In the Heart of a Fool Part 37

For Mr. Brotherton's commercial spirit could not permit him to withhold the fact that he had enlarged his business by adding such household necessities as wall paper and such business necessities as stationery and office supplies. Thus the town referred ever after to Mr.

Brotherton's "Sweet serenity of Books and Wallpaper," and so it was known of men in Harvey.

When Mrs. Van Dorn entered, she was surprised; for while she had heard casually of the changes in Mr. Brotherton's establishment, she was not prepared for the effulgence of refined and suppressed grandeur that greeted her.

Mr. Brotherton, in a three b.u.t.toned frock coat, a rich black ascot tie and suitable gray trousers, came forward to meet her.

"Ah, George," she exclaimed in her baby voice, "really what a lit-ry,"

that also was from her Chicago friend, "what a lit-ry atmosphere you have given us."

Mr. Brotherton's smile pleaded guilty for him. He waved her to a seat among the red cus.h.i.+ons. "How elegant," she simpered, "I just think it's perfectly swell. Just like Marshall Field's. I must bring Mrs.

Merrifield in when she comes down--Mrs. Merrifield of Chicago. You know, Mr. Brotherton," it was the wife of the Judge who spoke, "I think we should try to cultivate those whose wide advantages make our a.s.sociation with them a liberal education. What is it Emerson says about Friends.h.i.+p--in that wonderful essay--I'm sure you'll recall it."

And Mr. Brotherton was sure he would too, and indicated as much, for as he had often said to Mr. Fenn in their literary confidences, "Emerson is one of my best moving lines." And Mrs. Van Dorn continued confidentially: "Now there's a book, a German book--aren't those Germans candid--you know I'm of German extraction, and I tell the Judge that's where I get my candor. Well, there's a German book--I can't p.r.o.nounce it, so I've written it out--there; will you kindly order it?" Mr.

Brotherton took the slip and went to the back of the store to make a memorandum of the order. He left the book counter in charge of Miss Calvin--Miss Ave Calvin--yes, Miss Ave Maria Calvin, if you must know her full name, which she is properly ashamed of. But it pleased her mother twenty years before and as Mr. Calvin was glad to get into the house on any terms when the baby was named, it went Ave Maria Calvin, and Ave Maria Calvin stood behind the counter reading the _Bookman_ and trying to remember the names of the six best sellers so that she could order them for stock.

Mrs. Van Dorn, who kept Mrs. Calvin's one card conspicuously displayed in her silver card case in the front hall, saw an opportunity to make a little social hay, so she addressed Miss Calvin graciously: "Good morning, Ave--how is your dear mother? What a charming effect Mr.

Brotherton has produced!" Then Mrs. Van Dorn dropped the carefully modulated voice a trifle lower: "When the book comes that I just ordered, kindly slip it to one side; I wouldn't have Mr. Brotherton--he might misunderstand. But you can read it if you wish--take it home over night. It's very broadening."

When Mr. Brotherton returned the baby voice prattled at him. The voice was saying, "I was just telling Ave how dead swell it is here. I just can't get over it--in Harvey--dear old Harvey; do you remember when I was a little school teacher down in the Prospect schoolhouse and you used to order Chautauqua books--such an innocent little school girl--don't you remember? We wouldn't say how long ago that was, would we, Mr. Brotherton? Oh, dear, no. Isn't it nice to talk over old times?

Did you know the Jared Thurstons have left Colorado and have moved to Iowa where Jared has started another paper? Lizzie and I used to be such chums--she and Violet and I--where is Violet now, Mr. Brotherton? Oh, yes, I remember Mrs. Herd.i.c.ker said she lives next door to the kindergarten--down in South Harvey. Isn't it terrible the way Anne Sands did--just broke her father's heart. And Nate Perry quarrelling with ten million dollars. Isn't this a strange world, Mr. Brotherton?"

Mr. Brotherton confessed for the world and Mrs. Van Dorn shook her over-curled head sadly. She made some other talk with Mr. Brotherton which he paraphrased later for Henry Fenn and when Mrs. Van Dorn went out, Mr. Brotherton left the door open to rid the room of the scent of attar of roses and said to Miss Calvin:

"Well, s--," but checked himself and went on in his new character of custodian of "The Sweet Serenity of Books and Wall Paper," but he added as a compromise:

"'And for bonnie Annie Laurie' I certainly would make a quick get-away!"

After which reflection, Mr. Brotherton walked down the long store room to his dark stained desk, turned on the electric under the square copper shade, and began to figure up his accounts. But a little social problem kept revolving in his head. It was suggested by Mrs. Van Dorn and by something she had said. Beside Mrs. Van Dorn in her tailored gown and seal-skin, with her spanking new midwinter hat to match her coat, dragging the useless dog after her, he saw the picture of another woman who had come in the day before--a woman no older than Margaret Van Dorn--yet a broken woman, with rounded shoulders who rarely smiled, wis.h.i.+ng to hide her broken teeth, who wheeled one baby and led another, and shooed a third and slipped into the corner near the magazine counter and thumbed over the children's fas.h.i.+ons in the _Delineator_ eagerly and looked wistfully at the beautiful things in the store. Her red hands and brown skin showed that she had lived a rough, hard life, and that it had spent her and wasted her and taken everything she prized--and given her nothing--nothing but three overdressed children and a husband whose industrial status had put its heavy mark on her.

Mr. Brotherton's memory went back ten years, and recalled the two girls together--Violet and Margaret. Both were light-headed and vain; so far as their relations with Van Dorn were concerned, one was as blamable as the other. Yet one had prospered and the other had not--and the one who had apparently suffered most had upon the whole lived the cleaner, more normal life--and Mr. Brotherton drummed his penholder upon the black desk before him and questioned the justice of life.

But, indeed, if we must judge life's awards and benefits from the material side there is no justice in life. If there was any difference between the two women whom Tom Van Dorn had wronged--difference in rewards or punishments, it must have been in their hearts. It is possible that in her life of motherhood and wifehood, in the sacrifices that broke her body and scarred her face, Violet Mauling may have been compensated by the love she bore the children upon whom she lavished her life. For she had that love, and she did squander--in blind vain folly--the strength of her body, afterwards the price of her soul--upon her children. As for Margaret Van Dorn--Mr. Brotherton was no philosopher. He could not pity her. Yet she too had given all. She had given her mind--and it was gone. She had given her heart and it was gone also, and she had given that elusive blending of the heart and mind we call her soul--and that was gone, too. Mr. Brotherton could see that they were gone--all gone. But he could not see that her loss was greater than Violet's.

That night when Dennis Hogan came in for his weekly _Fireside Companion_ as he said, "for the good woman," Mr. Brotherton, for old sake's sake, put in something in paper backs by Marie Corelli, and a novel by Ouida; and then, that he might give until it hurt, he tied up a brand new _Ladies' Home Journal_, and said, as he locked up the store and stepped into the chill night air with Mr. Hogan: "Dennis--tell Violet--I sent 'em in return for the good turns she used to do me when I was mayor and she was in Van Dorn's office and drew up the city ordinances--she'll remember."

"Indeed she will, George Brotherton--that she will. Many's the night she's talked me to sleep of them golden days of her splendor--indeed she will."

They walked on together and Hogan said: "Well--I turn at the next crossin'. I'm goin' home and I'm glad of it. Up in the mornin' at five; off on the six-ten train, climbin' the slag dump at seven, workin' till six, home on the six-fifteen train, into the house at seven; to bed at ten, up at five, eat and work and sleep--sleep and eat and work, fightin' the dump by day and fightin' the fumes in me chist by night--all for a dollar and sixty a day; and if we jine a union, we get canned, and if we would seek dissipation, we're invited to go down to the Company hall and listen to Tommy Van Dorn norate upon what he calls the 'de-hig-nity of luh-ay-bor.' d.a.m.n sight of dignity labor has, lopin'

three laps ahead of the garnishee from one year's end to the other."

He laughed a good-natured, creaking laugh, and said as he waved his hand to part with Mr. Brotherton--"Well, annyhow, the good woman will thank you for the extra readin'; not that she has time to read it, G.o.d knows, but it gives the place a tone when Laura Nesbit drops in for a bit of a word of help about the makin' of the little white things she's doin' for the Polish family on 'D' Street these days." In another minute Brotherton heard the car moaning at the curve, and saw Hogan get in. It was nearly midnight when Hogan got to sleep; for the papers that Brotherton sent brought back "the grandeur that was Greece," and he had to hear how Mr. Van Dorn had made Mr. Brotherton mayor and how they had both made Dr. Nesbit Senator, and how ungrateful the Doctor was to turn against the hand that fed him, and many other incidents and tales that pointed to the renown of the unimpeachable Judge, who for seven years had reigned in the humble house of Hogan as a first-rate G.o.d.

That night Hogan tossed as the fumes in his lungs burned the tissues and at five he got up, made the fire, helped to dress the oldest child while his wife prepared the breakfast. He missed the six-ten car, and being late at work stopped in to take a drink at the Hot Dog, near the dump on the company ground, thinking it would put some ginger into him for the day's work. For two hours or so the whiskey livened him up, but as the forenoon grew old, he began to yawn and was tired.

"Hogan," called the dump-boss, "go down to the powder house and bring up a box of persuaders."

The slag was hard and needed blasting. Hogan looked up, said "What?" and before the dump boss could speak again Hogan had started down and around the dump to the powder house, near the saloon. He went into the powder house, and then came out, carrying a heavy box. At the sidewalk edge, Hogan, who was yawning, stumbled--they saw him stumble, two men standing in the door of the Hot Dog saloon a block away, and they told the people at the inquest that that was the last they saw. A great explosion followed. The men about the dump huddled for a long minute under freight cars, then crawled out, and the dump boss called the roll; Hogan was missing. In an hour they came and took Mrs. Hogan to the undertaker's room near the smelter--where so many women had stood beside death in its most awful forms. She had her baby in her arms, with another plucking at her skirts and she stood mutely beside the coffin that they would not open. For she knew what other women knew about the smelter, knew that when they will not open the coffin, it must not be opened. So the little procession rode to the Hogan home, where Laura Van Dorn was waiting.

Perhaps it was because she could not see the face of the dead that it seemed unreal to the widow. But she did not moan nor cry--after the first scream that came when she knew the worst. Stolidly she went through her tasks until after the funeral.

Then she called Laura into the kitchen and said, as she pressed out her black satin and tried to hide the threadbare seams that had been showing for years: "Mrs. Van Dorn, I'm going to do something you won't like." To Laura's questioning eyes Violet answered: "I know your ma, or some one else has told you all about me--but," she shut her mouth tightly and said slowly:

"But no matter what they say--I'm going to the Judge; he's got to make the railroad company pay and pay well. It's all I've got on earth--for the children. We have three dollars in my pocketbook and will have to wait until the fifteenth before I get his last month's wages, and I know they'll dock him up to the very minute of the day--that day! I wouldn't do it for anything else on earth, Mrs. Van Dorn--wild horses couldn't drag me there--but I'm going to the Judge--for the children. He can help."

So, putting on her bedraggled black picture hat with the red ripped off, Violet Hogan mounted the courthouse steps and went to the office of the Judge. A sorry, broken, haggard figure she cut there in the Judge's office. She would have told him her story--but he interrupted: "Yes, Violet--I read it in the _Times_. But what can I do--you know I'm not allowed to take a case and, besides, he was working for the railroad, and you know, Violet, he a.s.sumed the risk. What do they offer you?"

"Judge--for G.o.d's sake don't talk that way to me. That's the way you used to talk to those miners' wives--ugh!" she cried. "I remember it all--that a.s.sumed risk. Only this--he was working ten hours a day on a job that wouldn't let him sleep, and he oughtn't to be working but eight hours, if they hadn't sneaked under the law. They've offered me five hundred, Judge--five hundred--for a man, five hundred for our three children--and me. You can make them do better--oh, I know you can. Oh, please for the sake--oh!"

She looked at him with her battered face, and as her mouth quivered, she tried to hide her broken teeth. He saw she was about to give way to tears. He dreaded a scene. He looked at her impatiently and finally gripping himself after a decision, he said:

"Now, Violet, take a brace. Five hundred is what they always give in these cases." He smiled suavely at her and she noticed for the first time that his lip was bare and started at the cruel mouth that leered at her.

"But," he added expansively, "for old sake's sake--I'm going to do something for you." He rose and stood over her. "Now, Violet," he said, strutting the diagonal of his room, and smiling blandly at her, "we both know why I shouldn't give you my personal check--nor why you shouldn't have any cash that you cannot account for. But the superintendent of the smelter, who is also the general manager of the railroad, is under some obligations to me, and I'll give you this note to him." He sat down and wrote:

"For good reasons I desire one hundred dollars added to your check to the widow of Dennis Hogan who presents this, and to have the same charged to my personal account on your books."

He signed his name with a flourish, and after reading the note handed it to the woman.

She looked at him and her mouth opened, showing her broken, ragged teeth. Then she rose.

"My G.o.d, Tom Van Dorn--haven't you any heart at all! Six hundred dollars with three little children--and my man butchered by a law you made--oh,"

she cried as she shook her head and stood dry-eyed and agonized before him--"I thought you were a man--that you were my friend way down deep in your heart--I thought you were a man."

She picked up the paper, and at the door turned and said: "And you could get me thousands from the company for my hundreds by the scratch of your pen--and I thought you were a man." She opened the door, looked at him beseechingly, and repeating her complaint, turned away and left him.

She heard the click of the door-latch behind her and she knew that the man behind the door in whom she had put her faith was laughing at her.

Had she not seen him laugh a score of times in other years at the misery of other women? Had they not sat behind this door, he and she, and made sport of foolish women who came asking the disagreeable, which he ridiculed as the impossible? Had she not sat with him and laughed at his first wife, when she had gone away after some protest? The thought of his mocking face put hate into her heart and she went home hardened toward all the world. Laura Van Dorn was with the Hogan children, and when Violet entered the house, she gathered them to her heart with a mad pa.s.sion and wept--a woman without hope--a woman spurned and mocked in the only holy place she had in her heart.

Laura saw the widowed mother hysterically fondling the children, madly caressing them, foolishly chattering over them, and when Violet made it clear that she wished to be alone, Laura left. But if she could have heard Violet babbling on during the evening, of the clothes she would buy for the youngsters, about the good times they would have with the money, about the ways they were going to spend the little fortune that was theirs, Laura Van Dorn--thrifty, frugal, shrewd Laura, might have helped the thoughtless woman before it was too late. But even if Laura had interfered, it would have been but for a few months or a few years at most.

The end was inevitable--whether it had been five hundred or six hundred or five thousand or six thousand. For Violet was a prodigal bred and born. At first she tried to get some work. But when she found she had to leave the children alone in the house or in care of a neighbor or on the streets, she gave up her job. For when she came home, she found the foolish frills and starched tucks in which she kept them, dirty and torn, and some way she felt that they were losing social caste by the low estate of their clothes, so she bought them silks and fine linens while her money lasted, and when it was gone in the spring--then they were hungry, and needy; and she could not leave them by day.

If the poor were always wise, and the rich were always foolish, if hards.h.i.+p taught us sense, and indulgence made us giddy, what a fine world it would be. How virtue would be rewarded. How vice would be rebuked. But wisdom does not run with social rank, nor with commercial rating. Some of us who are poor are exceedingly foolish, and some of those who are rich have a world of judgment. And Violet Hogan,--poor and mad with a mother love that was as insane as an animal's when she saw her children hungry and needy, knew before she knew anything else that she must live with them by day. So she went out at night--went out into the streets--not of South Harvey--but over into the streets of Foley, down to Magnus and Plain Valley--out into the dark places. There Violet by night took up the oldest trade in the world, and came home by day a mad, half crazed mothering animal who covers her young in dread and fear.

When Laura knew the truth--knew it surely in spite of Violet's studied deceptions, and her outright falsehoods, the silver in the woman's laugh was m.u.f.fled for a long time. She tried to help the mad mother; but the mother would not admit the truth, would not confess that she needed help. Violet maintained the fiction that she was working in the night s.h.i.+ft at the gla.s.s factory in Magnus, and by day she starched and ironed and pressed and washed for the overdressed children and as she said, "tried to keep them somebody." Moreover, she would not let them play with the dirty children of the neighborhood, but such is the fear of social taint among women, that soon the other mothers called their children home when the Hogan children appeared.

When Violet discovered that her trade was branding her children--she moved to Magnus and became part of the drab tide of life that flows by us daily with its heartbreak unheeded, its sorrows unknown, its anguish pent up and uncomforted.

Now much meditation on the fate of Violet Hogan and upon the luck of Margaret Van Dorn had made George Brotherton question the moral government of the universe and, being disturbed in his mind, he naturally was moved to language. So one raw spring day when no one was in the Amen Corner but Mr. Fenn, in a moment of inadvertent sobriety, Mr. Brotherton opened up his heart and spoke thus:

"Say, Henry--what's a yogi?" Mr. Fenn refused to commit himself. Mr.

Brotherton continued: "The Ex was in here the other day and she says that she thinks she's going to become a yogi. I asked her to spell it, and I told her I'd be for her against all comers. Then she explained that a yogi was some kind of an adept who could transcend s.p.a.ce and time, and--well say, I said 'sure,' and she went on to ask me if I was certain we were not thinking matter instead of realizing it, and I says:

"'I bite; what's the sell?'

"And the Ex says--'Now, seriously, Mr. Brotherton, something tells me that you have in your mind, if you would only search it out, vague intimations, left-over impressions of the day you were an ox afield.'

"And, well say, Henry, I says, 'No, madam, it is an a.s.s that rises in me betimes.'

"And the Ex says, 'George Brotherton, you just never can talk sense.'