“I’m so sorry–so sorry, Morty. But I can’t! I never–never–never can!” She hesitated, and repeated, shaking her head sadly, “I never, never can love you, Morty–never! And it’s kind–”
“Yes, yes,” he answered as one who realizes a finality. “It’s kind enough–yes, I know you’re kind, Laura!” He stopped and gazed at her in the moonlight–and it was as if a flame on the charred altar of his heart had sprung up for a second as he spoke: “And I never–never shall–I never shall love any one else–I never, never shall!”
The girl rose. A moment later the youth followed her. Back into its sheath under his countenance his soul slipped, and he stood before the girl smiling a half deprecatory smile. But the girl’s face was racked with sorrow. She had seen tragedy. Her pain wounded him and he winced in his heart. Wherefore he smiled quite genuinely, and stepped back, and threw a kiss at the girl as he said: “It’s nothing, Laura! Don’t mind! It’s nothing at all and we’ll forget it! Won’t we?”
And turning away, he tripped down the walk, leaving her gazing after him in the moonlight. At the street he turned back with a gay little gesture, blew a kiss from his white finger tips and cried, “It’s nothing at all–nothing at all!” And as she went indoors she heard him call, “It’s nothing at all!”
She heard him lift his whistle to the tune of the waltz quadrille, but she stood with tears in her eyes until the brave tune died in the distance.
CHAPTER VII
IN WHICH WE SEE HOW LIFE TRANSLATES ITSELF INTO THE MATERIALISM AROUND IT
Coal and oil and gas and lead and zinc. The black sprite, the brown sprite, the invisible sprite, the two gray sprites–elemental sprites they were–destined to be bound servants of man. Yet when they came rushing out of the earth there at Harvey, man groveled before them, and sold his immortal soul to these trolls. Naturally enough Daniel Sands was the high priest at their altar. It was fitting that a devil worship which prostrated itself before coal and oil and gas and lead and zinc should make a spider the symbol of its servility. So the spider’s web, all iron and steel in pipes below ground, all steel and iron and copper in wires and rails above ground, spread out over the town, over the country near the town, and all the pipes and tubes and rails and wires led to the dingy little room where Daniel Sands sat spinning his web. He was the town god. Even the gilded heifer of Baal was a nobler one. And the curious thing about this orgy of materialism, was that Harvey and all the thousands of Harveys great and small that filled America in those decades believed with all their hearts–and they were essentially kind hearts–that quick, easy and exorbitant profits, really made the equality of opportunity which every one desired. They thought in terms of democracy–which is at bottom a spiritual estate,–and they acted like gross materialists. So they fooled the world, while they deceived themselves. For the soul of America was not reflected in that debauch of gross profit making. The soul of America still aspired for justice; but in the folly of the day, believed quite complacently because a few men got rich quick (stupid men too,) and many men were well-to-do, that justice was achieved, and the world ready for the millennium. But there came a day when Harvey, and all its kind saw the truth in shame.
And life in Harvey shaped itself into a vast greedy dream. A hard, metallic timbre came into the soft, high voice of Dr. James Nesbit, but did not warn men of the metallic plate that was galvanizing the Doctor’s soul; nor did it disturb the Doctor. Amos Adams saw the tinplate covering, heard the sounding brass, and Mary his wife saw and heard too; but they were only two fools and the Doctor who loved them laughed at them and turned to the healing of the sick and the subjugation of his county. So men sent him to the state Senate. Curiously Mrs. Nesbit–she whom George Brotherton always called the General–she did not shake the spell of the trolls from her heart. They were building wings and ells and lean-tos on the house that she called her home, and she came to love the witchery of the time and place and did not see its folly. Yet there walked between these two entranced ones, another who should have awakened. For she was young, fresh from the gods of life. Her eyes, unflinching, glorious eyes, should have seen through the dream of that day. But they were only a girl’s eyes and were happy, so they could not see beyond the spell that fell around them. And alas, even when the prince arrived, his kiss was poisoned too.
When young Thomas Van Dorn came to the Nesbit house on a voyage of exploration and discovery–came in a handsome suit of gray, with hat and handkerchief to match, and a flowing crepe tie, black to harmonize with his flowing mustache and his wing of fine jet black hair above his ivory tinted face, Laura Nesbit considered him reflectively, and catalogued him.
“Tom,” explained the daughter to her father rather coldly one morning, after the young man had been reading Swinburne in his deep, mellow pipe-organ of a voice to the family until bedtime the night before, “Tom Van Dorn, father, is the kind of a man who needs the influence of some strong woman!”
Mrs. Nesbit glanced at her husband furtively and caught his grin as he piped gayly:
“Who also must carry the night key!”
The three laughed but the daughter went on with the cataloguing: “He is a young man of strong predilections, of definite purpose and more than ordinary intellectual capacity.”
“And so far as I have counted, Laura,” her father interrupted again, “I haven’t found an honest hair in his handsome head; though I haven’t completed the count yet!” The father smiled amiably as he made the final qualification.
The girl caught the mother’s look of approval shimmering across the table and laughed her gay, bell-like chime. “O, you’ve made a bad guess, mother.”
Again she laughed gayly: “It’s not for me to open a school for the Direction of Miscalculated Purposes. Still,” this she said seriously, “a strong woman is what he needs.”
“Not omitting the latch-key,” gibed her father, and the talk drifted into another current.
The next Sunday afternoon young Tom Van Dorn appeared with Rossetti added to his Swinburne, and crowded Morty Sands clear out of the hammock so that Morty had to sleep in a porch chair, and woke up frequently and was unhappy. While the gilded youth slept the Woman woke and listened, and Morty was left disconsolate.
The shadows were long and deep when Tom Van Dorn rose from the hammock, closed his book, and stood beside the girl, looking with a gentle tenderness from the burning depths of his black eyes into her eyes. He paused before starting away, and held up a hand so that she could see, wound about it, a flaxen hair, probably drawn from the hammock pillow. He smiled rather sadly, dropped his eyes to the book closed in his hands, and quoted softly:
“‘And around his heart, one strangling golden hair!’”
He did not speak again, but walked off at a great stride down the stone path to the street. The next day Rossetti’s sonnets came to Laura Nesbit in a box of roses.
The Sunday following Laura Nesbit made it a point to go with her parents to spend the day with the Adamses down by the river on their farm. But not until the Nesbits piled into their phaëton to leave did Grant appear. He met the visitors at the gate with a great bouquet of woods flowers, saying, “Here, Mrs. Nesbit–I thought you might like them.” But they found Laura’s hands, and he smiled gratefully at her for taking them. As they drove off,