In the Heart of a Fool Part 56

He smoked until his pipe revived and added, "Well, Tom can afford it; he's got all the money he needs."

Grant, who heard the Doctor's news, did not seem to be disturbed by it.

His mind was occupied with more personal matters. He stood by a pillar, looking off into the summer day.

"Well, I suppose," he looked at his clothes, brushed the dust from the top of his shoes by rubbing them separately against the calves of his legs, straightened his ready-made tie and felt of the b.u.t.tons on his vest, "I suppose," he repeated, "I may just as well go now as at any other time," and he strode down the steps and made straight for the Van Dorn home.

When he came to the Van Dorn house he saw Margaret sitting alone in the deep shade of a vine-screened piazza. She wore a loose flowing purple house garment, of a bizarre pattern which accented her physical charms.

But not until he had begun to mount the steps before her did he notice that she was sound asleep in a gaping and disenchanting stupor. Yet his footstep aroused her, and she started and gazed wildly at him: "Why--why--you--why, Grant!"

"Yes, Margaret," he answered as he stood hat in hand on the top step before her, ignoring her trembling and the terror in her eyes. "I've come to have a talk with you--about Kenyon."

She looked about her, listened a second, shuddered, and said with quivering facial muscles and shaky voice, "Yes--oh, yes--about Kenyon--yes--Kenyon Adams. Yes, I know."

The eyes she turned on him were dull and her face was slumped, as though the soul had gone from it. A tremor was visible in her hands, and the color was gone from her drooping lips. She stared at him for a moment, stupidly, then irritation came into her voice, as he sat unbidden in a porch chair near her. "I didn't tell you to sit down."

"No." He turned his face and caught her eyes. "But I'll be comfortable sitting down, and we've got more or less talking to do."

He could see that she was perturbed, and fear wrote itself all over her face. But he did not know that she was vainly trying to get control of herself. The power of the little brown pellets left her while she slept, and she was uncertain of herself and timid. "I--I'm sick--well--I--I--why, I can't talk to you now. Go 'way," she cried. "Go 'way, won't you, please--please go 'way, and come some other time."

"No--now's as good a time as any," he replied. "At any rate, I'll tell you what's on my mind. Mag, now pay attention." He turned his face to her. "The time has come when Lila Van Dorn and her mother must know who Kenyon is."

She looked vacantly at him, then started and chattered, "Wh-wh-wh-wha-what are you s-s-sas-saying--do you mean?"

She got up, closed the door into the house, and came tottering back and stood by her chair, as the man answered:

"I mean, Maggie, exactly what I said. Kenyon wants to marry Lila. But I think, and Doctor Nesbit thinks, that before it is settled, Lila and her mother, and you might as well include Mrs. Nesbit, must know just who their daughter is marrying--I mean what blood. Now do you get my idea?"

As he spoke, the woman, clutching at her chair back, tried to quiet her fluttering hands. But she began panting and a sickly pallor overcame her and she cried feebly: "Oh, you devil--you devil--will you never let me alone?"

He answered, "Look here, Mag--what's the matter with you? I'm only trying to play fair with you. I wouldn't tell 'em until you--"

"Ugh!" She shut her eyes. "Grant--wait a minute. I must get my medicine.

I'll be back." She turned to go. "Oh, wait a minute--I'll be back in five minutes--I promise, honest to G.o.d, I'll be right back, Grant." She was at the door. As she fumbled with the screen, he nodded his a.s.sent and smiled grimly as he said, "All right, Maggie."

When he was alone, he looked about him, at the evidence of the Van Dorn money in the temple of Love. The outdoor room was furnished with luxuries he had never seen. He sniffed as though he smelled the money that was evident everywhere. Beside Margaret's chair, where she had dropped it when she went to sleep, was a book. It was a beautifully bound copy of the Memoirs of some t.i.tled harlot of the old French court.

He was staring absent-mindedly at the floor where the book lay when she came to the door.

She came out, sat down, looked steadily at him and began calmly: "Now, what is it you desire?"

She said "desiah," and Grant grunted as she went on: "I'm shuah no good can come and only hahm, great suffering--and Heaven knows what wrong, by this--miserable plan. What good can it do?"

Her changed att.i.tude surprised him. "Well, now, Maggie," he returned, "since you want to talk it over sensibly, I'll tell you how we feel--at least how I feel. The chief business of any proper marriage is children.

This marriage between Kenyon and Lila--if it comes--should bring forth fruit. I claim Lila has a right to know that he has my blood and yours in him before she goes into a life partners.h.i.+p with him."

"Oh, Grant, Grant," cried Margaret pa.s.sionately, "the sum of your hair-splitting is this: that you bring shame upon your child's mother, and then cant like a Pharisee about its being for a good purpose. That's the way with you--you--you--" She could not quite finish the sentence.

She sat breathing fast, waiting for strength to come to her from the fortifying little pill. Grant picked up his hat. "Well--I've told you.

That's what I came for."

She caught his arm and cried, "Sit down--haven't I a right to be heard?

Hasn't a mother any rights--"

"No," cut in Grant, "not when she strangles her motherhood!"

"But how could I take my motherhood without disgracing my boy?" she asked.

He met her eyes. They were steady eyes, and were brightening. The man stared at her and answered: "When I brought him to you after mother died, a little, toddling, motherless boy, when I wanted you to come with us to mother him--and I didn't want you, Maggie, any more than you wanted me, but I thought his right to a mother was greater than either of our rights to our choice of mates--then and there, you made your final choice."

"What does G.o.d mean," she whined, "by hounding me all my life for that one mistake!"

"Maggie--Maggie," answered the man, sitting down as she sank into a chair, "it wasn't the one mistake that has made you unhappy."

"That's twaddle," she retorted, "sheer twaddle. Don't I know how that child has been a cancer in my very heart--burning and gnawing and making me wretched? Don't I know?"

"No, you don't, Mag. If you want the truth," replied Grant bluntly, "you looked upon the boy as a curse. He has threatened you every day of your life. The very love you think you have for him, which I don't doubt for a minute, Mag, made you do a mad, foolish, infinitely cruel, spiteful thing--that night at the South Harvey riot. Perhaps you might care for Kenyon's affection now, but you can't have that even remotely. For all his interest in you is limited by the fact that you robbed Lila of her father. All your cancer and heart burnings, Mag, have been your own selfishness. Lord, woman--I know you."

He turned his hard gaze upon her and she winced. But she clearly was enjoying the quarrel. It stimulated her taut nerves. The house behind her was empty. She felt free to brawl.

"And you? And you?" she jeered. "I suppose he's made a saint of you."

The man's face softened, as he said simply, "I don't claim to be a saint, Mag. But I owe Kenyon everything I am in the world--everything."

"Well, it isn't much of a debt," she laughed.

"No," he repeated, "it's not much of a debt." After a moment he added, "Doctor Nesbit has kept this secret all these years. Now it's time to let these people know. You can see why, and the only reason I came to you--"

"You came to me, Grant," she cried, "to tell me you were going to shame me before that--that--before her--that old, yellow-haired tabby, who goes around doing good! Ugh--"

Grant stared at her blankly a full, uncomprehensive minute. Finally Margaret went on: "And I suppose the next thing you long-nosed busybodies will do will be to get chicken hearted about Tom Van Dorn's rights in the matter. Ah, you hypocrites!" she cried.

"Well, I don't know," answered Grant sternly; "if Lila should go to her father for advice--why shouldn't he have all the facts?"

Margaret rose. Her bright, gla.s.sy eyes flashed. Anger colored her face.

Her bosom rose and fell as she exclaimed: "But she'll not go to him. Oh, he's perfectly foolish about her. Every time a photographer in this town takes her picture, he snoops around and gets one. He has her picture in his watch, in which he thinks she looks like the Van Dorns. When he goes away he takes her picture in a leather frame and puts it on his table in the hotel--except when I'm around." She laughed. "Ain't it funny? Ain't it funny," she chattered hysterically, "him doddering the way he does about her, and her freezing the life out of him?" She shook with mirth, and went on: "Oh, the devil's coming round for Tom Van Dorn's soul--and all there is of it--all there is of it is the little green spot where he loves this brat. The rest's all rotted out!"

She laughed foolishly. Then Grant said:

"Well, Mag--I must be going. I just thought it would be square to tell you before I go any further. About the other--the affair of Lila and her father is no concern of mine. That's for Lila and her mother to settle.

But you and I and Kenyon are bound together by the deepest tie in the world, Maggie. And I had to come to you." She stared into his gnarled face, then shut her eyes, and in an instant wherein they were closed she lapsed into her favorite pose and disappeared behind her mask.

"Vurry kind of you, I'm shuah. Chahmed to have this little talk again."

He gazed at the empty face, saw the drugged eyes, and the smirking mouth, and felt infinitely sad as a flash of her girlhood came back to his memory. "Well, good-by, Mag," he said gently, and turned and went down the steps.

The messenger boy whom Grant Adams pa.s.sed as he went down the walk to the street from the Van Dorn home, put a telegram into Mrs. Van Dorn's lap. It was from Was.h.i.+ngton and read:

"Appointment as Federal Judge a.s.sured. Notify Sands. Have Calvin prepare article for Monday's _Times_ and other papers."

She re-read it, held it in her hand for a time as she looked hungrily into the future.