In the Heart of a Fool
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“Now, Tom, time is slipping by. It’s nearly midnight. We’ve got to talk sensibly and calmly. Sit here by me and be as sane as you can. We know we love one another. That’s been said and resaid; that’s settled. Now shall I first break for liberty–or will you? That must all be settled too. We can’t just let things drift. I’m twenty-seven. You’re thirty-five. Life is passing. Now when?”
They shrank before the light of a street car rounding the corner, that gleamed into their retreat. When it had gone, the man bowed his fine, proud, handsome head, and spoke with his eyes upon the ground:
“You go first–you have the best cause!” She looked upon his cowardly, sloping shoulders, and thought a moment. It was the tigress behind the flame who stooped over him, pondering, feeling her way through events that she had been going over and over in her imagination for weeks. The feline caution that guided her, told her, as it had always told her, that his letters were enough to damn him, but maybe not enough to hold him. She was not sure of men. Their standards might not be severe enough to punish him; he, knowing this, might escape. All this–this old query without answer went hurrying through her mind. But she was young; the spirit of adventure was in her. Henry Fenn, weak, vacillating, chivalrous, adoring Henry Fenn, had not conquered her; and the fire in her blood, and the ambition in her brain, came over her as a spell. She slipped to her knees, putting her head upon her lover’s breast, and cried passionately in a guttural murmur–“Yes, I’ll go first, Tom–now, for God’s sake, kiss me–kiss me and run.” Then she sprang up: “Now, go–go–go, Tom–run before I take it back. Don’t touch me again,” she cried. “Go.”
She slipped back into the door, then turned and caught him again and they stood for a terrible moment together. She whirled into the house, clicked the door after her and left him standing a-tremble, gaping and mad in the night. But she knew her strength, and knew his weakness and was not afraid.
She let him moan a wordless lovesong, very low and terrible in the night alone before the door, and did not answer. Then she saw him go softly down the steps, look up and down the street, move guiltily across the yard, hiding behind a bush at a distant footfall, and slip slowly into the sidewalk and go hurrying away from the house. In half an hour she was waiting for Henry Fenn as a cat might wait at a rat hole.
The next day little boys followed Henry Fenn about the streets laughing; Henry Fenn, drunken and debased, whose heart was bleeding. It was late in the afternoon when he appeared in the Amen Corner. His shooting stars were all exploded from their rocket and he was fading into the charred papier-mâche of the reaction that comes from over exhilaration. So he sat on the walnut bench, back of the newspaper counter with his hands on his knees and his eyes staring at the floor while traffic flowed through the establishment oblivious to his presence. Mr. Brotherton watched Fenn but did not try to make him talk. There came a time when trade was slack that Fenn looked for a minute fixedly at Mr. Brotherton, and finally said, shaking his head sadly:
“She says I’ve got to quit!” A pause and another sigh, then: “She says if I ever get drunk again, she’ll quit me like a dog.” Another inspection of the floor; more lugubrious head-shaking followed, after which the eyes closed and the dead voice spoke:
“Well, here’s her chance. Say, George,” he tried to smile, but the light only flickered in his leaden eyes. “I guess I’m orey-eyed enough now to furnish a correct imitation of a gentleman in his cups?”
Fenn got up, took Brotherton back among the books at the rear of the store. The drunken man took from his pocket a fountain pen incased in a silver mounting. He held the silver trinket up and said:
“Damn his soul to hell!”
“Let me see it–whose is it, Henry?” asked Brotherton. Fenn answered, “That’s my business.” He paused; then added “and his business.” Another undecided moment, and then Fenn concluded: “And none of your business.”
Suddenly he took his hands off the big man, and said, “I’m going home. If she means business, here’s her chance.”
Brotherton tried to stop him, but Fenn was insistent. Customers were coming in, and so Brotherton let the man go. But all the evening he was worried about his friend. Absentmindedly he went over his stock, straightening up Puck and Judge and Truth and Life, and putting the magazines in their places, sorting the new books into their shelf, putting the standard pirated editions of English authors in their proper place and squaring up the long rows of “The Bonnie Brier Bush” and “A Hazard of New Fortunes” where they would catch the buyers’ eyes upon the counter, in freshly jostled ranks, even and inviting, after the day’s havoc in Harvey’s literary circles. But always Fenn’s face was in Brotherton’s mind. The chatter of the evening passed without Brotherton realizing what it was all about. As for instance, between Grant Adams and Captain Morton over a sprocket which the Captain had invented and Henry Fenn had patented for the Captain. Grant on the other hand kept trying to tell the Captain about his unions organizing in the Valley, and neither was interested in what the other said, yet each was bursting with the importance of what he was saying. But even that comic dialogue could not take Mr. Brotherton’s mind from the search of the sinister connection it was trying to discover, between the fountain pen and Henry Fenn.
So Brotherton, worried with the affairs of Fenn, was not interested and the Captain peddled his dream in other marts. With Fenn’s ugly face on his mind, Brotherton saw young Judge Van Dorn swing in lightly, go through his daily pantomime, all so smoothly, so well oiled, so polished and polite, so courtly and affable, that for the moment Brotherton laid aside his fears and abandoned his suspicions. Then Van Dorn, after playing with his cigar, went to the stationery counter and remarked casually, “By the by, George, do you keep fountain pens?”
Mr. Brotherton kept fountain pens, and Judge Van Dorn said: “There–that one over by the ink eraser–yes, that one–the one in the silver casing–I seem to have mislaid mine. Yale men gave it to me at the reunion in ’91, as president of the class–had my initials on it–ten years–yes,” he looked at the pen offered by the store keeper. “That will do.” Mr. Brotherton watched the Judge as he put the pen in his vest pocket, after it had been filled.
The Judge picked up a Chicago paper, stowed it away with “Anglo-Saxon Supremacy” in his green bag. Then he swung gracefully out of the shop and left Mr. Brotherton wondering where and how Henry Fenn got that pen, and why he did not return it to its owner.
The air of mystery and malice–two unusual atmospheres for Henry Fenn to breathe–which he had put around the pen, impressed his friend with the importance of the thing.
“A mighty smooth proposition,” said Grant Adams, sitting in the Amen Corner reading “A Hazard of New Fortunes,” when Van Dorn had gone.
“Well, say, Grant,” returned Mr. Brotherton, pondering on the subject of the lost pen. “Sometimes I think Tom is just a little too oleaginous–a little too oleaginous,” repeated Mr. Brotherton, pleased with his big word.
That June night Henry Fenn passed from Congress Street and walked with a steady purpose manifest in his clicking heels. It was not a night’s bat that guided his feet, no festive orgy, but the hard, firm footfall of a man who has been drunk a long time–terribly mean drunk. And terribly mean drunk he was. His eyes were blazing, and he mumbled as he walked. Down Market Street he turned and strode to the corner where the Traders’ National Bank sign shone under the electrics. He looked up, saw a light burning in the office above, and suddenly changed his gait to a tip-toe. Up the stairs he crept to a door, under which a light was gleaming. He got a firm hold of the knob, then turned it quickly, thrust open the door and stepped quietly into the room. He grinned meanly at Tom Van Dorn who, glancing up over his shoulder from his book, saw the white face of Fenn leering at him. Van Dorn knew that this was the time when he must use all the wits he had.
“Why, hello–Henry–hello,” said Van Dorn cheerfully. He coughed, in an attempt to swallow the saliva that came rushing into his mouth. Fenn did not answer, but stood and then began to walk around Van Dorn’s desk, eyeing him with glowing-red eyes as he walked. Van Dorn tipped back his chair easily, put his feet on the desk before him, and spoke, “Sit down, Henry–make yourself at home.” He cleared his throat nervously. “Anything gone wrong, Henry?” he asked as the man stood over him glaring at him.
“No,” replied Fenn. “No, nothing’s gone wrong. I’ve just got some exhibits here in a law suit. That’s all.”
He stood over Van Dorn, peering steadfastly at him. First he laid down a torn letter. Van Dorn shuddered almost imperceptibly as he recognized in the crumpled, wrenched paper his writing, but smiled suavely and said, “Well?”
“Well,” croaked Fenn passionately. “That’s exhibit ‘A’. I had to fight a hell-cat for it; and this,” he added as he lay down the silver-mounted pen, “this is exhibit ‘B’. I found that in the porch swing this morning when I went out to get my drink hidden under the house.” He cackled and Van Dorn’s Adam’s apple bobbed like a cork upon a wave.
“And this,” cried Fenn, as he pulled a revolver, “God damn you, is exhibit ‘C’. Now, don’t you budge, or I’ll blow you to hell–and,” he added, “I guess I’ll do it anyway.”
He stood with the revolver at Van Dorn’s temple–stood over his victim growling like a raging beast. His finger trembled upon the trigger, and he laughed. “So you were going to have a convenient, inexpensive lady friend, were you, Tom!” Fenn cuffed the powerless man’s jaw with an open hand.
“Private snap?” he sneered. “Well, damn your soul–here’s a lady friend of mine,” he poked the cold barrel harder against the trembling man’s temple and cried: “Don’t wiggle, don’t you move.” Then he went on: “Kiss her, you damned egg-sucking pup–when you’ve done flirting with this, I’m going to kill you.”
He emphasized the “you,” and prodded the man’s face with the barrel.
“Henry,” whispered Van Dorn, “Henry, for God’s sake, let me talk–give me a show, won’t you?”
Fenn moved the barrel of the revolver over between the man’s eyes and cried passionately: “Oh, yes, I’ll give you a show, Tom–the same show you gave me.”
He shifted the revolver suddenly and pulled the trigger; the bullet bored a hole through the book on “Anglo-Saxon Supremacy” on the desk.
Fenn drew in a deep breath. With the shot he had spilled some vial of wrath within him, though Van Dorn could not see the change that was creeping into Fenn’s haggard face.
“You see she’ll shoot, Tom,” said Fenn.
Holding the smoking revolver to the man’s head, Fenn reached for a chair and sat down. His rage was ebbing, and his mind was clear. He withdrew the weapon a few inches, and cried:
“Don’t you budge an inch.”
His hand was limp and shaking, but Van Dorn could not see it. “Tom, Tom,” he cried. “God help me–help me.” He repeated twice the word “me,” then he went on:
“For being what I am–only what I am–” he emphasized the “I.”
“For giving in to your devil as I give into mine–for falling as I have fallen–on another road–I was going to kill you.”
The revolver slipped from his hands. He picked it up by the barrel. He rose crying in a weak voice,
“Oh, Tom, Tom, Tom,” Van Dorn was lifting up in his chair, “Tom, Tom, God help us both poor, hell-cursed men,” sobbed Fenn, and then with a fearful blow he brought the weapon down and struck the white, false forehead that gleamed beneath Fenn’s wet face.
He stood watching the man shudder and close his eyes, watching the blood seep out along a crooked seam, then gush over the face and fine, black hair and silken mustache. A bloody flood streamed there while he watched. Then Fenn wiped dry the butt of his revolver. He felt of the gash in the forehead, and found that the bone was not crushed. He was sober, and an unnatural calm was upon his brain. He could feel the tears in his eyes. He stood looking at the face of the unconscious man a long, dreadful minute as one who pities rather than hates a foe. Then he stepped to the telephone, called Dr. Nesbit, glanced at the fountain pen and the crumpled letter, burst into a spasm of weeping, and tiptoed out of the room.
CHAPTER XXI
IN WHICH WE SEE A FAT LITTLE RASCAL ON THE RACK
A year and a month and a day, an exceedingly hot day, after Judge Thomas Van Dorn had fallen upon the stair leading to his office and had cut that gash in his forehead which left the white thread of a scar upon his high, broad brow, Judge Van Dorn sat in chambers in his office in the court house, hearing an unimportant matter. Because the day was hot, the Judge wore a gray silk coat, without a vest, and because the matter was unimportant, no newspaper reporters were called in. The matter in hand was highly informal. The Judge, tilted back in his easy chair, toyed with his silken mustache, while counsel for defendant, standing by the desk before which the Judge’s chair was swinging, handled the papers representing the defendant’s answer, to the plaintiff’s pleadings. The plaintiff herself, dressed in rather higher sleeves than would have been thought possible to put upon a human form and make them stand erect, with a rather larger hat than one would have said might be carried by a single human neck without bowing it; the plaintiff above mentioned was rattling the court’s paper knife.
Plaintiff’s counsel, a callow youth from the law offices of Joseph Calvin, to be exact, Joseph Calvin, Jr., sat meekly on the edge of a small chair in the corner and being a chip of the old block, had little to say. The court and said hereinbefore described plaintiff talked freely between whiles as the counsel for said defendant, Henry Fenn, ran over his papers, looking for particular phrases, statements or exhibits which he desired to present to the court.
It appeared from the desultory reading of the papers by the attorney for the said defendant, Henry Fenn, that he had no desire to impose upon the plaintiff, as above described, any hardships in the matter and that the agreement reached by counsel as to the disposition of the joint property should be carried out as indicated in the answer submitted to the court–see folio No. 3. Though counsel for defendant smilingly told the court that if the counsel were Henry Fenn, he should not give up property worth at least five thousand dollars in consideration of the cause of action being made cruelty and inhuman treatment rather than drunkenness, but, as counsel explained and as the court agreed when a man gets to going by the booze route he hasn’t much sense–referring, of course, to said defendant, Henry Fenn, not present in person.
When counsel for the said defendant had finished, and had put all his papers upon the desk in front of the court, the court reached into his desk, and handed the counsel for defendant a cigar, which with proper apologies to the hereinabove and before described plaintiff, counsel lighted, and said:
“That’s certainly a good one.”
But as the court was writing upon the back of one of the papers, the court did not respond for a moment, but finally said absently, “Yes,–glad you think so; George Brotherton imports them for me.”
And went on writing. Still writing the court said without looking up, “I don’t know of anything else.”
And the counsel for defendant said he didn’t either and putting on his hat, smiling at the plaintiff aforesaid, counsel for said defendant Henry Fenn departed, and after a minute the court ceased writing, folded and blotted the back of the paper, handed it to young Joe Calvin, sitting meekly on the edge of the chair, saying: “Here Joey, take this to the clerk and file it,” and Joey got up from the edge of the chair and vanished, closing the door behind him.
“Well?” said the plaintiff.
“Well?” echoed the court.
“Well,” reiterated the plaintiff, gazing into the eyes of the court with somewhat more eagerness than the law requires under statute therefore made and provided.
“So it’s all over,” she continued, and added: “My part.”
She rose–this plaintiff hereinbefore mentioned, came to the desk, stood over him a moment, and said softly, much more softly than the code prescribes, “Tom–I hope yours won’t be any harder.”
Whereupon the court, then and there being as herein above set forth, did with premeditation, and much show of emotion look up into the eyes of said plaintiff, said eyes being tear-dimmed and extraordinarily beautiful as to their coloring to-wit: brown, as to their expression to-wit: sad and full of love, and furthermore the court did with deliberation and after for a moment while he held the heavy bejeweled hand of said plaintiff above mentioned, and did press said hand to his lips and then did draw the said plaintiff closer and whisper:
“God–God, Margaret, so do I hope so–so do I.”
And perhaps the court for a second thought of a little blue-eyed, fair-haired girl and a gentle woman who lived for him alone in all the world, and perhaps not; for this being a legal paper may set down only such matters as are of evidence. But it is witnessed and may be certified to that the court did drop his eyes for a second or two, that the white thread of a scar upon the forehead of the court did redden for a moment while he held the heavy bejewelled hand of plaintiff, hereinbefore mentioned, and that he did draw a deep breath, and did look out of the window, set high up in the court house, and that he did see the elm trees covering a home which, despite all his perfidy and neglect was full of love for him–love that needed no high sleeves nor great plumy hats, nor twinkling silver bangles, nor jangling gold chatelaines, to make it beautiful. But let us make it of record and set it down here, in this instrument that the court rose, looked into the great brown eyes and the fair face, and seeing the rich, shameless mouth and blazing color upon the features, did then and there fall down in his heart and worship that mask, and did take the hand that he held in both of his and standing before the woman did cry in a deep voice, full of agony:
“For God’s sake, Margaret, let me come to you now–soon.” And she–the plaintiff in this action gazed at the man who had been the court, but who now was man, and replied:
“Only when you may honestly–legally, Tom–it’s best for both of us.”
They walked to the door. The court pressed a button as she left, smiling, and when a man appeared with a note book the court said: “I have something to dictate,” and the next day young Joseph Calvin handed the following news item to the Harvey Times and to the South Harvey Derrick.
“A divorce was granted to-day by Judge Thomas Van Dorn of the district court in chambers to Mrs. Margaret Müller Fenn, from Henry Fenn. Charges of cruel and inhuman treatment filed by the attorneys for Mrs. Fenn were not met by Mr. Fenn and the court granted the decree and it was made absolute. It is understood that a satisfactory settlement of the joint property has been made. Mrs. Fenn will continue to hold the position she has held during the year past as chief clerk in the office of the superintendent of the Harvey Improvement Company. Mr. Fenn is former county attorney and is now engaged in the insurance business, having sold his real estate business to Joseph Calvin this morning.”
And thus the decree of divorce between Henry Fenn and Margaret, his wife, whom God had joined together, was made absolute, and further deponent sayeth not.
But the town of Harvey had more or less to say about the divorce and what the town said, more or less concerned Judge Thomas Van Dorn. For although Henry Fenn sober would not speak of the divorce, Henry Fenn drunk, babbled many quotations about the “rare and radiant maiden, who was lost forever more.” He was also wont to quote the line about the lover who held his mistress “something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.”
As for the Judge, his sensitive mind felt the disapproval of the community. But the fighting blood in him was roused, and he fought a braver fight than the cause justified. That summer he went to all the farmers’ picnics in his district, spoke wherever he was invited to speak, and spoke well; whatever charm he had he called to his aid. When the French of South Harvey celebrated the Fall of the Bastille, Judge Van Dorn spoke most beautifully of liberty, and led off when they sung the Marseillaise; on Labor Day he was the orator of the occasion, and made a great impression among the workers by his remarks upon the dignity of labor. He quoted Carlyle and Ruskin and William Morris, and wept when he told them how the mob had crucified the Carpenter, who was labor’s first prophet.
But one may say this for Judge Van Dorn: that with all his desire for the approval of his fellows, even in South Harvey, even at the meetings of men who he knew differed with him, he did not flinch from attacking on every occasion and with all his eloquence the unions that Grant Adams was promoting. The idea of mutual help upon which they rested seemed to make Van Dorn see red, and he was forever going out of his way to combat the idea. So bitter was his antagonism to the union idea that in the Valley he and Grant Adams became dramatized in the minds of the men as opponents.
But in Harvey, where men regarded Grant Adams’s activities with tolerant indifference and his high talk of bettering industrial conditions as the madness of youth, Judge Van Dorn was the town’s particular idol.
A handsome man he was as he stood out in the open under the bower made by the trees, and with the grace and charm of true oratory, spoke in his natural voice–a soft, penetrating treble that reached to the furthest man in the crowd; tall, well-built, oval-faced, commanding–a judge every inch of him, even if a young judge–was Tom Van Dorn. And when he had finished speaking at the Harvest Home Picnic, or at the laying of the corner stone of the new Masonic Temple, or at the opening of the Grant County fair, men said:
“Well, I know they say Tom Van Dorn is no Joseph, but all the same I’m here to tell you–” and what they were there to tell you would discourage ladies and gentlemen who believe that material punishments always follow either material or spiritual transgressions.
So the autumn wore into winter, and the State Bar Association promoted Judge Van Dorn; he appeared as president of that dignified body, and thereby added to his prestige at home. He appeared regularly at church with Mrs. Van Dorn–going the rounds of the churches punctiliously–and gave liberally when a subscription paper for any cause was presented. But for all this, he kept hearing the bees of gossip buzzing about him, and often felt their sting.
Day after day, through it all he never slept until in some way, by some device, through some trumped up excuse that seemed plausible enough in itself, he had managed to see and speak to Margaret Fenn. Whether in her office in the Light, Heat & Power Company’s building upon a business errand, and he made plenty of such, or upon the street, or in the court house, where she often went upon some business of her chief, or walking home at evening, or coming down in the morning, or upon rare occasions meeting her clandestinely for a moment, or whether at some social function where they were both present–and it of necessity had to be a large function in that event–for the town could register its disapproval of the woman more easily than it could put its opprobrium upon the man; or whether he spoke to her just a word from the sidewalk as he passed her home, always he managed to see her. Always he had one look into her eyes, and so during all the day, she was in his thoughts. It seems strange that a man of great talents could keep the machinery of his mind going and still have an ever present consciousness of a guilty intrigue. Yet there it was. Until he had seen her and spoken to her, it was his day’s important problem to devise some way to bring about the meeting. So with devilish caution and ponderous circumlocution and craft he went about his daily work, serene in the satisfaction that he was being successful in his elaborate deceit; rather gloating at times in the iniquity of one in his position being in so low a business. He wondered what the people would say if they really knew the depths of his infamy, and when he sentenced a poor devil for some minor crime, he would often watch himself as a third party and wonder if he would ever stand up and take his sentence. But he had no fear of that. The little drama between Judge Van Dorn, the prisoner at the bar, and the lover of Margaret Fenn, was for his diversion, rather than for his instruction, and he enjoyed it as an artistic travesty upon the justice he was dispensing.