Читать книгу In the Heart of a Fool - William Allen White - Страница 17

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Mrs. Nesbit tried to put the Doctor into his Sunday blacks the day of her daughter’s wedding, but he would have none of them. He appeared on Market Street and went his rounds among the sick in his linen clothes with his Panama hat and his pleated white shirt. He did not propose to have the visiting princes, political and commercial, who had been summoned to honor the occasion, find him in his suzerainty without the insignia of his power. For it was “Old Linen Pants,” not Dr. James Nesbit, who was the boss of the northern district and a member of the State’s triumvirate. So the Doctor in the phaëton, drawn by his amiable, motherly, sorrel mare, the Doctor, white and resplendent in a suit that shimmered in the hot June sun, flaxed around town, from his office to the hotel, from the hotel to the bank, from the bank to South Harvey. As a part of the day’s work he did the honors of the town, soothed the woes of the weary, healed the sick, closed a dying man’s eyes, held a mother’s hands away from death as she brought life into the world, made a governor, paid his overdue note, got a laborer work, gave a lift to a fallen woman, made two casual purchases: a councilman and a new silk vest, with cash in hand; lent a drunkard’s wife the money for a sack of flour, showed three Maryland Satterthwaites where to fish for bass in the Wahoo, took four Schenectady Van Dorns out to lunch, and was everywhere at once doing everything, clicking his cane, whistling gently or humming a low, crooning tune, smiling for the most part, keeping his own counsel and exhibiting no more in his face of what was in his heart than the pink and dimpled back of a six-months’ baby.

To say that the Doctor was everywhere in Harvey is inexact. He was everywhere except on Quality Hill in Elm 115Street. There, from the big, bulging house with its towers and minarets and bow windows and lean-tos, ells and additions, the Doctor was barred. There was chaos, and the spirit that breathed on the face of the waters was the Harvey representative of the Maryland Satterthwaites, with her crimping pins bristling like miniature gun barrels, and with the look of command upon her face, giving orders in a firm, cool voice and then executing the orders herself before any one else could turn around. She could call the spirits from the vasty deep of the front hall or the back porch and they came, or she knew the reason why. With an imperial wave of her hand she sent her daughter off to some social wilderness of monkeys with all the female Satterthwaites and Van Dorns and Mrs. Senators and Miss Governors and Misses Congressmen, and with the offices of Mrs. John Dexter, Mrs. Herdicker, the ladies’ hatter, and two Senegambian slaveys, Mrs. Nesbit brought order out of what at one o’clock seemed without form and void.

It was late in the afternoon, almost evening, though the sun still was high enough in the heavens to throw cloud shadows upon the hills across the valley when the Doctor stabled his mare and came edging into the house from the barn. He could hear the clamor of many voices; for the Maryland Satterthwaites had come home from the afternoon’s festivity. He slipped into his office-study, and as it was stuffy there he opened the side door that let out upon the veranda. He sat alone behind the vines, not wishing to be a part of the milling in the rooms. His heart was heavy. He blinked and sighed and looked across the valley, and crooned his old-fashioned tune while he tried to remember all of the life of the little girl who had come out of the mystery of birth into his life when Elm Street was a pair of furrows on a barren, wind-swept prairie hill; tried to remember how she had romped in girlhood under the wide sunshine in the prairie grass, how her little playhouse had sat where the new dining-room now stood, how her dolls used to litter the narrow porch that grew into the winding, serpentine veranda that belted the house, how she read his books, how she went about with him on his daily rounds, and how she had suddenly bloomed into a womanhood that 116made him feel shy and abashed in her presence. He wondered where it was upon the way that he had lost clasp of her hand: where did it drop from him? How did the little fingers that he used to hold so tightly, slip into another’s hand? Her life’s great decision had been made without consulting him; when did he lose her confidence? She had gone her way an independent soul–flown like a bird from the cage, he thought, and was going a way that he felt would be a way of pain, and probably sorrow, yet he could not stop her. All the experience of his life was worthless to her. All that he knew of men, all that he feared of her lover, were as chaff in the scales for her.

The Doctor, the boss, the friend, the man, withdrew from his consciousness as he sat behind the vines and he became the impersonal, universal father, wondering at the mystery of life. As he sat musing, he heard a step behind him, and saw his daughter coming across the porch to greet him. “Father,” she said, “I have just this half hour that’s to be ours. I’ve planned for it all day. Mother has promised to keep every one away.”

The father’s jaw began to tremble and his cherubic face to wrinkle in an emotional pucker. He put the girl’s arm about his neck, and rubbed her hand upon his cheek. Then the father said softly:

“I never felt poor before until this minute.” The girl looked inquiringly at him and was about to protest. He stopped her: “Money wouldn’t do you much good–not all the money in the world.”

“Well, father, I don’t want money: we don’t need it,” said the girl. “Why, we have a beautiful home and Tom is making–”

“It’s not that, my dear–not that.” He played with her hand a moment longer. “I feel that I ought to give you something better than money; my–my–well, my view of life–what they call philosophy of life. It’s the accumulation of fifty years of living.” He fumbled in his pocket for his pipe. “Let me smoke, and maybe I can talk.”

“Laura–girl–” He puffed bashfully in a pause, and began again: “There’s a lot of Indiana–real common Eendiany,” he mocked, “about your father, and I just some 117way can’t talk under pressure.” He caressed the girl’s hand and pulled at his pipe as one giving birth to a system of philosophy. Yet he was dumb as he sat before the warm glow of the passing torch of life which was shining from his daughter’s face. Finally he burst forth, piping impatience at his own embarrassment.

“I tell you, daughter, it’s just naturally hell to be pore.” The girl saw his twitching mouth and the impotence of his swimming eyes; but before she could protest he checked her.

“Pore! Pore!” he repeated hopelessly. “Why, if we had a million, I would still be just common, ornery, doless pore folks–tongue-tied and helpless, and I couldn’t give you nothin–nothin!” he cried, “but just rubbish! Yet there are so many things I’d like to give you, Laura–so many, many things!” he repeated. “God Almighty’s put a terrible hog-tight inheritance tax on experience, girl!” He smiled a crooked, tearful little smile–looked up into her eyes in dog-like wistfulness as he continued: “I’d like to give you some of mine–some of the wisdom I’ve got one way and another–but, Lord, Lord,” he wailed, “I can’t. The divine inheritance tax bars me.” He patted her with one hand, holding his smoldering pipe in the other. Then he shrilled out in the impotence of his pain: “I just must give you this, Laura: Whatever comes and whatever goes–and lots of sad things will come and lots of sad things will go, too, for that matter–always remember this: Happiness is from the heart out–not from the world in! Do you understand, child–do you?”

The girl smiled and petted him, but he saw that he hadn’t reached her consciousness. He puffed at a dead pipe a moment, then he cried as he beat his hands together in despair: “I suppose it’s no use. It’s no use. But you can at least remember these words, Laura, and some time the meaning will get to you. Always carry your happiness under your bonnet! It’s the only thing I can give you–out of all my store!”

The girl put her arm about him and pressed closely to him, and they rose, as she said: “Why, father–I understand. Of course I understand. Don’t you see I understand, father?”

118She spoke eagerly and clasped her arms tighter about the pudgy little figure. They stood quietly a moment, as the father looked earnestly, dog-wise, up into her face, as if trying by his very gaze to transmit his loving wisdom. Then, as he found voice: “No, Laura, probably you’ll need fifty years to understand; but look over on the hill across the valley at the moving cloud shadows. They are only shadows–not realities. They are just unrealities that prove the real–just trailing anchors of the sun!” He had pocketed his pipe and his hand came up from his pocket as he waved to the distant shadows and piped: “Trouble–heartaches–all the host of clouds that cover life–are only–only–” he let his voice drop gently as he sighed: “only anchors of the sun; Laura, they only prove–just prove–”

She did not let him finish, but bent to kiss him and she could feel the shudder of a smothered sob rack him as she touched his cheek.

Then he smiled at her and chirped: “Just Eendiany–sis’. Just pore, dumb Eendiany! Hi, ho! Now run and be a good girl! And here’s a jim-crack your daddy got you!”

From his pocket he drew out a little package, and dangled a sparkling jewel in his hands. He saw a flash of pleasure on her face. But his heart was full, and he turned away his head as he handed the gift to her. Her eyes were upon the sparkling jewel, as he led her into the house, saying with a great sigh: “Come on, my dear–let’s go in.”

At nine o’clock that night, the great foundry of a house, with its half a score of chimneys, marking its various epochs of growth, literally was stuffed with smilax, ferns, roses, orange blossoms, and daisy chains. In the mazes of these aisles of verdure, a labyrinth of Van Dorns and Satterthwaites and visiting statesmen with highly powdered womankind was packed securely. George Brotherton, who was born a drum major, wearing all of his glittering insignia of a long line of secret societies, moved as though the welding humanity were fluid. He had presided at too many funerals not to know the vast importance of keeping the bride’s kin from the groom’s kin, and when he saw that they were ushered into the wedding supper, in due form and order, 119it was with the fine abandon of a grand duke lording it over the populace. Senators, Supreme Court justices, proud Satterthwaites, haughty Van Dorns, Congressmen, governors, local gentry, were packed neatly but firmly in their proper boxes.

The old families of Harvey–Captain Morton and his little flock, the Kollanders, Ahab Wright with his flaring side-whiskers, his white necktie and his shadow of a wife; Joseph Calvin and his daughter in pigtails, Mrs. Calvin having written Mrs. Nesbit that it seemed that she just never did get to go anywhere and be anybody, having said as much and more to Mr. Calvin with emphasis; Mrs. Brotherton, mother of George, beaming with pride at her son’s part; stuttering Kyle Perry and his hatchet-faced son, the Adamses all starched for the occasion, Daniel Sands, a widower pro tem. with a broadening interest in school teachers, Mrs. Herdicker, the ladies’ hatter, classifying the Satterthwaites and the Van Dorns according to the millinery of their womenkind; Morty Sands wearing the first white silk vest exhibited in Harvey and making violent eyes at a daughter of the railroad aristocracy–either a general manager’s daughter or a general superintendent’s, and for the life of her Mrs. Nesbit couldn’t say; for she had not the highest opinion in the world of the railroad aristocracy, but took them, president, first, second and third vice, general managers, ticket and passenger agents, and superintendents, as a sort of social job-lot because they came in private cars, and the Doctor desired them, to add to his trophies of the occasion,–Henry Fenn, wearing soberly the suit in which he appeared when he rode the skyrocket, and forming part of the bridal chorus, stationed in the cigar-box of a sewing-room on the second floor to sing, “Oh, Day So Dear,” as the happy couple came down the stairs–the old families of Harvey were all invited to the wedding. And the old and the new and most of the intermediary families of no particular caste or standing, came to the reception 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 120pride 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.