It was a beautiful party that Captain Morton gave at the Country Club house that evening. And at the end of a most gorgeously elaborate dinner, wherein were dishes whose very names the Captain did not know, he rose among his guests seated at the U-shaped table in the big dining room with the heavy brown beams in the ceiling, a little old man by his big chair, which stood beside a chair unoccupied.
“Friends,” he said, “when a man gets on in his seventies, at that uncertain time, when he does not know whether to be ashamed of his years or proud of his age,” he smiled at Daniel Sands, who clicked his false-teeth in appreciation of the phrase, “it would seem that thoughts of what the poet calls ‘the livelier iris’ on the ‘burnished dove’ would not inconvenience him to any great extent–eh? At seventy-five a young fellow’s fancy ought to be pretty well done lightly turning to thoughts of love–what say? But by cracky–they don’t.”
He paused. The Morton girls in shame looked at their plates. “So, I just thought I’d have this little party to tell you about it. I wanted to surprise the girls.” There was only a faint clapping of hands; for tears in the eyes of the three Morton daughters discouraged merriment.
495“A man, as I was saying, never gets too old–never gets too crabbed, for what my friend Amos’s friend Emerson calls ‘a ruddy drop of manly blood’–eh? So, when that ‘ruddy drop of manly blood’ comes a surging up in me, I says I’ll just about have a party for that drop of manly blood! I’m going to tell you all about it. There’s a woman in my mind–a very beautiful woman; for years–a feller just as well breakdown and confess–eh?–well for years she’s been in my mind pretty much all the time–particularly since Ruthie there was a baby and left alorn and alone–as you may say–eh? And so,” he reached down and grasped a goblet of water firmly, and held it before him, “and so,” he repeated, and his old eyes glistened and his voice broke, “as it was just fifty years ago to-night that heaven opened and let her come to me, before I marched off to war–so,” he hurried along, “I give you this toast–the vacant chair–may it always, always, always be filled in my heart of hearts!”
He could not drink, but sank with his head on his arms, and when they had ceased clapping their hands, the old man looked up, signaled to the orchestra, and cried in a tight, cracked voice, “Now, dern ye–begin yer fiddlin’!”
Whereupon the three Morton daughters wept and the old ladies gathered about them and wept, and Mrs. Hilda Herdicker’s ton of jet heaved as in a tidal wave, and the old men dried their eyes, and only Lila Van Dorn and Kenyon Adams, holding hands under the table, really knew what it was all about.
Now they have capered through these pages of this chapter–all of the people in this story in their love affairs. Hand in hand, they have come to the footlights, hand in hand they have walked before us. We have seen that love is a passion with many sides. It varies with each soul. In youth, in maturity, in courtship, in marriage, in widowhood, in innocence, and in the wisdom of serpents, love reflects the soul it shines on. For love is youth in the heart–youth that always beckons, that always shapes our visions. Love ever sheens and shimmers brightly from within us; but what it shows to the world–that is vastly different with each of us. For that is the shadow of his inmost being.
496CHAPTER XLIII
WHEREIN WE FIND GRANT ADAMS CALLING UPON KENYON’S MOTHER, AND DARKNESS FALLS UPON TWO LOVERS
Once in a while an item appeared in the Harvey Tribune that might have been found nowhere else, and for reasons. For instance, the issue of the Tribune that contained the account of the Captain’s party also contained this item, which Daniel Sands had kept out of every other paper in town: