In the Heart of a Fool

CHAPTER XXIII

HERE GRANT ADAMS DISCOVERS HIS INSIDES

Laura Van Dorn stood watching her husband pass down the street. She silenced the child by clasping her close in the tender motherly arms. No tears rose in the wife’s eyes, as she stood looking vacantly down the street at the corner where her husband had turned. Gradually it came to her consciousness that a crowd was gathering by her father’s house. She remembered then that she had seen a carriage drive up, and that three or four men followed it on bicycles, and then half a dozen men got out of a wagon. Even while she stared, she saw the little rattletrap of a buggy that Amos Adams drove come tearing up to the curb by her father’s house. Amos Adams, Jasper and little Kenyon got out. Even amidst the turmoil of her emotions, she moved mechanically to the street, to see better, then she clasped Lila to her breast and ran toward her father’s home.

“What is it?” she cried to the first man she met at the edge of the little group standing near the veranda steps.

“Grant Adams–we’re afraid he’s killed.” The man who spoke was Denny Hogan. Beside him was an Italian, who said, “He’s burned something most awful. He got it saving des feller here,” nodding and pointing to Hogan.

Laura put down her child and hurried through the house to her father’s little office. The strong smell of an anesthetic came to her. She saw Amos Adams standing a-tremble by the office door, holding Kenyon’s hand. Amos answered her question.

“They think he’s dying,–I knew he’d want to see Kenyon.”

Jasper, white and frightened, stood on the stairs. These details she saw at a glance as she pushed open the office door. At first she saw great George Brotherton and three or four white-faced, terrified working men, standing in stiff helplessness, while like a white shuttle, among the gloomy figures the Doctor moved quickly, ceaselessly, effectively. Then her eyes met her father’s. He said:

“Come in, Laura–I need you. Now all of you go out but George and her.”

Then, as she came into the group, Laura saw Grant Adams, sitting with agony upon his wet face. Her father bent over him and worked on a puffy, pink, naked arm and shoulder, and body. The man was half conscious; his face was twitching, and when she looked again she saw where his right hand should be only a brown, charred stump.

Not looking up the Doctor spoke: “You know where things are and what I need–I can’t get him clear under,” Every motion he made counted; he took no false steps; he made no turn of his body or twist of his hand that was not full of conscious purpose. He only spoke to give orders, and when Brotherton whispered to Laura:

“White hot lead pig at the smelter–Grant saw it was going to kill Hogan and grabbed it.”

The Doctor shook his head at Brotherton and for two hours that was all Laura knew of the accident. Once when the Doctor stopped for a second to take a deep breath, Brotherton asked, “Do you want another doctor?” the little man shook his head again, and motioned with it at his daughter.

“She’s doing well enough.” She kept her father’s merciless pace, but always the sense of her stricken life seemed to be hovering in the back of her consciousness, and the hours seemed ages as she applied her bandages, and helped with the gruesome work of the knife on the charred stump of the arm. But finally it was over and she saw Brotherton and Hogan lift Grant to a cot, under her father’s direction, and carry him to the bedroom she had used as a girl at home. While the Doctor and Laura had been working in his office Mrs. Nesbit had been making the bedroom ready.

It was five o’clock, and the two fagged women were in Mrs. Nesbit’s room. The younger woman was pale and haggard and unable to relax. The mother tried all of a mother’s wiles to bring peace to the over-strung nerves. But the daughter paced the floor silently, or if she spoke it was to ask some trivial question about the household–about what arrangements were made for the injured man’s food, about Lila, about Amos Adams and Kenyon. Finally, as she turned to leave the room, her mother asked, “Where are you going?” The daughter answered, “Why, I’m going home.”

“But Laura,” the mother returned, “I believe your father is expecting your help here–to-night. I am sure he will need you.” The daughter looked steadily, but rather vacantly at her mother for a moment, then replied: “Well, Lila and I must go now. I’ll leave her there with the maid and I’ll try to come back.”

Her hand was on the door-knob. “Well,” hesitated her mother, “what about Tom–?”

The eyes of the two women met. “Did father tell you?” asked the daughter’s eyes. The mother’s eyes said “Yes.” Then rose the Spartan mother, and put a kind, firm hand upon the daughter’s arm and asked: “But Laura, my dear, my dear, you are not going back again, to all–all that, are you?”

“I am going home, mother,” the daughter replied.

“But your self-respect, child?” quoted the Spartan, and the daughter made answer simply: “I must go home, mother.”

When Laura Van Dorn entered her home she began the evening’s routine, somewhat from habit, and yet many things she did she grimly forced herself to do. She waited dinner for her husband. She called his office vainly upon the telephone. She and Lila ate alone; often they had eaten alone before. And as the evening grew from twilight to dark, she put the child to bed, left one of the maids in the child’s room, lighted an electric reading lamp in her husband’s room, turned on the hall lamp, instructed the maid to tell the Judge that his wife was with her father helping him with a wounded man, and then she went out through the open, hospitable door.

But all that night, as she sat beside the restless man, who writhed in his pain even under the drug, she went over and over her problem. She recognized that a kind of finality had come into her relations with her husband. In the rush of events that had followed his departure, a period, definite and conclusive seemed to have been put after the whole of her life’s adventures with Tom Van Dorn. She did not cry, nor feel the want of tears, yet there were moments when she instinctively put her hands before her face as in a shame. She saw the man in perspective for the first time clearly. She had not let herself take a candid inventory of him before. But that night all her subconscious impressions rose and framed themselves into conscious reflections. And then she knew that his relation with her from the beginning had been a reflex of his view of life–of his material idea of the scheme of things.

As the night wore on, she kept her nurse’s chart and did the things to be done for her patient. For the time her emotions were spent. Her heart was empty. Even for the shattered and suffering body before her, the tousled red head, the half-closed, pain-bleared eyes, the lips that shielded the clenched teeth–she felt none of that tenderness that comes from deep sympathy and moving pity. At dawn she went home with her body worn and weary, and after the sun was up she slept.

Scarcely had the morning stir begun in the Nesbit household, before Morty Sands appeared, clad in the festive raiment of the moment–white ducks and a shirtwaist and a tennis racket, to be exact. He asked for the Doctor and when the Doctor came, Morty cocked his sparrow like head and paused a moment after the greetings of the morning were spoken. After his inquiries for Grant had been satisfied, Morty still lingered and cocked his head.

“Of course, Doctor,” Morty began diffidently, “and naturally you know more of it than I–but–” he got no further for a second. Then he gathered courage from the Doctor’s bland face to continue: “Well, Doctor, last night at Brotherton’s, Tom came in and George and Nate Perry and Kyle and Captain Morton and I were there; and Tom–well, Doctor–Tom said something–”

“He did–did he?” cut in the Doctor. “The dirty dog! So he broke the news to the Amen Corner!”

“Now, Doctor, we all know Tom,” Morty explained. “We know Tom: but George said Laura was helping with Grant, and I just thought, certainly I have no wish to intrude, but I just thought maybe I could relieve her myself by sitting up with Grant, if–”

The Doctor’s kindly face twitched with pain, and he cried: “Morty, you’re a boy in a thousand! But can’t you see that just at this time if I had half a dozen cases like Grant’s, they would be a God’s mercy for her!”

Morty could not control his voice. So he turned and tripped down the steps and flitted away. As Morty disappeared, George Brotherton came roaring up the hill, but no word of what Van Dorn had said in the Amen Corner did Mr. Brotherton drop. He asked about Grant, inquired about Laura, and released a crashing laugh at some story of stuttering Kyle Perry trying to tell deaf John Kollander about the Venezuelan dispute. “Kyle,” said George, “pronounces Venezuela like an atomizer!” Captain Morton rested from his loved employ, let the egg-beater of the hour languish, and permitted stock in his new Company to slump in a weary market while he camped on the Nesbit veranda during the day to greet and disperse such visitors as Mrs. Nesbit deemed of sufficiently small social consequence to receive the Captain’s ministrations. At twilight the Captain greeted Laura coming from her home for her night watch, and with a rather elaborate scenario of amenities, told her how his Household Horse company was prospering, how his egg beater was going, and asked after Lila’s health, omitting mention of the Judge with an easy nonchalance which struck terror to the woman’s heart–terror, lest the Captain and through him all men should know of her trouble.

But deeper than the terror in her heart at what the Captain might know and tell was the pain at the thing she knew herself–that the home which she loved was dead. However proudly it might stand before the world, for the passing hour or day or year, she knew, and the knowledge sickened her to her soul’s death, that the home was doomed. She kept thinking of it as a tree, whose roots were cut; a tree whose leaves were still green, whose comeliness still pleased the eye but whose ugly, withered branches soon must stand out to affront the world. And sorrowing for the beauty that was doomed she went to her work. All night with her father she ministered to the tortured man, but in the morning she slipped away to her home again hoping her numb vain hope, through another weary journey of the sun.

The third night found Grant Adams restless, wakeful, anxious to talk. The opiates had left him. She saw that he was fully himself, even though conscious of his tortured body. “Laura,” he cried in a sick man’s feeble voice, “I want to tell you something.”

“Not now, Grant,” she returned quietly. “I’d rather hear it to-morrow.”

“No,” he returned stubbornly, “I want to tell you now.”

He paused as if to catch his breath. “For I want you to know I’m the happiest man in the world.” He set his teeth firmly. The muscles of his jaw worked, and he smiled up at her. He questioned her with his blue eyes, and after some assent had come into her face–or he thought it had, he went on:

“There’s a God in Israel, Laura–I know it way down in me and all through me.”

A crash of pain stopped him. He grinned at the groan, which the pain wrenched from him, and whispered, “There’s a God in Israel–for He gave me my chance. I saw the great white killing thing coming to do for Denny Hogan. How I’d waited for that chance. Then when it came, I wanted to run. But I didn’t run. There’s something in you bigger than fear. So when God gave me my chance He put the–the–the–” pain wrenched him again, and he said weakly, “the–I’ve got to say it, you’ll understand–He put the–the guts in me to take it.”

When she left him a few minutes later he seemed to be asleep. But when Doctor Nesbit came into the room an hour later Grant was wide-eyed and smiling, and seemed so much better that as a reward of merit the Doctor brought in the morning paper and told Grant he could look at the headings for five minutes. There it was that he first realized what a lot of business lay ahead of him, learning to live as a one-armed man. The Doctor saw his patient worrying with the paper, and started to help.

“No, Doctor,” said the young man, “I must begin sometime, and now’s as good a time as any.” So he struggled with the unwieldy sheets of paper, and finally managed to get his morning’s reading done. When the time was up, he handed back his paper saying, “I see Tom Van Dorn is going on his vacation–does that mean Laura, too?” The Doctor shook his head; and by way of taking the subject away from Laura he said: “Now about your damages, Grant–you know I’ll stand by you with the Company, don’t you–I’m no Van Dorn, if I am Company doctor. You ought to have good damages–for–”

“Damages! damages!” cried Grant, “why, Doctor, I can’t get damages. I wasn’t working for the smelter when it happened. I was around organizing the men. And I don’t want damages. This arm,” he looked lovingly at the stump beside him, “is worth more in my business than a million dollars. For it proves to me that I am not afraid to go clear through for my faith, and it proves me to the men! Damages! damages?” he said grimly. “Why, Doctor, if Uncle Dan and the other owners up town here only know what this stump will cost them, they would sue me for damages! I tell you those men in the mine there saved my life. Ever since then I’ve been trying to repay them, and here comes this chance to turn in a little on account, to bind the bargain, and now the men know how seriously I hold the debt. Damages?” There was just a hint of fanaticism in his laugh; the Doctor looked at Grant quickly, then he sniffed, “Fine talk, Grant, fine talk for the next world, but it won’t buy shoes for the baby in this,” and he turned away impatiently and went into a world of reality, leaving Grant Adams to enjoy his Utopia.

That morning after breakfast, when Laura had gone home, the Doctor and his wife sitting alone went into the matter further. “Of course,” said the Doctor, “she’ll see that he has gone away. But when should we tell her what he has done?”

“Doctor,” said the mother, “you leave his letter here where I can get it. I’m going over there and pack everything that rightfully may be called hers–I mean her dresses and trinkets–and such things as have in them no particular memory of him. They shall come home. Then I’ll lock up the house.”

The Doctor squinted up his eyes thoughtfully and said slowly, “Well, that seems kind. I don’t suppose you need read her the whole letter. Just tell her he is going to ask for a divorce–tell her it’s incompatibility. But his letter isn’t important.” The Doctor sighed.

“Grant ought really to stay here another week–maybe we can stretch it to ten days–and let her have all the responsibility she’ll take. It’ll help her over the first bridge. Kenyon is taking care of Lila–I suppose?” The Doctor rose, stood by his wife and said as he found her hand:

“Poor Laura–poor Laura–and Lila! You know when I had her down town with me yesterday, in the hallway leading to Joe Calvin’s office, she met Tom–” The Doctor looked away for a moment. “It was pretty tough–her little heartbreak when he went by her without taking her up!” The wife did not reply. The husband with his arm about her walked toward the door.

“You can’t tell me, my dear, that Tom isn’t paying–I know how that sort of thing gets under his skin–he’s too sensitive not to imagine all it means to the child.” Mrs. Nesbit’s face hardened and her husband saw her bitterness. “I know, my dear–I know how you feel–I feel all that, and yet in my very heart I’m sorry for poor Tom. He’s swapping substance for shadow so recklessly–not only in this, not merely with Laura–but with everything–everything.”

“Good Lord, Jim, I don’t see how you can agonize over a wool-dyed scoundrel like that–perhaps you have some tears for that Fenn hussy, too!”

“Well,” squeaked the Doctor soberly–“I knew her father–a lecherous old beast who brought her up without restraint or morals–with a greedy philosophy pounded into her by example every day of her life until she was seventeen years old. There’s something to be said–even for her, my dear–even for her.”

“Well, Jim Nesbit,” answered his wife, “I’ll go a long way with you in your tomfoolery, but so long as I’ve got to draw the line somewhere I draw it right there.”

The Doctor looked at the floor. “I suppose so–” he sighed, then lifted his head and said: “I was just trying to think of all the sorrows that come into the world, of all the tragedies I ever knew, and I have concluded that this tragedy of divorce when it comes like this–as it has come to our daughter–is the greatest tragedy in the world. To love as she loved and to find every anchor to which she tied the faith of her life rotten, to have her heart seared with faithlessness–to see her child–her flesh and blood scorned, to have her very soul spat upon–that’s the essence of sorrow, my dear.”

He looked up into her eyes, bent to kiss her hand, and after he had picked up his cane and his hat from the rack, toddled down the walk to the street, a sad, thoughtful, worried little man, white-clad and serene to outward view, who had not even a whistle nor a vagrant tune under his breath to console him.

That day, after her father’s insistence, Laura Van Dorn changed from the night watch to the day nurse, and from that day on for ten days, she ministered to Grant Adams’ wants. Mechanically she read to him from such books as the house afforded–Tolstoi–Ibsen, Hardy, Howells,–but she was shut away from the meaning of what she read and even from the comments of the man under her care, by the consideration of her own problems. For to Laura Van Dorn it was a time of anxious doubt, of sad retrogression, of inner anguish. In some of the books were passages she had marked and read to her husband; and such pages calling up his dull comprehension of their beauty, or bringing back his scoffing words, or touching to the quick a hurt place in her heart, taxed her nerves heavily. But during the time while she sat by the injured man’s bedside, she was glad in her heart of one thing–that she had an excuse for avoiding the people who called.