In the Heart of a Fool Part 19

"Well, I don't know that I would say exactly a pig's tail," he returned, bracketing his words with his most engaging smile, "but I should say out of highly refractory material."

His eyes in the meantime pried up her eyelids and asked what was wrong with that. And her eyes were coy about it, and would not answer directly.

He went on speaking: "The whole labor trouble, it seems to me, lies in this whistle trade. A smattering of education has made labor dissatisfied. The laboring people are trying to get out of their place, and as a result we have strikes and lawlessness and disrespect for courts, and men going around and making trouble in industry by 'doing something for labor.'"

"Yes," she replied, "that is very true."

But her eyes--her big, liquid, animal eyes were saying, "How handsome you are--you man--you great, strong, masterful man with your brown ulster and brown hat and brown tie, and silken, black mustache." To which his eyes replied, "And you--you are superb, and such lips and such teeth," while what he trusted to words was:

"Yes--I believe that the laborer in the mines, for instance, doesn't care so much about what we would consider hards.h.i.+p. It's natural to him.

It would be hard for us, but he gets used to it! Now, the smelter men in that heat and fumes--they don't seem to mind it. The agonizing is done largely by these red-mouthed agitators who never did a lick of work in their lives."

Their elbows touched for a moment as they walked. He drew away politely and her eyes said:

"That's all right: I didn't mind that a bit." But her lips said: "That's what I tell Mr. Fenn, and, anyway, the work's got to be done and cultivated people can't do it. It's got to be done by the ignorant and coa.r.s.e and those kind of people."

His eyes flinched a little at "those kind" of people and she wondered what was wrong. But it was only for a moment that they flinched. Then they told her eyes how fine and desirable she looked, and she replied eyewise with a droop such as the old wolf might have used in replying to Red Riding Hood, "The better to eat you, my child." Then his voice spoke; his soft, false, vain, mushy voice, and asked casually: "By the way, speaking of Mr. Fenn--how is Henry? I don't see him much now since he's quit the law and gone into real estate."

His eyes asked plainly: Is everything all right in that quarter? Perhaps I might--

"Oh, I guess he's all right," and her eyes said: That's so kind of you, indeed; perhaps you might--

But he went on: "You ought to get him out more--come over some night and we'll make a hand at whist. Mrs. Van Dorn isn't much of a player, but like all poor players, she enjoys it." And the eyes continued: But you and I will have a fine time--now please come--soon--very soon.

"Yes, indeed--I don't play so well, but we'll come," and the eyes answered: That is a fair promise, and I'll be so happy. Then they flashed quickly: But Mrs. Van Dorn must arrange it. He replied: "I'll tell Mrs. Van Dorn you like whist, and she and you can arrange the evening."

Then they parted. He walked into the post office, and she walked on to the Wright & Perry store. But instead of returning to his office, he lounged into Mr. Brotherton's and sat on a bench in the Amen Corner, biting a cigar, waiting for traffic to clear out. Then he said: "George, how is Henry Fenn doing--really?"

His soft, brown hat was tipped over his eyes and his ulster, unb.u.t.toned, displayed his fine figure, and he was clearly proud of it. Brotherton hesitated while he invoiced a row of books.

"Old trouble?" prompted Judge Van Dorn.

"Old trouble," echoed Mr. Brotherton--"about every three months since he's been married; something terrible the last time. But say--there's a man that's sorry afterwards, and what he doesn't buy for her after a round with the joy-water isn't worth talking about. So far, he's been able to square her that way--I take it. But say--that'll wear off, and then--" Mr. Brotherton winked a large, mournful, devilish wink as one who was hanging out a storm flag. Judge Van Dorn twirled his mustache, patted his necktie, jostled his hat and smiled, waiting for further details. Instead, he faced a question:

"Why did Henry quit the law for real estate, Judge--the old trouble?"

Judge Van Dorn echoed, and added: "Folks pretty generally know about it, and they don't trust their law business in that kind of hands. Poor Henry--poor devil," sighed the young Judge, and then said: "By the way, George, send up a box of cigars--the kind old Henry likes best, to my house. I'm going to have him and the missus over some evening."

Mr. Brotherton's large back was turned when the last phrase was uttered, and Mr. Brotherton made a little significant face at his shelves, and the thought occurred to Mr. Brotherton that Henry Fenn was not the only man whom people pretty generally knew about. After some further talk about Fenn and his affairs, Van Dorn primped a moment before the mirror in the cigar cutter and started for the door.

"By the by, your honor, I forgot about the Mayor's miners' relief fund.

How is it now?" asked Van Dorn.

"Something past ten thousand here in the county."

"Any one beat my subscription?" asked Van Dorn.

Brotherton turned around and replied: "Yes--Amos Adams was in here five minutes ago. He has mortgaged his place and so long as he and Grant can't find kith or kin of Chopini, and Mrs. Herd.i.c.ker would take nothing--Amos has put $1,500 into the fund. Done it just now--him and Grant."

The Judge took the paper, looked at the scrawl of the Adamses, and scratching out his subscription, put two thousand where there had been one thousand. He showed it to Brotherton, and added with a smile:

"Who'll call that--I wonder."

And wrapping his ulster about him and c.o.c.king his hat rakishly, he went with some pride into the street. He was thirty-four years old and was accounted as men go a handsome dog, with a figure just turning from the litheness of youth into a slight rotundity of very early middle age. He carried his shoulders well, walked with a firm, straight gait--perhaps a little too much upon his toes for candor, but, with all, he was a well-groomed animal and he knew it. So he pa.s.sed Margaret Fenn again on the street, lifted his hat, hunted for her eyes, gave them all the voltage he had, and the smile that he shot at her was left over on his face for half a block down the street. People pa.s.sing him smiled back and said to one another:

"What a fine, good-natured, big-hearted fellow Tom Van Dorn is!"

And Mr. Van Dorn, not oblivious to the impression he was making, smiled and bowed and bowed and smiled, and h.e.l.lowed d.i.c.k, and howareyoued Hiram, and goodmorninged John, down the street, into his office. There he found his former partner busy with a laudable plan of defending a client. His client happened to be the Wahoo Fuel Company, which was being a.s.sailed by the surviving relatives of something like one hundred dead men. So Mr. Calvin was preparing to show that in entering the mine they had a.s.sumed the ordinary risks of mining, and that the neglect of their fellow servants was one of those ordinary risks. And as for the boy ten years old being employed in the mines contrary to law, there were some details of a trip to Austria for that boy and his parents, that had to be arranged with the steams.h.i.+p company by wire that very morning. The Judge sat reading the law, oblivious--judicially--to what was going on, and Joseph Calvin fell to work with a will. But what the young Judge, who could ignore Mr. Calvin's activities, could not help taking judicial notice of in spite of his law books, were those eyes out there on the street. They were indeed beautiful eyes and they said so much, and yet left much to the imagination--and the imagination of Judge Van Dorn was exceedingly nimble in those little matters, and in many other matters besides. Indeed, so nimble was his imagination that if it hadn't been for the fact that at Judge Van Dorn's own extra-judicial suggestion, every lawyer in town, excepting Henry Fenn, who had retired from the law practice, had been retained by the Company an hour after the accident, no one knows how many holes might have been found in Mr.

Joseph Calvin's unaided brief.

As the young Judge sat poring over his law book, Captain Morton came in and after the Captain's usual circ.u.mlocution he said:

"What I really wanted to know, Judge, was about a charter. I want to start a company. So I says to myself, Judge Tom, he can just about start me right. He'll get my company going--what say?" Answering the Judge's question about the nature of the company, the Captain explained: "You see, I had the agency for the Waverly bicycle here a while back, and I got one of their wheels and was fooling with it like a fellow will on a wet day--what say?" He smiled up at the Judge a self-deprecatory smile, as if to ask him not to mind his foolishness but to listen to his story.

"And when I got the blame thing apart, she wouldn't go together--eh? So I had to kind of give up the agency, and I took a churn that was filling a long-felt want just then. Churns is always my specialty and I forgot all about the bicycle--just like a fellow will--eh? But here a while back I wanted to rig up a gearing for the churn and so I took down the wreck of the old wheel, and dubbing around I worked out a ball-bearing sprocket joint--say, man, she runs just like a feather. And now what I want is a patent for the sprocket and a charter for the company to put it on the market. Henry Fenn's going to the capital for me to fix up the charter; and then whoopee--the old man's coming along, eh? When I get that thing on the market, you watch out for me--what say?"

The eyes of Margaret Fenn danced around the Captain's sprocket. So the Judge, thinking to get rid of the Captain and oblige the Fenns with one stroke, sent the Captain away with twenty-five dollars to pay Henry Fenn for getting the patent for the sprocket and securing the charter for the company.

As the Captain left the office of the Judge he greeted Mrs. Van Dorn with an elaborate bow.

And now enter Laura Van Dorn. And she is beautiful, too--with candid, wide-open gray eyes. Maturity has hardly reached her, but through the beauty of line and color, character is showing itself in every feature; Satterthwaite and Nesbit, force and sentiment are struggling upon her features for mastery. The January air has flushed her face and her frank, honest eyes glow happily. But when one belongs to the ancient, though scarcely Honorable Primrose Hunt, and rides forever to the hounds down the path of dalliance, one's wife of four years is rather stale sport. One does not pry up her eyelashes; they have been pried; nor does one hold dialogues with her under the words of conventional speech. The rules of the Hunt require one to look up at one's wife--chiefly to find out what she is after and to wonder how long she will inflict herself.

And when one is hearing afar the cry of the pack, no true sportsman is diverted from the chase by ruddy, wifely cheeks, and beaming, wifely eyes, and an eager, wifely heart. So when Laura his wife came into the office of the young Judge she found his heart out with the Primrose Hunt and only his handsome figure and his judicial mind accessible to her.

"Oh, Tom," she cried, "have you heard about the Adamses?" The young Judge looked up, smiled, adjusted his judicial mind, and answered without emotion: "Rather foolish, don't you think?"

"Well, perhaps it's foolish, but you know it's splendid as well as I.

Giving up everything they had on earth to soften the horror in South Harvey--I'm so proud of them!"

"Well," he replied, still keeping his chair, and letting his wife find a chair for herself, "you might work up a little pride for your husband while you're at it. I gave two thousand. They only gave fifteen hundred."

"Well--you're a dear, too." She touched him with a caressing hand. "But you could afford it. It means for you only the profits on one real estate deal or one case of Joe Calvin's in the Federal Court, where you can still divide the fees. But, Tom--the Adamses have given themselves--all they have--themselves. It's a very inspiring thing; I feel that it must affect men in this town to see that splendid faith."

"Laura," he answered testily, "why do you still keep up that foolish enthusiasm for perfectly unreasonable things? There was no sense in the Adamses giving that way. It was a foolish thing to do, when the old man is practically on the town. His paper is a joke. Sooner or later we will all have to make up this gift a dollar at a time and take care of him."

He turned to his law book. "Besides, if you come to that--it's money that talks and if you want to get excited, get excited over my two thousand. It will do more good than their fifteen hundred--at least five hundred dollars more. And that's all there is to it."

Her face twitched with pain. Then from some depths of her soul she hailed him impulsively:

"Tom, I don't believe that, and I don't believe you do, either--it isn't the good the money does those who receive; it's the good it does the giver. And the good it does the giver is measured by the amount of sacrifice--the degree of himself that he puts into it--can't you understand, Tom? I'd give my soul if you could understand."

"Well, I can't understand, Laura," impatiently; "that's your father's sentimental side. Of all the fool things," the Judge slapped the book sheet viciously, "that the old man has put into your head--sentiment is one of the foolest. I tell you, Laura, money talks. There are ten languages spoken in South Harvey, and money talks in all of them, and one dollar does as much as another, and that's all there is to it."

She rose with a little sigh. "Well," she said gently, "we won't quarrel." The wife looked intently at the husband, and in that flash of time from beneath her consciousness came renewed strength. Something primeval--the eternal uxorial upon which her whole life rested, possessed her and she smiled, and touched her husband's thick, black hair gently. For she felt that if the spiritual ties for the moment had failed them, she must pick up some other tie. She was the nest builder indomitable. If the golden thread should drop--there is the string--the straw--the horse hair--the twig. So Laura Van Dorn picked up an appeal to her husband's affections and continued her predestined work.

"Tom," she said, with her smile still on her face, "what I really and truly wanted to tell you was about Lila." The mention of the child's name brought quick light to the mother's face. "Lila--think of it, Tom--Lila," the mother repeated with vast pride. "You must come right out and see her. About an hour ago, she sat gazing at your picture on my dresser, and suddenly without a word from me, she whispered 'Daddy,' and then was as shy for a moment, then whispered it again, and then spoke it out loud, and she is as proud as Punch, and keeps saying it over and over! Tom--you must come out and hear it."

Perhaps it was a knotty point of law that held his mind, or perhaps it was the old beat of the hoofs on the turf of the Primrose Hunt that filled his ears, or the red coat of the fox that filled his eyes.

He smiled graciously and replied absently: "Well--Daddy--" And repeated "Daddy--don't you think father is--" He caught the cloud flas.h.i.+ng across her face, and went on: "Oh, I suppose daddy is all right to begin with."

He picked up his law book and the woman drew nearer to him. She put her hand over the page and coaxed: