In the Heart of a Fool. White William Allen
after the ceremony. But because she had the best voice in town, Margaret Müller sang “Oh, Promise Me,” in a remote bedroom–to give the effect of distant music, low and sweet, and after that song was over, and after Henry Fenn’s great pride had been fairly sated, Margaret Müller mingled with the guests and knew more of the names and stations of the visiting nobility from the state house and railroad offices than any other person present. And such is the perversity of the male sex that there were more “by Georges,” and more “Look–look, looks,” and more faint whistles, and more “Tch–tch tchs,” and more nudging and pointing among the men when Margaret appeared than when the bride herself, pink and white and beautiful, came down the stairs. Even the eyes of the groom, as he stood beside the bride, tall, youthful, strong, and handsome as a man may dare to be and earn an honest living, even his eyes sometimes found themselves straying toward the figure and face of the beautiful girl whom he had scarcely noticed while she worked in the court house. But this may be said for the groom, that when his eyes did wander, he pulled them back with an almost irritated jerk, and seemed determined to keep them upon the girl by his side.
As for the wedding ceremony itself–it was like all others. The women looked exultant, and the men–the groom, the bride’s father, the groomsmen, and even Rev. John Dexter, had a sort of captured look and went through the service as though they wished that marriages which are made in Heaven were celebrated there also. But after the service was actually accomplished, after the bride and groom had been properly congratulated, after the multitude had been fed in serried ranks according to social precedence, after the band on the lawn outside had serenaded the happy couple, and after further interminable handshaking and congratulations, from those outside, after the long line of invited guests had filed past the imposing vista of pickle dishes, cutlery, butter dishes and cake plates, reaching around the walls of three bedrooms,–to say nothing of an elaborate wax representation of nesting cupids bearing the card of the Belgian Society from the glass works and sent, according to the card, to “Mlle. Lille’n’en Pense”; after the carriage, bedecked and bedizened with rice and shoes and ribbons, that was supposed to bear away the bride and groom, had gone amid the shouting and the tumult of the populace, and after the phaëton and the sorrel mare had actually taken the bride and groom from the barn to the railway station, after the fiddle and the bassoon and the horn and the tinkling cymbal at Morty Sands’s dance had frayed and torn the sleep of those pale souls who would sleep on such a night in Harvey, Grant Adams and his father, leaving Jasper to trip whatever fantastic toes he might have, in the opera house, drove down the hill through the glare of the furnaces, the creaking of the oil derricks and the smell of the straw paper mill through the heart of South Harvey.
They made little talk as they rode. Their way led them through the street which is shaded and ashamed by day, and which glows and flaunts itself by night. Men and women, gambling, drinking, carousing, rioted through the street, in and out of doors that spilled puddles of yellow light on the board sidewalks and dirt streets; screaming laughter, hoarse calls, the stench of liquor, the muffled noises of gambling, sputter of electric lights and the flash of glimmering reflections from bar mirrors rasped their senses and kept the father and son silent as they rode. When they had passed into the slumbering tenements, the father spoke: “Well, son, here it is–the two kinds of playing, and here we have what they call the bad people playing. The Van Dorns and the Satterthwaites will tell you that vice is the recreation of the poor. And it’s more or less true.” The elder man scratched his beard and faced the stars: “It’s a devilish puzzle. Character makes happiness; I’ve got that down fine. But what makes character? Why is vice the recreation of the poor? Why do we recruit most of our bad boys and all of our wayward girls from those neighborhoods in every city where the poor live? Why does the clerk on $12 a week uptown crowd into Doctor Jim’s wedding party, and the glass blower at $4 a day down here crowd into ‘Big Em’s’ and ‘Joe’s Place’ and the ‘Crescent’? Is poverty caused by vice; or is vice a symptom of poverty? And why does the clerk’s wife move in ‘our best circles’ and the miner’s wife, with exactly the same money to spend, live in outer social darkness?”
“I’ve asked myself that question lots of times,” exclaimed the youth. “I can’t make it work out on any theory. But I tell you, father,” the son clinched the hand that was free from the lines, and shook it, “it’s wrong–some way, somehow, it’s wrong, way down at the bottom of things–I don’t know how nor why–but as sure as I live, I’ll try to find out.”
The clang of an engine bell in the South Harvey railroad yards drowned the son’s answer. The two were crossing the track and turning the corner that led to the South Harvey station. The midnight train was about due. As the buggy came near the little gray box of a station a voice called, “Adams–Adams,” and a woman’s voice, “Oh, Grant.”
“Why,” exclaimed the father, “it’s the happy couple.” Grant stopped the horse and climbed out over the sleeping body of little Kenyon. “In a moment,” replied Grant. Then he came to a shadow under the station eaves and saw the young people hiding. “Adams, you can help us,” said Van Dorn. “We slipped off in the Doctor’s phaëton, to get away from the guying crowd and we have tried to get the house on the ’phone, and in some way they don’t answer. The horse is tied over by the lumber yard there. Will you take it home with you to-night, and deliver it to the Doctor in the morning–whatever–” But Grant cut in:
“Why, of course. Glad to have the chance.” He was awkward and ill at ease, and repeated, “Why, of course, anything.” But Van Dorn interjected: “You understand, I’ll pay for it–” Grant Adams stared at him. “Why–why–no–” stammered Grant in confusion, while Van Dorn thrust a five-dollar bill upon him. He tried to return it, but the bride and groom ran to the train, leaving the young man alone and hurt in his heart. The father from the buggy saw what had happened. In a few minutes they were leading the Doctor’s horse behind the Adams buggy. “I didn’t want their money,” exclaimed Grant, “I wanted their–their–”
“You wanted their friendship, Grant–that’s what you wanted,” said the father.
“And he wanted a hired man,” cried Grant. “Just a hired man, and she–why, didn’t she understand? She knew I would have carried the old horse on my back clear to town, if she’d let me, just to hear her laugh once. Father,” the son’s voice was bitter as he spoke, “why didn’t she understand─why did she side with him?”
The father smiled. “Perhaps, on your wedding trip, Grant, your wife will agree with you too, son.”
As they rode home in silence, the young man asked himself over and over again, what lines divided the world into classes; why manual toil shuts off the toilers from those who serve the world otherwise. Youth is sensitive; often it is supersensitive, and Grant Adams saw or thought he saw in the little byplay of Tom Van Dorn the caste prod of society jabbing labor back into its place.
“Tom,” said the bride as they watched Grant Adams unhitch the horse by the lumber yard, “why did you force that money on Grant─he would have much preferred to have your hand when he said good-by.”
“He’s not my kind of folks, Laura,” replied Van Dorn. “I know you like him. But that five will do him lots more good than my shaking his hand, and if that youth wasn’t as proud as Lucifer he’d rather have five dollars than any man’s hand. I would─if it comes to that.”
“But, Tom,” answered the girl, “that wasn’t pride, that was self-respect.”
“Well, my dear,” he squeezed her gloved hand and in the darkness put his arm about her, “let’s not worry about him. All I know is that I wanted to square it with him for taking care of the horse and five dollars won’t hurt his self-respect. And,” said the bridegroom as he pressed the bride very close to his heart, “what is it to us? We have each other, so what do we care─what is all the world to us?”
As the midnight train whistled out of South Harvey Grant Adams sitting on a bedside was fondly unbuttoning a small body from its clothes, ready to hear a sleepy child’s voice say its evening prayers. In his heart there flamed the love for the child that was beckoning him into love for every sentient thing. And as Laura Van Dorn, bride of Thomas of that name, heard the whistle, her being was flooded