In the Heart of a Fool

CHAPTER XXXI

IN WHICH JUDGE VAN DORN MAKES HIS BRAGS AND DR. NESBIT SEES A VISION

It was the last day of the last year of the Nineteenth Century–and a fair, beautiful day it was. The sun shone over Harvey in spite of the clouds from the smelter in South Harvey, and in spite of the clouds that were blown by the soft, south wind up the Wahoo Valley from other smelters and other coal mines, and a score of great smoke stacks in Foley and Magnus and Plain Valley, where the discovery of coal and oil and gas, within the decade that was passing, had turned the Valley into a straggling town almost twenty miles long. So high and busy were the chimneys that when the south wind blew toward the capital of this industrial community, often the sun was dimmed in Harvey by a haze. But on this fair winter’s day the air was dry and cold and even in Harvey shadows were black and clear, and the sun’s warmth had set the redbirds to singing in the brush and put so much joy into the world that Judge Thomas Van Dorn had ventured out with his new automobile–a chugging, clattering wonder that set all the horses of Greeley County on their hind feet, making him a person of distinction in the town far beyond his renown as a judge and an orator and a person of more than state-wide reputation. But the Judge’s automobile was frail and prone to err–being not altogether unlike its owner in that regard. Thus many a time when it chugged out of his barn so proudly, it came limping back behind a span of mules. And so it happened on that bright, beautiful, December day that the Judge was sitting upon a box in Captain Morton’s shop, while the Captain at his little forge was welding some bits of metal together and discoursing upon the virtues of his Household Horse, which he was assembling in small quantities–having arranged with a firm in South Chicago to cast the two iron pieces that were needed.

“Now, for instance, on a clothes wringer,” the Captain was saying: “It’s a perfect wonder on a clothes wringer: I have the agency of a clothes wringer that is making agents rich all over the country. But women don’t like clothes wringers; why? Because they require such hard work. All right–hitch on my Household Horse, and the power required is reduced three-fifths and a day’s wash may be put on the line as easy as a girl could play The Maiden’s Prayer on a piano–eh? Or, say, put it on a churn–same Horse–one’s all that’s needed to a house. Or make it an ice cream freezer or a cradle or a sewing machine, or anything on earth that runs by a crank–and ’y gory, man, you make housework a joy. I sold Laura one–traded her one for lessons for Ruth, and she says wash-day at the Doctor’s is like Sunday now–what say? Lila’s so crazy about it they can’t keep her out of the basement while the woman works,–likes to dabble in the water you know like all children, washing her doll clothes, what say?”

But the Judge said nothing. The Captain tinkered with the metal, and dipped it slowly in and out of a tub of dirty water to temper it, and as he tried it in the groove where it belonged upon the automobile backed up to the shop, he found that it was not exactly true, and went to work to spring it back into line. The Judge looked around the shop–a barny, little place filled with all sorts of wheels and pulleys and levers and half-finished inventions that wouldn’t work, and that, even if they would work, would be of little consequence. There was an attempt to make a self-oiler for buggy wheels, a half-finished contrivance that was supposed to keep cordwood stacked in neat rows; an automatic contraption to prevent coffeepots from burning; a cornsheller that would all but work; a molasses faucet with an alcohol burner which was supposed to make the sirup flow faster–but which instead sometimes blew up and burned down grocery stores, and there were steamers and churns and household contrivances which the Captain had introduced into the homes of Harvey in past years, not of his invention, to be sure, but contrivances that had inspired his eloquence, and were mute witnesses to his prowess–trophies of the chase. Above the forge were rows of his patent sprockets, all neatly wrapped in brown paper, and under this row of merchandise was a clipping from the Times describing the Captain’s invention, and predicting–at five cents a line–that it would revolutionize the theory of mechanics and soon become a household need all over the world.

As the Judge looked idly at the Captain’s treasures while the Captain tinkered with the steel, he took off his hat, and the Captain, peering through his glasses, remarked:

“Getting kind of thin on top, Tom–eh? Doc, he’s leaning a little hard on his cane. Joe Calvin, he’s getting rheumatic, and you’re getting thin-haired. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”

“So you believe the Lord runs things here in Harvey, do you, Cap?” asked the Judge, who was playing with a bit of wire.

“Well–I suppose if you come right down to it,” answered the Captain, “a man’s got to have the consolation of religion in some shape or other or he’s going to get mighty discouraged–what say?”

“Why,” scoffed the Judge, “it’s a myth–there’s nothing to it. Look at my wife–I mean Margaret–she changes religion as often as she changes dogs. Since we’ve been married she’s had three religions. And what good does it do her?”

The Captain, sighting down the edge of the metal, shook his head, and the Judge went on: “What good does any religion do? I’ve broken the ten commandments, every one of them–and I get on. No one bothers me, because I keep inside the general statutes. I’ve beat God at his own game. I tell you, Cap, you can do what you please just so you obey the state and federal laws and pay your debts. This God-myth amuses me.”

Captain Morton did not care to argue with the Judge. So he said, by way of making conversation for a customer, and neighbor and guest:

“I hear, well, to be exact, George Brotherton was telling me and the girls the other night that the Company is secretly dropping out the members of the unions that Grant Adams has been organizing down in South Harvey.”

“Yes–that Adams is another one of your canting, God-and-morality fellows. Always watch that kind. I tell you, Captain,” barked the Judge, “about the only thing my wife and I have agreed on for a year is that this Adams fellow is a sneaking, pharisaical hound. Lord, how she hates him! Sometimes I think women hate hard enough to compete with your God, who according to the preachers, is always slipping around getting even with fellows for their sins. God and women are very much alike, anyway,” sneered the Judge. In the silence that followed, both men were attracted by a noise behind them–the rustling of straw. They looked around and saw the figure of a little girl–a yellow-haired, blue-eyed, shy, little girl, trying to slip out of the place. She had evidently been in the loft gathering eggs, for her apron was full, and she had her foot on the loft ladder.

“Why, Lila, child,” exclaimed the Captain, “I clean forgot you being up there–did you find any eggs? Why didn’t you come down long ago?”

“Come here, Lila,” called the Judge. The child stood by the ladder hesitatingly, holding her little apron corners tightly in her teeth basketing the eggs–too embarrassed now that she was down the ladder, to use her hands.

“Lila,” coaxed the Judge, reaching his hand into his pocket, “won’t you let Papa give you a dollar for candy or something. Come on, daughter.” He put out his hands. She shook her head. She had to pass him to get to the door. “You aren’t afraid of your Papa are you, Lila–come–here’s a dollar for you–that’s a good girl.”

Her mouth quivered. Big tears were dropping down her cheeks. The Captain’s quick eye saw that something had hurt her. He went over to her, put his arm about her, took the eggs from her apron, fondled her gently without speaking. The Judge drew nearer “Lila–come–that’s a good girl–here, take the money. Oh Lila, Lila,” he cried, “won’t you take it for Papa–won’t you, my little girl?”

The child looked up at him with shy frightened eyes, and suddenly she put down her head and ran past him. He tried to hold her–to put the silver into her hand, but she shrank away and dropped the coin before him.

“Shy child, Judge–very shy. Emma let her gather the eggs this morning, she loves to hunt eggs,” chuckled the Captain, “and she went to the loft just before you came in. I clean forgot she hadn’t come down.”

The Captain went on with his work.

“I suppose, Cap,” said Van Dorn quietly, “she heard more or less of what I said.” The Captain nodded.

“How much did she understand?” the Judge asked.

“More’n you’d think, Judge–more’n you’d think. But,” added Captain Morton after a pause, “I know the little skite like a top, Judge–and there’s one thing about her: She’s a loyal little body. She’ll never tell; you needn’t be worrying about that.”

The Judge sighed and added sadly: “It wasn’t that, Cap–it was–” But the Judge left his sentence in the air. The mending was done. The Judge paid the old man and gave him a dollar more than he asked, and went chugging off in a cloud of smoke, while the Captain, thinking over what the Judge had said, sighed, shook his head, and bending over his work, cackled in an undertone, snatches of a tune that told of a land that is fairer than day. He had put together three sprockets and was working on the fourth when he looked up and saw his daughter Emma sitting on the box that the Judge had vacated. The Captain put his hand to his back and stood up, looking at his eldest daughter with loving pride.

“Emma,” he said at length, “Judge Tom says women are like God.” He stood near her and smoothed her hair, and patted her cheek as he pressed her head against his side. “I guess he’s right–eh? Lila was in the loft getting eggs and she overheard a lot of his fool talk.” The daughter made no reply. The Captain worked on and finally said: “It kind of hit Tom hard to have Lila hear him; took the tuck out of him, eh?”

Emma still waited. “My dear, the more I know of women the better I think of God, and the surer I am of God, the better I think of women–what say?” He sat on the box beside her and took her hand in his hard, cracked, grimy hand, “’Y gory, girl, I tell you, give me a line on a man’s idea of God and I can tell you to a tee what he thinks of women–eh?” The Captain dropped the hand for a moment and looked out of the door into the alley.

“Well, Father, I agree with you in general about women but in particular I don’t care about Mrs. Herdicker and I wish Martha had another job, though I suppose it’s better than teaching school.” The daughter sighed. “Honest, father, sometimes when I’ve been on my feet all day, and the children have been mean, and the janitor sticks his head in and grins, so I’ll know the superintendent is in the building and get the work off the board that the rules don’t allow me to put on, or one of the other girls sends a note up to watch for my spelling for he’s cranky on spelling to-day, I just think, ‘Lordee, if I had a job in some one’s kitchen, I’d be too happy to breathe.’ But then–”

“Yes–yes, child–I know it’s hard work now–but ’y gory, Emmy, when I get this sprocket introduced and going, I’ll buy you six superintendents in a brass cage and let you feed ’em biled eggs to make ’em sing–eh?” He smiled and patted his daughter’s hair and rose to go back to work. The girl plucked at his coat and said: “Now sit down, father, I want to talk to you,” she hesitated. “It’s about Mr. Brotherton. You know he’s been coming out here for years and I thought he was coming to see me, and now Martha thinks he comes to see her, and Martha always stays there and so does Ruth, and if he is coming to see me–” she stopped. Her father looked at her in astonishment. “Why, father,” she went on,–“why not? I’m twenty-five, and Martha’s twenty-two and even Ruth is seventeen–he might even be coming to see Ruth,” she added bitterly.

“Yes, or Epaminondas–the cat–eh?” cut in the old man. Then he added, indignantly, “Well, how about this singing Jasper Adams–who’s he coming to see? Or Amos–he comes around here sometimes Saturday night after G. A. R. meeting, with me–what say? Would you want us all to clear out and leave you the front room with him?” demanded the perturbed Captain.

Then the father put his arm about his child tenderly: “Twenty-five years old–twenty-five years–why, girl, in my time a girl was an old maid laid on the shelf at twenty-five–and here you are,” he mused, “just thinking of your first beau and here I am needing your mother worse than I ever did in my life. Law-see’ girl–how do I know what to do–what say?” But he did know enough to draw her to him and kiss her and sigh. “Well–maybe I can do something–maybe–we’ll see.” And then she left him and he went to his work. And as he worked the thought struck him suddenly that if he could put one of his sprockets in the Judge’s automobile where he had seen a chain, that it would save power and stop much of the noise. So as he worked he dreamed that his sprocket was adopted by the makers of the new machines, and that he was rich–exceedingly rich and that he took the girls to visit the Ohio kin, and that Emma had her trip to the Grand Canyon, that Martha went to Europe and that Ruthie “took vocal” of a teacher in France whose name he could not pronounce.

As he hammered away at his bench he heard a shuffling at the door and looking up saw Dr. Nesbit in the threshold.

“Come in, Doctor; sit down and talk,” shrilled the Doctor before the Captain could speak, and when the Doctor had seated himself upon the box by the workbench, the Captain managed to say: “Surely–come right in, I’m kind of lonesome anyhow.”

“And I’m mad,” cried the Doctor. “Just let me sit here and blow off a little to my old army friend.”

“Well–well, Doctor, it’s queer to see you hot under the collar–eh?” The Doctor began digging out his pipe and filling it, without speaking. The Captain asked: “What’s gone wrong? Politics ain’t biling? what say?”

“Well,” returned the Doctor, “you know Laura works at her kindergarten down there in South Harvey, and she got me to pass that hours-of-service law for the smelter men at the extra session last summer. Good law! Those men working there in the fumes shouldn’t work over six hours a day–it will kill them. I managed by trading off my hide and my chances of Heaven to get a law through, cutting them down to eight hours in smelter work. Denny Hogan, who works on the slag dump, is going to die if he has to do it another year on a ten-hour shift. He’s been up and down for two years now–the Hogans live neighbors to Laura’s school and I’ve been watching him. Well,” and here the Doctor thumped on the floor with his cane, “this Judge–this vain, strutting peacock of a Judge, this cat-chasing Judge that was once my son-in-law, has gone and knocked the law galley west so far as it affects the slag dump. I’ve just been reading his decision, and I’m hot–good and hot.”

The Captain interrupted:

“I saw Violet Hogan and the children–dressed like princesses, walking out to-day–past the Judge’s house–showing it to them–what say? My, how old she looks, Doctor!”

“Well–the damned villain–the infernal scoundrel–” piped the Doctor. “I just been reading that decision. The men showed in their lawsuit that the month before the law took effect the company, knowing the law had been passed, went out and sold their switch and sold the slag dump, to a fake railroad company that bought a switch engine and two or three cars, and incorporated as a railroad, and then–the same people owning the smelter and the railroad, they set all the men in the smelter that they could working on the slag dump, so the men were working for the railroad and not for the smelter company and didn’t come within the eight hour law. And now the Judge stands by that farce; he says that the men working there under the very chimney of the smelter on the slag dump where the fumes are worst, are not subject to the law because the law says that men working for the smelters shall not work more than eight hours, and these men are working for a cheating, swindling subterfuge of a railroad. That’s judge-made law. That’s the kind of law that makes anarchists. Law!” snorted the Doctor, “Law!–made by judges who have graduated out of the employ of corporations–law!–is just what the Judge on the bench dares to read into the statute. I tell you, Cap, if the doctors and engineers and preachers were as subservient to greed and big money as the lawyers are, we would soon lose our standing. But when a lawyer commits some flagrant malpractice like that of Tom Van Dorn’s–the lawyers remind us that the courts are sacred institutions.”

The Doctor’s pipe was out and in filling it again, he jabbed viciously at the bowl with his knife, and in the meantime the Captain was saying:

“Well, I suppose he found the body of the decisions leaning that way, Doc–you know Judges are bound by the body of the law.”

“The body of the law–yes, damn ’em, I’ve bought ’em to find the body of the law myself.”

The Doctor sputtered along with his pipe and cried out in his high treble–“I never had any more trouble buying a court than a Senator. And lawyers have no shame about hiring themselves to crooks and notorious lawbreakers. And some lawyers hire themselves body and soul to great corporations for life and we all know that those corporations are merely evading the laws and not obeying them; and lawyers–at the very top of the profession–brazenly hire out for life to that kind of business. What if the top of the medical profession was composed of men who devoted themselves to fighting the public welfare for life! We have that kind of doctors–but we call them quacks. We don’t allow ’em in our medical societies. We punish them by ostracism. But the quack lawyers who devote themselves to skinning the public–they are at the head of the bar. They are made judges. They are promoted to supreme courts. A damn nice howdy-do we’re coming to when the quacks run a whole profession. And Tom Van Dorn is a quack–a hair-splitting, owl-eyed, venal quack–who doles out the bread pills of injustice, and the strychnine stimulants of injustice and the deadening laudanum of injustice, and falls back on the body of the decisions to uphold him in his quackery. Justice demands that he take that fake corporation, made solely to evade the law, and shake its guts out and tell the men who put up this job, that he’ll put them all in jail for contempt of court if they try any such shenanigan in his jurisdiction again. That would be justice. This–this decision–is humbug and every one knows it. What’s more–it may be murder. For men can’t work on that slag dump ten hours a day without losing their lives.”

The captain tapped away at his sprocket. He had his own ideas about the sanctity of the courts. They were not to be overthrown so easily. The Doctor snorted: “Burn their bodies, and blear their minds, and then wail about our vicious lower classes–I’m getting to be an anarchist.”

He prodded his cane among the débris on the floor and then he began to twitch the loose skin of his lower face and smiled. “Thank you, Cap,” he chirped. “How good and beautiful a thing it is to blow off steam in a barn to your old army friend.”

The Captain looked around and smiled and the Doctor asked: “What was that you were saying about Violet Hogan?”

“I said I saw her to-day and she looked faded and old–she’s not so much older than my Emma–eh?”

“Still,” said the Doctor, “Violet’s had a tough time–a mighty tough time; three children in six years. The last one took most of her teeth; young horse doctor gave her some dope that about killed her; she’s done all the cooking, washing, scrubbing and made garden for the family in that time–up every morning at five, seven days in the week to get breakfast for Dennis–Emma would look broken if she’d had that.” The Doctor paused. “Like her mother–weak–vain–puts all of Denny’s wages on the children’s backs–Laura says Violet spends more on frills for those kids than we spend for groceries–and Violet goes around herself looking like the Devil before breakfast.” The Doctor rested his chin on his cane. “Remember her mother–Mrs. Mauling–funny how it breeds that way. The human critter, Cap, is a curious beast–but he does breed true–mostly.” The Doctor loafed, whistling, around the work shop, prodding at things with his cane, and wound up leaning against one end of the bench.