In the Heart of a Fool. White William Allen
Van Dorn had touched his black wing of hair, his soft mustache and the crimson flower on his coat, he had himself well in hand and had planned his defense and counter attacks. He spoke softly:
“Now, Father Jim–I’m not–” he put a touch of feeling in the “not,” “going to give up the Mauling girl. When I’m elected next month, I’m going to make her my court stenographer!” He looked the Doctor squarely in the face and paused for the explosion which came in an excited, piping cry:
“Why, Tom, are you crazy! Take her all over the three counties of this district with you? Why, boy–” But Judge Van Dorn continued evenly: “I don’t like a man stenographer. Men make me nervous and self-conscious, and I can’t give a man the best that’s in me. And I propose to give my best to this job–in justice to myself. And Violet Mauling knows my ways. She doesn’t interpose herself between me and my ideas, so I am going to make her court stenographer next month right after the election.”
When the Doctor drew in a breath to speak, Van Dorn put out a hand, checked the elder man and said blandly and smilingly, “And, Father Jim, I’m going to be elected–I’m dead sure of election.”
The Doctor thought he saw a glint of sheer malicious impudence in Van Dorn’s smile as he finished speaking: “And anyway, pater, we mustn’t quarrel right now–Just at this time, Laura–”
“You’re a sly dog, now, ain’t you! Ain’t you a sly dog?” shrilled the Doctor in sputtering rage. Then the blaze in his eyes faded and he cried in despair: “Tom, Tom, isn’t there any way I can put the fear of God into you?”
Van Dorn realized that he had won the contest. So he forbore to strike again.
“Doctor Jim, I’m afraid you can’t jar me much with the fear of God. You have a God that sneaks in the back door of matter as a kind of a divine immanence that makes for progress and Joe Calvin in there has a God with whiskers who sits on a throne and runs a sort of police court; but one’s as impossible as the other. I have no God at all,” his chest swelled magnificently, “and here’s what happens”:
He was talking against time and the Doctor realized it. But his scorn was crusting over his anger and he listened as the young Judge amused himself: “I’ve defended gamblers and thugs–and crooks, some rich, some poor, mostly poor and mostly guilty. And Joe has been free attorney for the law and order league and has given the church free advice and entertained preachers when he wasn’t hiding out from his wife. And he’s gone to conference and been a deacon and given to the Lord all his life. And now that it’s good business for him to have me elected, can he get a vote out of all his God-and-morality crowd? Not a vote. And all I have to do is to wiggle my finger and the whole crowd of thugs and blacklegs and hoodlums and rich and poor line up for me–no matter how pious I talk. I tell you, Father Jim–there’s nothing in your God theory. It doesn’t work. My job is to get the best out of myself possible.” But this was harking back to Violet Mauling and the young Judge smiled with bland impertinence as he finished, “The fittest survive, my dear pater, and I propose to keep fit–to keep fit–and survive!”
The Doctor’s anger cooled, but the pain still twinged his heart, the pain that came as he saw clearly and surely that his daughter’s life was bound to the futile task of making bricks without straw. Deep in his soul he knew the anguish before her and its vain, continual round of fallen hopes. As the young Judge strutted up and down the Doctor’s office, the father in the elder man dominated him and a kind of contemptuous pity seized him. Pity overcame rage, and the Doctor could not even sputter at his son-in-law. “Fit and survive” kept repeating themselves over in Dr. Nesbit’s mind, and it was from a sad, hurt heart that he spoke almost kindly: “Tom–Tom, my boy, don’t be too sure of yourself. You may keep fit and you may survive–but Tom, Tom–” the Doctor looked steadily into the bold, black eyes before him and fancied they were being held consciously from dropping and shifting as the Doctor cried: “For God’s sake, Tom, don’t let up! Keep on fighting, son, God or no God–you’ve got a devil–keep on fighting him!”
The olive cheeks flushed for a fleeting second. Van Dorn laughed an irritated little laugh. “Well,” he said, turning to the door, “be over to-night?–or shall we come over? Anything good for dinner?”
A minute later he came swinging into his own office. He pulled a package from his pocket. “Violet,” he said, going up to her writing desk and half sitting upon it, as he put the package before her, “here’s the candy.”
He picked up her little round desk mirror, smiled at her in it, and played rather idly about the desk for a foolish moment before going to his own desk. He sat looking into the street, folding a sheet of blank paper. When it became a wad he snapped it at the young woman. It hit her round, beautiful neck and disappeared into her square-cut bodice.
“Get it out for you if you want it?” He laughed fatuously.
The girl flashed quick eyes at him, and said, “Oh, I don’t know,” and went on with her work. He began to read, but in a few minutes laid his book down.
“How’d you like to be a court stenographer?” The girl kept on writing. “Honest now I mean it. If I win this election and get this job for the two years of unexpired term, you’ll be court stenographer–pays fifteen hundred a year.” The girl glanced quickly at him again, with fire in her eyes, then looked conspicuously down at the keyboard of the writing machine.
“I couldn’t leave home,” she said finally, as she pulled out a sheet of paper. “It wouldn’t be the thing–do you think so?”
He put his feet on the desk, showing his ankles of pride, and fingering his mustache, smiling a squinty smile with his handsome, beady eyes as he said: “Oh, I’d take care of you. You aren’t afraid of me, are you?”
They both laughed. And the girl came over with a sheet of paper. “Here is that Midland Valley letter. Will you sign it now?”
He managed to touch her hand as she handed him the sheet, and again to touch her bare forearm as he handed it back after signing it. For which he got two darts from her eyes.
A client came in. Joseph Calvin hurried in and out, a busy little rat of a man who always wore shiny clothes that bagged at the knees and elbows. George Brotherton crashed in through the office on city business, and so the afternoon wore away. At the end of the day, Thomas Van Dorn and Miss Mauling locked up the office and went down the hall and the stairs to the street together. He released her arm as they came to the street, and tipped his hat as she rounded the corner for home. He saw the white-clad Doctor trudging up the low incline that led to Elm Street.
Dr. Nesbit was asking the question, Who are the fit? Who should survive? His fingers had been pinched in the door of the young Judge’s philosophy and the Doctor was considering much that might be behind the door. He wondered if it was the rich and the powerful who should survive. Or he thought perhaps it is those who give themselves for others. There was Captain Morton with his one talent, pottering up and down the town talking all kinds of weather, and all kinds of rebuffs that he might keep the girls in school and make them ready to serve society; yet according to Tom’s standards of success the Captain was unfit; and there was George Brotherton, ignorant, but loyal, foolishly blind, of a tender heart, yet compared with those who used his ignorance and played upon his blindness (and the Doctor winced at his part in that game) Mr. Brotherton was cast aside among the world’s unfit; and so was Henry Fenn, fighting with his devil like a soldier; and so was Dick Bowman going into the mines for his family, sacrificing light and air and the joy of a free life that the wife and children might be clad, housed and fed and that they might enjoy something of the comforts of the great civilization which his toil was helping to build up around them; yet in his grime Dick was accounted exceedingly unfit. Dick only had a number on the company’s books and his number corresponded to a share of stock and it was the business of the share of stock to get as much out of Dick and give him back as little, and to take as much from society in passing for coal as it could, and being without soul or conscience or feeling of any kind, the share of stock put the automatic screws on Dick–as their numbers corresponded. And for squeezing the sweat out of him the share was accounted unusually fit, while poor Dick–why he