In the Heart of a Fool
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“Well, Tom–” piped the Doctor as he grasped the sweaty, cold hands of the young orator, “if Yengst had been innocent do you suppose you could have done as well?”
Van Dora, gave his sandwich to a passing dog, and took the Doctor’s arm as they walked to their common stairway. Before they had walked a dozen steps the Doctor had unfolded a situation in local politics that needed attention, and Van Dorn could not lead the elder man back to further praises of his speech. Yet the young lawyer knew that he had moved the Doctor deeply.
That night in his office Tom Van Dorn and Henry Fenn sat with their feet in the window sill, looking through the open window into the moon. In their discourse they used that elaborate, impersonal anonymity that youth engages to carry the baggage of its intimate confidences.
“I’ve got to have a pretty woman, Henry,” quoth the lawyer to his friend, while the moon blushed behind a cloud. “She must have beauty above everything, and after that good manners, and after that good blood.”
The moon came out and smiled at Henry. “Tom, let me tell you something, I don’t care! I used to think I’d be pickey and choosey. But I know my own heart. I don’t care! I’m the kind of fellow, I guess, who just gets it bad and comes down all broken out with it.” He turned his glowing smile into Tom Van Dorn’s face, and finding no quick response smiled whimsically back at the moon.
“Some fellows are that way, Henry,” assented Van Dorn, “but not I! I couldn’t love a servant girl no matter how pretty she was–not for keeps, and I couldn’t love an ugly princess, and I’d leave a bluestocking and elope with a chorus girl if I found the bluestocking crocked or faded in the wash! Yet a beautiful woman, who remained a woman and didn’t become a moral guide–” he stared brazenly at the moon and in the cloud that whisked by he saw a score of fancies of other women whose faces had shone there, and had passed. He went on: “Oh, she could hold me–she could hold me–I think!”
The street noises below filled the pause. Henry rose, looked eagerly into the sky and wistfully at the moon as he spoke, “Hold me? Hold me?” he cried. “Why, Tom, though I’d fall into hell myself a thousand times–she couldn’t lose me! I’d still–still,” he faltered, “I’d still–” He did not finish, but sat down and putting his hand on the arm of his friend’s chair, he bent forward, smiled into the handsome young face in the moonlight and said: “Well–you know the kind of a fool I am, Tom–now!”
“That’s what you say, Henry–that’s what you say now.” Van Dorn turned and looked at his friend. “You’re sticking it out all right, Henry–against the rum fiend–I presume? When does your sentence expire?”
“Next October,” answered Fenn.
“Going to make it then?”
“That’s the understanding,” returned Fenn.
“And you say you’ve got it bad,” laughed Van Dorn. “And yet–say, Henry–why didn’t you do better with the jury this afternoon in the Yengst case? Doesn’t it–I mean that tremendous case you have on with the Duchess of Müller–doesn’t it put an edge on you? What was the matter with you to-day?”
Fenn shook his head slowly and said: “It’s different with me. I just couldn’t help feeling that if I was worth any woman’s giving herself–was worth anything as a man, I’d want to be dead square with that Yengst creature–and I got to thinking, maybe in his place, drunk and hungry–well, I just couldn’t, Tom–because–because of–well, I wanted her to marry a human being first–not a county attorney!”
“You’re a damn fool!” retorted Van Dorn. “Do you think you’ll succeed in this world on that basis! I tell you if I was in love with a woman I’d want to take that Yengst case and lay it before her as a trophy I’d won–lay it before her like a dog!”
Fenn hesitated. He disliked to give pain. But finally he said, “I suppose, Tom, I’d like to lay it before her–like a man!”
“Hell’s delight!” sneered Van Dorn, and they turned off the subject of the tender passion, and went to considering certain stipulations that Van Dorn was asking of the county attorney in another matter before the court.
The next day young Thomas Van Dorn began rather definitely to prepare his pleading in still another suit in another court, and before the summer’s end, Morty Sands’s mandolin was wrapped in its chamois skin bag and locked in its mahogany case. Sometimes Morty, whistling softly and dolefully, would pass the Nesbit home late at night, hoping that his chirping might reach her heart; at times he made a rather formal call upon the entire Nesbit family, which he was obviously encouraged to repeat by the elders. But Morty was inclined to hide in the thicket of his sorrow and twitter his heart out to the cold stars. Tom Van Dorn pervaded the Nesbit home by day with his flowers and books and candy, and by night–as many nights a week as he could buy, beg or steal–by night he pervaded the Nesbit home like an obstinate haunt.
He fell upon the whole family and made violent love to the Doctor and Mrs. Nesbit. He read Browning to the Doctor and did his errands in politics like a retrieving dog. Mrs. Nesbit learned through him to her great joy that the Satterthwaite, who was the maternal grandfather of the Tory governor of Maryland, was not descended from the same Satterlee hanged by King John in his war with the barons, but from the Sussex branch of the family that remained loyal to the Crown. But Tom Van Dorn wasted no time or strength in foolishness with the daughter of the house. His attack upon her heart was direct and unhalting. He fended off other suitors with a kind of animal jealousy. He drove her even from so unimportant a family friend as Grant Adams.
Gradually, as the autumn deepened into winter and Tom Van Dorn found himself spending more and more time in the girl’s company he had glimpses of his own low estate through the contrast forced upon him daily by his knowledge of what a good woman’s soul was. The self-revelation frightened him; he was afraid of what he saw inside himself in those days, and there can be no doubt that for a season his soul was wrestling with its doom for release. No make-believe passion was it that spurred him forward in his attack upon the heart of Laura Nesbit. Within him, there raged the fierce battle between the spirit of the times–crass, material and ruthless–and the spirit of things as they should be. It was the old fight between compromise and the ideal.
As for the girl, she was in that unsettled mind in which young women in their first twenties often find themselves when sensing by an instinct new to them the coming of a grown-up man with real matrimonial intentions. Given a girl somewhat above the middle height, with a slim, full-blown figure, with fair hair, curling and blowing about a pink and white face, and with solemn eyes–prematurely gray eyes, her father called them–with red lips, with white teeth that flashed when she smiled, and with a laugh like the murmur of gay waters; given a more than usual amount of inherited good sense, and combine that with a world of sentiment that perfect health can bring to a girl of twenty-two; then add one exceptionally fascinating man of thirty–more or less–a handsome young man; a successful man as young men go, with the oratorical temperament and enough of a head to be a good consulting lawyer as well as a jury lawyer with more than local reputation; add to the young man that vague social iridescence, or aura or halo that young men wear in glamor, and that old men wear in shame–a past; and then let public opinion agree that he is his own worst enemy and declare that if he only had some strong woman to take hold of him–and behold there are the ingredients of human gunpowder!
Doctor Nesbit smelled the burning powder. Vainly he tried to stamp out the fire before the explosion.
“Bedelia,” said the Doctor one day, as the parents heard the girl talking eagerly with the young man, “what do you make out of this everlasting ‘Tom, Tom, Tom,’ out there in the living room?”
Mrs. Nesbit rocked in her chair and shook an ominous head. Finally she said: “I wish he’d Tom himself home and stay there, Doctor.” The wife spoke as an oracle with emphasis and authority. “You must speak to the child!”
The little man puckered his loose-skinned face into a sad, absurdly pitiful smile and shrilled back:
“Yes–I did speak to her. And she–” he paused.
“Well?” demanded the mother.
“She just fed me back all the decent things I have said of Tom when he has done my errands.” He drummed his fingers helplessly on his chair and sighed mournfully: “I wonder why I said those things! I really wonder!”
But the voices of the young people rose gayly and disturbed his musings.
It is easy now after a quarter of a century has unfolded its events for us to lay blame and grow wise in retrospect. It is easy to say that what happened was foredoomed to happen; and yet here was a man, walking up and down the curved verandahs that Mrs. Nesbit had added to the house at odd times, walking up and down, and speaking to a girl in the moonlight, with much power and fire, of life and his dreams and his aspirations.
Over and over he had sung his mating song. Formerly he had made love as he tried lawsuits, exhibiting only such fervor as the case required. There can be no doubt, however, that when he made love to Laura Nesbit, it was with all the powers of his heart and mind. If he could plead with a jury for hire, if he could argue with the court and wrangle with council, how could he meet reason, combat objections, and present the case of his soul and make up the brief for his own destiny?
He did not try to shield himself when he wooed Laura Nesbit, but she saw all that he could be. A woman has her vanity of sex, her elaborate, prematernal pride in her powers, and when man appeals to a woman’s powers for saving him, when he submits the proofs that he is worth saving, and when he is handsome, with an education in the lore of the heart that gives him charm and breaks down reserves and barriers–but these are bygones now–bygones these twenty-five years and more. What was to be had to be, and what might have been never was, and what their hopes and high aims were, whose hearts glowed in the fires of life in Harvey so long ago–and what all our vain, unfruited hopes are worth, only a just God who reads us truly may say. And a just God would give to the time and the place, the spirit of the age, its share in all that followed.
CHAPTER VIII
CAPTAIN MORTON ACTS AS COURT HERALD AND MORTY SANDS AND GRANT ADAMS HEAR SAD NEWS
Spring in Mrs. Nesbit’s garden, even in those days when a garden in Harvey meant chiefly lettuce and radishes and peas, was no casual event. Spring opened formally for the Nesbits with crocuses and hyacinths; smiled genially in golden forsythia, bridal wreath and tulips, preened itself in flags and lilacs before glowing in roses and peonies. Now the spring is always wise; for it knows what the winter only hopes or fears. Events burst forth in spring that have been hidden since their seedtime. And it was with the coming of the first crocuses that Dr. Nesbit found in his daughter’s eyes a joyous look, new and exultant–a look which never had been inspired by the love he lavished upon her. It was not meant for him. Yet it was as truly a spring blossom as any that blushed in the garden. When it came and when the father realized that the mother also saw it, they feared to speak of it–even to themselves and by indirection.
For they knew their winter conspiracies had failed. In vain was the trip to Baltimore; in vain was the week with grand opera in New York, and they both knew that the proposed trip to Europe never would occur. When the parents saw that look of triumphant joy in their daughter’s face, when they saw how it lighted up her countenance like a flame when Tom Van Dorn was near or was on his way to her, they knew that from the secret recesses of her heart, from the depths of her being, love was springing. They knew that they could not uproot it, and they had no heart to try. For they accepted love as a fact of life, and felt that when once it has seeded and grown upon a heart, it is a part of that heart and only God’s own wisdom and mercy may change the destiny that love has written upon the life in which love rests. So in the wisdom of the spring, the parents were mute and sad.
There was no hint of anger in their sorrow. They realized that if she was wrong, and they were right, she needed them vastly more than if they were wrong and she was right, and so they tried to rejoice with her–not of course expressly and baldly, but in a thousand ways that lay about them, they made her as happy as they could. Their sweet acquiescence in what she knew was cutting the elders to the quick, gave the girl many an hour of poignant distress. Yet the purpose of her heart was not moved. The Satterthwaite in her was dominant.
“Doctor,” spoke the wife one morning as they sat alone over their breakfast, “I think–” She stopped, and he knew she was listening to the daughter, who was singing in an undertone in the garden.
“Yes,” he answered, “so do I. I think they have settled it.”
The man dropped his glance to the table before him, where his hands rested helplessly and cried, “Bedelia–I don’t–I don’t like it!”
The color of her woe darkened Mrs. Nesbit’s face as her features trembled for a second, before she controlled herself. “No, Jim–no–no! I don’t–I’m afraid–afraid, of I don’t know what!”
“Of course, he’s of excellent family–the very best!” the wife ventured.
“And he’s making money–and has lots of money from his people!” returned the father.
“And he’s a man among men!” added the mother.
“Oh, yes–very much that,–and he’s trying to be decent! Honestly, Bedelia, I believe the fellow’s got a new grip on himself!” The Doctor’s voice had regained its timbre; it was just a little hard, and it broke an instant later as he cried: “O Lord, Lord, mother–we can’t fool ourselves; let’s not try!” They looked into the garden, where the girl stood by the blooming lilacs with her arms filled with blossoms.
At length the mother spoke, “What shall we do?”
“What can we do?” the Doctor echoed. “What can any human creatures do in these cases! To interfere does no good! The thing is here. Why has it come? I don’t know.” He repeated the last sentence piteously, and went on gently:
“‘They say it was a stolen tide–the Lord who sent it, He knows all!’ But why–why–why–did it wash in here? What does it mean? What have we done–and what–what has she done?”
The little Doctor looked up into the strong face of his wife rather helplessly, then the time spirit that is after all our sanity–touched them, and they smiled. “Perhaps, Jim,” the smile broke into something almost like a laugh, “father said something like that to mother the day I stood among the magnolias trying to pluck courage with the flowers to tell him that I was going with you!”
They succeeded in raising a miserable little laugh, and he squeezed her hand.
The girl moved toward the house. The father turned and put on his hat as he went to meet her. She was a hesitant, self-conscious girl in pink, who stopped her father as he toddled down the front steps with his medicine case, and she put her hand upon him, saying:
“Father,” she paused, looking eagerly at him, then continued, “there’s the loveliest yellow flag over here.” The father smiled, put his arm about the girl and piped: “So the pink rosebud will take us to the yellow flag!” They walked across the garden to the flower and she exclaimed: “Oh, father–isn’t it lovely!”
The father looked tenderly into her gray eyes, patted her on the shoulder and with his arm still about her, he led her to a seat under the lilacs before the yellow flower. He looked from the flower to her face and then kissed her as he whispered: “Oh my dear, my dear.” She threw her arms about him and buried her face, all flushed, upon his shoulder. He felt her quiver under the pressure of his arm and before she could look at him, she spoke:
“Oh, father! Father! You–you won’t–you won’t blame–” Then she lifted up her face to his and cried passionately: “But all the world could not stop it now–not now! But, oh, father, I want you with me,” and she shook his arm. “You must understand. You must see Tom as I see him, father.” She looked the question of her soul in an anxious, searching glance. Her father reached for one of her hands and patted it. He gazed downward at the yellow iris, but did not see it.
“Yes, dear, I know–I understand.”
“I was sure that you would know without my spelling it all out to you. But, oh, father,” she cried, “I don’t want you and mother to feel as you do about Tom, for you are wrong. You are all–all wrong!”
The Doctor’s fat hand pressed the strong hand of the girl. “Well,” he began slowly, his high-keyed voice was pitched to a soft tone and he spoke with a woman’s gentleness, “Tom’s quite a man, but–” he could only repeat, “quite a man.” Then he added gently: “And I feel that he thinks it’s genuine now–his–love for you, daughter.” The Doctor’s face twitched, and he swallowed a convulsive little sob as he said, “Laura–child–can’t you see, it really makes no difference about Tom–not finally!” He blinked and gulped and went on with renewed courage. “Can’t you see, child–you’re all we’ve got–mother and I–and if you want Tom–why–” his face began to crumple, but he controlled it, and blurted out, “Why by johnnie you can have him. And what’s more,” his voice creaked with emotion as he brought his hand down on his knee, “I’m going to make Tom the best father-in-law in the whole United States.” His body rocked for a moment as he spurred himself to a last effort. Then he said: “And mother–mother’ll be–mother will–she’ll make him–” he could get no further, but he felt the pressure of her hand, and knew that she understood. “Mother and I just want you to be happy and if it takes Tom for that–why Tom’s what it takes, I guess–and that’s all we want to know!”
The girl felt the tears on his face as she laid her cheek against his.
Then she spoke: “But you don’t know him, father! You don’t understand him! It’s beautiful to be able to do what I can do–but,” she shuddered, “it’s so awful–I mean all that devil that used to be in him. He is so ashamed, so sorry–and it’s gone–all gone–all, every bit of it gone, father!” She put her father’s hand to her flaming cheek and whispered, “You think so, don’t you, father?”
The father’s eyes filled again and his throat choked. “Laura,” he said very gently, “my professional opinion is this: You’ve a fighting chance with Tom Van Dorn–about one in ten. He’s young. You’re a strong, forceful woman–lots of good Satterthwaite in you, and precious little of the obliging Nesbits. Now I’ll tell you the truth, Laura; Tom’s got a typical cancer on his soul. But he’s young; and you’re young, and just now he’s undergoing a moral regeneration. You are new blood. You may purify him. If the moral tissue isn’t all rotten, you may cure him.”
The girl gripped her father’s hand and cried: “But you think I can–father, you think I can?”
“No,” piped the little man sadly, “no, daughter, I don’t think you can. But I hope you can; and if you’d like to know, I’m going to pray the God that sent me to your mother to give you the sense and power He gave her.” The Doctor smiled, withdrew his arm, and started for the street. He turned, “And if you do save him, Laura, I’ll be mighty proud of you. For,” he squeaked good naturedly, “it’s a big job–but when you’ve done it you’ll have something to show for it–I’ll say that for him–you’ll certainly have something to show for it,” he repeated. He did not whistle as he walked down the street and the daughter thought that he kept his eyes upon the ground. As he was about to pass from her view, he turned, waved his hand and threw her a kiss, and with it she felt a blessing.
But curiously enough she saw only one of the goodly company of Doctor Nesbits that trudged down the hill in his white linen suit, under his broad-brimmed panama hat. Naturally she hardly might be expected to see the conscienceless boss of Hancock and Greely counties, who handled the money of privilege seekers and bought and sold men gayly as a part of the day’s work. Nor could she be expected to see the helpless little man whose face crumpled, whose heart sank and whose courage melted as he stood beside her in the garden, the sad, hopeless little man who, as he went down the hill was captain of the groups that walked under his hat that hour. The amiable Doctor, who was everybody’s friend and was loyal to those who served him, the daughter neglected that day; and the State Senator did not attract her. She saw only a gentle, tender, understanding father, whose love shone out of his face like a beacon and who threw merry kisses as he disappeared down the hill–a ruddy-faced, white phantom in a golden spring day!
Some place between his home and Market Street the father retired and the politician took command of Dr. Nesbit’s soul. And he gave thought to the Nesbit machine. The job of the moment before the machine was to make George Brotherton, who had the strength of a man who belonged to all the lodges in town, mayor of Harvey. “Help Harvey Hump” was George’s alliterative slogan, and the translation of the slogan into terms of Nesbitese was found in a rather elaborate plan to legalize the issuance of bonds by the coal and oil towns adjacent to Harvey, so that Daniel Sands could spin out his web of iron and copper and steel,–rails and wires and pipes into these huddles of shanties that he might sell them light and heat and power and communication and transportation.
Even the boss–even Old Linen Pants–was not without his sense of humor, nor without his joyous moments when he relished human nature in large, raw portions. As he walked down the hill there flashed across his mind a consciousness of the pride of George Brotherton in his candidacy. That pride expressed itself in a feud George had with Violet Mauling who, having achieved stenography, was installed in the offices of Calvin & Van Dorn as a stenographer–the stenographer in fact. She on her part was profoundly proud of her job and expressed her pride in overhanging and exceeding mischievous looking bangs upon her low and rather narrow brow. In the feud between George and Violet, it was her consecrated task to keep him waiting as long as possible before admitting him to Van Dorn’s inner room, and it was Mr. Brotherton’s idea never to call her by her right name, nor by any name twice in succession. She was Inez or Maude or Mabel or Gwendolyn or Pet or Sweetheart or Dearest, in rapid succession, and in return for his pseudonymnal attentions, Mr. Brotherton always was sure of receiving from Miss Mauling upon leaving the office, an elaborately turned-up nose. For Miss Mauling was peevish and far from happy. She had been conscious for nearly a year that her power over young Mr. Van Dorn was failing, or that her charms were waning, or that something was happening to clog or cloy her romance. On a certain May morning she had sat industriously writing, “When in the course of human events,” “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary,” “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to separate–” upon her typewriter, over and over and over again, while she listened to Captain Morton selling young Mr. Van Dorn a patent churn, and from the winks and nods and sly digs and nudges the Captain distributed through his canvass, it was obvious to Miss Mauling that affairs in certain quarters had reached a point.
That evening at Brotherton’s Amen corner, where the gay young blades of the village were gathered–Captain Morton decided that as court herald of the community he should proclaim the banns between Thomas Van Dorn and Laura Nesbit. Naturally he desired a proper entrance into the conversation for his proclamation, but with the everlasting ting-aling and tym-ty-tum of Nathan Perry’s mandolin and the jangling accompaniment of Morty’s mandolin, opening for the court herald was not easy. Grant Adams was sitting at the opposite end of the bench from the Captain, deep in one of Mr. Brotherton’s paper bound books–to-wit, “The Stones of Venice,” and young Joe Calvin sadly smoking his first stogy, though still in his knickerbockers, was greedily feasting his eyes upon a copy of the pink Police Gazette hanging upon a rack above the counter. Henry Fenn and Mr. Brotherton were lounging over the cigar case, discussing matters of state as they affected a county attorney and a mayor, when the Captain, clearing his throat, addressed Mr. Brotherton thus: