Читать книгу In the Heart of a Fool - William Allen White - Страница 8

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The world into which Kenyon Adams came was a busy and noisy and ruthless world. The prairie grass was leaving Harvey when Grant Adams came, and the meadow lark left in the year that Jasper came. When Kenyon entered, even the blue sky that bent over it was threatened. For Dr. Nesbit returning from the Adamses the evening that Kenyon came to Harvey found around the well-drill at Jamey McPherson’s a great excited crowd. Men were elbowing each other and craning their necks, and wagging their heads as they looked at the core of the drill. For it contained unmistakably a long worm of coal. And that night saw rising over Harvey such dreams as made the angels sick; for the dreams were all of money, and its vain display and power. And when men rose after dreaming those dreams, they swept little Jamey McPherson away in short order. For he had not the high talents of the money maker. He had only persistence, industry and a hopeful spirit and a vague vision that he was discovering coal for the common good. So when Daniel Sands put his mind to bear upon the worm of coal that came wriggling up from the drilled hole on Jamey’s lot, the worm crawled away from Jamey and Jamey went to work in the shaft that Daniel sank on his vacant lot near the McPherson home. The coal smoke from Daniel Sands’s mines began to splotch the blue sky above the town, and Kenyon Adams missed the large leisure and joyous comraderie that Grant had seen; indeed the only leisurely person whom Kenyon saw in his life until he was–Heaven knows how old–was Rhoda Kollander. The hum and bustle of Harvey did not ruffle the calm waters of her soul. She of all the women in Harvey held to the early custom of the town of going out to spend the day.

48“So that Margaret’s gone,” she was saying to Mary Adams sometime during a morning in the spring after Kenyon was born. “Law me–I wouldn’t have a boarder. I tell John, the sanctity of the home is invaded by boarders these days; and her going out to the dances in town the way she does, I sh’d think you’d be glad to be alone again, and to have your own little flock to do for. And so Grant’s going to be a carpenter–well, well! He didn’t take to the printing trade, did he? My, my!” she sighed, and folded her hands above her apron–the apron which she always put on after a meal, as if to help with the dishes, but which she never soiled or wrinkled–“I tell John I’m so thankful our little Fred has such a nice place. He waits table there at the Palace, and gets all his meals–such nice food, and can go to school too, and you wouldn’t believe it if I’d tell you all the nice men he meets–drummers and everything, and he’s getting such good manners. I tell John there’s nothing like the kind of folks a boy is with in his teens to make him. And he sees Tom Van Dorn every day nearly and sometimes gets a dime for serving him, and now, honest, Mary, you wouldn’t believe it, but Freddie says the help around the hotel say that Mauling girl at the cigar stand thinks Tom’s going to marry her, but law me–he’s aiming higher than the Maulings. The old man is going to die–did you know it? They came for John to sit up with him last night. John’s an Odd Fellow, you know. But speaking of that Margaret, you know she’s a friend of Violet’s and slips into the cigar stand sometimes and Violet introduces Margaret to some nice drummers. And I heard John say that when Margaret gets this term of school taught here, the Spring Township people have made Doc Jim get her a job in the court house–register of deeds office. But I tell John–law me, you men are the worst gossips! Talk about women!”

Little Kenyon in his crib was restless, and Mary Adams was clattering the dishes, so between the two evils, Mrs. Kollander picked up the child, and rocked him and patted him and then went on: “I was over and spent the day with the Sandses the other day. Poor woman, she’s real puny. Ann’s such a pretty child and Mrs. Sands says that Morty’s not goin’ back to college again. And she says he just moons 49around Laura Nesbit. Seems like the boy’s got no sense. Why, Laura’s just a child–she’s Grant’s age, isn’t she–not more than eighteen or nineteen, and Morty must be nearly twenty-three. My–how they have sprung up. I tell John–why, I’ll be thirty-six right soon now, and here I’ve worked and slaved my youth away and I’ll be an old woman before we know it.” She laughed good naturedly and rocked the fretting child. “Law me, Mary Adams, I sh’d think you’d want Grant to stay with George Brotherton there in the cigar stand, instead of carpentering. Such elegant people he can meet there, and such refined influences since Mr. Brotherton’s put in books and newspapers, and he could work in the printing office and deliver the Kansas City and St. Louis and Chicago dailies for Mr. Brotherton, and do so much better than he can carpentering. I tell John, if we can just keep our boy among nice people until he’s twenty-five, he’ll stay with ’em. Now look at Lide Bowman. Mary Adams, we know she was a smart woman until she married Dick and now just see her–living down there with the shanty trash and all those ignorant foreigners, and she’s growing like ’em. She’s lost two of her babies, and that seems to be weighing on her mind, and I can’t persuade her to pick up and move out of there. It’s like being in another world. And Mary Adams–let me tell you–Casper Herdicker has gone into the mine. Yes, sir, he closed his shop and is going to work in the mine, because he can make three dollars a day. But law me! you’ll not see Hildy Herdicker moving down there. She’ll keep her millinery store and live with the white folks.”

The dishes were put away, and in the long afternoon Mary Adams sat sewing as Rhoda Kollander rambled on. For the third time Rhoda came back to comment upon the fact that Grant Adams had quit working in the printing office–a genteel trade, and had stopped delivering papers for Mr. Brotherton’s newspaper stand–a rather high vocation, and was degrading himself by learning the carpenter’s trade, when Mary Adams cut into the current of the stream of talk.

“Well, my dear, it was this way. There are two reasons why Grant is learning the carpenter’s trade. In the first place, the boy has some sort of a passion to cast his lot among 50the poor. He feels they are neglected and–well, he has a sort of a fierce streak in him to fight for the under dog, and–”

“Well, law me, Mary–don’t I know that? Hasn’t Freddie told me time and again how Grant used to fight for Freddie when he was a little boy and the big boys plagued him. Grant whipped the whole school for teasing a little half-witted boy once–did you know that?” Mary Adams shook her head. “Well, he did, and–well now, isn’t that nice. I can see just how he feels!” And she could. Never lived a more sympathetic soul than Rhoda. And as she rocked she said: “Of course, if that’s the reason–law me, Mary, you never can tell how these children are going to turn out. Why, I tell John–”

“And the other reason is, Rhoda, that he is earning two dollars a day as a carpenter’s helper, and since Kenyon came we seem to be miserably hard pushed for money.” Mary Adams stopped and then went on as one carefully choosing her words: “And since Margaret has gone to board over at the other side of the school district, and we don’t have her board money–why of course–”

“Why of course,” echoed Mrs. Kollander, “of course. I tell John he’s been in a county office now twenty years, drawing all the way from a thousand to three thousand a year–and what have we got to show for it? I scrimp and pinch and save, and John does too–but law me–it seems like the way times are–” Amos Adams, standing at the door, heard her and cut in:

“I was talking the other night with George Washington about the times, and they’re coming around all right.” The man fumbled his sandy beard, closed his eyes as if to remember something and went on: “Let’s see, he wrote: ‘Peas and potatoes preserve the people,’ and the next day, everything in the market dropped but peas and potatoes.” He nodded a wise head. “They think that planchette is nonsense, but how do they account for coincidences like that! And now tell me some news for the Tribune.” The two sat talking well into the twilight and when Rhoda pulled up her chair to the supper table, the editor’s notebook was full.

Grant appeared, an ox-shouldered, red-haired, bass-voiced 51boy with ham-like hands; Jasper came in from school full of the town’s adventure into coal and the industries, and his chatter trickled into the powerful but slowly spoken insistence of Mrs. Kollander’s talk and was lost and swept finally into silence. After supper Grant retired to a book from the Sea-side Library, borrowed of Mr. Brotherton from stock–“Sesame and Lilies” was its title. Jasper plunged into his bookkeeping studies and by the wood stove in the sitting-room Rhoda Kollander held her levee until bedtime sent her home.

During the noon hour the next day in Mr. Brotherton’s cigar store and news stand, the walnut bench was filled that he had just installed for the comfort of his customers. At one end, was Grant Adams who had hurried up from the mines to buy a paperbound copy of Carlyle’s “French Revolution”; next to him sat deaf John Kollander smoking his noon cigar, and beside Kollander sat stuttering Kyle Perry, thriftily sponging his morning Kansas City Times over Dr. Nesbit’s shoulder. The absent brother always was on the griddle at Mr. Brotherton’s amen corner, and the burnt offering of the moment was Henry Fenn. He had just broken over a protracted drouth–one of a year and a half–and the group was shaking sad heads over the county attorney’s downfall. The doctor was saying, “It’s a disease, just as the ‘ladies, God bless ’em’ will become a disease with Tom Van Dorn if he doesn’t stop pretty soon–a nervous disease and sooner or later they will both go down. Poor Henry–Bedelia and I noticed him at the charity ball last night; he was–”

“A trifle polite–a wee bit too punctilious for these latitudes,” laughed Brotherton from behind the counter.

“I was going to say decorative–what Mrs. Nesbit calls ornate–kind of rococco in manner,” squeaked the doctor, and sighed. “And yet I can see he’s still fighting his devil–still trying to keep from going clear under.”

“It’s a sh-sh-sh-a-ame that ma-a-an should have th-that kind of a d-d-d-devil in him–is-isis-n’t it?” said Kyle Perry, and John Kollander, who had been smoking in peace, blurted out, “What else can be expected under a Democratic administration? Of course, they’ll return the rebel flags. They’ll 52pension the rebel soldiers next!” He looked around for approval, and the smiles of the group would have lured him further but Tom Van Dorn came swinging through the door with his princely manner, and the Doctor rose to go. He motioned George Brotherton to the rear of the room and said gently:

“George–old man Mauling died an hour ago; John Dexter and I were there at the last. And John sent word for me to have you get your choir out–so I’ll notify Mrs. Nesbit. Dexter said he was a lodge member with you–what lodge, George?”

“Odd Fellow,” returned the big man, then asked, “Pall-bearer?”

“Yes,” returned the Doctor. “There’s no one else much but the lodge in his case. You will sing him to sleep with your choir and tuck him in as pall-bearer as you’ve been doing for the dead folks ever since you came to town.” The Doctor turned to go, “Meet to-night at the house for choir practice, I suppose?”

Brotherton nodded, and turned to take a bill from Tom Van Dorn, who had pocketed a handful of cigars and a number of papers.

“We were just talking about Henry, Tom,” remarked Mr. Brotherton, as he handed back the change.

“He’s b-back-sl-slidden,” prompted Perry.

“Oh, well–it’s all right. Henry has his weaknesses–we all have our failings. But drunk or sober he danced a dozen times last night with that pretty school teacher from Prospect Township.” Grant looked up from his book, as Van Dorn continued, “Gorgeous creature–” he shut his eyes and added: “Don’t pity Henry when he can get a woman like that to favor him!”

As John Kollander thundered back some irrelevant comment on the moment’s politics, Van Dorn led Brotherton to the further end of the counter and lowering his voice said:

“You know that Mauling girl at the Palace cigar counter?”

As Brotherton nodded, Van Dorn, dropping his voice to a whisper, said: “Her father’s dead–poor child–she’s been spending her money–she hasn’t a cent. I know; I have 53been talking to her more or less for a year or so. Which one of your lodges does the old man belong to, George?”