In the Heart of a Fool

He reached for her hands beseechingly and said: “We are asking your husband, the Judge, to let him out of jail to-night, for if the Judge doesn’t release Grant–they are going to mob him and maybe kill him! Oh, won’t you save him? You can. I know you can. The Judge will let him out if you demand it.”

“My son, my son!” the woman answered as she looked vacantly at him. “You are my son, my very own, aren’t you?”

She stooped to look into his eyes and cried: “Oh, you’re mine”–her trembling fingers ran over his face. “My eyes, my hair. You have my voice–O God–why haven’t they found it out?” Then she began whispering over again the words, “My son.”

A clock chimed the half-hour. It checked her. “He’ll be back in half an hour,” she said, rising; then–“So they’re going to mob Grant, are they? And he sent you here asking me for mercy!”

Kenyon shook his head in protest and cried: “No, no, no. He doesn’t even know–”

She looked at the young man and became convinced that he was telling the truth; but she was sure that Laura Van Dorn had sent him. It was her habit of mind to see the ulterior motive. So the passion of motherhood flaring up after years of suppression quickly died down. It could not dominate her in her late forties, even for the time, nor even with the power which held her during the night of the riot in South Harvey, when she was in her thirties. The passion of motherhood with Margaret Van Dorn was largely a memory, but hate was a lively and material emotion.

She fondled her son in the simulation of a passion that she did not feel–and when in his eagerness he tried vainly to tie her to a promise to help his father, she would only reply:

“Kenyon, oh, my son, my beautiful son–you know I’d give my life for you–”

The son looked into the dead, brassy eyes of his mother, saw her drooping mouth, with the brown lips that had not been stained that day; observed the slumping muscles of her over-massaged face, and felt with a shudder the caress of her fingers–and he knew in his heart that she was deceiving him. A moment after she had spoken the automobile going to the station for the Judge backed out of the garage and turned into the street.

“You must go now,” she cried, clinging to him. “Oh, son–son–my only son–come to me, come to your mother sometimes for her love. He is coming now in a few minutes on the eight o’clock train. You must not let him see you here.”

She helped Kenyon to rise. He stumbled across the floor to the steps and she helped him gently down to the lawn. She stood play-acting for him a moment in whisper and pantomime, then she turned and hurried indoors and met the inquisitive maid servant with:

“Just that Kenyon Adams–the musician–awfully dear boy, but he wanted me to interfere with the Judge for that worthless brother, Grant. The Nesbits sent him. You know the Nesbit woman is crazy about that anarchist. Oh, Nadine, did Chalmers see Kenyon? You know Chalmers just blabs everything to the Judge.”

Nadine indicated that Chalmers had recognized Kenyon as he crawled up the veranda steps and Mrs. Van Dorn replied: “Very well, I’ll be ready for him.” And half an hour later, when the Judge drove up, his wife met him as he was putting his valise in his room:

“Dahling,” she said as she closed the door, “that Kenyon Adams was over here, appealing to me for his brother, Grant.”

“Well?” asked the Judge contemptuously.

“You have him where we want him now, dahling,” she answered. “If you refuse him his freedom, the mob will get him. And oh, oh, oh,” she cried passionately, “I hope they’ll hang him, hang him, higher’n Haman. That will take the tuck out of the old Nesbit cat and that other, his–his sweetheart, to have her daughter marrying the brother of a man who was hanged! That’ll bring them down.”

A flash across the Judge’s face told the woman where her emotion was leading her. It angered her.

“So that holds you, does it? That binds the hands of the Judge, does it? This wonderful daughter, who snubs him on the street–she mustn’t marry the brother of a man who was hanged!” Margaret laughed, and the Judged glowered in rage until the scar stood white upon his purple brow.

“Dahling,” she leered, “remember our little discussion of Kenyon Adams’s parentage that night! Maybe our dear little girl is going to marry the son, the son,” she repeated wickedly, “of a man who was hanged!”

He stepped toward her crying: “For God’s sake, quit! Quit!”

“Oh, I hope he’ll hang. I hope he’ll hang and you’ve got to hang him! You’ve got to hang him!” she mocked exultingly.

The man turned in rage. He feared the powerful, physical creature before him. He had never dared to strike her. He wormed past her and ran slinking down the hall and out of the door–out from the temple of love, which he had builded–somewhat upon sand perhaps, but still the temple of love. A rather sad place it was, withal, in which to rest the weary bones of the hunter home from the hills, after a lifelong ride to hounds in the primrose hunt.

He stood for a moment upon the steps of the veranda, while his heart pumped the bile of hate through him; and suddenly hearing a soft footfall, he turned his head quickly, and saw Lila–his daughter. As he turned toward her in the twilight it struck him like a blow in the face that she in some way symbolized all that he had always longed for–his unattainable ideal; for she seemed young–immortally young, and sweet. The grace of maidenhood shone from her and she turned an eager but infinitely wistful face up to his, and for a second the picture of the slim, white-clad figure, enveloping and radiating the gentle eagerness of a beautiful soul, came to him like the disturbing memory of some vague, lost dream and confused him. While she spoke he groped back to the moment blindly and heard her say:

“Oh, you will help me now, this once, this once when I beg it; you will help me?” As she spoke she clutched his arm. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Father, don’t let them murder him–don’t, oh, please, father–for me, won’t you save him for me–won’t you let him out of jail now?”

“Lila, child,” the Judge held out his hand unsteadily, “it’s not what I want to do; it’s the law that I must follow. Why, I can’t do–”

“If Mr. Ahab Wright was in jail as Grant is and the workmen had the State government, what would the law say?” she answered. Then she gripped his hands and cried: “Oh, father, father, have mercy, have mercy! We love him so and it will kill Kenyon. Grant has been like a father to Kenyon; he has been–”

“Tell me this, Lila,” the Judge stopped her; he held her hands in his cold, hard palms. “Who is Kenyon–who is his father–do you know?”

“Yes, I know,” the daughter replied quietly.

“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 noble, 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 passionately: “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 God–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-shell rimmed glasses, 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 petition in habeas corpus of Grant Adams, the court, through its owlish glasses, saw the eyes of the petitioner 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 petitioner 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 manuscript, “I suppose you think you are a martyr.”