In the Heart of a Fool Part 21

The thought of the quarter page advertis.e.m.e.nt overcame whatever scruples Mrs. Thurston may have had, and so long as she had the center of the stage she said her lines: "Why I don't know a single thing--only this: that for--maybe a month or so every few days along about five or six o'clock when the roads are good I've seen him coming one way on his wheel, and go down in the country on the Adams road, and about ten minutes later from another way she'd come riding along on her wheel and go down the Adams road into the country following him. Then in an hour or so, they come back, sometimes one of them first--sometimes the other, but I've really never seen them together. She might be going to the Adamses; she boarded there once years ago."

"Yes,--and she hates 'em!" snapped Mrs. Herd.i.c.ker derisively, and then added, "Well, it's none of my business so long as they pay for their hats."

"Well, my land, Mrs. Herd.i.c.ker," quoth Lizzie, "it's a comfort to hear some one talk sense. For two months now we've been hearing nothing but that fool Adams boy's crazy talk about unions, and men organizing to help their fellows, and--why did you know he's quit his job as boss carpenter in the mine? And for why--so that he can be a witness against the company some say; though there won't be any trial. Tom Van Dorn will see to that. He's sent word to the men that they'd better settle as the law is against them. But that Grant Adams quit his job any way and is going about holding meetings every night, and working on construction work above ground by day and talking union, union, union till Jared and I are sick of it. I tell you the man's gone daft. But a lot of the men are following him, I guess."

Being a methodical woman Mrs. Herd.i.c.ker, Prop., wrote the copy for her advertis.e.m.e.nt and let Mrs. Thurston go in peace. She went into the gathering twilight, and hurried to do a few errands before returning to South Harvey.

At the court house Mrs. Thursston met Henry Fenn coming out of the register of deeds office where he had been filing a deed to some property he had sold, and at Mr. Brotherton's Amen Corner, she saw Tom Van Dorn smoking upon the bench. The street was filled with bicycles, for that was a time when the bicycle was a highly respectable vehicle of business and pleasure. Mrs. Thurston left Market Street and a dozen wheels pa.s.sed her. As she turned into her street to South Harvey a bell tinkled. She looked around and saw Margaret Fenn making rapidly for the highway. Mrs. Thurston was human; she waited! And in five minutes Tom Van Dorn came by and went in the same direction!

An hour later Margaret Fenn came pedaling into the town from the country road, all smiling and breathless and red lipped, and full of color. As she turned into her own street she met her husband, immaculately dressed. He bowed with great punctiliousness and lifting his hat high from his head smiled a search-light of a smile that frightened his wife.

But he spoke no word to her. Five minutes later, as Tom Van Dorn wheeled out of Market Street, he also saw Henry Fenn, standing in the middle of the crossing leering at him and laughing a drunken, foolish, noisy laugh. Van Dorn called back but Fenn did not reply, and the Judge saw nothing in the figure but his drunken friend standing in the middle of the street laughing.

CHAPTER XX

IN WHICH HENRY FENN FALLS FROM GRACE AND RISES AGAIN

This chapter must devote itself chiefly to a bargain. In the bargain, Judge Thomas Van Dorn is party of the first part, and Margaret Fenn, wife of Henry Fenn, is party of the second part, and the devil is the broker.

Tom Van Dorn laid hungry eyes upon Margaret Fenn; Margaret Fenn looked ravenously upon all that Van Dorn had; his talent, his position, his worldly goods, estates and chattels. He wanted what she had. He had what she wanted, and by way of commission in negotiating the bargain, the devil took two souls--not such large souls so far as that goes; but still the devil seems to have been the only one in the transaction who profited.

June came--June and the soft night wind, and the warm stars; June with its new, deep foliage and its fragrant gra.s.s and trees and flowers; June with a mocking bird singing through the night to its brooding mate; June came with its poets leaning out of windows into the night hearing love songs in the rhythmic whisper of lagging feet strolling under the shade of elms. And under cover of a June night, breathing in the sensuous meaning of the time like a charmed potion, Judge Van Dorn, who personated justice to twenty-five thousand people, went forth a slinking, cringing beast to woo!

Here and there a lamp blinked through the foliage. The footfalls of late homecomers were heard a long way off; the voices of singers--a serenading party out baying at the night--was heard as the breeze carried the music upon its sluggish ebb and flow. To avoid belated homecomers, Judge Van Dorn crossed the street; the clanging electric car did not find him with its search-light, though he felt shielded by its roar as he stepped over the iron railing about the Fenn home and came softly across the lawn upon the gra.s.s.

On the verandah, hidden by summer vines, he sat a moment alone, panting, breathless, though he had come up but four steps, and had mounted them gently. A rustle of woman's garments, the creaking of a screen door, the perfume that he loved, and then she stood before him--and the next moment he had her in his arms. For a minute she surrendered without struggling, without protest, and for the first time their lips met. Then she warded him off.

"No--no, Tom. You sit there--I'll have this swing," and she slipped into a porch swing and finally he sat down.

"Now, Tom," she said, "I have given you everything to-night. I am entirely at your mercy; I want you to be as good to me as I have been to you."

"But, Margaret," he protested, "is this being good to me, to keep me a prisoner in this chair while you--"

"Tom," she answered, "there is no one in the house. I've just called Henry up by long distance telephone at the Secretary of State's office in the capitol building. I've called him up every hour since he got there this afternoon, to make him remember his promise to me. He hasn't taken a thing on this trip--I'm sure; I can tell by his voice, for one thing." The man started to speak. She stopped him: "Now listen, Tom.

He'll have that charter for the Captain's company within half an hour and will start home on the midnight train. That will give us just an hour together--all alone, Tom, undisturbed."

She stopped and he sprang toward her, but she fended him off, and gave him a pained look and went on as he sank moaning into his chair: "Tom, dear, how should we spend the first whole hour we have ever had in our lives alone together? I have read and re-read your beautiful letters, dear. Oh, I know some of them by heart. I am yours, Tom--all yours. Now, dear," he made a motion to rise, "come here by my chair, I want to touch you. But--that's all."

They sat close together, and the woman went on: "There are so many things I want to say, Tom, to-night. I wonder if I can think of any of them. It is all so beautiful. Isn't it?" she asked softly, and felt his answer in every nerve in his body, though his lips did not speak. It was the woman who broke the silence. "Time is slipping by, Tom. I know what's in your mind, and you know what's in mine. Where will this thing end? It can't go on this way. It must end now, to-night--this very night, Tom, dear, or we must know where we are coming out. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Margaret," replied the man. He gripped his arm about her, and continued pa.s.sionately, "And I'm ready." In a long minute of ecstasy they were dumb. He went on, "You have good cause--lots of cause--every one knows that. But I--I'll make it somehow--Oh, I can make it." He set his teeth fiercely, and repeated, "Oh, I'll make it, Margaret."

The night sounds filled their deaf ears, and the pressure of their hands--all so new and strange--filled them with joy, but the joy was shattered by a step upon the sidewalk, and until it died away they were breathless. Then they sat closer together and the woman whispered:

"'And I'd turn my back upon things eternal To lie on your breast a little while.'"

A noise in the house, perhaps of the cat moving through the room behind them, startled them again. The man shook and the woman held her breath; then they both smiled. "Tom--Tom--don't you see how guilty we are? We mustn't repeat this; this is our hour, but we must understand each other here and now." The man did not reply. He who had taken recklessly and ruthlessly all of his life had come to a place where he must give to take. His fortunes were tied up in his answer, so he replied: "Margaret, you know the situation--down town?"

"The judgeship?" she asked.

"Yes."

"But that will be settled in November. After that is time enough. Oh, eternity is time enough, Tom--I can wait and wait and wait--only if it is to be for eternity, we must not reckon with it now."

"Oh, Margaret, Margaret, Margaret--my soul's soul--I want you. I know no peace but to look into your eyes; I know no heaven but your smile--no G.o.d but your possession, no h.e.l.l but--but--this!" He pressed her hand to his lips and moaned a kind of human bellow of unrequited love--some long suppressed man's courting note that we had in the forest, and he grasped her in a flood of pa.s.sionate longing. She slipped away from him and stood up before him and said: "No,--No, no, my dear--my dear--I love you--Oh, I do love you, Tom--but don't--don't."

He started after her but she pushed him back with her powerful arms and held him. "Tom, don't touch me. Tom," she panted, "Tom." Her big meaningful eyes met his and she held him for a moment silent. He stepped back and she smiled and kissed his forehead when he had dropped into a chair.

"Now, Tom, time is slipping by. It's nearly midnight. We've got to talk sensibly and calmly. Sit here by me and be as sane as you can. We know we love one another. That's been said and resaid; that's settled. Now shall I first break for liberty--or will you? That must all be settled too. We can't just let things drift. I'm twenty-seven. You're thirty-five. Life is pa.s.sing. Now when?"

They shrank before the light of a street car rounding the corner, that gleamed into their retreat. When it had gone, the man bowed his fine, proud, handsome head, and spoke with his eyes upon the ground:

"You go first--you have the best cause!" She looked upon his cowardly, sloping shoulders, and thought a moment. It was the tigress behind the flame who stooped over him, pondering, feeling her way through events that she had been going over and over in her imagination for weeks. The feline caution that guided her, told her, as it had always told her, that his letters were enough to d.a.m.n him, but maybe not enough to hold him. She was not sure of men. Their standards might not be severe enough to punish him; he, knowing this, might escape. All this--this old query without answer went hurrying through her mind. But she was young; the spirit of adventure was in her. Henry Fenn, weak, vacillating, chivalrous, adoring Henry Fenn, had not conquered her; and the fire in her blood, and the ambition in her brain, came over her as a spell. She slipped to her knees, putting her head upon her lover's breast, and cried pa.s.sionately in a guttural murmur--"Yes, I'll go first, Tom--now, for G.o.d's sake, kiss me--kiss me and run." Then she sprang up: "Now, go--go--go, Tom--run before I take it back. Don't touch me again," she cried. "Go."

She slipped back into the door, then turned and caught him again and they stood for a terrible moment together. She whirled into the house, clicked the door after her and left him standing a-tremble, gaping and mad in the night. But she knew her strength, and knew his weakness and was not afraid.

She let him moan a wordless lovesong, very low and terrible in the night alone before the door, and did not answer. Then she saw him go softly down the steps, look up and down the street, move guiltily across the yard, hiding behind a bush at a distant footfall, and slip slowly into the sidewalk and go hurrying away from the house. In half an hour she was waiting for Henry Fenn as a cat might wait at a rat hole.

The next day little boys followed Henry Fenn about the streets laughing; Henry Fenn, drunken and debased, whose heart was bleeding. It was late in the afternoon when he appeared in the Amen Corner. His shooting stars were all exploded from their rocket and he was fading into the charred papier-mache of the reaction that comes from over exhilaration. So he sat on the walnut bench, back of the newspaper counter with his hands on his knees and his eyes staring at the floor while traffic flowed through the establishment oblivious to his presence. Mr. Brotherton watched Fenn but did not try to make him talk. There came a time when trade was slack that Fenn looked for a minute fixedly at Mr. Brotherton, and finally said, shaking his head sadly:

"She says I've got to quit!" A pause and another sigh, then: "She says if I ever get drunk again, she'll quit me like a dog." Another inspection of the floor; more lugubrious head-shaking followed, after which the eyes closed and the dead voice spoke:

"Well, here's her chance. Say, George," he tried to smile, but the light only flickered in his leaden eyes. "I guess I'm orey-eyed enough now to furnish a correct imitation of a gentleman in his cups?"

Fenn got up, took Brotherton back among the books at the rear of the store. The drunken man took from his pocket a fountain pen incased in a silver mounting. He held the silver trinket up and said:

"d.a.m.n his soul to h.e.l.l!"

"Let me see it--whose is it, Henry?" asked Brotherton. Fenn answered, "That's my business." He paused; then added "and his business." Another undecided moment, and then Fenn concluded: "And none of your business."

Suddenly he took his hands off the big man, and said, "I'm going home.

If she means business, here's her chance."

Brotherton tried to stop him, but Fenn was insistent. Customers were coming in, and so Brotherton let the man go. But all the evening he was worried about his friend. Absentmindedly he went over his stock, straightening up _Puck_ and _Judge_ and _Truth_ and _Life_, and putting the magazines in their places, sorting the new books into their shelf, putting the standard pirated editions of English authors in their proper place and squaring up the long rows of "The Bonnie Brier Bush" and "A Hazard of New Fortunes" where they would catch the buyers' eyes upon the counter, in freshly jostled ranks, even and inviting, after the day's havoc in Harvey's literary circles. But always Fenn's face was in Brotherton's mind. The chatter of the evening pa.s.sed without Brotherton realizing what it was all about. As for instance, between Grant Adams and Captain Morton over a sprocket which the Captain had invented and Henry Fenn had patented for the Captain. Grant on the other hand kept trying to tell the Captain about his unions organizing in the Valley, and neither was interested in what the other said, yet each was bursting with the importance of what he was saying. But even that comic dialogue could not take Mr. Brotherton's mind from the search of the sinister connection it was trying to discover, between the fountain pen and Henry Fenn.

So Brotherton, worried with the affairs of Fenn, was not interested and the Captain peddled his dream in other marts. With Fenn's ugly face on his mind, Brotherton saw young Judge Van Dorn swing in lightly, go through his daily pantomime, all so smoothly, so well oiled, so polished and polite, so courtly and affable, that for the moment Brotherton laid aside his fears and abandoned his suspicions. Then Van Dorn, after playing with his cigar, went to the stationery counter and remarked casually, "By the by, George, do you keep fountain pens?"

Mr. Brotherton kept fountain pens, and Judge Van Dorn said: "There--that one over by the ink eraser--yes, that one--the one in the silver casing--I seem to have mislaid mine. Yale men gave it to me at the reunion in '91, as president of the cla.s.s--had my initials on it--ten years--yes," he looked at the pen offered by the store keeper. "That will do." Mr. Brotherton watched the Judge as he put the pen in his vest pocket, after it had been filled.

The Judge picked up a Chicago paper, stowed it away with "Anglo-Saxon Supremacy" in his green bag. Then he swung gracefully out of the shop and left Mr. Brotherton wondering where and how Henry Fenn got that pen, and why he did not return it to its owner.

The air of mystery and malice--two unusual atmospheres for Henry Fenn to breathe--which he had put around the pen, impressed his friend with the importance of the thing.

"A mighty smooth proposition," said Grant Adams, sitting in the Amen Corner reading "A Hazard of New Fortunes," when Van Dorn had gone.