In the Heart of a Fool

She knew better than any one else in Harvey–better even than the Nesbits–what Kenyon Adams really promised in achievement and fame. They knew that he had some European recognition. Margaret in Europe had been amazed to see how far he was going. In New York and Boston, she knew what it meant to have her son’s music on the best concert programs. Her realization of her loss increased her loneliness. But regret did not produce remorse. She was always and finally glad that the door was inexorably sealed upon her secret. She saw only her husband angered by her son’s association with her husband’s daughter, and when malice spent itself, she was weary and lonely and out of humor, and longed to retire to her fortification.

After Captain Morton had bowed himself away from Margaret Van Dorn, he stood at the other end of the veranda looking down toward the lake. The carpenters were quitting work for the day on the new bathing pavilion and he saw the tall figure of Grant Adams in the group. He hurried down the steps near by, and came bustling over to Grant.

“Just the man I want to see! I saw Jap chasing around the golf course with Ruthie and invited him, but he said your pa wasn’t very spry and mightn’t be uptown to-morrow, so you just tell him for me that you and he are to come to my party here next Tuesday night–surprise party for the girls–going to break something to them they don’t know anything about–what say? Tell your pa that his old army friend is going to send his car–my new car–great, big, busting gray battleship for your pa–makes Tom’s car look like an ash cart. Don’t let your pa refuse. I want to bring you all up here to the party in that car in style–you and Amos and Jap and Kenyon! eh? Say, Grant–tell me–” he wagged his head at Kenyon and Lila still loitering by the tree. “What’s Kenyon’s idea in loafing around so much here in Harvey? He’s old enough to go to work. What say?” Grant tried to get it to the Captain that Kenyon’s real job in the world was composing music, and that sometimes he tired of cities and came down to Harvey to get the sunshine and prairie grass and the woods and the waters of his childhood into his soul. But the Captain waved the idea aside, “Nothing in the fiddling business, Grant–two dollars a day and find yourself, is all the best of ’em make,” protested the Captain. “Let him do like I done–get at something sound and practical early in life and ’y gory, man–look at me. What say?”

Grant did not answer, but when the Captain veered around to the subject of his party, Grant promised to bring the whole Adams family. A moment later the Captain saw the Sands’s motor car on the road before them, and said:

“Excuse me, Grant–here are the Sandses–I’ve got to invite them–Hi there, Dan’l, come alongside.” While the Captain was inviting Daniel Sands, the Doctor’s electric came purring up the hill to the club house driven by Laura Van Dorn. Grant was trotting ahead to join the other carpenters who were going to the street-car station, when Laura passing, hailed him:

“Wait a minute, Grant, till I take this to father, and I’ll go with you.”

As Laura Van Dorn turned her car around the club house, she stopped it under the veranda overlooking the golf course and the rolling prairie furrowed by the slowly winding stream. The afternoon sun slanting upon the landscape brought out all its beauty–its gay greens, its somber, contrasting browns, and its splashing of color from the fruit trees across the valley that blushed pink and went white in the first unsure ecstasies of new life. Then she saw Kenyon and Lila slowly walking up the knoll to the road. The mother noted with quick instinct the way their hands jostled together as they walked. The look that flashed from their eyes when their hands touched–the look of proprietorship in each other–told Laura Van Dorn that her life’s work with Lila was finished. The daughter’s day of choice had come; and whatever of honesty, whatever of sense, and sentiment, whatever of courage or conscience the mother had put into the daughter’s heart and mind was ready for its lifelong test. Lila had embarked on her own journey; and motherhood was ended for Laura Van Dorn.

As she looked at the girl, the mother saw herself, but she was not embittered at the sad ending of her own journey along the road which her daughter was taking. For years she had accepted as the fortunes of war, what had come to her with her marriage, and because she had the daughter, the mother knew that she was gainer after all. For to realize motherhood even with one child, was to taste the best that life held. So her face reflected, as a cloud reflects the glory of the dawn, something of the radiance that shone in the two young faces before her; and in her faith she laid small stress upon the particular one beside her daughter. Not his growing fame, not his probable good fortune, inspired her satisfaction. When she considered him at all as her daughter’s lover, she only reflected on the fact that all she knew of Kenyon was honest and frank and kind. Then she dismissed him from her thoughts.

The mother standing on the hillock looking at the youth and maiden sauntering toward her, felt the serene reliance in the order of things that one has who knows that the worst life can do to a brave, wise, kind heart, is not bad. For she had felt the ruthless wrenches of the senseless wheels of fate upon her own flesh. Yet she had come from the wheels bruised, and in agony, but not broken, not beaten. Her peace of mind was not passive. It amounted to a militant pride in the strength and beauty of the soul she had equipped for the voyage. Laura Van Dorn was sure of Lila and was happy. Her eyes filled with grateful tears as she looked down upon her daughter.

Her father, toddling ahead of Mrs. Nesbit a hundred paces, reached the car first. She nodded at the young people trudging up the slope. “Yes,” said the Doctor, “we have been watching them for half an hour. Seems like the voice of the turtle is heard in the land.”

The daughter alighted from the runabout, her father got in and waited for his wife. The three turned their backs on the approaching lovers and pretended not to see them. As Laura walked around the corner of the house, she found Grant waiting for her at the car station, and the two having missed the car that the other carpenters had taken, stood under the shed waiting.

“Well–Laura,” he asked, “are you leaving the idle rich for the worthy poor?” She laughed and explained:

“The electric was for father and mother, and so long as I have to go down to my girls’ class in South Harvey this evening for their picnic, I’m going to ride in your car, if you don’t mind?”

The street car came wailing down on them and when they had taken a rear seat on the trailer together, Grant began: “I’m glad you’ve come just now–just to-night. I’ve been anxious to see you. I’ve got some things to talk over–mighty big things–for me. In the first place–”

“In the first place and before I forget it, let me tell you the good news. A telegram has just come from the capital to father, saying that the State supreme court had upheld his labor bill–his and your bill that went through the referendum.

“‘Referendum J.’ probably was the judge who wrote the opinion,” said Grant grimly. He took off his hat, and the cooling breeze of the late afternoon played with his hair, without fluttering the curly, wiry red poll, turning light yellow with the years. “Well, whoever influenced the court–I’m glad that’s over. The men have been grumbling for a year and more because we couldn’t get the benefits of the law. But their suits are pending–and now they ought to have their money.”

As the car whined along through the prairie streets, Grant, who had started to speak twice, at last said abruptly, “I’ve got to cut loose.” He turned around so that his eyes could meet hers and went on: “Your father and George Brotherton and a lot of our people seem to think that we can patch things up–I mean this miserable profit system. They think by paying the workmen for accidents and with eight hours, a living wage, and all that sort of thing, we can work out the salvation of labor. I used to think that too; but it won’t do, Laura–I’ve gone clean to the end of that road, and there’s nothing in it. And I’m going to cut loose. That’s what I want to see you about. There’s nothing in this step-at-a-time business. I’m for the revolution!”

She showed clearly that she was surprised, and he seemed to find some opposition in her countenance, for he hurried on: “The Kingdom–I mean the Democracy of labor–is at hand; the day is at its dawn. I want to throw my weight for the coming of the Democracy.”

His voice was full of emotion as he cried:

“Laura–Laura, I know what you think; you want me to wait; you want me to help on the miserable patchwork job of repairing the profit system. But I tell you–I’m for the revolution, and with all the love in my heart–I’m going to throw myself into it!”

No one sat in the seat before them, as they whirled through the lanes leading to town, and he rested his head in his hand and put his elbow on the forward seat.

“Well, what do you think of it?” he asked, looking anxiously into her troubled face. “I have been feeling strongly now for a month–waiting to see you–also waiting to be dead sure of myself. Now I am sure!” The mad light in his eye and the zealot’s enthusiasm flaming in his battered face, made the woman pause a moment before she replied:

“Well,” she smiled as she spoke, “don’t you think you are rather rushing me off my feet? I’ve seen you coming up to it for some time–but I didn’t know you were so far along with your conviction.”

She paused and then: “Of course, Grant, the Socialists–I mean the revolutionary group–even the direct action people–have their proper place in the scheme of things–but, Grant–” she looked earnestly at him with an anxious face, “they are the scouts–the pioneers ahead of the main body of the troops! And, Grant,” she spoke sadly, “that’s a hard place–can’t you find enough fighting back with the main body of the troops–back with the army?”

He beat the seat with his iron claw impatiently and cried: “No–no–I’m without baggage or equipment. I’m traveling light. I must go forward. They need me there. I must go where the real danger is. I must go to point the way.”

“But what is the way, Grant–what is it? You don’t know–any more than we do–what is beyond the next decade’s fight! What is the way you are going to point out so fine and gay–what is it?” she cried.

“I don’t know,” he answered doggedly. “I only know I must go. The scouts never know where they are going. Every great movement has its men who set out blindly, full of faith, full of courage, full of joy, happy to fail even in showing what is not the way–if they cannot find the path. I must go,” he cried passionately, “with those who leave their homes to mark the trail–perhaps a guide forward, perhaps as a warning away–but still to serve. I’m going out to preach the revolution for I know that the day of the Democracy of labor is at hand! It is all but dawning.”

She saw the exultation upon him that hallowed his seamed features and she could not speak. But when she got herself in hand she said calmly: “But, Grant–that’s stuff and nonsense–there is no revolution. There can be no Democracy of labor, so long as labor is what it is. We all want to help labor–we know that it needs help. But there can be no Democracy of labor until labor finds itself; until it gets capacity for handling big affairs, until it sees more clearly what is true and what is false. Just now labor is awakening, is growing conscious–a little–but, Grant, come now, my good friend, listen, be sensible, get down to earth. Can’t you see your fine pioneering and your grand scouting won’t help–not now?”

“And can’t you understand,” he replied almost angrily, “that unless I or some one else who can talk to these people does go out and preach a definite ideal, a realizable hope–even though it may not be realized, even though it may not take definite shape–they will never wake up? Can’t you see, girl, that when labor is ready for the revolution–it won’t need the revolution? Can’t you see that unless we preach the revolution, they will never be ready for it? When the workers can stand together, can feel class consciousness and strike altogether, can develop organizing capacity enough to organize, to run their own affairs–then the need for class consciousness will pass, and the demand for the revolution will be over? Can’t you see that I must go out blindly and cry discontent to these people?”

She smiled and shook her head and answered, “I don’t know, Grant–I don’t know.”

They were coming into town, and every few blocks the car was taking on new passengers. She spoke low and almost whispered when she answered:

“I only know that I believe in you–you are my faith; you are my social gospel.” She paused, hesitated, flushed slightly, and said, “Where you go I shall go, and your people shall be my people! Only do–Oh, do consider this well before you take the final step.”

“Laura, I must go,” he returned stubbornly. “I am going to preach the revolution of love–the Democracy of labor founded on the theory that the Holy Ghost is in every heart–poor as well as rich–rich as well as poor. I’m not going to preach against the rich–but against the system that makes a few men rich without much regard to their talent, at the expense of all the rest, without much regard to their talents.”

The woman looked at him as he turned his blue eyes upon her in a kind of delirium of conviction. He hurried on as their car rattled through the town:

“We must free master as well as slave. For while there is slavery–while the profit system exists–the mind of the slave and the mind of the master will be cursed with it. There can be no love, no justice between slave and master–only deceit and violence on each side, and I’m going out to preach the revolution–to call for the end to a system that keeps love out of the world.”

“Well, then, Grant,” said the woman as the car jangled its way down Market Street, “hurrah for the revolution.”

She smiled up at him, and they rode without speaking until they reached South Harvey. He left her at the door of her kindergarten, and a group of young girls, waiting for her, surrounded her.

When he reached his office, he found Violet Hogan working at her desk.

“You’ll find all your mail opened, and I’ve noted the things that have been attended to,” she said, as she turned to him. “I’m due over to the girls’ class with Miss Laura–I’m helping her to-night with her picnic.”

Grant nodded, and fell to his work. Violet went on:

“The letters for your signature are here on my desk. Money seems to be coming in. New local showing up down in Magnus–from the tile works.” She rose, put on her coat and hat, and said as she stood in the door, “To-morrow will be your day in–won’t it?” He nodded at his work, and she called out, “Well,–bye, bye–I’ll be in about noon.”

Daylight faded and he turned on the electric above his desk and was going over his work, making notations on letters for Violet, when he heard a footstep on the stairs. He recognized the familiar step of Henry Fenn.

“Come in–come in, Henry,” cried Grant.

Fenn appeared, saw Grant at his work, slipped into a chair, and said:

“Now go right on–don’t mind me, young man.” Fenn pulled a newspaper from his cheap neat coat, and sat reading it, under a light that he made for himself at Violet’s desk. The light fell on his thin whitening hair–still coarse, and close cropped. In his clean, washed-out face there was the faded glow of the man who had been the rising young attorney thirty years before. Grant knew that Fenn did not expect the work to stop, so he went on with it. “I’m going to supper about eight o’clock,” said Grant, and asked: “Will that be all right?”

“Don’t mind me,” returned Fenn, and smiled with a dim reflection of the old incandescence of his youth.

Fenn’s hands trembled a little, but his eyes were steady and his voice clear. His clothes were shabby but decent, and his whole appearance was that of one who is making it a point to keep up. When Grant had finished his correspondence, and was sealing up his letters, Fenn lent a hand and began:

“Well, Grant, I’m in trouble–Oh, it’s not that,” he laughed as Grant looked quickly into the clean, alert old face. “That’s not bothered me for–Oh, for two years now. But it’s Violet–she wants me to marry her.” He blurted it out as if it had been pent in, and was hard to hold.

“Why–well–what makes you–well, has she proposed, Henry?” asked the younger man.

“Naw–of course not,” answered Fenn. “Boy, you don’t know anything about women.”

Fenn shook his head knowingly, and winked one eye slowly. “Children–she’s set the children on me. You know, Grant–” he turned his smile on with what candlepower he could muster, “that’s my other weakness–children. And they’re the nicest children in the world. But I can’t–I tell you, man, I can’t,” protested Mr. Fenn, as if he believed Grant in league with the woman to kidnap him.

“Well, then, don’t,” said Grant, rising and gathering up his mail.

“But how can I help it?” Fenn cried helplessly. “What can a man do? Those kids need a father. I need a family–I’ve always needed a family–but I don’t want Violet–nor any one else.” Grant towed him along to the restaurant, and they sat alone. After Grant had ordered his supper he asked, “Henry–why can’t you marry Violet? She’s a sensible, honest woman–she’s got over her foolishness; what’s wrong with her?”

“Why, of course, she is a good woman. If you’d see her chasing out nights–picking up girls, mothering ’em, loving ’em, working with ’em–she knows their language; she can talk to ’em so they get it. And I’ve known her time and again to get scent of a new girl over there at Bessie Wilson’s and go after her and pull her out and start her right again. I tell you, Grant, Violet has her weaknesses–as to hair ribbons and shirtwaists and frills for the kids–but she’s got a heart, Grant–a mighty big heart.”

“Then why not marry her?” persisted Grant.

“That’s just it,” answered Fenn.

He looked hopelessly at Grant and finally said as he reached his hands across the table and grasped Grant’s big flinty paw, “Grant–let me tell you something–it’s Margaret. I’m a fool–a motley fool i’ the forest, Grant, but I can’t help it; I can’t help it,” he cried. “So long as she lives–she may need me. I don’t trust that damn scoundrel, Grant. She may need me, and I stand ready to go to hell itself with her if I live a thousand years. It’s not that I want her any more; but, Grant–maybe you know her; maybe you understand. She used to hate you for some reason, and maybe that will help you to know how I feel. But–I know I’m weak–God knows I’m putty in my soul. And I’m ashamed. But I mustn’t get married. It wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t be square to Violet, nor the kids, nor to any one. So long as Margaret is on this earth–it’s my job to stand guard and wait till she needs me.”

He turned a troubled, heartbroken face up to the younger man and concluded, “I know she despises me–that she loathes me. But I can’t help it, Grant–and I came to you to kind of help me with Violet. It wouldn’t be right to–well, to let this thing go on.” He heaved a deep sigh, then he added as he fumbled with the red tablecloth, “What a fool a man is–Lord, what a fool!”

In the end, Grant had to agree to let Violet know, by some round about procedure devised by Mr. Fenn’s legal mind, that he was not a marriageable person. At the same time, Grant had to agree not to frighten away the Hogan children.

The next morning as Grant and his father rode from their home into town, Grant told his father of the invitation to the Captain’s party.

“If your mother could have lived just to see the Captain on his grand plutocratic spree, Grant–” said his father. He did not finish the sentence, but cracked the lines on the old mare’s back and looked at the sky. He turned his white beard and gentle eyes upon his son and said, “There was a time last night, before you came in, when I thought I had her. Some one was greatly interested in you and some new project you have in mind. Emerson thinks well of it,” said Amos, “though,” he added, “Emerson thinks it won’t amount to much–in practical immediate results. But I think, Grant, now of course, I can’t be sure,” the father rubbed his jaw and shook a meditative head, “it certainly did seem to me mother was there for a time. Something kept bothering Emerson–calling Grantie–the way she used to–all the time he was talking!”

The father let Grant out of the buggy at the Vanderbilt House in South Harvey, and the old mare and her driver jogged up town to the Tribune office. There he creaked out of the buggy and went to his work. It was nine o’clock before the Captain came capering in, and the two old codgers in their seventies went into the plot of the surprise party with the enthusiasm of boys.

After the Captain had explained the purpose of the surprise, Amos Adams sat with his hands on his knees and smiled. “Well–well, Ezry–I didn’t realize it. Time certainly does fly. And it’s all right,” he added, “I’m glad you’re going to do it. She certainly will approve it. And the girls–” the old man chuckled, “you surely will settle them for good and all.”

He laughed a little treble laugh, cracked and yet gleeful. “Nice girls–all of ’em. But Grant says Jap’s a kind of shining around your Ruth–that’s the singing one, isn’t it? Well, I suppose, Ezry, either of ’em might do worse. Of course, this singing one doesn’t remember her mother much, so I suppose she won’t be much affected by your surprise?” He asked a question, but after his manner went on, “Well, maybe it was Jap and Ruth that was bothering Mary last night. I kind of thought someway, for the first time maybe I’d get her. But nothing much came of it,” he said sadly. “It’s funny about the way I’ve never been able to get her direct, when every one else comes–isn’t it?”

The Captain was in no humor for occult things, so he cut in with: “Now listen here, Amos–what do you think of me asking Mrs. Herdicker to sit at one end of the table, eh? Of course I know what the girls will think–but then,” he winked with immense slyness, “that’s all right. I was talking to her about it, and she’s going to have a brand new dress–somepin swell–eh? By the jumping John Rogers, Amos–there’s a woman–eh?”

And tightening up his necktie–a scarlet creation of much pride–he pulled his hat over his eyes, as one who has great affairs under it, and marched double-quick out of the office.

You may be sure that some kind friend told the Morton girls of what was in store for them, the kind friend being Mr. George Brotherton, who being thoroughly married, regarded any secret from his wife in the light of a real infidelity. So he told her all that he and Market Street knew. Now the news of the party–a party in whose preparations they were to have no share, roused in the Misses Morton, and their married sister, jointly and severally, that devil of suspicion which always tormented their dreams.

“And, Emma,” gasped Martha, when Emma came over for her daily visit, “just listen! Mrs. Herdicker is having the grandest dress made for the party! She told the girls in the store she had twenty-seven dollars’ worth of jet on it–just jet alone.” Here the handsome Miss Morton turned pale with the gravity of the news. “She told the girls to-day, this very afternoon, that she was going to take the three o’clock morning train right after the party for New York to do her fall buying. Fall buying, indeed! Fall buying,” the handsome Miss Morton’s voice thickened and she cried, “just because papa’s got a little money, she thinks–”

But what she thought Miss Morton never said, for Mrs. Brotherton, still familiar with the gossip of the schoolhouse, cut in to say: “And, Martha, what do you think those Copini children say? They say father’s got their father’s orchestra to practice all the old sentimental music you ever heard of–‘Silver Threads Among the Gold,’ and ‘Do You Love Me, Molly Darling,’ and ‘Lorena,’ and ‘Robin Adair,’–and oh,” cried Mrs. Brotherton, shaking a hopeless head, “I don’t know what other silly things.”

“And yes, girls,” exclaimed the youngest Miss Morton flippantly, “he’s sent around to the Music School for Miss Howe to come and sing ‘O Promise Me’!”

“The idea!” cried the new Mrs. Brotherton.

“Why, the very idea!” broke out the handsome Miss Morton, sitting by the dining-room table.

“The idea!” echoed the youngest Miss Morton, putting away her music roll, and adding in gasping excitement: “And that isn’t the worst. He sent word for her to sing it just after the band had finished playing the wedding march!”