William White - In the Heart of a Fool

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 every living thing?” she urged.

“I love only you–only you in all the world–your eyes thrill me; when your body is near I am mad with delight; when I touch you I am in heaven. When I close my eyes before the jury I see you and I put the bliss of my vision into my voice, and,” he clinched his hands, “all the devils of hell couldn’t win that jury away from me. You spur me to my best, put springs in every muscle, put power in my blood.”

“But, Tom, tell me this?” Still wistfully, she came close to him, and put her chin on her clasped hands that rested on his shoulder. “Love makes me want to be so good, so loyal, so brave, so kind–isn’t it that way with you? Isn’t love the miracle that brings the soul out into the world through the senses.” She did not wait for his answer. She clasped her hands tighter on his shoulder. “I feel that I’m literally stealing when I have a single thought that I do not bring to you. In every thrill of my heart about the humblest thing, I find joy in knowing that we shall enjoy it together. Let me tell you something. Grant Adams and his father were here to-day for dinner. Well, you know Grant is in a kind of obsession of love for that little motherless child Mrs. Adams left; Grant mothers him and fathers him and literally loves him to distraction. And Grant’s growing so manly, and so loyal and so strong in the love of that little boy–he doesn’t realize it; but I can see it in him. Oh, Tom, can you see it in me?”

Before her mood had changed she told him all that Grant Adams had said; and her voice broke when she retold the Italian’s story. Tears were in her eyes when she finished. And young Mr. Van Dorn was emotionally touched also, but not in sympathy with the story the girl was telling. She ended it:

“And then I looked at Grant’s big rough hands–bony and hairy, and Tom, they told me the whole story of his destiny; just as your soft, effective, gentle white hands prophesy our destiny. Oh, why–why–I am beginning to wonder why, Tom, why things must be so. Why do some of us have to do all the world’s rough, hard, soul-killing work, and others of us have lives that are beautiful, aspiring, glorious? How can we let such injustices be, and not try to undo them!”

In his face an indignation was rising which she could not comprehend. Finally he found words to say:

“So that’s what that Adams boy is putting in your head! Why do you want to bother with such nonsense?”

But the girl stopped him: “Tom, it’s not nonsense. They do work and dig and grind down there in a way which we up here know nothing about. It’s real–this–this miserable unfair way things are done in the world. O my dear, my dear, it’s because I love you so, it’s because I know now what love really is that it hurts to see–” He took her face in his hands caressingly, and tried to put an added tenderness into his voice that his affection might blunt the sharpness of his words.

“Well, it’s nonsense I tell you! Look here, Laura, if there is a God, he’s put those dagos and ignorant foreigners down there to work; just as he’s put the fish in the sea to be caught, and the beasts of the field to be eaten, and it’s none of my business to ask why! My job is myself–myself and you! I refuse to bear burdens for people. I love you with all the intensity of my nature–but it’s my nature–not human nature–not any common, socialized, diluted love; it’s individual and it’s forever between you and me! What do I care for the rest of the world! And if you love me as you will some day, you’ll love me so that they can’t set you off mooning about other people’s troubles. I tell you, Laura, I’m going to make you love me so you can’t think of anything day or night but me–and what I am to you! That’s my idea of love! It’s individual, intimate, restricted, qualified and absolutely personal–and some day you’ll see that!”