In the Heart of a Fool

CHAPTER XXVI

DR. NESBIT STARTS ON A LONG UPWARD BUT DEVIOUS JOURNEY

The Van Dorns opened their new house without ostentation the day after their marriage in October. There was no reception; the handsomest hack in town waited for them at the railway station, as they alighted from the Limited from Chicago. They rode down Market Street, up the Avenue to Elm Crest Place, drove to the new house, and that night it was lighted. That was all the ceremony of housewarming which the place had. The Van Dorns knew what the town thought of them. They made it plain what they thought of the town. They allowed no second rate people to crowd into the house as guests while the first rate people smiled, and the third rate people sniffed. The Judge had some difficulty keeping Mrs. Van Dorn to their purpose. She was impatient–having nothing in particular to think about, and being proud of her furniture. Naturally, there were calls–a few. And they were returned with some punctiliousness. But the people whom the Van Dorns were anxious to see did not call. In the winter, the Van Dorns went to Florida for a fortnight, and put up at a hotel where they could meet a number of persons of distinction whom they courted, and whom the Van Dorns pressed to visit them. When she came home from the winter’s social excursion, Mrs. Van Dorn went straight to the establishment of Mrs. Herdicker, Prop., and bought a hat; and bragged to Mrs. Herdicker of having met certain New York social dignitaries in Florida whose names were as familiar to the Harvey women as the names of their hired girl’s beaux! Then having started this tale of her social prowess on its career, Margaret was more easily restrained by her husband from offering the house to the Plymouth Daughters for an entertainment. It was in that spring that Margaret began–or perhaps they both began to put on what George Brotherton called the “Van Dorn remnant sale.” The parade passed down Market Street every morning at eight thirty. It consisted of one handsome rather overdressed man and one beautiful rather conspicuously dressed woman. On fair days they rode in a rakish-looking vehicle known as a trap, and in bad weather they walked through Market Street. At the foot of the stairs leading to the Judge’s office they parted with all the voltage of affection permitted by the canons of propriety and at five in the evening, Mrs. Van Dorn reappeared on Market Street, and at the foot of the stairs before the Judge’s office, the parade resumed its course.

“Well–say,” said George Brotherton, “right smart little line of staple and fancy love that firm is carrying this season. Rather nice titles too; good deal of full calf bindings–well, say–glancing at the illustrations, I should like to read the text. But man–say–hear your Uncle George! With me it’s always a sign of low stock when I put it all in the window and the show case! Well, say–” and he laughed like the ripping of an earthquake. “It certainly looks to me as if they were moving the line for a quick turnover at a small profit! Well say!”

But without the complicated ceremony required to show the town that he was pleased with his matrimonial bargain, the handsome Judge was a busy man. Every time he saw Dr. Nesbit toddling up or down Market Street, or through South Harvey, or in the remotenesses of Foley or Magnus, the Judge whipped up his energies. For he knew that the Doctor never lost a fight through overconfidence. So the Judge, alone for the first time in his career, set out to bring about his nomination, where a nomination meant an election. Now a judge who showed the courage of his convictions, as Judge Van Dorn had shown his courage in forcing settlements in the mine accident cases and in similar matters of occasional interest, was rather more immediately needed by the mine owners of Harvey than the political boss, who merely used the mine owner’s money to encompass his own ends, and incidentally work out the owner’s salvation. Daniel Sands played both sides, which was all that Van Dorn could ask. But when the Doctor saw that Sands was giving secret aid to Van Dorn, the Doctor’s heart was hot within him. And Van Dorn continued to rove the district day and night, like a dog, hunting for its buried bone.

It was in the courthouse that Van Dorn made his strongest alliance–in the courthouse, where the Doctor was supposed to be in supreme command. A capricious fate had arranged it so that nearly all the county officers were running for their second terms, and a second term was a time honored courtesy. Van Dorn tied himself up with them by maintaining that his was a second term election also,–and a second regular four year term it was. His appointment, and his election to fill out the remainder of his predecessor’s term, he waved aside as immaterial, and staged himself as a candidate for his second term. The Doctor tried to break the combination between the Judge and the second term county candidates by ruthlessly bringing out their deputies against the second termers as candidates. But the scheme provoked popular rebellion. The Doctor tried bringing out one young lawyer after another against the Judge, but all had retainers from the mine owners, and no one in the county would run against Van Dorn, so the Doctor had to pick his candidate from outside of the county, in a judicial convention wherein Greeley County had a majority of the votes. But Van Dorn knew that for all the strategy of the situation, the Doctor might be able to mass the town’s disapproval of Van Dorn, socially, into a political majority in the convention against him. So the handsome Judge, with his matrimonial parade to give daily, his political fortunes to consider every hour, and withal, a court to hold, and a judicial serenity to maintain, was a busy young man–a rather more than passing busy young man!

As for the Doctor, he threw himself into the contest against Van Dorn with no mixed motives. “There,” quoth the Doctor, to the wide world including his own henchmen, yeomen, heralds, and outriders, “is one hound pup I am going to teach house manners!” And failing to break Van Dorn’s alliance in the courthouse, and failing to bulldoze Daniel Sands out of a secret liaison with Van Dorn, failing to punish those of his courthouse friends who permitted Van Dorn to stand with them on their convention tickets in the primary, the Doctor went forth with his own primary ticket, and announced that he proposed to beat Van Dorn in the convention single handed and alone.

And so quiet are the wheels of our government, that few heard them grinding during the spring and early summer–few except the little coterie of citizens who pay attention to the details of party politics. Yet underneath and over the town, and through the very heart of it wherever the web of the spider went, there was a cruel rending. Two men with hate in their hearts were pulling at the web, wrenching its filaments, twisting it out of shape, ripping its texture, in a desperate struggle to control the web, and with that control to govern the people.

Then Dr. Nesbit pushed his way into the very nest of the spider, and bolted into Daniel Sands’s office to register a final protest against Sands’s covert alliance with the Judge. He plunked angrily into the den of the spider, shut the door, turned the spring lock, and looking around saw not Sands, but Van Dorn himself.

The Doctor burst out: “Well, young man! So you’re here, eh!” Van Dorn nodded pleasantly, and replied graciously: “Yes, Doctor, here I am, and I believe we have met here before–at one time or another.”

The Doctor sat down and slapping a fat hand on a chair arm, cried angrily: “Thomas, it can’t be did–you can’t cut ’er.”

Judge Van Dorn answered blandly, rather patronizingly: “Yes, Dr. Jim, it can be done. And I shall do it.”

“Have you let ’em fool you–the fellows on the street?” asked the Doctor.

Judge Van Dorn tapped on the desk beside him meditatively, then answered slowly: “No–I should say they mostly lied to me–they’re not for me–excepting, maybe, Captain Morton, who tried to say he was opposed to me–but couldn’t–quite. No–Doctor–no–Market Street didn’t fool me.”

He was so suave about it, so naïve, and yet so cock-sure of his success, that the Doctor was impatient: “Tom,” he piped, “I tell you, they’re too strong to bluff and too many to buy. You can’t make it.”

The younger man shut one eye, knocked with his tongue on the roof of his mouth, and then said as he looked insolently into the Doctor’s face:

“Well, to begin–what’s your price?”

The Doctor flushed; his loose skin twitched around his nostrils, and he gripped his chair arms. He did not answer for nearly a minute, during which the Judge tilted back in his chair beside the desk and looked at the elder man with some show of curiosity, if not of interest.

“My price,” sneered the Doctor, “is a little mite low to-day. It’s a pelt–a hound pup’s pelt and you are going to furnish it, if you’ll stop strutting long enough for me to skin you!”

The two men glared at each other. Then Van Dorn, regaining his poise, answered: “Well, sir, I’m going to win–no matter how–I’m going to win. I’ve sat up with this situation every night for six months–Oh, for a year. I know it backwards and forwards, and you can’t trip me any place along the line. I’ve counted you out.” He went on smiling:

“What have I done that is not absolutely legal? This is a government of law, Doctor–not of hysteria. The trouble with you,” the Judge settled down to an upright position in his chair, “is that you’re an old maid. You’re so–so” he drawled the “so” insolently, “damn nice. You’re an old maid, and you come from a family of old maids. I warrant your grandmother and her mother before her were old maids. There hasn’t been a man in your family for five generations.” The Doctor rose, Van Dorn went on arrogantly, “Doctor James Nesbit, I’m not afraid of you. And I’ll tell you this: If you make a fight on me in this contest, when I’m elected, we’ll see if there isn’t one less corrupt boss in this state and if Greeley County can’t contribute a pompadour to the rogues’ gallery and a tenor voice to the penitentiary choir.”

During the harangue of the Judge, the Doctor’s full lips had begun to twitch in a smile, and his eyes to twinkle. Then he chirped gaily:

“Heap o’ steam for the size of the load and weight of your biler, Tom. Better hoop ’em up!”

And with a laugh, shaking his little round stomach, he toddled out of the room into the corridor, and began whistling the tune that tells what will happen when Johnny comes marching home.

So the Doctor whistled about his afternoon’s work and did not realize that the whistling was a form of nervousness.

That evening the Doctor and Laura began to read their Browning where they had left off the night before. They were in the midst of “Paracelsus,” when the father looked up and said:

“Laura, you know I’m going to fight Tom Van Dorn for another term as district judge?”

“Why, of course you should, father–I didn’t expect he’d ask it again!” said the daughter.

“We had a row this afternoon–a miserable, bickering row. He got on his hind legs and snarled and snapped at me, and made me mad, I guess. So I got to thinking why I should be against him, and it came to me that a man who had violated the decencies as he has and whose decisions for the old spider have been so raw, shouldn’t be judge in this district. Lord, what will young fellows think if we stand for him! So I have kind of worked myself up,” the Doctor smiled deprecatingly, “to a place where I seem to have a sacred duty in the matter of licking him for the sake of general decency. Anyway,” he concluded in his high falsetto, “old Browning’s diver, here, fits me. He goes down a pauper and, with his pearl, comes up a prince.”

“Festus,” cried the Doctor, waving the book, “I plunge.”

Thus through the pique of pride, and through the sting of scorn, a force of righteousness came into the world of Harvey. For our miracles of human progress are not always done with prunes and prisms. The truth does not come to men always, nor even, generally, as they are gazing in joyful admiration at the good and the beautiful. Sudden conversions of men to good causes are rare, and often unstable and sometimes worthless. The good Lord would find much of the best work of the world undone if he waited until men guided by purely altruistic motives and inspired by new impulses to righteousness, did it. The world’s work is done by ladies and gentlemen who, for the most part, are largely clay, working in the clay, for clay rewards, with just enough of the divine impulse moving them to keep their faces turned forward and not back.

Public opinion in the Amen Corner, voiced by Mr. Brotherton, spoke for Harvey and said: “Well, say–what do you think of Old Linen Pants bucking the whole courthouse just to get the hide of Judge Van Dora? Did you ever see such a thing in your whole life?” emphasizing the word “whole” with fine effect.

Mr. Brotherton sat at his desk in the rear of his store, contemplating the splendor of his possessions. Gradually the rear of the shop had been creeping toward the alley. It was filled with books, stationery, cigars and smoker’s supplies. The cigars and smoker’s supplies were crowded to a little alcove near the Amen Corner, and the books–school books, pirated editions of the standard authors, fancy editions of the classics, new books copyrighted and gorgeously bound in the fashion of the hour, were displayed prominently. Great posters adorned the vacant spaces on the walls, and posters and enlarged magazine covers adorned the bulletin boards in front of the store. Piles of magazines towered on the front counters–and upon the whole, Mr. Brotherton’s place presented a fairly correct imitation of the literary tendencies of the period in America just before the Spanish war.

Amos Adams came in, with his old body bent, his hands behind him, his shapeless coat hanging loosely from his stooped shoulders, his little tri-colored button of the Loyal Legion in his coat lapel, being the only speck of color in his graying figure. He peered at Mr. Brotherton over his spectacles and said: “George–I’d like to look at Emerson’s addresses–the Phi Beta Kappa Address particularly.” He nosed up to the shelves and went peering along the books in sets. “Help yourself, Dad, help yourself–Glad you like Emerson–elegant piece of goods; wrapped one up last week and took it home myself–elegant piece of goods.”

“Yes,” mused the reader, “here is what I want–I had a talk with Emerson last night. He’s against the war; not that he is for Spain, of course, but Huxley,” added Amos, as he turned the pages of his book, “rather thinks we should fight–believes war lies along the path of greatest resistance, and will lead to our greater destiny sooner.” The old man sighed, and continued: “Poor Lincoln–I couldn’t get him last night: they say he and Garrison were having a great row about the situation.”

The elder stroked his ragged beard meditatively. Finally he said: “George–did you ever hear our Kenyon play?”

The big man nodded and went on with his work. “Well, sir,” the elder reflected: “Now, it’s queer about Kenyon. He’s getting to be a wonder. I don’t know–it all puzzles me.” He rose, put back the book on its shelf. “Sometimes I believe I’m a fool–and sometimes things like this bother me. They say they are training Kenyon–on the other side! Of course he just has what music Laura and Mrs. Nesbit could give him; yet the other day, he got hold of a piano score of Schubert’s Symphony in B flat and while he can’t play it, he just sits and cries over it–it means so much to the little fellow.”

The gray head wagged and the clear, old, blue eyes looked out through the steel-rimmed glasses and he sighed: “He is going ahead, making up the most wonderful music–it seems to me, and writing it down when he can’t play it–writing the whole score for it–and they tell me–” he explained deprecatingly, “my friends on the other side, that the child will make a name for himself.” He paused and asked: “George–you’re a hardheaded man–what do you think of it? You don’t think I’m crazy, do you, George?”

The younger man glanced up, caught the clear, kindly eye of Amos Adams looking questioningly down.

“Dad,” said Mr. Brotherton, hammering his fat fist on the desk, “‘there’s more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio’–well say, man–that’s Shakespeare. We sell more Shakespeares than all the other poets combined. Fine business, this Shakespeare. And when a man holds the lead in the trade as this Shakespeare has done ever since I went into the Red Line poets back in the eighties–I’m pretty nearly going to stay by him. And when he says, ‘Don’t be too damn sure you know it all–’ or words to that effect–and holds the trade saying it–well, say, man–your spook friends are all right with me, only say,” Mr. Brotherton shuddered, “I’d die if one came gliding up to me and asked for a chew of my eating tobacco–the way they do with you!”

“Well,” smiled Amos Adams, “much obliged to you, George–I just wanted your ideas. Laura Van Dorn has sent Kenyon’s last piece back to Boston to see if by any chance he couldn’t unconsciously have taken it from something or some one. She says it’s wonderful–but, of course,” the old man scratched his chin, “Laura and Bedelia Nesbit are just as likely to be fooled in music as I am with my controls.” Then the subject drifted into politics–the local politics of the town, the Van Dorn-Nesbit contest.

And at the end of their discussion Amos rubbed his bony, lean, hard, old hands, and looked away through the books and the brick wall and the whole row of buildings before him into the future and smiled. “I wonder–I wonder if the country ever will come to see the economic and social and political meaning of this politics that we have now–this politics that the poor man gets through a beer keg the night before election, and that the rich man buys with his ‘barl.’”

He shook his head. “You’ll see it–you and Grant–but it will be long after my time.” Amos lifted up his old face and cried: “I know there is another day coming–a better day. For this one is unworthy of us. We are better than this–at heart! We have in us the blood of the fathers, and their high visions too. And they did not put their lives into this nation for this–for this cruel tangle of injustice that we show the world to-day. Some day–some day,” Amos Adams lifted up his face and cried: “I don’t know! May be my guides are wrong but my own heart tells me that some day we shall cease feeding with the swine and return to the house of our father! For we are of royal blood, George–of royal blood!”

“Why, hello, Morty,” cut in Mr. Brotherton. “Come right in and listen to the seer–genuine Hebrew prophet here–got a familiar spirit, and says Babylon is falling.”

“Well, Uncle Amos,” said Morty Sands, “let her fall!” Old Amos smiled and after Morty had turned the talk from falling Babylon to Laura Van Dorn’s kindergarten, Amos being reminded by Laura of Kenyon and his music, unfolded his theory of the occult source of the child’s musical talent, and invited George and Morty to church to hear Kenyon play.

So when Sunday came, with it came full knowledge that most members of the congregation were to hear Kenyon Adams’ new composition, which had been rather widely advertised by his friends; and Rev. John Dexter, feeling himself a fifth wheel, discarded his sermon and in humility and contrition submitted some extemporaneous remarks on the passion for humanity of “Christ and him crucified.”

A little boy was Kenyon Adams–a slim, great-eyed, serious faced, little boy in an Eton jacket and knickerbockers–not so much larger than his violin that he carried under his arm. His little hand shook, but Grant caught his gaze and with a tender, earnest reassurance put sinews into the small arms, and stilled an unsteady jaw. The organ was playing the prelude, when the little hand with the bow went out in a wide, sure, strong curve, and when the bow touched the strings, they sang from a soul depth that no child’s experience could know.

It was the first public rendering of the now famous Adagio in C minor, known sometimes as “The Prairie Wind,” or perhaps better as the Intermezzo between the second and third acts of the opera that made Kenyon Adams’ fame in Europe before he was twenty. It has been changed but little since that first hearing there in John Dexter’s church with the Sands Memorial organ, built in the early eighties for Elizabeth Page Sands, mother of Anne of that tribe. The composition is simplicity itself–save for the mystical questioning that runs through it in the sustained sevenths–a theme which Captain Morton said always reminded him of a meadow lark’s evening song, but which repeats itself over and over plaintively and sadly as the stately music swells to its crescendo and dies with that unanswered cry of heartbreak echoing in the last faint notes of the closing bar.