"Well, I know they say Tom Van Dorn is no Joseph, but all the same I'm here to tell you—" and what they were there to tell you would discourage ladies and gentlemen who believe that material punishments always follow either material or spiritual transgressions.

So the autumn wore into winter, and the State Bar Association promoted Judge Van Dorn; he appeared as president of that dignified body, and thereby added to his prestige at home. He appeared regularly at church with Mrs. Van Dorn—going the rounds of the churches punctiliously—and gave liberally when a subscription paper for any cause was presented. But for all this, he kept hearing the bees of gossip buzzing about him, and often felt their sting.

Day after day, through it all he never slept until in some way, by some device, through some trumped up excuse that seemed plausible enough in itself, he had managed to see and speak to Margaret Fenn. Whether in her office in the Light, Heat & Power Company's building upon a business errand, and he made plenty of such, or upon the street, or in the court house, where she often went upon some business of her chief, or walking home at evening, or coming down in the morning, or upon rare occasions meeting her clandestinely for a moment, or whether at some social function where they were both present—and it of necessity had to be a large function in that event—for the town could register its disapproval of the woman more easily than it could put its opprobrium upon the man; or whether he spoke to her just a word from the sidewalk as he passed her home, always he managed to see her. Always he had one look into her eyes, and so during all the day, she was in his thoughts. It seems strange that a man of great talents could keep the machinery of his mind going and still have an ever present consciousness of a guilty intrigue. Yet there it was. Until he had seen her and spoken to her, it was his day's important problem to devise some way to bring about the meeting. So with devilish caution and ponderous circumlocution and craft he went about his daily work, serene in the satisfaction that he was being successful in his elaborate deceit; rather gloating at times in the iniquity of one in his position being in so low a business. He wondered what the people would say if they really knew the depths of his infamy, and when he sentenced a poor devil for some minor crime, he would often watch himself as a third party and wonder if he would ever stand up and take his sentence. But he had no fear of that. The little drama between Judge Van Dorn, the prisoner at the bar, and the lover of Margaret Fenn, was for his diversion, rather than for his instruction, and he enjoyed it as an artistic travesty upon the justice he was dispensing.

Thomas Van Dorn believed that the world was full of a number of exceedingly pleasant things that might be had for the taking, and no questions asked. So when he felt the bee sting of gossip, he threw back his head, squared his face to the wind, put an extra kink of elegance into his raiment, a tighter crimp into his smile and an added ardor into his hale greeting, did some indispensable judicial favor to the old spider of commerce back of the brass sign at the Traders National, defied the town, and bade it watch him fool it. But the men who drove the express wagons knew that whenever they saw Judge Van Dorn take the train for the capital they would be sure to have a package from the capital the next day for Mrs. Fenn; sometimes it would be a milliner's box, sometimes a jeweler's, sometimes a florist's, sometimes a dry-goods merchant's, and always a candy maker's.

At last the whole wretched intrigue dramatized itself in one culminating episode. It came in the spring. Dr. Nesbit had put on his white linens just as the trees were in their first gayety of foliage and the spring blooming flowers were at their loveliest.

After a morning in the dirt and grime and misery and injustice and wickedness that made the outer skin over South Harvey and Foley and Magnus and the mining and smelter towns of the valley, the Doctor came driving into the cool beauty of Quality Hill in Harvey with a middle aged man's sense of relief. South Harvey and its neighbors disheartened him.

He had seen Grant Adams, a man of the Doctor's own caste by birth, hurrying into a smelter on some organization errand out of overalls in his cheap, ill-fitting clothes, begrimed, heavy featured, dogged and rapidly becoming a part of the industrial dregs. Grant Adams in the smelter, preoccupied with the affairs of that world, and passing definitely into it forever, seemed to the Doctor symbolic of the passing of the America he understood (and loved), into an America that discouraged him. But the beauty and the calm and the restful elm-bordered lawns of Harvey always toned up his spirits. Here, he said to himself was the thing he had helped to create. Here was the town he had founded and cherished. Here were the people whom he really loved—old neighbors, old friends, dear in associations and sweet in memories.

It was in a cherubic complaisance with the whole scheme of the universe that the white-clad Doctor jogged up Elm Street behind his maternal sorrel in the phaeton, to get his noon day meal. He passed the Van Dorn home. Its beauty fitted into this mood and beckoned to him. For the whole joy of spring bloomed in flower and shrub and vine that bordered the house and clambered over the wide hospitable porch. The gay color of the spring made the house glow like a jewel. The wide lawn—the stately trees, the gorgeous flowers called to his heart, and seeing his daughter upon the piazza, the Doctor surrendered, drew up, tied the horse and came toddling along the walk to the broad stone steps, waving his hands gayly to her as he came. Little Lila, coming home from kindergarten and bleating through the house lamb-wise: "I'm hungry," saw her grandfather, and ran down the steps to meet him, forgetting her pangs.

He lifted her high to his shoulder, and came up the porch steps laughing: "Here come jest and youthful jollity, my dear," and stooping with his grandchild in his arms, kissed the beautiful woman before him.

"Some one is mighty sweet this morning," and then seeing a package beside her asked: "What's this—" looking at the address and the sender's name. "Some one been getting a new dress?"

The child pulling at her mother's skirts renewed her bleat for food. When Lila had been disposed of Laura sat by her father, took his fat, pudgy hand and said:

"Father, I don't know what to do; do you mind talking some things over with me. I suppose I should have been to see you anyway in a few days. Have we time to go clear to the bottom of things now?"

She looked up at him with a serious, troubled face, and patted his hand. He felt instinctively the shadow that was on her heart, and his face may have winced. She saw or knew without seeing, the tremor in his soul.

"Poor father—but you know it must come sometime. Let us talk it all out now."

He nodded his head. He did not trust his voice.

"Well, father dear," she said slowly. She nodded at the package—a long dress box beside the porch post.

"That was sent to Margaret Fenn. It came here by mistake—addressed to me. There were some express charges on it. I thought it was for me; I thought Tom had bought it for me yesterday, when he was at the capital, so I opened it. There is a dress pattern in it—yellow and black—colors I never could wear, and Tom has an exquisite eye for those things, and also there is a pair of silk stockings to match. On the memoranda pinned on these, they are billed to Mrs. Fenn, but all charged to Tom. I hadn't opened it when I sent the expressman to Tom's office for the express charges, but when he finds the package has been delivered here—we shall have it squarely before us." The daughter did not turn her eyes to her father as she went on after a little sigh that seemed like a catch in her side:

"So there we are."

The Doctor patted his foot in silence, then replied:

"My poor, poor child—my poor little girl," and added with a heavy sigh: "And poor Tom—Laura—poor, foolish, devil-ridden Tom." She assented with her eyes. At the end of a pause she said with anguish in her voice:

"And when we began it was all so beautiful—so beautiful—so wonderful. Of course I've known for a long time—ever since before Lila came that it was slipping. Oh, father—I've known; I've seen every little giving of the tie that bound us, and in my heart deep down, I've known all—all—everything—all the whole awful truth—even if I have not had the facts as you've had them—you and mother—I suppose."

"You're my fine, brave girl," cried her father, patting her trembling hand. But he could speak no further.

"Oh, no, I'm not brave—I'm not brave," she answered. "I'm a coward. I have sat by and watched it all slip away, watched him getting further and further from me, saw my hold slipping—slipping—slipping, and saw him getting restless. I've seen one awful—" she paused, shuddered, and cried, "Oh, you know, father, that other dreadful affair. I saw that rise, burn itself out and then this one—" she turned away and her body shook.

In a minute she was herself: "I'm foolish I suppose, but I've never talked it out before. I won't do it again. I'm all right now." She took his hands and continued:

"Now, then, tell me—is there any way out? What shall we do to be saved—Tom and Lila and I?" She hesitated. "I'm afraid—Oh, I know, I know I don't love Tom any more. How could I—how could I? But some way I want to mother him. I don't want to see him get clear down. I know this woman. I know what she means. Let me tell you, father. For two years she's been playing with Tom like a cat. I knew it when she began. I can't say how I knew it; but I felt it—felt it reflected in his moods, saw him nervous and feverish. She's been torturing him, father—she's strong. Also she's—she's hard. Tom hasn't—well, I mean she's always kept the upper hand. I know that in my soul. And he's stark, raving mad somewhere within him." A storm of emotion shook her and then she cried passionately, "And, oh, father, I want to rescue him—not for myself. Oh, I don't love him any more. That's all gone. At least not in the old way, I don't, but he's so sensitive—so easy to hurt. And she's slowly burning him alive. It's awful."

The little pink face of the Doctor began to harden. His big blue eyes began to look through narrow slits in his eyelids, and the pudgy, white-clad figure stood erect. The daughter's voice broke and as she gripped herself the father reached his bristling pompadour and cried in wrath, "Let him burn—let him burn, girl—hell's too good for him!"

His voice was high and harsh and merciless. It restored the woman's poise and she shook her head sorrowfully as she resumed:

"I can't bear to see it; I—I want to shield him—I must—if I can." A tremor ran through her again. She caught hold of herself, then went on more calmly. "But things can't go on this way. Here is this box—"

"Child—child," cried the Doctor angrily, "you come right home—right home," he piped with rising wrath. "Right home to mother and me."

The wife shook her head and replied: "No, father, that's the easy road. I must take the hard road." Her father's mobile face showed his pain and the daughter cried: "I know, father—I know how you would have stopped me before I chose this way. But I did choose and now here is Lila, and here is a home—a home—our home, father, and I mustn't leave it. Here is my duty, here in this home, and I must not ran away. I must work out my life as it is—as before God and Lila—and Tom—yes, Tom, father, as before all three, I have my responsibility. I must not put away Tom—no matter—no matter how I feel—no matter what he has done. I won't," she repeated. "I won't."

The father turned an impatient face to his daughter, and retorted, "You won't—you won't leave that miserable cur—that—that woman hunting dog—won't leave—"

The father's rage sputtered on his lips, but the daughter caught his hand as it was beating his cane on the floor. "Stop, father," she said gently, "it's something more than women that's wrong with Tom. Women are merely an outward and visible sign—it's what he believes—and what he does, living his creed—always following the material thing. As a judge I thought he would see his way—must see his way to bring justice here—" She looked into the fume stained sky above South Harvey, and Foley and Magnus, far down the valley, and tightened her grip on her father's hands. "But no—no," she cried, "Tom doesn't know justice—he only sees the law, the law and profits, and prosperity—only the eternal material. He sits by and sees the company settle for four and five hundred dollars for the lives of the men it wasted in the mine—yes, more than sits by—he stands at the door of justice and drives the widows and children into a settlement like an overseer. And he and Joe Calvin have some sort of real estate partnership—Oh—I know it's dishonest, though I don't know how. But it branches so secretly into the law and it all reaches down into politics. And the whole order here, father—Daniel Sands paying for politics, paying for government that makes the laws, paying for mayors and governors that enforce the laws and paying the judges to back them up—and all that poverty and wretchedness and wickedness down there and all this beauty and luxury and material happiness up here. It's all, all wrong, father." Her voice broke again in sobs, and tears were running down her cheeks as she continued. "How can we blame Tom for violating his vows to me? Where are all our vows to God to deal justly with His people—the widows and orphans and helpless ones, father?" She looked at her father through her tears, at her father, whose face was agape! He was staring into the wistaria vines as one who saw his world quaking. A quick bolt of sympathy shot through the daughter's heart. She patted his limp hands and said softly, "So—father—I mustn't leave Tom. He's a poor, weak creature—a rotten stick—and because I know it—I must stay with him!"

* * * * *

Behind the screen of matter, the lusty fates were pulling at the screws of the rack. "Pull harder," cried the first fate; "the little old pot-bellied rascal—make him see it: make him see how he warned her against the symptoms, but not the disease that was festering her lover's soul!"

"Turn yourself," cried the second, "make the forehead sweat as he sees how he has been delivering laws in a basket to grind iniquity through Tom Van Dorn's mill! Turn—turn, turn you lout!"

"And you," cried the third fate at the screw to the first, "twist that heart-string, twist it hard when he sees his daughter's broken face and hears her sobbing!"

But the angels, the pitying angels, loosened the cords of the rack with their gentle tears.

* * * * *

As the taut threads of the rack slackened, he heard the soft voice of his daughter saying: "But of course, the most important thing is Lila—not that she means a great deal to him now. He doesn't care much for children. He doesn't want them—children."

She turned upon her father and with anguished voice and with all her denied motherhood, she cried: "O, father—I want them—lots of them—arms full of them all the time."

She stretched out her arms. "Oh, it's been so hard, to feel my youth passing, and only one child—I wanted a whole house full. I'm strong; I could bear them. I don't mind anything—I just want my babies—my babies that never have come."

And then the pitiless fates turned the screws of the rack again and the father burst forth in his vain grief, with his high, soft, woman's voice. "I wonder—I wonder—I wonder, what God has in waiting for you to make up for this?"

Before she could answer, the telephone bell rang. The wife stepped to the instrument. "Well," she said when she came back. "The hour has struck; the expressman went to Tom for the express charges; he knows the package is here and," she added after a sigh, "he knows that I know all about it." She even smiled rather sadly, "So he's coming out—on his wheel."



CHAPTER XXII

IN WHICH TOM VAN DORN BECOMES A WAYFARING MAN ALSO

The father rose. His head was cast down. He poked a vine curling about the porch floor with his cane.

"I wonder, my dear," he spoke slowly, and with great gentleness, "if maybe I shouldn't talk with Tom—before you see him."

He continued to poke the vine, and looked up at the daughter sadly. "Of course there's Lila; if it is best for her—why that's the thing to do—I presume."

"But father," broke in the daughter, "Tom and I can—"

But he entreated, "Won't you let me talk with Tom? In half an hour—I'll go. You and Lila slip over to mother's for half an hour—come back at half past twelve. I'll tell him where you are."

The mother and child had disappeared around the corner of the house when the click of Van Dorn's bicycle on the curbing told the Doctor that the young man was upon the walk. The package from the capital still lay beside the porch column. The Doctor did not lift his eyes from it as the younger man came hurrying up the steps. He was flushed, bright-eyed, a little out of breath, and his black wing of hair was damp. On the top step, he looked up and saw the Doctor.

"It's all right, Tom—I understand things." The Doctor's eyes turned to the parcel on the floor between them.

The Doctor's voice was soft; his manner was gentle, and he lifted his blue, inquiring eyes into the young Judge's restless black ones. Dr. Nesbit put a fatherly hand on the young man's arm, and said: "Shall we sit down, Tom, and take stock of things and see where we stand? Wouldn't that be a good idea?"

They sat down and the younger man eyed the package, turned it over, looked at the address nervously, pulled at his mustache as he sank back, while the elder man was saying: "I believe I understand you, Tom—better than any one else in the world understands you. I believe you have not a better friend on earth than I right at this minute."

The Judge turned around and said in a disturbed voice, "I am sure that's the God's truth, Doctor Jim." Then after a sigh he added, "And this is what I've done to you!"

"And will keep right on doing to me as long as you live," piped the elder man, twitching his mouth and nose contemptuously.

"As long as I live, I fancy," repeated the other. In the pause the young man put his hands to his hips and his chin on his breast as he slouched down in the chair and asked: "Where's Laura?"

"Over at her mother's," replied the father. "Nobody will interrupt us—and so I thought we could get down to grass roots and talk this thing out."

The Judge crossed his handsome ankles and sat looking at his trim toes.

"I suppose that idea is as good as any." He put one long, lean, hairy hand on the short, fat knee beside him and said: "The whole trouble with our Protestant religion is that we have no confessor. So some of us talk to our lawyers, and some of us talk to our doctors, and in extreme unction we talk to our newspapers."

He grinned miserably, and went on: "But we all talk to some one, and now I'm going to talk to you—talk for once, Doctor, right out of my soul—if I have one."

He rose nervously, obeying some purely physical impulse, and then sat down again, with his hands in his thick, black hair, and his elbows on his bony knees.

"All right, Tom," piped the Doctor, "go ahead."

"Well, then," he began as he looked at the floor before him, "do you suppose I don't know that you know what I'm up to? Do you think I don't know even what the town is buzzing about? Lord, man, I can feel it like a scorching fire. Why," he exclaimed with emotion, "feeling the hearts of men is my job. I've been at it for fifteen years—"

He broke off and looked up. "How could I get up before a jury and feel them out man by man as I talked if I wasn't sensitive to these things? You've seen me make them cry when I was in the practice. How could I make them cry if I didn't feel like crying myself. You're a doctor—you know that. People forget what I am—what a thousand stringed instrument I am. Now, Doctor Jim, let me tell you something. This is the bottom hard pan of the truth: I never before really cared for these women—these other women—when I got them. But I do care for the chase, I do care for the risk of it—for the exhilaration of it—for the joy of it!"

The Doctor's mouth twitched and he took a breath as if about to speak. Van Dorn stopped him: "Don't cut in, Doc Jim—let me say it all out. I'm young. I love the moonlight and the stars and I never go through a wood that I do not see trysting places there—and I never see a great stretch of prairie under the sunshine that I do not put in a beautiful woman and go following her—not for her—Doctor Jim, but for the joy of pursuit, for the thrill of uncovering a bared, naked soul, and the overwhelming danger of it. God—man, I've stood afraid to breathe, flattened against a wall and heard the man-beast growl and sniff, hunting me. I love to love and be loved; but not less do I love to hunt and be hunted. I've hidden under trees, I've skulked in the shadows, I've walked boldly in the sunlight with my life in my hand to meet a woman's eyes, to feel her guilty shudder in my arms. Oh, Doctor Jim, you don't understand the riot in my blood that the moon makes shining through the trees upon the water, with great, shadowy glades, and the tinkle of cow bells far away, and a woman afraid of me—and I afraid of her—and nothing but the stars and the night between us."

He rose and began pacing the piazza as he continued speaking. "It's always been so with me—as early as my boyhood it was so. I often wake in the lonely nights and think of them all over again—the days and nights, the girls and women who have flashed bright and radiant into my life. Over and over again, I repeat to my soul their names, over and over I live the hours we have spent together, the dangers, the delights, the cruel misery of it all and then at the turn of the street, at the corner of a room, in the winking of an eye I see another face, it looks a challenge at me and I am out on the high road of another romance. I've got to go! It's part of my life; it's the pulse of my blood."

He stood excited with his deep, beady, black eyes burning and his proud, vain face flushed and his hands a-tremble. The Doctor saw that he was in the midst of a physical and mental turmoil that could not be checked.

Van Dorn went on: "And then you and my friends ask me to quit. Laura, God help her—she naturally—" he exclaimed. "But is the moon to be blotted out for me? Are the night winds to be muffled and mean no more than the scraping of a dead twig against a rusty wire? Are flowers to lose their scent, and grass and trees and birds to be blurred and turned drab in my eyes? How do you think I live, man? How do you think I can go before juries and audiences and make them thrill and clench their fists and cry like children and breathe with my emotions, if I am to be stone dead? Do you think a wooden man can do that? Try Joe Calvin with a jury—what does he accomplish with all his virtue? He hasn't had an emotion in twenty years. A pretty woman looking at Joe in a crowd wouldn't say anything to him with her eyes and dilating nostrils and the swish of her body. And when he gets before a jury he talks the law to them, and the facts to them, and the justice of the case to them. But when I used to stand up before them, they knew I was weak, human mud. They had heard all the stories on me. They knew me, and some of them despised me, and all of them were watching out for me, but when I reached down in my heart and brought up the common clay of which we all are made and molded it into a man or an event before their eyes, then—by God they came to me. And yet you've been sitting there for years, Doctor Jim Nesbit and saying 'Tom—Tom, why don't you quit?'"

He was seated now, talking in a low, tense voice, looking the Doctor deeply in the eyes, and as he paused, the perspiration stood out upon his scarred forehead, and pink splotches appeared there and the veins of his temples were big and blue. The Doctor turned away his eyes and said coldly: "There's Laura—Tom—Laura and little Lila."

"Yes," he groaned, rising. "There are Laura and Lila."

He thrust his hands deeply into his pockets and looked down at the Doctor and sneered. "There's the trap that snapped and took a paw, and I'm supposed to lick it and love it and to cherish it."

He shuddered, and continued: "For once I'll speak and tell it all. I'll not be a hypocrite in this hour, though ever after I may lie and cringe. There are Laura and Lila and here am I. And out beyond is the wind in the elms and the sunshine upon the grass and the moving odor of flowers—flowers that are blushing with the joy of nature in her great perennial romance—and there's Laura and Lila and here am I."

His passion was ebbing; his face was hardening into its wonted vain, artificial contour, his eyes were losing their dilation, and he was sitting rather limply in his chair, staring into space. The Doctor came at him.

"You're a fool. You had your fling; you're along in your thirties, nearly forty now and it's time to stop." The younger man could not regain the height, but he could hide under his crust. So he parried back suavely, with insolence in his voice:

"Why stop at thirty—or even forty? Why stop at all?"

"Let me tell you something, Tom," returned the Doctor. "It's all very fine to talk this way; but this thing has become a fixed habit, just like the whiskey habit; and in fifteen or twenty years more you'll be a chronic, physical, degenerate man. You'll lose your self-respect. You'll lose your quick wits, and your whole mind and body will be burning up with a slow fire."

"Oh, you dear old fossil," replied Van Dorn in a hollow, dead voice, rising and patting his tie and adjusting his coat and collar, "I'm no fool. I know what I'm doing. I know how far to go, and when to stop. But this game is interesting; and I'm only a man," he straightened up again, patted his mustache, and again tipped his hat into a cockey angle over his forehead, and went on, "not a monk." He smiled, pivoted on his heel nervously and went on, "And what is more I can take care of myself."

"Tom," cried the Doctor in his treble, with excitement in his voice, "you can't take care of yourself. No man ever lived who could. You may get away with your love affairs, and no one be the wiser; you may make a crooked or dirty million on a stock deal and no one be the wiser; but you'll bear the marks to the grave."

"So," mocked the sneering voice of the young Judge, "I suppose you'll carry the marks of all the men you've bought up in this town for twenty years."

"Yes, Tom," returned the Doctor pitifully, as he rose and stood beside the preening young man, "I'll carry 'em to the grave with me, too; I've had a few stripes to-day."

"Well, anyway," retorted Van Dorn, pulling his hat over his eyes, restlessly, "you're entitled to what you get in this life. And I'm going to get all I can, money and fun, and everything else. Morals are for sapheads. The preacher's God says I can't have certain things without His cracking down on me. Watch me beat Him at his own game." It was all a make-believe and the Doctor saw that the real man was gone.

"Tom," sighed the Doctor, "here's the practical question—you realize what all this means to Laura? And Lila—why, Tom, can't you see what it's going to mean to her—to all of us as the years go by?"

Their eyes met and turned to the parcel on the floor. "You can't afford—well, that sort of thing," the Doctor punched the parcel contemptuously with his cane. "It's all bad enough, Tom, but that way lies hell!"

Van Dorn turned upon the Doctor, and squared his jaw and said: "Well then—that's the way I'm going—that way"—he nodded toward the package—"lies romance for me! There is the road to the only joy I shall ever know in this earth. There lies life and beauty and all that I live for, and I'm going that way."

The Judge met the father's beseeching face, with an angry glare—defiant and insolent.

The Doctor had no time to reply. There was a stir in the house, and a child's steps came running through the hall. Lila stopped on the porch, hesitating between the two men. The Doctor put out his arms for her. Van Dorn casually reached out his hand. She ran to her father and cried, "Up—Daddy—up," and jumped to his shoulder as he took her. The Doctor walked down the steps as his daughter came out of the door.

The man and the woman looked at one another, but did not speak. The father put the child down and said:

"Now, Lila, run with grandpa and get a cooky from granny while your mother and I talk."

She looked up at him with her blue eyes and her sadly puckered little face, swallowed her disappointed tears and trudged down the steps after the white-clad grandfather who was untying his horse.

When the child and the grandfather were gone the wife said in a dead, emotionless voice, looking at the parcel on the floor, "Well, Tom?"

"Well, Laura," he repeated, "that's about the size of it—there it is—and you know all about it. I shall not lie—this time. It's not worth while—now."

The woman sat in a porch chair. The man hesitated, and she said: "Sit down, Tom. I don't know what to do or what to say," she began. "If there were just you and me to consider, I suppose I'd say we'd have to quit. But there's Lila. She is here and she does love you—and she has her right—the greatest right in the world to—well, to us—to a home, and a home means a father and a mother." The man rose. He put his hands in his coat pockets and stood by the porch column, making no reply.

The wife continued, "I can't even speak of what you have done to me, Tom. But it will hurt when I'm an old woman—I want to hide my face from every one—even from God—when I think of what you have used me for."

He dropped into the chair beside her, looking at the floor. Her voice had stirred some chord in his thousand-stringed heart. He reached out a hand to her.

"No, Tom," said the wife, "I don't want your pity."

"No, Laura," the husband returned quickly, "no, you don't need my pity; it's not pity that I am trying to give you. I only wished you to listen to what I have to say." The wife looked at her husband for a second in fear as she apprehended what he was about to utter. He turned his eyes from her and went on: "It was a mistake, a very nightmare of a mistake—my mistake—all my mistake—but still just an awful mistake. We couldn't make life go. All this was foredoomed, Laura, and now—now—" his eyes were upon the parcel on the floor, "here I am sure I have found the thing my life needs. And it is my life—my life." He saw his wife go pale, then flush; but he went on. "After all, it is one's own life that commands him, and nothing else in the world. And now I must follow my destiny."

"But, Tom," asked the wife, "you aren't going to this woman? You aren't going to leave us? You surely won't break up this home—not this home, Tom?"

The man hesitated before answering, then spoke directly: "I must follow my destiny—work it out as I see it. You have no right, no one has any right—even I have no right to compromise with my destiny. I live in this world just once!"

"But what is your destiny, Tom?" answered the wife. "Leave me out of it: but aren't the roots you have put down in this home, this career you are building; our child's normal girlhood with a father's care—aren't these the big things in your destiny? Lila's life—growing up under the shame that follows a child of parents divorced for such base reasons as these? Lila's life is surely a part of your destiny. Surely, surely you have no rights apart from her and hers!"

His quick mind was ready. "I have my own life to live, my own destiny to follow; my individual equation to solve, and for me nothing exists in the universe. As for my career—I'll take care of that. That's mine also!"

The wife threw out an appealing hand. "Tom, I can't help wanting to pick you up and shield you. It will be awful—awful—that thing you are trying to go into. You've always chosen the material thing—the practical thing—and she—she's a practical woman. Oh, Tom—I'm not jealous—not a bit. If I thought she would enrich your soul—if I thought she would give you what I've wanted to give you—what I've prayed God night after night to let me give you—I'd take even Lila and go away and give you your chance for a love such as I've had. Can you see, Tom, I'm not jealous? I'm not even angry."

He turned upon her suddenly and said: "You don't know what you're talking about. Anyway—she suits me—she'll enrich me as you call it all right. I'm sure of that."

"No, Tom," said the wife quietly, "she'll not enrich you—not spiritually. No one can do that—for any one. It must come from within. I've poured my very heart over you, Tom, and you didn't want it—you only wanted—oh, God—hide my shame—my shame—my shame." Her voice rose for a moment and she muffled it with her face in her arms.

"Tom—" she faltered, "Tom—I am going to make one last plea—for Lila's sake won't you put it all away—won't you?" she shuddered. "It is killing all my self-respect, Tom—but I must. Won't you—won't you please for Lila's sake come back, break this off—and see if we can't patch up life?"

"No," he answered.

Their eyes met; his shifting, beady eyes were held forcibly with many a twitching, by her gray eyes. For two awful seconds they stood taking farewell of each other.

"No," he repeated, dropping his glance.

Then he put out his hand with a gesture of finality, "I'm going now. I don't know when—or—well, whether I'll come—" He picked up the package. He was going down the steps with the package in his hands when he heard the patter of little feet and a little voice calling:

"Daddy—daddy—" and repeated, "daddy."

He did not turn, but walked quickly to the sidewalk. As far as he could hear, that childish voice called to him.

And he heard the cry in his dreams.



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.

As Grant grew stronger—as it became evident that he must go soon, the woman's heart shrank from meeting the town, and she clung to each duty of the man's convalescence hungrily. She knew she must face life, that she must have some word for her friends about her tragedy. She felt that in going away, in suing for the divorce himself, her husband had made the break irrevocable. There was no resentment nor malice toward him in her heart. Yet the future seemed hopelessly black and terrible to her.

The afternoon before Grant Adams was to leave the Nesbit home he was allowed to come down stairs, and he sat with her upon the side porch, all screened and protected by vines that led to her father's office. Laura's finger was in a book they had been reading—it was "The Pillars of Society." The day was one of those exquisite days in mid-June, and after a cooling rain the air was clear and seemed to put joy into one's veins.

"How modern he is—how American—how like Harvey," said the young man. "Ibsen might have lived right here in this town, and written that," he added. He started to raise his right arm, but a twinge of pain reminded him that the stump was bound, so he raised his left and cried:

"And I tell you, Laura—that's what I'm on earth to fight—the whole infernal system of pocket-picking and poor-robbing, and public gouging that we permit under the profit system." The woman's thoughts were upon her own sorrow, but she called herself back to smile and reply:

"All right, Grant—I'm with you. We may have to draft father and commandeer George Brotherton, and start out as a pirate crew—but I'm with you."

"Let me tell you something," said the man. "I've not been loafing for the past two years. I've got Harvey—the men in the mines and smelter, I mean, fairly well unionized, but the unions are nothing—nothing ultimate—they are only temporary."

"Well," returned the woman, soberly, "that's something."

The man made no answer. With his free hand he was ruffling his red hair, and she could see the muscles of his jaw working, and she felt his great mouth harden as he flashed his blue eyes upon her. "Laura," he cried, "they may whip us this year. For a while they may scare the men into voting for prosperity, but as sure as we both live we shall see these times and these issues and these men who are promoting this devilish conspiracy eternally damned—all of them—the issues, the times and the men who are leading. And I don't want to hurt you, Laura, but," he added solemnly, "your husband must take his punishment with the rest."

They sat mute, then each heard the plaintive cry of a child running through the house. "She is looking for me," said Laura. In a moment a little wet-eyed girl was in her mother's arms, crying:

"I want my daddy—my dear daddy—I want him to come home—where is he?"

She sobbed in her mother's arms and held up her little face to look earnestly into the beautiful face above her, as she cried, "Is he gone—Annie Sands' new mamma says my papa's never coming back—Oh, I want my daddy—I want to go home."

She continued calling him and sobbing, and the mother rose to take the child away.

"Laura!" cried Grant, in a passionate question. He saw the weeping child and the grief-stricken face of the mother. In an instant he held out his bony left hand to her and said gently: "God help you—God help you."



CHAPTER XXIV

IN WHICH THE DEVIL FORMALLY TAKES THE TWO HINDERMOST AND CLOSES AN ACCOUNT IN HIS LEDGER

Harvey tried sincerely to believe in Tom Van Dorn up to the very day when it happened. For the town had accepted him gladly and unanimously as its most distinguished citizen. But when the town read in the Times one November day after he had come home from his political campaign through the east for sound money and the open mills—a campaign in which Harvey had seen him through the tinted glasses of the Harvey Daily Times as one of the men who had saved the country—when the town read that cold paragraph beginning: "A decree of divorce was issued to-day to Judge Thomas Van Dorn, from his wife, Mrs. Laura Nesbit Van Dorn, upon the ground of incompatibility of temperament by Judge protem Calvin in the district court," and ending with these words: "Mrs. Van Dorn declined through her attorney to participate in a division of the property upon any terms and will live for the present with her daughter, aged five, at the home of Dr. and Mrs. James Nesbit on Elm Street"—when the town read that paragraph, Harvey closed its heart upon Thomas Van Dorn.

Only one other item was needed to steel the heart of Harvey against its idol, and that item they found upon another page. It read, "Wanted, pupils for the piano—Mrs. Laura Van Dorn, Quality Hill, Elm Street."

Those items told the whole story of the deed that Thomas Van Dorn had done. If he had felt bees sting before he got his decree, he should have felt vipers gnawing at his vitals afterward.

But he was free—the burden of matrimony was lifted. He felt that the whole world of women was his now for the choosing, and of all that world, he turned in wanton fancy to the beckoning arms of Margaret Fenn. But the feeling of freedom, the knowledge that he could speak to any woman as he chose and no one could gainsay him legally, the consciousness that he had no ties which the law recognized—and with him law was the synonym of morality—the exuberant sense of relief from a bondage that was oppressive to him, overbore all the influence of the town's spirit of wrath in the air about him.

As for the morality of the town and what he regarded as its prudery—he scorned it. He believed he could live it down; he said in his heart that it was merely a matter of a few weeks, a few months, or a few years at most, before they would have some fresh ox to gore and forget all about him. He was sure that he could play upon the individual self-interest of the leaders of the community to make them respect him and ignore what he had done. But what he had done, did not bother him much. It was done.

He seemed to be free, yet was he free?

Now Thomas Van Dorn was thirty-eight years old that autumn. Whether he loved the woman he had abandoned or not, she was a part of his life. Counting the courtship during which he and this woman had been associated closely, nearly ten years of his life, half of the years of his manhood—and that half the most active and effective part, had been spent with her. A million threads of memory in his brain led to her; when he remembered any important event in his life during those ten years, always the chain of associated thought led back to the image of her. There she was, fixed in his life; there she smiled at him through every hour of those ten years of their life, married or as lovers together.

For whom God had joined, not Joseph Calvin, not Joseph Calvin, sitting as Judge protem, not Joseph Calvin vested with all the authority of the great commonwealth in which he lived, could put asunder. That was curious. At times Thomas Van Dorn was conscious of this phenomenon, that he was free, yet bound, and that while there was no God, and the law was the final word, in all considerable things, some way the brain, or the mind that is fettered to the brain, or the soul that is built upon the aspect of the mind fettered to the brain, held him tethered to the past.

For our lives are not material, whatever our bodies may be. Our lives are the accumulations of consciousness, the assembling of our memories, our affections, our judgments, our aspirations, our weaknesses, our strength—the vast sum of all our impressions, good or bad, made upon a material plate called the brain. The brain is of the dust. The picture—which is a human life—is of the spirit. And the spirit is of God. And when by whatever laws of chance or greed, or high purpose or low desire two lives are joined until the cement of years has united the myriads of daily sensations that make up a segment of these lives, they are thus joined in the spirit forever.

Now Thomas Van Dorn went about his free life day by day, glorying in his liberty. But strands of his old life, floating idly and unnoticed through minutes of his hourly existence, kept tripping him and bothering him. His meals, his clothes, his fixed habits of work, the manifold creature comforts that he prized—all the associations of his life with home—came to him a thousand, thousand times and cut little knife-edged rents in the fabric of his new freedom.

And he would have said a year before that it was physically impossible for one child—one small, fair-haired child of five, with pleading face and eager eyes—to meet a man so often in a given period of time, as Lila met him. At first he had avoided her; he would duck into stores; hurry up stairways, or hide himself in groups of men on the sidewalk when he saw her coming. Then there came a time when he knew that the little figure was slipping across the street to avoid him because his presence shamed her with her playmates.

He had never in his heart believed that the child meant much to him. She was merely part of the chain that held him, and yet now that she was not of him or his interests, it seemed to Thomas Van Dorn that she made a piteous figure upon the street, and that the sadness that flitted over her face when she saw him, in some way reproached him, and yet—what right had she in him—or why should he let her annoy him, or disturb his peace and the happiness that his freedom brought. Materially he noticed that she was well fed, well dressed, and he knew that she was well housed. What more could she have—but that was absurd. He couldn't wreck his life for the mere chance that a child should be petted a little. There was no sense in such a proposition. And Thomas Van Dorn's life was regulated by sense—common sense—horse sense, he called it.

It is curious—and scores of Tom Van Dorn's friends wondered at it then and have marveled at it since, that in the six months which elapsed between his divorce and his remarriage, he did not fathom the shallowness and pretense of Margaret Fenn. But he did not fathom them. Her glib talk taken mechanically from cheap philosophy about being what you think you are, about shifting moral responsibility onto good intentions, about living for the present and ignoring the past with the uncertain future, took him in completely. She used to read books to him, sitting in the glow of her red lamp-shade—a glow that brought out hidden hints of her splendid feline body, books which soothed his vanity and dulled his mind. In that day he fancied her his intellectual equal. He thought her immensely strong-minded, and clear headed. He contrasted her in thought with the wife he had put away, told Margaret that Laura was always puling about duty and getting her conscience pinched and whining about it. They agreed sitting there under the lamp, that they had been mates in some far-off jungle, that they had been parted and had been seeking one another through eons, and that when their souls met one of the equations of the physical universe was solved, and that their happiness was the adjustment of ages of wrong. She thought him the most brilliant of men; he deemed her the most wonderful of women, and the devil checked off two drunken fools in his inventory.

It was in those halcyon days of his courtship of Margaret Fenn, when he felt the pride of conquest of another soul and body strongly upon him, that Judge Thomas Van Dorn began to acquire—or perhaps to exhibit noticeably—the turkey gobbler gait, that ever afterward went with him, and became famous as the Van Dorn Strut. It was more than mere knee action—though knee action did characterize it prominently. The strut properly speaking began at the tip of his hat—his soft, black hat that sat so cockily upon his head. His head was thrown back as though he had been pulled by a check-rein. His shoulders swung jauntily—more than jauntily, call it insolently—as he walked, and his trunk swayed with some stateliness as his proud hands and legs performed their grand functions. But withal he bowed and smiled—with much condescension—and lifted his hat high from his handsome head, and when women passed he doffed it like a flag in a formal salute, and while his body spelled complacence, his face never lost the charm and grace and courtesy that drew men to him, and held them in spite of his faults.

One bitter cold December day, when the wind was blowing sleet down Market Street, and hardly a passer-by darkened the doors of the stores, the handsome Judge sailed easily into the Amen Corner, fumbled over the magazines, picked out a pocketful of cigars from the case, without calling Mr. Brotherton who was in the rear of the store working upon his accounts, lighted a cigar, and stood looking out of the frosted window at the deserted gray windy street, utterly ignoring the presence of Captain Morton who was pretending to be deeply buried in the National Tribune, but who was watching the Judge and trying to summon courage to speak. The Judge unbuttoned his modish gray coat that nearly reached his heels and put his hands behind him for a moment, as he puffed and pondered—apparently debating something.

"Judge," said the Captain suddenly and then the Captain's courage fell and he added, "Bad morning."

"Yes," acquiesced the Judge from his abstraction. In a long pause that followed, Captain Morton swallowed at least a peck of Adam's apples that kept coming up to choke him, and then he cleared his throat and spoke:

"Tom—Tom Van Dorn—look around here." He lowered his voice and went on, "I want to talk to you." The Captain edged over on the bench.

"Sit down here a minute—I've been wanting to see you for a month." Captain Morton spoke all but in a whisper. The Adam's apple kept strangling him. The Judge saw that the old man was wrestling with some heavy problem. He turned, and looking down at the little wizened man, asked: "Well, Captain?"

The Captain moistened his lips, patted his toes on the floor, and twirled his fingers. He took a deep breath and said: "Tom, I've known you since you were twenty-one years old. Do you remember how we took you in the first night you came to town—me and mother? before the hotel was done, eh?" A smile on the Judge's face emboldened the Captain. "You've got brains, Tom—lots of brains—I often say Tom Van Dorn will sit in the big chair at the White House yet—what say? Well, Tom—" Now there was the place to say it. But the Captain's Adam's apple bobbed convulsively in a second silence. He decided to take a fresh start: "Tom, you're a sensible man—? I says to myself I'm going to have a plain talk to that man. He's smart; he'll appreciate it. Just the other day—George back there, and John Kollander and Dick Bowman and old man Adams, and Joe Calvin, and Kyle Perry were in here talking and I says—Gentlemen, that boy's got brains—lots of brains—eh? and he's a prince; 'y gory a prince, that's what Tom Van Dorn is, and I can go to him—I can talk to him—what say?" The Captain was on the brink again. Slowly there mantled over the face of the prince the gray scum of a fear. And the scar on his forehead flashed crimson. The Captain saw that he had been anticipated. He began patting his toes on the floor. Judge Van Dorn's face was set in a cement of resistance.

"Well?" barked the Judge. The little man's lips dried, he smiled weakly, and licked his lips and said: "It was about my sprocket—my Household Horse—I says, Tom Van Dorn understands it if you gentlemen don't and some day him and me will talk it over and 'y gory—he'll buy some stock—he'll back me."

The Captain's nervous voice had lifted and he was talking so that the clerk and Mr. Brotherton both in the back part of the store might hear. The cement of the Judge's countenance cracked in a smile, but the gray mantle of fear still fluttered across his eyes.

"All right, Captain," he answered, "some other time—not now—I'm in a hurry," and went strutting out into the storm.

Mr. Brotherton with his moon face shining into the ledger laughed a great clacking laugh and got up from his stool to come to the cigar case, saying, "Well, say—Cap—if you'd a' went on with what you started out to say, I'd a' give fi' dollars—say, I'd a' made it ten dollars—say!" And he laughed again a laugh that seemed to set all the celluloid in the plush covered, satin lined toilet cases on the new counter a-flutter. He walked down the store with elephantine tread, as he laughed, and then the door opened and Dr. Nesbit came in. Five months had put a perceptible bow into his shoulders, and an occasional cast of uncertainty into his twinkling eyes.

Mr. Brotherton called half down the store, "Say, Doc—you should have been here a minute ago, and seen the Captain bristle up to Tom Van Dorn about his love affair and then get cold feet and try to sell him some Household Horse stock." The Captain grinned sheepishly, the Doctor patted the Captain affectionately on the shoulder and chirped.

"So you went after him, did you, Ezry?" The loose skin of his face twitched, "Poor Tom—packing up his career in a petticoat and going forth to fuss with God—no sense—no sense," piped the Doctor, glancing over the headlines in his Star. The Captain, still clinging to the subject that had been too much for him, remarked: "Doc—don't you think some one ought to tell him?" The Doctor put down his paper, stroked his pompadour and looking over his glasses, answered:

"Ezry—if some one hasn't told him—no one ever can. I tried to tell him once myself. I talked pretty middlin' plain, Ezry." He was speaking softly, then he piped out, "But what a man's heart doesn't tell him, his friends can't. Still, Ezry, a strong friend is often a good tonic for a weak heart." The Doctor looked at the Captain, then concluded: "That was a brave, kind act you tried to do—and I warrant you got it to him—some way. He's a keen one—Ezry—a mighty keen one; and he understood."

Mr. Brotherton went back to his ledger; the Doctor plunged into the Star, the Captain folded up his newspaper and began studying the trinkets in the holiday stock in the show case under the new books. A comb and brush with tortoise shell backs seemed to arrest his eyes. "Doc," he mused, "Christmas never comes that I don't think of—her—mother! I guess I'd just about be getting that comb and brush for her." The Doctor casually looked through the show case and saw what had attracted the Captain. "Doc," again the Captain spoke, bending over the case with his face turned from his auditor: "You're a doctor and are supposed to know lots. Tell me this: How does a man break it to a woman when he wants to leave her—eh?" Without waiting for an answer the Captain went on: "And this is what puzzles me—how does he get used to another one—with that one still living? You tell me that. I'd think he'd be scared all the time that he would do something the way his first wife had trained him not to. Of course," meditated the Captain, "right at first, I suppose a man may feel a little coltish and all. But, Doc, honest and true, when mother first left I kind of thought—well, I used to enjoy swearing a little before we was married, and I says to myself I guess I may as well have a damn or two as I go along—but, Doc, I can't do it. Eh? Every time I set off the fireworks—she fizzles; I can see mother looking at me that way." The old man went on earnestly: "Tell me, Doc, you're a smart man—how Tom Van Dorn can do it. What say? 'Y gory I'd be scared—right now! And if I thought I had to get used all over again to another woman, and her ways of doing things—say of setting her bread Friday night, and having a hot brick for her feet and putting her hair in her teeth when she done it up, and dosing the children with sassafras tea in spring—I'd just naturally take to the woods, eh? And as for learning over again all the peculiarities of a new set of kin and what they all like to eat and died of, and how they all treated their first wives, and who they married—Doc? Doc?" The Captain shook a dubious and doleful head. "Fourteen years, Doc," sighed the Captain. "Pretty happy years—children coming on,—trouble visiting us with the rest; sorrow—happiness—skimping and saving; her a-raking and scraping to make a good appearance, and make things do; me trying one thing and another, to make our fortune and her always kind and encouraging, and hopeful; death standing between us and both of us sitting there by the kitchen stove trying to make up some kind of prayer to comfort the other. Fourteen years of it, Doc—her and me, and her so patient, so forbearing—Doc—you're a smart man—tell me, Doc, how did Tom Van Dorn get around to actually doing it? What say?"

The Doctor waved his folded paper in an impatient gesture at the Captain.

"We are all products of our yesterdays, Ezry; we are what we were, and we will be what we were. Man is queer. Sometimes out of the depth of him a god rises—sometimes it's a beast. I've sat by the bed and seen life gasp into being; I've stood in the ranks and fought with men as you have, and have seen them fight and then again have seen them turn tail like cowards. I have sat by the bed and seen life sigh into the dust. What is life—what is the God that quickens and directs us,—why and how and whence?—Ezry Morton, man—I don't know. And as for Tom—into that roaring hell of lust and lying and cheap parching pride where he is plunging—why, Ezry, I could almost cry for the fool; the damned beforehand fool!"

As the Doctor went whistling homeward through the storm that winter night he wondered how many more months the black spell of grief and despair would cover his daughter. Five months had passed since that summer day when her home had fallen. He knew how tragic her struggle was to fit herself into her new environment. She was dwelling, but not living in the Nesbit home. It was the Nesbit home; a kindly abode, but not her home. Her home was gone. The severed roots of her life kept stirring in her memory—in her heart, and outwardly, her spirit showed a withered and unhappy being, trying to rebuild life, to readjust itself after the shock that all but kills. The Doctor realized what an agony the new growth was bringing, and that night, stirred somewhat to somber meditation by Captain Morton's reflections, the Doctor's tune was a doleful little tune as he whistled into the wind. Excepting Kenyon Adams, who still came daily bringing his violin and was rapidly learning all that she knew of the theory of music, Laura Van Dorn had no interest in life outside of her family. When the Adamses came to dinner as frequently they came—Laura seemed to feel no constraint with them. Grant had even made her laugh with stories of Dick Bowman's struggles to be a red card socialist, and to vote the straight socialist ticket and still keep in ward politics in which he had been a local heeler for nearly twenty years. Laura was interested in the organization of the unions, and though the Doctor carped at it and made fun of Grant, it was largely to stir up a discussion in which his daughter would take a vital interest.

Grant was getting something more than a local reputation in labor circles as an agitator, and was in demand as an organizer in different parts of the valley. He worked at his trade more or less, having rigged up a steel device on the stump of his right forearm that would hold a saw, a plane or a hammer. But he was no longer a boss carpenter at the mines. His devotion to the men and in the work they were doing seemed to the Nesbits to awaken in their daughter a new interest in life, and so they made many obvious excuses to have the Adamses about the Nesbit home.

Kenyon was growing into a pale, dreamy child with wonderful eyes, lustrous, deep, thoughtful and kind. He was music mad, and read all the poetry in the Nesbit library—and the Doctor loved poetry as many men love wine. Hero-tales and mythology, romances and legends Kenyon read day after day between his hours of practice, and for diversion the boy sat before the fire or in the sun of a chilly afternoon, retailing them in such language as little Lila could understand. So in the black night of sorrow that enveloped her, Laura Nesbit often spent an hour with Grant Adams, and talked of much that was near her heart.

He was strong, sometimes she thought him coarse and raw. He talked the jargon of the agitator with the enthusiasm of a dervish and the vernacular of the mine and the shop and the forge. But in him she could see the fire of a mad consuming passion for humanity.

During those days of shame and misery, when the old interests of life were dying in her heart, interests upon which she had built since her childhood—the interests of home, of children, of wifehood and motherhood, to which in joy she had consecrated herself, she listened often to Grant Adams. Until there came into her life slowly and feebly, and almost without her conscious realization of it, a new vision, a new hope, a new path toward usefulness that makes for the only happiness.

As the Doctor went whistling into the storm that December night, he went over in his mind rather seriously the meaning and the direction and the final outcome of those small, unconscious buddings of interest in social problems that he saw putting forth in his daughter's mind. Above everything else, he was not a reformer. He hated the reformer type. But he preferred to see her interested in the work of Grant Adams—even though he considered Grant mildly cracked and felt that his growing power in the valley was dangerous—rather than to see her under the black pall that enveloped her.

It was early in the evening as the Doctor went up the hill. He passed Judge Van Dorn, striding along and saw him turn into Congress Street to visit his lady love. The Judge carried a large roll of architect's plans under his arm. The Doctor nodded to the Judge, and the Judge rather proud that he was free and did not have to slink to his lady's bower, returned a gracious good evening, and his tall, straight figure went prancing down the street. When the Doctor entered his home, he found Laura and Lila sitting by the open fire. The child was in her night gown and they were discussing Santa Claus. Lila was saying:

"Kenyon told me Santa Claus was your father?"

Before the mother could reply the little voice went on:

"I wonder if my Santa Claus will come this year—will he, mother?—Why doesn't father ever come to us, mother—why doesn't he play with me when I see him?"

Now there is the story of the absent one that parents tell—the legend about God and Heaven and the angels—a beautiful and comforting legend it is for small minds, and being merciful, God may in His own way bring us to realize it, in deed and in truth. When the lonely father or the broken hearted mother tells the desolate child that legend, childhood finds surcease there for its sorrow. But when there is no God, no Heaven, no angels to whom the absent one has gone, what then do deserted mothers say?—or dishonored fathers answer? What surcease for its sorrow has the little lonely, aching heart in that sad case? What then, "ye merry gentlemen that nothing may dismay"?



CHAPTER XXV

IN WHICH WE SEE TWO TEMPLES AND THE CONTENTS THEREOF

It was an old complaint in Harvey that the Harvey Tribune was too much of a bulletin of the doings of the Adams family and their friends. But when a man sets all the type on a paper, writes all the editorials and gets all the news he may be pardoned if he takes first such news as is near his hand. Thus in the May that followed events set down in the last chapter we find in the Tribune a few items of interest to the readers of this narrative. We learn for instance that Captain Ezra Morton who is introducing the Nonesuch Sewing Machine, paid his friends in Prospect school district a visit; that Jasper Adams has been promoted to superintendent of deliveries in Wright & Perry's store; that Kenyon Adams entertained his friends in the Fifth Grade of the South Harvey schools with a violin solo on the last day of school; that Grant Adams had been made assistant to the secretary of the National Building Trades Association in South Harvey; that Mr. George Brotherton with Miss Emma Morton and Martha and Ruth had enjoyed a pleasant visit with the Adamses Sunday afternoon and had resumed an enjoyable buggy ride after partaking of a chicken dinner. In the editorial column were some reflections evidently in Mr. Left's most lucid style and a closing paragraph containing this: "Happiness and character," said the Peach Blow Philosopher, "are inseparable: but how easy it is to be happy in a great, beautiful house; or to be unhappy if it comes to that in a great, beautiful house: Environment may influence character; but all the good are not poor, nor all the rich bad. Therefore, the Peach Blow Philosopher takes to the woods. He is willing to leave something to the Lord Almighty and the continental congress. Selah!"

As Dr. Nesbit sat reading the items above set forth upon the broad new veranda of the residence that he was so proud to call his home, he smiled. It was late afternoon. He had done a hard day's work—some of it among the sick, some of it among the needy—the needy in the Doctor's bright lexicon being those who tried to persuade him that they needed political offices. "I cheer up the sick, encourage the needy, pray for 'em both, and sometimes for their own good have to lie to 'em all," he used to say in that day when the duties of his profession and the care of his station as a ruling boss in politics were oppressing him. Dr. Nesbit played politics as a game. But he played always to win.

"Old Linen Pants is a bland old scoundrel," declared Public Opinion, about the corridors of the political hotel at the capital. "But he is as ruthless as iron, as smooth as oil, and as bitter as poison when he sets his head on a proposition. Buy?—he buys men in all the ways the devil teaches them to sell—offices, power, honor, cash in hand, promises, prestige—anything that a man wants, Old Linen Pants will trade for, and then get that man. Humorous old devil, too," quoth Public Opinion. "Laughs, quotes scripture, throws in a little Greek philosophy, and knows all the new stories, but never forgets whose play it is, nor what cards are out." Thus was he known to others.

But as he remained longer and longer in the game, as his fourth term as state Senator began to lengthen, the game here and there began to lose in his mouth something of its earlier savor. That afternoon as he sat on the veranda overlooking the lawn shaded by the elm trees of his greatest pride, Dr. Nesbit was discoursing to Mrs. Nesbit, who was sewing and paid little heed to his animadversions; it was a soliloquy rather than a conversation—a soliloquy accompanied by an obligate of general mental disagreement from the wife of his bosom, who expressed herself in sniffs and snorts and scornful staccato interjections as the soliloquy ran on. Here are a few bars of it transcribed for beginners:

From the Doctor's solo: "Heigh-ho—ho hum—Two United States Senators, one slightly damaged Governor, marked down, five congressmen and three liars, one supreme court justice, also a liar, a working interest in a second, and a slight equity in a third; organization of the Senate, speaker of the house,—forty liars and thirty thieves—that's my political assets, my dear."

"I wish you'd quit politics, Doctor, and attend to your practice," this by way of accompaniment from Mrs. Nesbit. The Doctor was in a playful and facetious mood that pleasant afternoon.

He leaned back in his chair, reached up in the air with outstretched arms, clapped his hands three times, gayly, kicked his shoe-heels three times at the end of his short little legs, smiled and proceeded: "Liabilities of James Nesbit, dealer in public grief, licensed dispenser of private joy, purveyor of Something Equally Good, item one, forty-nine gentlemen who think they've been promised thirty-six jobs—but they are mistaken, they have been told only that I'll do what I can for them—which is true; item two, three hundred friends who want something and may ask at any minute; item three, seventy-five men who will be or have been primed up by the loathed opposition to demand jobs; item four, Tom Van Dorn who is as sure as guns to think in about a year he has to have a vindication, by running for another term; item five—"

"He can't have it," from Mrs. Nesbit, and then the piping voice went on:

"Item six, a big, husky fight in Greeley county for the maharaja of Harvey and the adjoining provinces." A deep sigh rose from the Doctor, then followed more clapping of hands and kicking of heels and some slapping of suspenders, as the voices of Kenyon and Lila came into the veranda from the lawn, and the Doctor cast up his accounts: "Let's see now—naught's a naught and figure's a figure and carry six, and subtract the profits and multiply the trouble and you have a busted community. Correct," he piped, "Bedelia, my dear, observe a busted community. Your affectionate lord and master, kind husband, indulgent father, good citizen gone but not forgotten. How are the mighty fallen."

"Doctor," snapped Mrs. Nesbit, "don't be a fool; tell me, James, will Tom Van Dorn want to run again?"

Making a basket with his hands for the back of his head the Doctor answered slowly, "Ho-ho-ho! Oh, I don't know—I should say—yes. He'll just about have to run—for a Vindication."

"Well, you'll not support him! I say you'll not support him," Mrs. Nesbit decided, and the Doctor echoed blandly:

"Then I'll not support him. Where's Laura?" he asked gently.

"She went down to South Harvey to see about that kindergarten she's been talking of. She seems almost cheerful about the way Kenyon is getting on with his music. She says the child reads as well as she now and plays everything on the violin that she can play on the piano. Doctor," added Mrs. Nesbit meditatively, "now about those oriental rugs we were going to put upstairs—don't you suppose we could take the money we were going to put there and help Laura with that kindergarten? Perhaps she'd take a real interest in life through those children down there." The wife hesitated and asked, "Would you do it?"

The Doctor drummed his chair arm thoughtfully, then put his thumbs in his suspenders. "Greater love than this hath no woman shown, my dear—that she gives up oriental rugs for a kindergarten—by all means give it to her."

"James, Lila still grieves for her father."

"Yes," answered the Doctor sadly, "and Henry Fenn was in the office this morning begging me to give him something that would kill his thirst."

The doctor brought his hands down emphatically on his chair arms. "Duty, Bedelia, is the realest obligation in the world. Here are Lila and Henry Fenn. What a miserable lot of tommy rot about soul-mating Tom and this Fenn woman conjured up to get away from their duty to child and husband. They have swapped a place with the angels for a right to wallow with the hogs; that's what all their fine talking amounts to." The Doctor's shrill voice rose. "They don't fool me. They don't fool any one; they don't even fool each other. I tell you, my dear," he chirped as he rose from his chair, "I never saw one of those illicit love affairs in life or heard of it in literature that was not just plain, old fashion, downright, beastly selfishness. Duty is a greater thing in life than what the romance peddlers call love."

The Doctor stood looking at his wife questioningly—waiting for some approving response. She kept on sewing. "Oh you Satterthwaites with hearts of marble," he cried as he patted the cast iron waves of her hair and went chuckling into the house.

Mrs. Nesbit was aroused from her reverie by the rattle of the Adams buggy. When it drew up to the curb Laura and Grant climbed out and came up the walk. Laura wore a simple summer dress that brought out all the exquisite coloring of her skin, and made her light hair shine in a kind of haloed glory. It had been months since the mother had seen in her daughter's face such a smile as the daughter gave to the man beside her—red-faced, angular, hard muscled, in his dingy blue carpenter's working clothes with his measuring rule and pencil sticking from his apron pocket, and with his crippled arm tipped by its steel tool-holder.

"Grant is going to take that box of Lila's toys down to the kindergarten, mother," she explained.

When they had disappeared up the stairs Mrs. Nesbit could hear them on the floor above and soon the heavy feet of the man carrying a burden were on the stairs and in another minute the young woman was saying:

"Leave them by the teacher's desk, Grant," and as he untied the horse, she called, "Now you will get that door in to-night without fail—won't you? I'll be down and we'll put in the south partition in the morning." As she turned from the door she greeted her mother with a smile and dropped wearily into a chair.

"Oh mother," she cried, "it's going to be so fine. Grant has the room nearly finished and he's interesting the wives of the union men in South Harvey and George Brotherton is going to give us every month all the magazines and periodicals that are not returnable and George brought down a lot of Christmas numbers of illustrated papers, and we're cutting the bright pictures out and pinning them on the wall and George himself worked with us all afternoon. George says he is going to make every one of his lodges contribute monthly to the kindergarten—he belongs to everything but the Ladies of the G. A. R.—" she smiled and her mother smiled with her,—"and Grant says the unions are going to pay half of the salary of the extra teacher. That makes it easier."

"Well, Laura, don't you think—"

But her daughter interrupted her. "Now, mother," she went on, "don't you stop me till I'm done—for this is the best yet. Morty Sands came down to-day to help—" Laura laughed a little at her mother's surprised glance, "and Morty promised to give us $200 for the kindergarten just as soon as he can worm it out of his father for expense money." She drew in a deep, tired breath, "There," she sighed, "that's all."

Her own child came up and the mother caught the little girl and began playing with her, tying her hair ribbon, smoothing out her skirts, rubbing a dirt speck from her nose, and cuddling the little one rapturously in her arms. When the two women were alone, Laura sat on the veranda steps with her head resting upon her mother's knee. The mother touched the soft hair and said: "Laura, you are very tired."

"Yes, mother," the daughter answered. "The mothers are so hungry for help down there in South Harvey, and," she added a little drearily—"so am I; so we are speaking a common language."

She nestled her head in the lap above her. "And I'm going to find something worth doing—something fine and good."

She watched the lazy clouds, "You know I'm glad about Morty Sands. Grant thinks Morty sincerely wants to amount to something real—to help and be more than a money grubber! If the old spider would just let him out of the web!" The mother stared at her daughter a second.

"Well, Laura, about the only money grubbing Morty seems to be doing is grubbing money out of his father to maintain his race horse."

The daughter smiled and the mother went on with her work. "Mother, did you know that little Ruth Morton is going to begin taking vocal lessons this summer?" The mother shook her head. "Grant says Mr. Brotherton's paying for it. He thinks she has a wonderful voice."

"Voice—" cut in Mrs. Nesbit, "why Laura, the child's only fourteen—voice—!"

Laura answered, "Yes, mother, but you've never heard her sing; she has a beautiful, deep, contralto voice, but the treble above 'C' is a trifle squeaky, and Mr. Brotherton says he's 'going to have it oiled'; so she's to 'take vocal' regularly."

On matters musical Mrs. Nesbit believed she had a right to know the whole truth, so she asked: "Where does Mr. Brotherton come in, Laura?"

"Oh, mother, he's always been a kind of god-father to those girls. You know as well as I that Emma's been playing with that funeral choir of yours and Mr. Brotherton's all these years, only because he got her into it, and Grant says he's kept Mrs. Herdicker from discharging Martha for two years, just by sheer nerve. Of course Grant gets it from Mr. Brotherton but Grant says Martha is so pretty she's such a trial to Mrs. Herdicker! I like Martha, but, mother, she just thinks she should be carried round on a chip because of her brown eyes and red hair and dear little snubby nose. Grant says Mr. Brotherton is trying to get the money someway to float the Captain's stock company and put his Household Horse on the market. I think Mr. Brotherton is a fine man, mother—he's always doing things to help people."

Mrs. Nesbit folded up her work, and began to rise. "George Brotherton, Laura," said her mother as she stood at full length looking down upon her child, "has a voice of an angel, and perhaps the heart of a god, but he will eat onions and during the twenty years I've been singing with him I've never known him to speak a correct sentence. Common, Laura—common as dishwater."

As Laura Van Dorn talked the currents of life eddying about her were reflected in what she said. But she could not know the spirit that was moving the currents; for with a neighborly shyness those who were gathering about her were careful to seem casual in their kindness, and she could not know how deeply they were moved to help her. Kindergartens were hardly in George Brotherton's line; yet he untied old bundles of papers, ransacked his shop and brought a great heap of old posters and picture papers to her. Captain Morton brought a beloved picture of his army Colonel to adorn the room, and deaf John Kollander, who had a low opinion of the ignorant foreigners and the riff-raff and scum of society, which Laura was trying to help, wished none the less to help her, and came down one day with a flag for the schoolroom and insisted upon making a speech to the tots about patriotism. He made nothing clear to them but he made it quite clear to himself that they were getting the flag as a charity, which they little deserved, and never would return. And to Laura he conveyed the impression that he considered her mission a madness, but for her and the sorrow which she was fighting, he had appreciative tenderness. He must have impressed his emotions upon his wife for she came down and talked elaborately about starting a cooking school in the building, and after planning it all out, went away and forgot it. The respectable iron gray side-whiskers of Ahab Wright once relieved the dingy school room, when Ahab looked in and the next day Kyle Perry on behalf of the firm of Wright & Perry came trudging into the kindergarten with a huge box which he said contained a p-p-p-p-p-pat-a-p-p-p-pppat-pat—here he swallowed and started all over and finally said p-p-patent, and then started out on a long struggle with the word swing, but he never finished it, and until Laura opened the box she thought Mr. Perry had brought her a soda fountain. But Nathan Perry, his son, who came wandering down to the place one afternoon with Anne Sands, put up the swing, and suggested a half dozen practical devices for the teacher to save time and labor in her work, while Anne Sands in her teens looked on as one who observes a major god completing a bungling job of the angels on a newly contrived world.

Sometimes coming home from his day's work Amos Adams would drop in for a chat with the tired teacher, and he refreshed her curiously with his quiet manner and his unsure otherworldliness, and his tough, unyielding optimism. He had no lectures for the children. He would watch them at their games, try to play with them himself in a pathetic, old-fashioned way, telling them fairy stories of an elder and a grimmer day than ours. Sometimes Doctor Nesbit, coming for Laura in his buggy, would find Amos in the school room, and they would fall to their everlasting debate upon the reality of time and space with the Doctor enjoying hugely his impious attempt to couch the terminology of abstract philosophy in his Indiana vernacular.