In the Heart of a Fool

At night Jasper went to his room above the kitchen and the father turned to his lonely bed. In the cold parlor Mary Adams lay. Grant sat in the kitchen by the stove, pressing to his face his mother’s apron, only three days before left hanging by her own hands on the kitchen door. He clung to this last touch of her fingers, through the long night, and as he sat there his heart filled with a blind, vague, rather impotent purpose to take his mother’s place with Kenyon. From time to time he rose to put wood in the stove, but always when he went back to his chair, and stroked the apron with his face, the baby seemed to be clinging to him. The thought of the little hands forever tugging at her apron racked him with sobs long after his tears were gone.

And so as responsibility rose in him he stepped across the border from youth to manhood.

They made him dress in his Sunday best the next morning and he was still so close to that borderland of boyhood that he was standing about the yard near the gate, looking rather lost and awkward when the Nesbits drove up with Kenyon, whom they had taken for the night. When the others had gone into the house the Doctor asked:

“Did she come, Grant?”

The youth lifted his face to the Doctor and looked him squarely in the eye as man to man and answered sharply, “No.”

The Doctor cocked one eye reflectively and said slowly, “So–” and drove away.

It was nearly dusk when the Adamses came back from the cemetery to the empty house. But a bright fire was burning in the kitchen stove and the kettle was boiling and the odor of food cooking in the oven was in the air. Kenyon was moving fitfully about the front room. Mrs. Dexter was quietly setting the table. Amos Adams hung up his hat, took off his coat, and went to his rocker by the kitchen door; Jasper sat stiffly in the front room. Grant met Mrs. Dexter in the dining room, and she saw that the child had hold of the young man’s finger and she heard the baby calling, “Mother–mother! Grant, I want mother!” with a plaintive little cry, over and over again. Grant played with the child, showed the little fellow his toys and tried to stop the incessant call of “Mother–mother–where’s mother!” At last the boy’s eyes filled. He picked up the child, knocking his own new hat roughly to the floor. He drew up his chin, straightened his trembling jaw, batted his eyes so that the moisture left them and said to his father in a hard, low voice–a man’s voice:

“I am going to Margaret; she must help.”

It was dark when he came to town and walked up Congress Street with the little one snuggled in his arms. Just before he arrived at the house, the restless child had asked to walk, and they went hand in hand up the steps of the house where Margaret Müller lived. She was sitting alone on the veranda–clearly waiting for some one, and when she saw who was coming up the steps she rose and hurried to them, greeting them on the very threshold of the veranda. She was white and her bosom was fluttering as she asked in a tense whisper:

“What do you want–quick, what do you want?”

She stood before Grant, as if stopping his progress. The child’s plaintive cry, “Mother–Grant, I want mother!” not in grief, but in a great question, was the answer.

He looked into her staring, terror-stricken eyes until they drooped and for a moment he dominated her. But she came back from some outpost of her nature with reënforcements.

“Get out of here–get out of here. Don’t come here with your brat–get out,” she snarled in a whisper. The child went to her, plucked her skirts and cried, “Mother, mother.” Grant pointed to the baby and broke out: “Oh, Maggie–what’s to become of Kenyon?–what can I do! He’s only got you now. Oh, Maggie, won’t you come?” He saw fear flit across her face in a tense second before she answered. Then fear left and she crouched at him trembling, red-eyed, gaping, mouthed, the embodiment of determined hate; swiping the child’s little hands away from her, she snapped:

“Get out of here!–leave! quick!” He stood stubbornly before her and only the child’s voice crying, “Grant, Grant, I want to go home to mother,” filled the silence. Finally she spoke again, cutting through the baby’s complaint. “I shall never, never, never take that child; I loathe him, and I hate you and I want both of you always to keep away from me.”

Without looking at her again, he caught up the toddling child, lifted it to his shoulder and walked down the steps. As they turned into the street they ran into Henry Fenn, who in his free choice of a mate was hurrying to one who he thought would give him a home–a home and children, many children to stand between him and his own insatiate devil. Henry greeted Grant:

“Why, boy–oh, yes, been to see Maggie? I wish she could help you, Grant.”

And from the veranda came a sweet, rich voice, crying:

“Yes, Henry–do you know where they can get a good nurse girl?”

CHAPTER XI

HERE OUR FOOL GROPES FOR A SPIRIT AND CAN FIND ONLY DUST

Henry Fenn and Margaret Müller sat naming their wedding day, while Grant Adams walked home with his burden. Henry Fenn had been fighting through a long winter, against the lust for liquor that was consuming his flesh. At times it seemed to him that her presence as he fought his battle, helped him; but there were phases of his fight, when she too fashioned herself in his imagination as a temptress, and she seemed to blow upon the coals that were searing his weak flesh.

At such times he was taciturn, and went about his day’s work as one who is busy at a serious task. He smiled his amiable smile, he played his man’s part in the world without whimpering, and fought on like a gentleman. The night he met Grant and the child at the steps of the house where Margaret lived, he had called to set the day for their marriage. And that night she glowed before him and in his arms like a very brand of a woman blown upon by some wind from another world. When he left her his throat grew parched and dry and his lips quivered with a desire for liquor that seemed to simmer in his vitals. But he set his teeth, and ran to his room, and locked himself in, throwing the key out of the window into the yard. He sat shivering and whimpering and fighting, by turns conquering his devil, and panting under its weight, but always with the figure and face of his beloved in his eyes, sometimes beckoning him to fight on, sometimes coaxing him to yield and stop the struggle. But as the day came in he fell asleep with one more battle to his credit.

In Harvey for many years Henry Fenn’s name was a byword; but the pitying angels who have seen him fight in the days of his strength and manhood–they looked at Henry Fenn, and touched reverent foreheads in his high honor. Then why did they who know our hearts so well, let the blow fall upon him, you ask. But there you trespass upon that old question that the Doctor and Amos Adams have thrashed out so long. Has man a free will, or has the illusion of time and space wound him up in its predestined tangle, to act as he must and be what he is without appeal or resistance, or even hope of a pardon?

Doctor Nesbit and Amos Adams were trying to solve the mystery of human destiny at the gate of the Adams’ home the day after the funeral. Amos had his foot on the hub of the Doctor’s buggy and was saying: “But Doctor, can’t you see that it isn’t all material? Suppose that every atom of the universe does affect every other atom, and that the accumulated effect of past action holds the stars in their courses, and that if we knew what all the past was we should be able to foretell the future, because it would be mathematically calculable–what of it? That does not prove your case, man! Can’t you see that in free will another element enters–the spiritual, if you please, that is not amenable to atomic action past or present?” Amos smiled deprecatingly and added sadly: “Got that last night from Schopenhauer.” The Doctor, clearly unawed by Schopenhauer, broke out: “Aye, there I have you, Amos. Isn’t the brain matter, and doesn’t the brain secrete consciousness?”

“Does this buggy secrete distance, Jim? Go ’long with you, man.” Before the Doctor could reply, around the corner of the house, bringing little Kenyon Adams in his best bib and tucker, came the lofty figure of Mrs. Nesbit. With her came her daughter. Then up spoke Mrs. Bedelia Satterthwaite Nesbit of the Maryland Satterthwaites, “Look here, Amos Adams–I don’t care what you say, I’m going to take this baby.” There was strong emphasis upon the “I’m,” and she went on: “You can have him every night, and Grant can take care of the child after supper when he comes home from work. But every morning at eight I’m going to have this baby.” Further emphasis upon the first person. “I’m not going to see a child turned over to a hired girl all day and me with a big house and no baby and a daughter about to marry and leave me and a houseful of help, if I needed it, which thank Heavens I don’t.” She put her lips together sternly, and, “Not a word, Amos Adams,” she said to Amos, who had not opened his mouth. “Not another word. Kenyon will be home at six o’clock.”

She put the child into the Doctor’s submissive arms–helped her daughter into the buggy, and when she had climbed in herself, she glared triumphantly over her glasses and above her Roman nose, as she said: “Now, Amos–have some sense. Doctor,–go on.” And in a moment the buggy was spinning up the hill toward the town.

Thus it was that every day, rain or shine, until the day of her wedding, Laura Nesbit drove her dog cart to the Adamses before the men went to their work and took little Kenyon home with her and brought him back in the evening. And always she took him from the arms of Grant–Grant, red-headed, freckled, blue-eyed, who was hardening into manhood and premature maturity so fast that he did not realize the change that it made in his face. It grew set, but not hard, a woman’s tenderness crept into the features, and with that tenderness came at times a look of petulant impatience. It was a sad face–a sadly fanatic face–yet one that lighted with human feeling under a smile.

Little by little, meeting daily–often meeting morning and evening, Grant and Laura established a homely, wholesome, comfortable relation.

One evening while Laura was waiting for Tom Van Dorn and Grant was waiting for Kenyon she and Grant sitting upon the veranda steps of the Nesbit home, looked into the serene, wide lawn that topped the hill above the quiet town. They could look across the white and green of the trees and houses, across the prosperous, solid, red roofs of the stone and brick stores and offices on Market Street, into the black smudge of smoke and the gray, unpainted, sprawling rows of ill-kept tenements around the coal mines, that was South Harvey. They could see even then the sky stains far down the Wahoo Valley, where the villages of Foley and Magnus rose and duplicated the ugliness of South Harvey.

The drift of the conversation was personal. The thoughts of youth are largely personal. The universe is measured by one’s own thumb in the twenties. “Funny, isn’t it,” said Grant, playing with a honeysuckle vine that climbed the post beside him, “I guess I’m the only one of the old crowd who is outlawed in overalls. There’s Freddie Kollander and Nate Perry and cousin Morty and little Joe Calvin, all up town counterjumping or working in offices. The girls all getting married.” He paused. “But as far as that goes I’m making more money than any of the fellows!” He paused again a moment and added as he gazed moodily into the pillars of smoke rising above South Harvey, “Gee, but I’ll miss you when you’re gone–”

The girl’s silvery laugh greeted his words. “Now, Grant,” she said, “where do you think I’m going? Why, Tom and I will be only a block from here–just over on Tenth Street in the Perry House.”

Grant grinned as he shook his head. “You’re lost and gone forever, just the same, Miss Clementine. In about three years I’ll probably be that ‘red-headed boss carpenter in the mine─let me see, what’s his name?’”

“Oh, Grant,” scoffed the girl. She saw that his heart was sadder than his face.

She took courage and said: “Grant, you never can know how often I think of you–how much I want you to win everything worth while in this world, how much I want you to be happy–how I believe in you and–and–bet on you, Grant–bet on you!”

Grant did not answer her. Presently he looked up and over the broad valley below them. The sun behind the house was touching the limestone ledge far across the valley with golden rays. The smoke from South Harvey on their right was lighted also. The youth looked into the smoke. Then he turned his eyes back from the glowing smoke and spoke.

“This is how I look at it. I don’t mean you’re any different from any one else. What I was trying to say was that I’m the only one of our old crowd in the High School you know that used to have parties and go together in the old days–I’m the only one that’s wearing overalls, and my way is down there”; he nodded his head toward the mines and smelters and factories in the valley.

“Look at these hands,” he said, solemnly spreading out his wide, muscular hands on his knees; showing one bruised blue-black finger nail. The hands were flinty and hairy and brown, but they looked effective with an intelligence almost apart from the body which they served.

“I’m cut out for work. It’s all right. That’s my job, and I’m proud of it so far as that goes. I could get a place clerking if I wanted to, and be in the dancing crowd in six months, and be out to the Van Dorns for dinner in a year.” He paused and looked into the distant valley and cried. “But I tell you–my job is down there. And I’m not going to quit them. God knows they’re getting the rough end of it. If you knew,” his voice raised slightly and a petulant indignation tempered it. “If you knew the gouging and pocket picking and meanness that is done by the people up town to the people down there in the smoke, you’d be one of those howling red-mouthed anarchists you read about.”

The girl looked at him silently and at length asked: “For instance–what’s just one thing?”

“Well, for instance–in the mines where I work all the men come up grimy and greasy and vile. They have to wash. In Europe we roughnecks know that wash-houses are provided by the company, but here,” he cried excitedly, “the company doesn’t provide even a faucet; instead the men–father and son and maybe a boarder or two have to go home–into those little one and two roomed houses the company has built, and strip to the hide with the house full of children and wash. What if your girlhood had been used to seeing things like that–could you laugh as you laugh now?” He looked up at her savagely. “Oh, I know they’re ignorant foreigners and little better than animals and those things don’t hurt them–only if you had a little girl who had to be in and out of the single room of your home when the men came home to wash up–”

He broke off, and then began again, “Why, I was talking to a dago last night at the shaft mouth going down to work on the graveyard shift and he said that he came here believing he would find a free, beautiful country in which his children could grow up self-respecting men and women, and then he told me about his little girls living down there where all the vice is scattered through the tenements, and–about this washing up proposition, and now one of the girls is gone and they can’t find her.” He threw out a despairing hand; “So I’m a roughneck, Laura–I’m a jay, and I’m going to stay with them.”

“But your people,” she urged. “What about them–your father and brothers?”

“Jap’s climbing out. Father’s too old to get in. And Kenyon–” he flinched, “I hope to God I’ll have the nerve to stay when the test on him comes.” He turned to the girl passionately: “But you–you–oh, you–I want you to know–” He did not finish the sentence, but rose and walked into the house and called: “Dad–Kenyon–come on, it’s getting late. Stars are coming out.”

Half an hour later Tom Van Dorn, in white flannels, with a red silk tie, and with a white hat and shoes, came striding across the lawn. His black silky mustache, his soft black hair, his olive skin, his shining black eyes, his alert emotional face, dark and swarthy, was heightened even in the twilight by the soft white clothes he wore.

“Hello, popper-in-law,” he cried. “Any room left on the veranda?”

“Come in, Thomas,” piped the older man. “The girls are doing the dishes, Bedelia and Laura, and we’ll just sit out two or three dances.”

The young man lolled in the hammock shaded by the vines. The elder smoked and reflected. Then slowly and by degrees, as men who are feeling their way to conversation, they began talking of local politics. They were going at a high rate when the talk turned to Henry Fenn. “Doing pretty well, Doctor,” put in the younger man. “Only broke over once in eighteen months–that’s the record for Henry. Shows what a woman can do for a man.” He looked up sympathetically, and caught the Doctor’s curious eyes.

The Doctor puffed, cleaned out his pipe, absently put it away, then rose and deliberately pulled his chair over to the hammock: “Tom–I’m a generation older than you–nearly. I want to tell you something–” He smiled. “Boy–you’ve got the devil’s own fight ahead of you–did you know it–I mean,” he paused, “the–well, the woman proposition.”

Van Dorn fingered his mustache, and looked serious.

“Tom,” the elder man chirped, “you’re a handsome pup–a damn handsome, lovable pup. Sometimes.” He let his voice run whimsically into its mocking falsetto, “I almost catch myself getting fooled too.”