Part 21 (2/2)
”The judges.h.i.+p?” 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.
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