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 grass 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 grass.
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 passionately, "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
God but your possession, no hell 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 passionate 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 passing. 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 damn 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 passionately in a guttural murmur--"Yes, I'll go first, Tom--now,
for God'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:
"Damn his soul to hell!"
"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 passed
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 class--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.
"Well, say, Grant," returned Mr. Brotherton, pondering on the subject of
the lost pen. "Sometimes I think Tom is just a little too oleaginous--a
little too oleaginous," repeated Mr. Brotherton, pleased with his big
word.
That June night Henry Fenn passed from Congress Street and walked with a
steady purpose manifest in his clicking heels. It was not a night's bat
that guided his feet, no festive orgy, but the hard, firm footfall of a
man who has been drunk a long time--terribly mean drunk. And terribly
mean drunk he was. His eyes were blazing, and he mumbled as he walked.
Down Market Street he turned and strode to the corner where the Traders'
National Bank sign shone under the electrics. He looked up, saw a light
burning in the office above, and suddenly changed his gait to a tip-toe.
Up the stairs he crept to a door, under which a light was gleaming. He
got a firm hold of the knob, then turned it quickly, thrust open the
door and stepped quietly into the room. He grinned meanly at Tom Van
Dorn who, glancing up over his shoulder from his book, saw the white
face of Fenn leering at him. Van Dorn knew that this was the time when
he must use all the wits he had.
"Why, hello--Henry--hello," said Van Dorn cheerfully. He coughed, in an
attempt to swallow the saliva that came rushing into his mouth. Fenn did
not answer, but stood and then began to walk around Van Dorn's desk,
eyeing him with glowing-red eyes as he walked. Van Dorn tipped back his
chair easily, put his feet on the desk before him, and spoke, "Sit down,
Henry--make yourself at home." He cleared his throat nervously.
"Anything gone wrong, Henry?" he asked as the man stood over him glaring
at him.
"No," replied Fenn. "No, nothing's gone wrong. I've just got some
exhibits here in a law suit. That's all."
He stood over Van Dorn, peering steadfastly at him. First he laid down a
torn letter. Van Dorn shuddered almost imperceptibly as he recognized in
the crumpled, wrenched paper his writing, but smiled suavely and said,
"Well?"
"Well," croaked Fenn passionately. "That's exhibit 'A'. I had to fight a
hell-cat for it; and this," he added as he lay down the silver-mounted
pen, "this is exhibit 'B'. I found that in the porch swing this morning
when I went out to get my drink hidden under the house." He cackled and
Van Dorn's Adam's apple bobbed like a cork upon a wave.
"And this," cried Fenn, as he pulled a revolver, "God damn you, is
exhibit 'C'. Now, don't you budge, or I'll blow you to hell--and," he
added, "I guess I'll do it anyway."
He stood with the revolver at Van Dorn's temple--stood over his victim
growling like a raging beast. His finger trembled upon the trigger, and
he laughed. "So you were going to have a convenient, inexpensive lady
friend, were you, Tom!" Fenn cuffed the powerless man's jaw with an open
hand.
"Private snap?" he sneered. "Well, damn your soul--here's a lady friend
of mine," he poked the cold barrel harder against the trembling man's
temple and cried: "Don't wiggle, don't you move." Then he went on: "Kiss
her, you damned egg-sucking pup--when you've done flirting with this,
I'm going to kill you."
He emphasized the "you," and prodded the man's face with the barrel.
"Henry," whispered Van Dorn, "Henry, for God's sake, let me talk--give
me a show, won't you?"
Fenn moved the barrel of the revolver over between the man's eyes and
cried passionately: "Oh, yes, I'll give you a show, Tom--the same show
you gave me."
He shifted the revolver suddenly and pulled the trigger; the bullet
bored a hole through the book on "Anglo-Saxon Supremacy" on the desk.
Fenn drew in a deep breath. With the shot he had spilled some vial of
wrath within him, though Van Dorn could not see the change that was
creeping into Fenn's haggard face.
"You see she'll shoot, Tom," said Fenn.
Holding the smoking revolver to the man's head, Fenn reached for a chair
and sat down. His rage was ebbing, and his mind was clear. He withdrew
the weapon a few inches, and cried:
"Don't you budge an inch."
His hand was limp and shaking, but Van Dorn could not see it. "Tom,
Tom," he cried. "God help me--help me." He repeated twice the word "me,"
then he went on:
"For being what I am--only what I am--" he emphasized the "I."
"For giving in to your devil as I give into mine--for falling as I have
fallen--on another road--I was going to kill you."
The revolver slipped from his hands. He picked it up by the barrel. He
rose crying in a weak voice,
"Oh, Tom, Tom, Tom," Van Dorn was lifting up in his chair, "Tom, Tom,
God help us both poor, hell-cursed men," sobbed Fenn, and then with a
fearful blow he brought the weapon down and struck the white, false
forehead that gleamed beneath Fenn's wet face.
He stood watching the man shudder and close his eyes, watching the blood
seep out along a crooked seam, then gush over the face and fine, black
hair and silken mustache. A bloody flood streamed there while he
watched. Then Fenn wiped dry the butt of his revolver. He felt of the
gash in the forehead, and found that the bone was not crushed. He was
sober, and an unnatural calm was upon his brain. He could feel the tears
in his eyes. He stood looking at the face of the unconscious man a long,
dreadful minute as one who pities rather than hates a foe. Then he
stepped to the telephone, called Dr. Nesbit, glanced at the fountain pen
and the crumpled letter, burst into a spasm of weeping, and tiptoed out
of the room.