In the Heart of a Fool. White William Allen
apart from the body which they served.
“I’m cut out for work. It’s all right. That’s my job, and I’m proud of it so far as that goes. I could get a place clerking if I wanted to, and be in the dancing crowd in six months, and be out to the Van Dorns for dinner in a year.” He paused and looked into the distant valley and cried. “But I tell you–my job is down there. And I’m not going to quit them. God knows they’re getting the rough end of it. If you knew,” his voice raised slightly and a petulant indignation tempered it. “If you knew the gouging and pocket picking and meanness that is done by the people up town to the people down there in the smoke, you’d be one of those howling red-mouthed anarchists you read about.”
The girl looked at him silently and at length asked: “For instance–what’s just one thing?”
“Well, for instance–in the mines where I work all the men come up grimy and greasy and vile. They have to wash. In Europe we roughnecks know that wash-houses are provided by the company, but here,” he cried excitedly, “the company doesn’t provide even a faucet; instead the men–father and son and maybe a boarder or two have to go home–into those little one and two roomed houses the company has built, and strip to the hide with the house full of children and wash. What if your girlhood had been used to seeing things like that–could you laugh as you laugh now?” He looked up at her savagely. “Oh, I know they’re ignorant foreigners and little better than animals and those things don’t hurt them–only if you had a little girl who had to be in and out of the single room of your home when the men came home to wash up–”
He broke off, and then began again, “Why, I was talking to a dago last night at the shaft mouth going down to work on the graveyard shift and he said that he came here believing he would find a free, beautiful country in which his children could grow up self-respecting men and women, and then he told me about his little girls living down there where all the vice is scattered through the tenements, and–about this washing up proposition, and now one of the girls is gone and they can’t find her.” He threw out a despairing hand; “So I’m a roughneck, Laura–I’m a jay, and I’m going to stay with them.”
“But your people,” she urged. “What about them–your father and brothers?”
“Jap’s climbing out. Father’s too old to get in. And Kenyon–” he flinched, “I hope to God I’ll have the nerve to stay when the test on him comes.” He turned to the girl passionately: “But you–you–oh, you–I want you to know–” He did not finish the sentence, but rose and walked into the house and called: “Dad–Kenyon–come on, it’s getting late. Stars are coming out.”
Half an hour later Tom Van Dorn, in white flannels, with a red silk tie, and with a white hat and shoes, came striding across the lawn. His black silky mustache, his soft black hair, his olive skin, his shining black eyes, his alert emotional face, dark and swarthy, was heightened even in the twilight by the soft white clothes he wore.
“Hello, popper-in-law,” he cried. “Any room left on the veranda?”
“Come in, Thomas,” piped the older man. “The girls are doing the dishes, Bedelia and Laura, and we’ll just sit out two or three dances.”
The young man lolled in the hammock shaded by the vines. The elder smoked and reflected. Then slowly and by degrees, as men who are feeling their way to conversation, they began talking of local politics. They were going at a high rate when the talk turned to Henry Fenn. “Doing pretty well, Doctor,” put in the younger man. “Only broke over once in eighteen months–that’s the record for Henry. Shows what a woman can do for a man.” He looked up sympathetically, and caught the Doctor’s curious eyes.
The Doctor puffed, cleaned out his pipe, absently put it away, then rose and deliberately pulled his chair over to the hammock: “Tom–I’m a generation older than you–nearly. I want to tell you something–” He smiled. “Boy–you’ve got the devil’s own fight ahead of you–did you know it–I mean,” he paused, “the–well, the woman proposition.”
Van Dorn fingered his mustache, and looked serious.
“Tom,” the elder man chirped, “you’re a handsome pup–a damn handsome, lovable pup. Sometimes.” He let his voice run whimsically into its mocking falsetto, “I almost catch myself getting fooled too.”
They laughed.
“Boy, the thing’s in your blood. Did you realize that you’ve got just as hard a fight as poor Henry Fenn? It’s all right now–for a while; but the time will come–we might just as well look this thing squarely in the face now, Tom–the time will come in a few years when the devil will build the same kind of a fire under you he is building under Henry Fenn–only it won’t be whisky; it will be the woman proposition. Damn it, boy,” cried the elder man squeakily, “it’s in your blood; you’ve let it grow in your very blood. I’ve known you ten years now, and I’ve seen it grow. Tom–when the time comes, can you stand up and fight like Henry Fenn–can you, Tom? And will you?” he cried with a piteous fierceness that stirred all the sympathy in the young man’s heart.
He rose to the height of the Doctor’s passion. Tears came into Van Dorn’s bright eyes. His breast expanded emotionally and he exclaimed: “I know what I am, oh, I know it. But for her–you and I together–you’ll help and we’ll stand together and fight it out for her.” The father looked at the mobile features of his companion, and sensed the thin plating of emotion under the vain voice. Whereupon the Doctor heaved a deep, troubled sigh.
“Heigh-ho, heigh-ho.” He put his arm upon the broad, handsome, young shoulder. “But you’ll try to be a good boy, won’t you–” he repeated. “Just try hard to be a good boy, Tom–that’s all any of us can do,” and turning away he whistled into the house and a girlish trill answered him.
After the Doctor had jogged down the hill behind his old horse making his evening professional visits, Mrs. Nesbit came out and made a show of sitting with the young people for a time. And not until she left did they go into those things that were near their hearts.
When Mrs. Nesbit left the veranda the young man moved over to the girl and she asked: “Tom, I wonder–oh, so much and so often–about the soul of us and the body of us–about the justice of things.” She was speaking out of the heart that Grant had touched to the quick with his outburst about the poor. But Tom Van Dorn could not know what was moving within her and if he had known, perhaps he would have had small sympathy with her feeling. Then she said: “Oh, Tom, Tom, tell me–don’t you suppose that our souls pay for the bodies that we crush–I mean all of us–all of us–every one in the world?”
The man looked at her blankly. Then he put his arm tenderly about her and answered: “I don’t know about our souls–much–” He kissed her. “But I do know about you–your wonderful eyes–and your magic hair, and your soft cheek!” He left her in no doubt as to her lover’s mood.
Vaguely the girl felt unsatisfied with his words. Not that she doubted the truth of them; but as she drew back from him she said softly: “But if I were not beautiful, what then?”
“Ah, but you are–you are; in all the world there is not another like you for me.” In the rapture that followed, her soul grew in a wave of joy, yet she spoke shyly.
“Tom,” she said wistfully, “how can you fail to see it–this great, beautiful truth that makes me glad: That the miracle of our love proves God.”
He caressed her hands and pressed closer to her. “Call it what you will, little girl: God if it pleases you, I call it nature.”
“Oh, it’s bigger than that, Tom,” and she shook a stubborn Satterthwaite head, “and it makes me so happy and makes me so humble that I want to share it with all the world.” She laid an abashed cheek on his hands that were still fondling hers.
But young Mr. Van Dorn spoke up manfully, “Well, don’t you try sharing it. I want all of it, every bit of it.” He played with her hair, and relaxed in a languor of complete possession of her.
“Doesn’t love,” she questioned, “lift you? Doesn’t it make you love