human
She's all right, returns the daughter, smiling.
gpt
How's the khedive of Greeley county?
human
Sit down, father--I've something on my mind. To her father's inquiring face she replied,
gpt
It's Lila. Her father has been after her again. She just came home crying as though her little heart would break. It's so pitiful--she loves him; that is left over from her babyhood; but she is learning someway--perhaps from the children, perhaps from life--what he has done--and when he tries to attract her--she shrinks away from him.
human
And he knows why--he knows why, Laura. The Doctor taps the floor softly with his cane.
gpt
It isn't all gone--Tom's heart, I mean. Somewhere deep in his consciousness he is hungering for affection--for respect--for understanding. You haven't seen Tom's eyes recently? The daughter makes no reply.
human
I have, he continues.
gpt
They're burned out--kind of glassy--scummed over with the searing of the hell he carries in his heart--like the girls' eyes down in the Row. For he is dying at the heart--burning out with everything he has asked for in his hands, yet turning to Lila!
human
Father, she says with her eyes brimming,
gpt
I'm not angry with Tom--only sorry. He hasn't hurt me--much--when it's all figured out. I still have my faith--my faith in folks--and in God! Really to take away one's faith is the only wrong one can do to another!
human
The chief wrong he did you was when he married you. It was nobody's fault; I might have stopped it--but no man can be sure of those things. It was just one of the inevitable mistakes of youth, my dear, that come into our lives, one way or another. They fall upon the just and the unjust--without any reference to deserts.
gpt
Let it come--out with it--tell your daddy if anything is on your mind.
human
I believe that I am going to be happy--really and truly happy! She does not smile but looks seriously at her father as she presses his hand and pats it.
gpt
I am finding my place--doing my work--creating something--not the home that I once hoped for--not the home that I would have now, but it is something good and worth while. It is self respect in me and self respect in those wives and mothers and children in South Harvey. All over the place I find its roots--the shrivelled parching roots of self-respect, and the aspiration that grows with self respect. Sometimes I see it in a geranium flowering in a tomato can, set in a window; oftentimes in a cheap lace curtain; occasionally in a struggling, stunted yellow rose bush in the hard-beaten earth of a dooryard; or in a second hand wheezy cabinet organ in some front bedroom--in a thousand little signs of aspiration, I find America asserting itself among these poor people, and as I cherish these things I find happiness asserting itself in my life. So it's my job, my consecrated job in this earth--to water the geranium, to prune the rose, to mulch the roots of self-respect among these people, and I am happy, father, happier every day that I walk that way.
human
Father, you won't quite understand me when I tell you that the tomato cans with their geraniums behind those gray lace curtains, that make Harvey people smile, are really not tomato cans at all. They are social dynamite bombs that one day will blow into splinters and rubbish the injustices, the cruel injustices of life that the poor suffer at the hands of their exploiters. The geranium is the flower, the spring flower of the divine discontent, which some day shall bear great and wonderful fruit.
gpt
Rather a swift pace you're setting for a fat man, Laura, pipes the Doctor, adding earnestly:
human
There you go talking like Grant Adams! Don't let Grant Adams fool you, child: the end of the world isn't here. Grant's a good boy, Laura, and I like him; but he's getting a kind of Millerite notion that we're about to put on white robes and go straight up to glory, politically and socially and every which way, in a few years, and there's nothing to it. Grant's a good son, and a good brother, and a good friend and neighbor, but --the Doctor pounds his chair arm vehemently,
gpt
Perhaps Grant is touched--touched with the mad impatience of God's fools, father. I don't always follow Grant. He goes his way and I go mine. But I am sure of this, that the thing which will really start South Harvey, and all the South Harveys in the world out of their dirt and misery, and vice, is not our dreams for them, but their dreams for themselves. They must see the vision. They must aspire. They must feel the impulse to sacrifice greatly, to consecrate themselves deeply, to give and give and give of themselves that their children may know better things. And it is my work to arouse their dreams, to inspire their visions, to make them yearn for better living. I am trying to teach them to use and to love beautiful things, that they may be restless among ugly things. I think beauty only serves God as the handmaiden of discontent! And, father, way down deep in my heart--I know--I know surely that I must do this--that it is my reason for being--now that life has taken the greater joy of home from me. So, she concludes solemnly;