“For many years,” she was saying, and pronounced it “yee-ahs,” having remembered at the moment to soften her “r’s,” “I have been living on a highah plane wheyah one ignoahs the futuah and foahgets the pahst. On this plane one rises to his full capacity of soul strength, without the hampah of remoahs or the terror of a vindictive Providence.”
She might as well have been reciting the alphabet backwards so far as Ahab understood or cared what she said. He was fascinated by her resemblance to a pink and white marshmallow–rather over-powdered. But she was still fortifying herself from that little black box in the farthest corner in the bottom drawer of her dresser–and fortifying herself with two brown pellets instead of one. So she ogled 480Ahab Wright by way of diversion, and sat in the recesses of her soul and wondered what she would say next.
The Captain pulling his panama off made a tremendous bow as Margaret was saying: “Those who grahsp the great Basic Truths in the Science of Being–” and just as the Captain was about to open his mouth to invite Ahab Wright to his party, plumb came the ghastly consciousness to him that the Van Dorns were not on his list. For the Van Dorns, however securely they were entrenched socially among the new people who had no part in the town’s old quarrel with Tom, however the oil and gas and smelter people and the coal magnates may have received the Van Dorns–still they were under the social ban of the only social Harvey that Captain Morton knew. So as a man falling from a balloon gets his balance, the Captain gasped as he came up from his low bow and said:
“Madam, I says to myself just now as I looks over to that elm tree yonder,” he pointed to the place where Kenyon and Lila were sitting, “soon we’ll be having the fourth generation here in Harvey, and I says, that will interest Tom! An ’y gory, ma’am, as I saw you sitting here, I says as it was well in my mind, ‘Here’s Tom’s lady love, and I’ll just go over and pass my congratulations on to Tom through the apple of his eye, as you may say, and not bother him and the young man around the corner there in their boss trade, eh?’ What say?” He was flushed and red, and he did not know exactly where to stop, but it was out–and after a few sparring sentences, he broke away from the clutch of his bungling intrusion and was gone. But as the Captain left the couple at the table, the spell was broken. Life had intruded, and Ahab rose hastily and went his way.
Margaret Van Dorn sat looking out at a dreary world. Even the lovers by the elm tree did not quicken her pulse. Scarcely more did they interest her than her vapid adventure with Ahab Wright. All romantic adventure, personal or vicarious, was as ashes on her lips. But emotion was not all dead in her. As she gazed at Lila and Kenyon, Margaret wondered if her husband could see the pair. Her first emotional reaction was a gloating sense that he would be boiling with humiliation and rage when he saw his child so obviously 481and publicly, even if unconsciously, adoring an Adams. So she exulted in the Van Dorn discomfiture. As her first spiteful impulse wore away, a sense of desolation overcame Margaret Van Dorn. Probably she had no regrets that she had abandoned Kenyon. For years she had nursed a daily horror that the door which hid her secret might swing open, but that horror was growing stale. She felt that the door was forever sealed by time. So in the midst of a world at its spring, a budding world, a world of young mating, a gay world going out on its vast yearly voyage to hunt new life in new joy, a quest for ever new yet old as God’s first smile on a world unborn, this woman sat in a drab and dreary desolation. Even her spite withered as she sat playing with her tall glass. And as spite chilled, her loneliness grew.
She knew better than any one else in Harvey–better even than the Nesbits–what Kenyon Adams really promised in achievement and fame. They knew that he had some European recognition. Margaret in Europe had been amazed to see how far he was going. In New York and Boston, she knew what it meant to have her son’s music on the best concert programs. Her realization of her loss increased her loneliness. But regret did not produce remorse. She was always and finally glad that the door was inexorably sealed upon her secret. She saw only her husband angered by her son’s association with her husband’s daughter, and when malice spent itself, she was weary and lonely and out of humor, and longed to retire to her fortification.
After Captain Morton had bowed himself away from Margaret Van Dorn, he stood at the other end of the veranda looking down toward the lake. The carpenters were quitting work for the day on the new bathing pavilion and he saw the tall figure of Grant Adams in the group. He hurried down the steps near by, and came bustling over to Grant.
“Just the man I want to see! I saw Jap chasing around the golf course with Ruthie and invited him, but he said your pa wasn’t very spry and mightn’t be uptown to-morrow, so you just tell him for me that you and he are to come to my party here next Tuesday night–surprise party for the girls–going to break something to them they don’t know anything about–what say? Tell your pa that 482his old army friend is going to send his car–my new car–great, big, busting gray battleship for your pa–makes Tom’s car look like an ash cart. Don’t let your pa refuse. I want to bring you all up here to the party in that car in style–you and Amos and Jap and Kenyon! eh? Say, Grant–tell me–” he wagged his head at Kenyon and Lila still loitering by the tree. “What’s Kenyon’s idea in loafing around so much here in Harvey? He’s old enough to go to work. What say?” Grant tried to get it to the Captain that Kenyon’s real job in the world was composing music, and that sometimes he tired of cities and came down to Harvey to get the sunshine and prairie grass and the woods and the waters of his childhood into his soul. But the Captain waved the idea aside, “Nothing in the fiddling business, Grant–two dollars a day and find yourself, is all the best of ’em make,” protested the Captain. “Let him do like I done–get at something sound and practical early in life and ’y gory, man–look at me. What say?”
Grant did not answer, but when the Captain veered around to the subject of his party, Grant promised to bring the whole Adams family. A moment later the Captain saw the Sands’s motor car on the road before them, and said:
“Excuse me, Grant–here are the Sandses–I’ve got to invite them–Hi there, Dan’l, come alongside.” While the Captain was inviting Daniel Sands, the Doctor’s electric came purring up the hill to the club house driven by Laura Van Dorn. Grant was trotting ahead to join the other carpenters who were going to the street-car station, when Laura passing, hailed him: