In the Heart of a Fool Part 25

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 G.o.d--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 s.h.i.+eld 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 G.o.d 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, G.o.d--hide my shame--my shame--my shame." Her voice rose for a moment and she m.u.f.fled 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 s.h.i.+fting, 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 pa.s.s 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 f.a.gged 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-k.n.o.b. "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.