth under her window. For her candy, flowers, books–usually gift books with padded covers, or with handpainted decorations, or with sumptuous engravings upon them or in them, sifted into the Nesbits’ front room, and lay in a thick coating upon the parlor table.

Someway these votive offerings didn’t reach the heart of the goddess. She rode beside him in his stanhope, and she wore his bouquets and read his books, such as were intended for reading; and alas for her figure, she ate his candy. But these things did not prosper his suit. She was just looking around in the market of life. Pippa was forever passing through her heart singing, “God’s in his heaven–all’s right with the world.” She did not blink at evil; she knew it, abhorred it, but challenged it with love. She had a vague idea that evil could be vanquished by inviting it out to dinner and having it in for tea frequently and she believed if it still refused to transform itself into good, that the thing to do with evil was to be a sister to it.

The closest she ever came to overcoming evil with evil was when she spanked little Joe Calvin for persisting in tying cans to the Morton cat’s tail, whereupon Morty Sands rose and gave the girl nine rahs, exhibiting an enthusiasm that inspired him for a year. So Laura thought that if the spanking had not helped much the soul of little Joe, it had put something worth while into Morty Sands. The thought cheered her. For Morty was her problem. During the first months after her return from boarding school, she had broken him–excepting upon minor moonlight relapses–of trying to kiss her, and she had sufficiently discouraged his declarations of undying devotion, so that they came only at weddings, or after other mitigating circumstances which, after pinching his ear, she was able to overlook.

But she could not get him to work for a living. He wouldn’t even keep office hours. Lecturing settled nothing. Lecturing a youth in a black and gold blazer, duck trousers and a silk shirt and a red sash, with socks and hat to match his coat, lecturing a youth who plays the mandolin while you talk, and looks at you through hazel eyes with all the intelligence of an affectionate pup, lecturing a youth who you know would be kissing you at the moment if you weren’t twenty pounds heavier and twice as strong–someway doesn’t arouse enthusiasm. So Morty Sands remained a problem.

Now an affair of the heart when a man is in his twenties and a girl is just passing out of her teens, is never static; it is dynamic and always there is something doing.

It was after one of Morty’s innumerable summer dances in the Sands Opera House, that Fate cast her dies for the final throw. Morty had filled Laura Nesbit’s program scandalously full. Two Newports, three military schottisches, the York, the Racket–ask grandpa and grammer about these dances, ye who gyrate in to-day’s mazes–two waltz quadrilles and a reel. And when you have danced half the evening with a beautiful girl, Fate is liable to be thumping vigorously on the door of your heart. So Morty walking home under a drooping August moon with Laura Nesbit that night determined to bring matters to a decision. As they came up the walk to the Nesbit home, the girl was humming the tune that beat upon his heart, and almost unconsciously they fell to waltzing. At the veranda steps they paused, and his arm was around her. She tried to move away from him, and cuffed him as she cried: “Now Morty–you know–you know very well what I’ve always–”

“Laura–Laura–” he cried, as he held her hand to his face and tried to focus her soul with his brown eyes, “Laura,” he faltered, then words deserted him: the fine speech he had planned melted into, “O, my dear–my dear!” But he kept her hand. The pain and passion in his voice cut into the girl’s heart. She was not frightened. She did not care to run. She did not even take his persisting arm from about her. She let him kiss her hand reverently, then she sat with him on the veranda step and as they sat she drew his arm from her waist until it was hooked in her arm, and her hand held his.

“Oh, I’m in earnest to-night, Laura,” said Morty, gripping her hand. “I’m staking my whole life to-night, Laura. I’m deadly–oh, quite deadly serious, Laura, and oh–”

“And I’m serious too, Morty,” said the girl–“just as serious as you!” She slipped her hand away from his and put her hand upon his shoulder gently, almost tenderly. But the youth felt a certain calmness in her touch that disheartened him.

In a storm of despair he spoke: “Laura–Laura, can’t you see–how can you let me go on loving you as I do until I am mad! Can’t you see that my soul is yours and always has been! You can call it into heights it will never know without you! You–you–O, sometimes I feel that I could pray to you as to God!” He turned to her a face glowing with a white and holy passion, and dropped her hand from his shoulder and did not touch her as he spoke. Their eyes met steadfastly in a silence. Then the girl bowed her head and sobbed. For she knew, even in her teens, she knew with the intuitions that are old as human love upon the planet that she was in the naked presence of an adoring soul. When she could speak she picked up the man’s soft white hand, and kissed it. She could not have voiced her eternal denial more certainly. And Morty Sands lifted an agonized face to the stars and his jaws trembled. He had lighted his altar fire and it was quenched. The girl, still holding his hand, said tenderly:

“I’m so sorry–so sorry, Morty. But I can’t! I never–never–never can!” She hesitated, and repeated, shaking her head sadly, “I never, never can love you, Morty–never! And it’s kind–”

“Yes, yes,” he answered as one who realizes a finality. “It’s kind enough–yes, I know you’re kind, Laura!” He stopped and gazed at her in the moonlight–and it was as if a flame on the charred altar of his heart had sprung up for a second as he spoke: “And I never–never shall–I never shall love any one else–I never, never shall!”

The girl rose. A moment later the youth followed her. Back into its sheath under his countenance his soul slipped, and he stood before the girl smiling a half deprecatory smile. But the girl’s face was racked with sorrow. She had seen tragedy. Her pain wounded him and he winced in his heart. Wherefore he smiled quite genuinely, and stepped back, and threw a kiss at the girl as he said: “It’s nothing, Laura! Don’t mind! It’s nothing at all and we’ll forget it! Won’t we?”

And turning away, he tripped down the walk, leaving her gazing after him in the moonlight. At the street he turned back with a gay little gesture, blew a kiss from his white finger tips and cried, “It’s nothing at all–nothing at all!” And as she went indoors she heard him call, “It’s nothing at all!”

She heard him lift his whistle to the tune of the waltz quadrille, but she stood with tears in her eyes until the brave tune died in the distance.

CHAPTER VII

IN WHICH WE SEE HOW LIFE TRANSLATES ITSELF INTO THE MATERIALISM AROUND IT

Coal and oil and gas and lead and zinc. The black sprite, the brown sprite, the invisible sprite, the two gray sprites–elemental sprites they were–destined to be bound servants of man. Yet when they came rushing out of the earth there at Harvey, man groveled before them, and sold his immortal soul to these trolls. Naturally enough Daniel Sands was the high priest at their altar. It was fitting that a devil worship which prostrated itself before coal and oil and gas and lead and zinc should make a spider the symbol of its servility. So the spider’s web, all iron and steel in pipes below ground, all steel and iron and copper in wires and rails above ground, spread out over the town, over the country near the town, and all the pipes and tubes and rails and wires led to the dingy little room where Daniel Sands sat spinning his web. He was the town god. Even the gilded heifer of Baal was a nobler one. And the curious thing about this orgy of materialism, was that Harvey and all the thousands of Harveys great and small that filled America in those decades believed with all their hearts–and they were essentially kind hearts–that quick, easy and exorbitant profits, really made the equality of opportunity which every one desired. They thought in terms of democracy–which is at bottom a spiritual estate,–and they acted like gross materialists. So they fooled the world, while they deceived themselves. For the soul of America was not reflected in that debauch of gross profit making. The soul of America still aspired for justice; but in the folly of the day, believed quite complacently because a few men got rich quick (stupid men too,) and many men were well-to-do, that justice was achieved, and the world ready for the millennium. But there came a day when Harvey, and all its kind saw the truth in shame.

And life in Harvey shaped itself into a vast greedy dream. A hard, metallic timbre came into the soft, high voice of Dr. James Nesbit, but did not warn men of the metallic plate that was galvanizing the Doctor’s soul; nor did it disturb the Doctor. Amos Adams saw the tinplate covering, heard the sounding brass, and Mary his wife saw and heard too; but they were only two fools and the Doctor who loved them laughed at them and turned to the healing of the sick and the subjugation of his county. So men sent him to the state Senate. Curiously Mrs. Nesbit–she whom George Brotherton always called the General–she did not shake the spell of the trolls from her heart. They were building wings and ells and lean-tos on the house that she called her home, and she came to love the witchery of the time and place and did not see its folly. Yet there walked between these two entranced ones, another who should have awakened. For she was young, fresh from the gods of life. Her eyes, unflinching, glorious eyes, should have seen through the dream of that day. But they were only a girl’s eyes and were happy, so they could not see beyond the spell that fell around them. And alas, even when the prince arrived, his kiss was poisoned too.

When young Thomas Van Dorn came to the Nesbit house on a voyage of exploration and discovery–came in a handsome suit of gray, with hat and handkerchief to match, and a flowing crepe tie, black to harmonize with his flowing mustache and his wing of fine jet black hair above his ivory tinted face, Laura Nesbit considered him reflectively, and catalogued him.

“Tom,” explained the daughter to her father rather coldly one morning, after the young man had been reading Swinburne in his deep, mellow pipe-organ of a voice to the family until bedtime the night before, “Tom Van Dorn, father, is the kind of a man who needs the influence of some strong woman!”

Mrs. Nesbit glanced at her husband furtively and caught his grin as he piped gayly:

“Who also must carry the night key!”

The three laughed but the daughter went on with the cataloguing: “He is a young man of strong predilections, of definite purpose and more than ordinary intellectual capacity.”

“And so far as I have counted, Laura,” her father interrupted again, “I haven’t found an honest hair in his handsome head; though I haven’t completed the count yet!” The father smiled amiably as he made the final qualification.

The girl caught the mother’s look of approval shimmering across the table and laughed her gay, bell-like chime. “O, you’ve made a bad guess, mother.”

Again she laughed gayly: “It’s not for me to open a school for the Direction of Miscalculated Purposes. Still,” this she said seriously, “a strong woman is what he needs.”

“Not omitting the latch-key,” gibed her father, and the talk drifted into another current.

The next Sunday afternoon young Tom Van Dorn appeared with Rossetti added to his Swinburne, and crowded Morty Sands clear out of the hammock so that Morty had to sleep in a porch chair, and woke up frequently and was unhappy. While the gilded youth slept the Woman woke and listened, and Morty was left disconsolate.

The shadows were long and deep when Tom Van Dorn rose from the hammock, closed his book, and stood beside the girl, looking with a gentle tenderness from the burning depths of his black eyes into her eyes. He paused before starting away, and held up a hand so that she could see, wound about it, a flaxen hair, probably drawn from the hammock pillow. He smiled rather sadly, dropped his eyes to the book closed in his hands, and quoted softly:

“‘And around his heart, one strangling golden hair!’”

He did not speak again, but walked off at a great stride down the stone path to the street. The next day Rossetti’s sonnets came to Laura Nesbit in a box of roses.

The Sunday following Laura Nesbit made it a point to go with her parents to spend the day with the Adamses down by the river on their farm. But not until the Nesbits piled into their phaëton to leave did Grant appear. He met the visitors at the gate with a great bouquet of woods flowers, saying, “Here, Mrs. Nesbit–I thought you might like them.” But they found Laura’s hands, and he smiled gratefully at her for taking them. As they drove off, leaving him looking eagerly after them, Dr. Nesbit said when they were out of hearing, “I tell you, girls–there’s the makings of a man–a real man!”

That night Laura Nesbit in her room looking at the stars, rose and smelled the woods flowers on her table beside some fading roses.

As her day dreams merged into vague pictures flitting through her drowsy brain, she heard the plaintive, trembling voice of Morty Sands’s mandolin, coming nearer and nearer, and his lower whistle taking the tune while the E string crooned an obligato; he passed the house, went down the street to the Mortons’ and came back and went home again, still trilling his heart out like a bird. As the chirping faded into the night sounds, the girl smiled compassionately and slept.

As she slept young Thomas Van Dorn walked alone under the elm trees that plumed over the sidewalks in those environs with hands clasped behind him, occasionally gazing into the twinkling stars of the summer night, considering rather seriously many things. He had come out to think over his speech to the jury the next day in a murder case pending in the court. But the murderer kept sinking from his consciousness; the speech would not shape itself to please him, and the young lawyer was forever meeting rather squarely and abruptly the vision of Laura Nesbit, who seemed to be asking him disagreeable and conclusive questions, which he did not like to answer. Was she worth it–the sacrifice that marriage would require of him? Was he in love with her? What is love anyway? Wherein did it differ from certain other pleasurable emotions, to which he was not a stranger? And why was the consciousness of her growing larger and larger in his life? He tried to whistle reflectively, but he had no music in his soul and whistling gave him no solace.

It was midnight when he found himself walking past the Nesbit home, looking toward it and wondering which of the open windows was nearest to her. He flinched with shame when he recollected himself before other houses gazing at other windows, and he unpursed his lips that were wont to whistle a signal, and went down the street shuddering. Then after an impulse in which some good angel of remorse shook his teeth to rouse his soul, he lifted his face to the sky and would have cried in his heart for help, but instead he smiled and went on, trying to think of his speech and resolving mightily to put Laura Nesbit out of his heart finally for the night. He held himself to his high resolve for four or five minutes. It is only fair to say that the white clad figure of the Doctor coming clicking up the street with his cane keeping time to a merry air that he hummed as he walked distracted the young man. His first thought was to turn off and avoid the Doctor who came along swinging his medicine case gayly. But there rushed over Van Dorn a feeling that he would like to meet the Doctor. He recognized that he would like to see any one who was near to Her. It was a pleasing sensation. He coddled it. He was proud of it; he knew what it meant. So he stopped the preoccupied figure in white, and cried, “Doctor–we’re late to-night!”

“Well, Tom, I’ve got a right to be! Two more people in Harvey to-night than were here at five o’clock this afternoon because I am a trifle behindhand. Girl at your partner’s–Joe Calvin’s, and a boy down at Dick Bowman’s!” He paused and smiled and added musingly, “And they’re as tickled down at Dick’s as though he was heir to a kingdom!”

“And Joe–I suppose–not quite–”

“Oh, Joe, he’s still in the barn, I dropped in to tell him it was a girl. But he won’t venture into the house to see the mother before noon to-morrow! Then he’ll go when she’s asleep!”

“Dick really isn’t more than two jumps ahead of the wolf, is he, Doctor?”

“Well,” grinned the elder man, “maybe a jump-and-a-half or two jumps.”

The young man exclaimed, “Say, Doctor! I think it would be a pious act to make the fellows put up fifty dollars for Dick to-night. I’ll just go down and raid a few poker games and make them do it.”