In the Heart of a Fool Part 68

"To sound the clarion means riot and bloodshed--and failure for the cause."

"To let things drift," put in Brotherton, "puts Grant in danger."

"Of what?" asked the Doctor.

"Well, of indignities unspeakable and cruel torture," returned Brotherton.

"I'm sure that's all, George. But can't we--we four stop that?" said Fenn. "Can't we stand off the mob? A mob's a coward."

"It's the least we can do," said Perry.

"And all you can do, Nate," added the Doctor, with the weariness of age in his voice and in his counsel.

But when the group separated and the Doctor purred up the hill in his electric, his heart was sore within him and he spoke to the wife of his bosom of the burden that was on his heart. Then, after a dinner scarcely tasted, the Doctor hurried down town to meet with the men at Brotherton's.

As Mrs. Nesbit saw the electric dip under the hill, her first impulse was to call up her daughter on the telephone, who was at Foley that evening. For be it remembered Mrs. Nesbit in the days of her prime was dubbed "the General" by George Brotherton, and when she saw the care and hovering fear in the pink, old face of the man she loved, she was not the woman to sit and rock. She had to act and, because she feared she would be stopped, she did not pick up the telephone receiver. She went to the library, where Kenyon Adams with his broken leg in splints was sitting while Lila read to him. She stood looking at the lovers for a moment.

"Children," she said, "Grant Adams is in great danger. We must help him."

To their startled questions, she answered: "He is asking your father, Lila, to release him from the prison to-night. If he is not released, a mob will take Grant as they took that poor fool last night and--" She stopped, turned toward them a perturbed and fear-wrinkled face. Then she said quickly: "I don't know that I owe Grant Adams anything but--you children do--" She did not complete her sentence, but burst out: "I don't care for Tom Van Dorn's court, his grand folderol and mummery of the law. He's going to send a man to death to-night because his masters demand it. And we must stop it--you and Lila and I, Kenyon."

Kenyon reached out, tried to rise and failed, but grasped her strong, effective hand, as he cried: "What can we do--what can I do?"

She went into the Doctor's office and brought out two old crutches.

"Take these," she said, "then I'll help you down the porch steps--and you go to your mother! That's what you can do. Maybe she can stop him--she has done a number of other worse things with him."

She literally lifted the tottering youth down the veranda steps and a few moments later his crutches were rattling upon the stone steps that rose in front of the proud house of Van Dorn. Margaret had seen him coming and met him before he rang the bell.

She looked the dreadful wonder in her mind and as he took her hand to steady himself, he spoke while she was helping him to sit.

"You are my mother," he said simply. "I know it now." He felt her hand tighten on his arm. She bent over him and with finger on lips, whispered: "Hush, hush, the maid is in there--what is it, Kenyon?"

"I want you to save Grant."

She still stood over him, looking at him with her glazed eyes shot with the evidence of a strong emotion.

"Kenyon, Kenyon--my boy--my son!" she whispered, then said greedily: "Let me say it again--my son!" She whispered the word "son" for a moment, stooping over him, touching his forehead gently with her fingers. Then she cried under her breath: "What about that man--your--Grant? What have I to do with him?"

He reached for her hands beseechingly and said: "We are asking your husband, the Judge, to let him out of jail to-night, for if the Judge doesn't release Grant--they are going to mob him and maybe kill him! Oh, won't you save him? You can. I know you can. The Judge will let him out if you demand it."

"My son, my son!" the woman answered as she looked vacantly at him. "You are my son, my very own, aren't you?"

She stooped to look into his eyes and cried: "Oh, you're mine"--her trembling fingers ran over his face. "My eyes, my hair. You have my voice--O G.o.d--why haven't they found it out?" Then she began whispering over again the words, "My son."

A clock chimed the half-hour. It checked her. "He'll be back in half an hour," she said, rising; then--"So they're going to mob Grant, are they?

And he sent you here asking me for mercy!"

Kenyon shook his head in protest and cried: "No, no, no. He doesn't even know--"

She looked at the young man and became convinced that he was telling the truth; but she was sure that Laura Van Dorn had sent him. It was her habit of mind to see the ulterior motive. So the pa.s.sion of motherhood flaring up after years of suppression quickly died down. It could not dominate her in her late forties, even for the time, nor even with the power which held her during the night of the riot in South Harvey, when she was in her thirties. The pa.s.sion of motherhood with Margaret Van Dorn was largely a memory, but hate was a lively and material emotion.

She fondled her son in the simulation of a pa.s.sion that she did not feel--and when in his eagerness he tried vainly to tie her to a promise to help his father, she would only reply:

"Kenyon, oh, my son, my beautiful son--you know I'd give my life for you--"

The son looked into the dead, bra.s.sy eyes of his mother, saw her drooping mouth, with the brown lips that had not been stained that day; observed the slumping muscles of her over-ma.s.saged face, and felt with a shudder the caress of her fingers--and he knew in his heart that she was deceiving him. A moment after she had spoken the automobile going to the station for the Judge backed out of the garage and turned into the street.

"You must go now," she cried, clinging to him. "Oh, son--son--my only son--come to me, come to your mother sometimes for her love. He is coming now in a few minutes on the eight o'clock train. You must not let him see you here."

She helped Kenyon to rise. He stumbled across the floor to the steps and she helped him gently down to the lawn. She stood play-acting for him a moment in whisper and pantomime, then she turned and hurried indoors and met the inquisitive maid servant with:

"Just that Kenyon Adams--the musician--awfully dear boy, but he wanted me to interfere with the Judge for that worthless brother, Grant. The Nesbits sent him. You know the Nesbit woman is crazy about that anarchist. Oh, Nadine, did Chalmers see Kenyon? You know Chalmers just blabs everything to the Judge."

Nadine indicated that Chalmers had recognized Kenyon as he crawled up the veranda steps and Mrs. Van Dorn replied: "Very well, I'll be ready for him." And half an hour later, when the Judge drove up, his wife met him as he was putting his valise in his room:

"Dahling," she said as she closed the door, "that Kenyon Adams was over here, appealing to me for his brother, Grant."

"Well?" asked the Judge contemptuously.

"You have him where we want him now, dahling," she answered. "If you refuse him his freedom, the mob will get him. And oh, oh, oh," she cried pa.s.sionately, "I hope they'll hang him, hang him, higher'n Haman. That will take the tuck out of the old Nesbit cat and that other, his--his sweetheart, to have her daughter marrying the brother of a man who was hanged! That'll bring them down."

A flash across the Judge's face told the woman where her emotion was leading her. It angered her.

"So that holds you, does it? That binds the hands of the Judge, does it?

This wonderful daughter, who snubs him on the street--she mustn't marry the brother of a man who was hanged!" Margaret laughed, and the Judged glowered in rage until the scar stood white upon his purple brow.

"Dahling," she leered, "remember our little discussion of Kenyon Adams's parentage that night! Maybe our dear little girl is going to marry the son, the son," she repeated wickedly, "of a man who was hanged!"

He stepped toward her crying: "For G.o.d's sake, quit! Quit!"

"Oh, I hope he'll hang. I hope he'll hang and you've got to hang him!

You've got to hang him!" she mocked exultingly.

The man turned in rage. He feared the powerful, physical creature before him. He had never dared to strike her. He wormed past her and ran slinking down the hall and out of the door--out from the temple of love, which he had builded--somewhat upon sand perhaps, but still the temple of love. A rather sad place it was, withal, in which to rest the weary bones of the hunter home from the hills, after a lifelong ride to hounds in the primrose hunt.

He stood for a moment upon the steps of the veranda, while his heart pumped the bile of hate through him; and suddenly hearing a soft footfall, he turned his head quickly, and saw Lila--his daughter. As he turned toward her in the twilight it struck him like a blow in the face that she in some way symbolized all that he had always longed for--his unattainable ideal; for she seemed young--immortally young, and sweet.

The grace of maidenhood shone from her and she turned an eager but infinitely wistful face up to his, and for a second the picture of the slim, white-clad figure, enveloping and radiating the gentle eagerness of a beautiful soul, came to him like the disturbing memory of some vague, lost dream and confused him. While she spoke he groped back to the moment blindly and heard her say:

"Oh, you will help me now, this once, this once when I beg it; you will help me?" As she spoke she clutched his arm. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Father, don't let them murder him--don't, oh, please, father--for me, won't you save him for me--won't you let him out of jail now?"

"Lila, child," the Judge held out his hand unsteadily, "it's not what I want to do; it's the law that I must follow. Why, I can't do--"

"If Mr. Ahab Wright was in jail as Grant is and the workmen had the State government, what would the law say?" she answered. Then she gripped his hands and cried: "Oh, father, father, have mercy, have mercy! We love him so and it will kill Kenyon. Grant has been like a father to Kenyon; he has been--"

"Tell me this, Lila," the Judge stopped her; he held her hands in his cold, hard palms. "Who is Kenyon--who is his father--do you know?"

"Yes, I know," the daughter replied quietly.