Being a methodical woman Mrs. Herdicker, Prop., wrote the copy for her advertisement 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 passed 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 208Henry 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.
209CHAPTER 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 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 210steps, 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.