At last the whole wretched intrigue dramatized itself in one culminating
episode. It came in the spring. Dr. Nesbit had put on his white linens
just as the trees were in their first gayety of foliage and the spring
blooming flowers were at their loveliest.
After a morning in the dirt and grime and misery and injustice and
wickedness that made the outer skin over South Harvey and Foley and
Magnus and the mining and smelter towns of the valley, the Doctor came
driving into the cool beauty of Quality Hill in Harvey with a middle
aged man's sense of relief. South Harvey and its neighbors disheartened
him.
He had seen Grant Adams, a man of the Doctor's own caste by birth,
hurrying into a smelter on some organization errand out of overalls in
his cheap, ill-fitting clothes, begrimed, heavy featured, dogged and
rapidly becoming a part of the industrial dregs. Grant Adams in the
smelter, preoccupied with the affairs of that world, and passing
definitely into it forever, seemed to the Doctor symbolic of the passing
of the America he understood (and loved), into an America that
discouraged him. But the beauty and the calm and the restful
elm-bordered lawns of Harvey always toned up his spirits. Here, he said
to himself was the thing he had helped to create. Here was the town he
had founded and cherished. Here were the people whom he really
loved--old neighbors, old friends, dear in associations and sweet in
memories.
It was in a cherubic complaisance with the whole scheme of the universe
that the white-clad Doctor jogged up Elm Street behind his maternal
sorrel in the phaeton, to get his noon day meal. He passed the Van Dorn
home. Its beauty fitted into this mood and beckoned to him. For the
whole joy of spring bloomed in flower and shrub and vine that bordered
the house and clambered over the wide hospitable porch. The gay color of
the spring made the house glow like a jewel. The wide lawn--the stately
trees, the gorgeous flowers called to his heart, and seeing his daughter
upon the piazza, the Doctor surrendered, drew up, tied the horse and
came toddling along the walk to the broad stone steps, waving his hands
gayly to her as he came. Little Lila, coming home from kindergarten and
bleating through the house lamb-wise: "I'm hungry," saw her grandfather,
and ran down the steps to meet him, forgetting her pangs.
He lifted her high to his shoulder, and came up the porch steps
laughing: "Here come jest and youthful jollity, my dear," and stooping
with his grandchild in his arms, kissed the beautiful woman before him.
"Some one is mighty sweet this morning," and then seeing a package
beside her asked: "What's this--" looking at the address and the
sender's name. "Some one been getting a new dress?"
The child pulling at her mother's skirts renewed her bleat for food.
When Lila had been disposed of Laura sat by her father, took his fat,
pudgy hand and said:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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