That evening, sitting on their front porch, the Dexters talked over Grant’s decision. “Well,” said John Dexter, looking up into the mild November sky, and seeing the brown gray smudge of the smelter there, “so Grant has sidled by another devil in his road. We have seen that women won’t stop him; it’s plain that money nor fame won’t stop him, though they clearly tore his coat tails. I imagine from what Laura says he must have decided once to accept.”
“Yes,” answered his wife, “but it does seem to me, if my old father needed care as his does, and my brother had to accept charity, I’d give that particular devil my whole coat and see if I couldn’t make a bargain with him for a little money, at some small cost.”
“Mother Eve–Mother Eve,” smiled the minister, “you women are so practical–we men are the real idealists–the only dreamers who stand by our dreams in this wicked, weary world.”
He leaned back in his chair. “There is still one more big black devil waiting for Grant: Power–the love of power which is the lust of usefulness–power may catch Grant after he has escaped from women and money and fame. Vanity–vanity, saith the preacher–Heaven help Grant in the final struggle with the big, black devil of vanity.”
Yet, after all, vanity has in it the seed of a saving grace that has lifted humanity over many pitfalls in the 372world. For vanity is only self-respect multiplied; and when that goes–when men and women lose their right to lift their faces to God, they have fallen upon bad times indeed. It was even so good a man as John Dexter himself, who tried to put self-respect into the soul of Violet Hogan, and was mocked for it.
“What do they care for me?” she cried, as he sat talking to her in her miserable home one chill November day. “Why should I pay any attention to them? Once I chummed with Mag Müller, before she married Henry Fenn, and I was as good as she was then–and am now for that matter. She knew what I was, and I knew what she was going to be–we made no bones of it. We hunted in pairs–as women like to. And I know Mag Müller. So why should I keep up for her?”
The woman laughed and showed her hollow mouth and all the wrinkles of her broken face, that the paint hid at night. “And as for Tom Van Dorn–I was a decent girl before I met him, Mr. Dexter–and why in God’s name should I try to keep up for him?”
She shuddered and would have sobbed but he stopped her with: “Well, Violet–wife and I have always been your friends; we are now. The church will help you.”
“Oh, the church–the church,” she laughed. “It can’t help me. Fancy me in church–with all the wives looking sideways at all the husbands to see that they didn’t look too long at me. The church is for those who haven’t been caught! God knows if there is a place for any one who has been caught–and I’ve been caught and caught and caught.” She cried. “Only the children don’t know–not yet, though little Tom–he’s the oldest, he came to me and asked me yesterday why the other children yelled when I went out. Oh, hell–” she moaned, “what’s the use–what’s the use–what’s the use!” and fell to sobbing with her head upon her arms resting upon the bare, dirty table.
It was rather a difficult question for John Dexter. Only one other minister in the world ever answered it successfully, and He brought public opinion down on Him. The Rev. John Dexter rose, and stood looking at the shattered thing that once had been a graceful, beautiful human body enclosing 373an aspiring soul. He saw what society had done to break and twist the body; what society had neglected to do in the youth of the soul–to guide and environ it right–he saw what poverty had done and what South Harvey had done to cheat her of her womanhood even when she had tried to rise and sin no more; he remembered how the court-made law had cheated her of her rightful patrimony and cast her into the streets to spread the social cancer of her trade; and he had no answer. If he could have put vanity into her heart–the vanity which he feared for Grant Adams, he would have been glad. But her vanity was the vanity of motherhood; for herself she had spent it all. So he left her without answering her question. Money was all he could give her and money seemed to him a kind of curse. Yet he gave it and gave all he had.