In the Heart of a Fool. White William Allen
what do you think?”
“Bluffing,” returned the Doctor absently, then added quickly: “Come now, George, get your voters’ list! It’s getting late!”
George Brotherton looked blankly at the group. In every face but the Doctor’s a genuine sorrow for their friend was marked. “Doc,” Brotherton began apologetically, “I guess I’ll just have to get you to let me off to-night!” He hesitated; then as he saw the company around him backing him up, “Why, Doc, the way I feel right now I don’t care if the whole county ticket is licked! I can’t work to-night, Doc–I just can’t!”
The Doctor’s face as he listened, changed. It was as though another soul had come upon the deck of his countenance. He answered softly in his piping voice, “No man could, George–after that!” Then turning to Grant the Doctor said gently, as one reminded of a forgotten purpose:
“Come along with me, Grant.” They mounted the stairs to the Doctor’s office and when the door was closed the Doctor motioned Grant to a chair and piped sharply: “Grant, Kenyon is wearing your mother’s life out. I’ve just been down to see her. Look here, Grant, I want to know about Margaret? Does she ever come to see you folks–how does she treat Kenyon?”
Looking at the floor, Grant answered slowly, “Well she rode down on her wheel on his first birthday–slipped in when we were all out but mother, and cried and went on about her poor child, mother said, and left him a pair of little knit slippers. And she wrote him a birthday card the second time, but we didn’t hear from her this time.” He paused. “She never looks at him on the street, and she’s just about quit speaking to me. But last winter, she came down and cried around one afternoon. Mother sent for her, I think.”
“Why!” asked the Doctor quickly.
“Well,” hesitated Grant, “it was when mother was first taken sick. I think father and mother thought maybe Maggie might see things different–well, about Kenyon.” He stopped.
“Maggie and you?” prompted the Doctor.
“Well, something like that, perhaps,” replied the boy.
The Doctor pushed back in his chair abruptly and cut in shrilly, “They still think you and Margaret should marry on account of Kenyon?” Grant nodded. “Do you want to marry her?” The Doctor leaned forward in his chair, watching the boy. The Doctor saw the flash of revulsion that spread over the youth’s face before Grant raised his head, and met the Doctor’s keen gaze and answered soberly, “I would if it was best.”
“Well,” the Doctor returned as if to himself. “I suppose so.” To the younger man, he said: “Grant, she wouldn’t marry you. She is after bigger game. As far as reforming Henry Fenn’s concerned, she’s bluffing. It doesn’t interest her any more than Kenyon’s lack of a mother.”
The Doctor rose and Grant saw that the interview was over. The Doctor left the youth at the foot of the stairway and went out into the autumn night, where the stars could blink at all his wisdom. Though he, poor man, did not know that they were winking. For often men who know good women and love them well, are as unjust to weak women as men are who know only those women who are frail.
That night Margaret Müller sat on the porch, where Henry Fenn left her, considering her problem. Now this problem did not remotely concern the Adamses–nor even Kenyon Adams. Margaret Müller’s problem was centered in Henry Fenn, County Attorney of Greeley County; Henry Fenn, who had visited her gorgeously drunk; Henry Fenn on whose handsome shoulder she had enjoyed rather keenly shedding some virtuous tears in chiding him for his broken promise. Yet she knew that she would take him back. And she knew that he knew that he might come back. For she had moved far forward in the siege of Harvey. She was well within the walls of the beleaguered city, and was planning for the larger siege of life and destiny.
About all there is in life is one’s fundamental choice between the spiritual and the material. After that choice is made, the die of life is cast. Events play upon that choice their curious pattern, bringing such griefs and joys, such calamities and winnings as every life must have. For that choice makes character, and character makes happiness. Margaret Müller sitting there in the night long after the last step of Henry Fenn had died away, thought of her lover’s arms, remembered her lover’s lips, but clearer and more moving than these vain things, her mind showed her what his hands could bring her and if her soul waved a duty signal, for the salvation of Henry Fenn, she shut her eyes to the signal and hurried into the house.
She was one of God’s miracles of beauty the next day as she passed Grant Adams on the street, with his carpenter’s box on his arm, going from the mine shaft to do some work in the office of the attorney for the mines. She barely nodded to Grant, yet the radiance of her beauty made him turn his head to gaze at her. Doctor Nesbit did that, and Captain Morton, and Dick Bowman,–even John Kollander turned, putting up his ear trumpet as if to hear the glory of her presence; the whole street turned after her as though some high wind had blown human heads backward when she passed. They saw a lithe, exquisite animal figure, poised strongly on her feet, walking as in the very pride of sex, radiating charms consciously, but with all the grace of a flower in the breeze. Her bright eyes, her masses of dark hair, her dimpled face and neck, her lips that flamed with the joy of life, the enchantment of her whole body, was so complete a thing that morning, that she might well have told her story to the world. The little Doctor knew what her answer to Henry Fenn had been and always would be. He knew as well as though she had told him. In spite of himself, his heart melted a little and he had consciously to stop arguing with himself that she had done the wise thing; that to throw Henry over would only hasten an end, which her powerful personality might finally avert. But George Brotherton–when he saw the light in her eyes, was sad. In the core of him, because he loved his friend, he knew what had happened to that friend. He was sad–sad and resentful, vaguely and without reason, at the mien and bearing of Margaret Müller as she went to her work that morning.
Brotherton remembered her an hour later when, in the back part of the bookstore Henry Fenn sat, jaded, haggard, and with his dull face drawn with remorse,–a burned-out sky rocket. Brotherton was busy with his customers, but in a lull, and between sales as the trade passed in and out, they talked. Sometimes a customer coming in would interrupt them, but the talk went on as trade flowed by. It ran thus:
“Yes, George, but it’s my salvation. She’s the only anchor I have on earth.”
“But she didn’t hold you yesterday.”
“I know, but God, George, it was terrific, the way that thing grabbed me yesterday. But it’s all gone now.”
“I know, Henry, but it will come back–can’t you see what you’ll be doing to her?”
Fenn, gray of face, with his straight, colorless hair, with his staring eyes, with his listless form, sat head in hands, gazing at the floor. He did not look up as he replied: “George, I just can’t give her up; I won’t give her up,” he cried. “I believe, after the depths of love she showed me in her soul last night, I’d take her, if I knew I was taking us both to hell. Just let me have a home, George,–and her and children–George, I know children would hold me–lots of children–I can make money. I’ve got money–all I need to marry on, and we’ll have a home and children and they will hold me–keep me up.”
In Volume XXI of the “Psychological Society’s Publications,” page 374, will be found a part of the observations of “Mr. Left,” together with copious notes upon the Adams case by an eminent authority. The excerpt herewith printed is attributed by Mr. Left to Darwin or Huxley or perhaps one of the Brownings–it is unimportant to note just which one, for Mr. Left gleaned from a wide circle of intellects. The interesting thing is that about the time these love affairs we are considering were brewing, Mr. Left wrote: “If the natural selection of love is the triumph of evolution on this planet, if the free choice of youth and maiden, unhampered by class or nationality, or wealth, or age, or parental interference, or thought of material advantage, is the greatest step taken by life since it came mysteriously into this earth, how much of the importance of the natural selection of youth in love hangs upon full and free access to all the data necessary for choice.”
What irony was in the free