Part 46 (2/2)

The furious man rushed toward her with his hands clinched. She stood with her arms akimbo and said slowly:

”You try that--just try that.”

He stopped. She came over and rubbed her body against his, purring, with a pause after each word:

”You are a coward--aren't you?”

She put her fingers under his jaw, and sneered, ”If ever you lay hands on me--just one finger on me, Tom Van Dorn--” She did not finish her sentence.

The man uttered a shrill, insane cry of fury and whirled and would have run, but she caught him, and with a gross physical power, that he knew and dreaded, she swung him by force into a chair.

”Now,” she panted, ”sit down like a man and tell me what you are going to do about it? Look up--dawling!” she cried, as Van Dorn slumped in the chair.

The man gave her a look of hate. His eyes, that showed his soul, burned with rage and from his face, so mobile and expressive, a devil of malice gaped impotently at his wife, as he sat, a heap of weak vanity, before her. He pulled himself up and exclaimed:

”Well, there's one thing d.a.m.n sure, I'll not live with you any more--no man would respect me if I did after to-night.”

”And no man,” she smiled and said in her mocking voice, ”will respect you if you leave me. How Laura's friends will laugh when you go, and say that Tom Van Dorn simply can't live with any one. How the Nesbit crowd will t.i.tter when you leave me, and say Tom Van Dorn got just what he had coming! Why--go on--leave me--if you dare! You know you don't dare to.

It's for better or worse, Tom, until death do us part--dawling!”

She laughed and winked indecently at him.

”I will leave you, I tell you, I will leave you,” he burst forth, half rising. ”All the devils of h.e.l.l can't keep me here.”

”Except just this one,” she mocked. ”Oh, you might leave me and go with your present mistress! By the way, who is our latest conquest--dawling?

I'm sure that would be fine. Wouldn't they cackle--the dear old hens whose claws scratch your heart so every day?” She leaned over, caressing him devilishly, and cried, ”For you know when you get loose from me, you'll pretty nearly have to marry the other lady--wouldn't that be nice? 'Through sickness and health, for good or for ill,'--isn't it nice?” she scoffed. Then she turned on him savagely, ”So you will try to hide behind a child, and use him for a s.h.i.+eld--Oh, you cur--you despicable dog,” she scorned. Then she drew herself up and spoke in a pa.s.sion that all but hissed at him. ”I tell you, Tom Van Dorn, if you ever, in this row that's coming, harm a hair of that boy's head--you'll carry the scar of that hair to your grave. I mean it.”

Van Dorn sprang up. He cried: ”What business is it of yours? You she devil, what's the boy to you? Can't I run my own business? Why do you care so much for the Adams brat? Answer me, I tell you--answer me,” he cried, his wrath filling his voice.

”Oh, nothing, dawling,” she made a wicked, obscene eye at him, and simpered: ”Oh, nothing, Tom--only you see I might be his mother!”

She played with the vulgar diamonds that hid her fingers and looked down coyly as she smiled into his gray face.

”Great G.o.d,” he whispered, ”were you born a--” he stopped, ashamed of the word in his mouth.

The woman kept twinkling her indecent eyes at him and put her head on one side as she replied: ”Whatever I am, I'm the wife of Judge Van Dorn; so I'm quite respectable now--whatever I was once. Isn't that lawvly, dawling!” She began talking in her baby manner.

Her husband was staring at her with doubt and fear and weak, footless wrath playing like scurrying clouds across his proud, shamed face.

”Oh, Margaret, tell me the truth,” he moaned, as the fear of the truth baffled him--a thousand little incidents that had attracted his notice and pa.s.sed to be stirred up by a puzzled consciousness came rus.h.i.+ng into his memory--and the doubt and dread overcame even his hate for a moment and he begged. But she laughed, and scouted the idea and then called out in anguish:

”Why--why have you a child to love--to love and live for even if you cannot be with her--why can I have none?”

Her voice had broken and she felt she was losing her grip on herself, and she knew that her time was limited, that her fortifications were about to crumble. She sat down before her husband.

”Tom,” she said coldly, ”no matter why I'm fond of Kenyon Adams--that's my business; Lila is your business, and I don't interfere, do I? Well,”

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