In the Heart of a Fool

by William Allen White

254For our lives are not material, whatever our bodies may be. Our lives are the accumulations of consciousness, the assembling of our memories, our affections, our judgments, our aspirations, our weaknesses, our strength–the vast sum of all our impressions, good or bad, made upon a material plate called the brain. The brain is of the dust. The picture–which is a human life–is of the spirit. And the spirit is of God. And when by whatever laws of chance or greed, or high purpose or low desire two lives are joined until the cement of years has united the myriads of daily sensations that make up a segment of these lives, they are thus joined in the spirit forever.

Now Thomas Van Dorn went about his free life day by day, glorying in his liberty. But strands of his old life, floating idly and unnoticed through minutes of his hourly existence, kept tripping him and bothering him. His meals, his clothes, his fixed habits of work, the manifold creature comforts that he prized–all the associations of his life with home–came to him a thousand, thousand times and cut little knife-edged rents in the fabric of his new freedom.

And he would have said a year before that it was physically impossible for one child–one small, fair-haired child of five, with pleading face and eager eyes–to meet a man so often in a given period of time, as Lila met him. At first he had avoided her; he would duck into stores; hurry up stairways, or hide himself in groups of men on the sidewalk when he saw her coming. Then there came a time when he knew that the little figure was slipping across the street to avoid him because his presence shamed her with her playmates.

He had never in his heart believed that the child meant much to him. She was merely part of the chain that held him, and yet now that she was not of him or his interests, it seemed to Thomas Van Dorn that she made a piteous figure upon the street, and that the sadness that flitted over her face when she saw him, in some way reproached him, and yet–what right had she in him–or why should he let her annoy him, or disturb his peace and the happiness that his freedom brought. Materially he noticed that she was well fed, well dressed, and he knew that she was well housed. What more could she have–but that was absurd. He 255couldn’t wreck his life for the mere chance that a child should be petted a little. There was no sense in such a proposition. And Thomas Van Dorn’s life was regulated by sense–common sense–horse sense, he called it.

It is curious–and scores of Tom Van Dorn’s friends wondered at it then and have marveled at it since, that in the six months which elapsed between his divorce and his remarriage, he did not fathom the shallowness and pretense of Margaret Fenn. But he did not fathom them. Her glib talk taken mechanically from cheap philosophy about being what you think you are, about shifting moral responsibility onto good intentions, about living for the present and ignoring the past with the uncertain future, took him in completely. She used to read books to him, sitting in the glow of her red lamp-shade–a glow that brought out hidden hints of her splendid feline body, books which soothed his vanity and dulled his mind. In that day he fancied her his intellectual equal. He thought her immensely strong-minded, and clear headed. He contrasted her in thought with the wife he had put away, told Margaret that Laura was always puling about duty and getting her conscience pinched and whining about it. They agreed sitting there under the lamp, that they had been mates in some far-off jungle, that they had been parted and had been seeking one another through eons, and that when their souls met one of the equations of the physical universe was solved, and that their happiness was the adjustment of ages of wrong. She thought him the most brilliant of men; he deemed her the most wonderful of women, and the devil checked off two drunken fools in his inventory.

It was in those halcyon days of his courtship of Margaret Fenn, when he felt the pride of conquest of another soul and body strongly upon him, that Judge Thomas Van Dorn began to acquire–or perhaps to exhibit noticeably–the turkey gobbler gait, that ever afterward went with him, and became famous as the Van Dorn Strut. It was more than mere knee action–though knee action did characterize it prominently. The strut properly speaking began at the tip of his hat–his soft, black hat that sat so cockily upon his head. His head was thrown back as though he had been pulled by a 256check-rein. His shoulders swung jauntily–more than jauntily, call it insolently–as he walked, and his trunk swayed with some stateliness as his proud hands and legs performed their grand functions. But withal he bowed and smiled–with much condescension–and lifted his hat high from his handsome head, and when women passed he doffed it like a flag in a formal salute, and while his body spelled complacence, his face never lost the charm and grace and courtesy that drew men to him, and held them in spite of his faults.

One bitter cold December day, when the wind was blowing sleet down Market Street, and hardly a passer-by darkened the doors of the stores, the handsome Judge sailed easily into the Amen Corner, fumbled over the magazines, picked out a pocketful of cigars from the case, without calling Mr. Brotherton who was in the rear of the store working upon his accounts, lighted a cigar, and stood looking out of the frosted window at the deserted gray windy street, utterly ignoring the presence of Captain Morton who was pretending to be deeply buried in the National Tribune, but who was watching the Judge and trying to summon courage to speak. The Judge unbuttoned his modish gray coat that nearly reached his heels and put his hands behind him for a moment, as he puffed and pondered–apparently debating something.

“Judge,” said the Captain suddenly and then the Captain’s courage fell and he added, “Bad morning.”

“Yes,” acquiesced the Judge from his abstraction. In a long pause that followed, Captain Morton swallowed at least a peck of Adam’s apples that kept coming up to choke him, and then he cleared his throat and spoke:

“Tom–Tom Van Dorn–look around here.” He lowered his voice and went on, “I want to talk to you.” The Captain edged over on the bench.