His eyes filled and his voice needed a cough to prime it. The fire, glowing in Emma Morton"s eyes, steamed up George Brotherton"s will--the will which had sent him crashing forward in life from a train peddler to a purveyor of literature and the arts in Harvey. Deeds followed impulses with him swiftly, so in an instant the floor of the Morton cottage was shaking under his tread and with rash indifference, high and heroic, ignoring with equal disdain two t.i.ttering girls, an astonished little old man and a cold base burner, the big man stalked across the room and cried:
"Well, say--why, Emma--my dear!" He had her hands in his and was putting his arm about her as he bellowed: "Girls--" his voice broke under its heavy emotional load. "Why, dammit all, I"m your long-lost brother George! Cap, kick me, kick me--me the prize jacka.s.s--the grand sweepstake prize all these years!"
"No, no, George," protested the wriggling maiden. "Not--not here! Not--"
"Don"t you "no--no" me, Emmy Morton," roared the big man, pulling her to his side. "Girl--girl, what do we care?" He gave her a resounding kiss and gazed proudly around and exclaimed, "Ruthie, run and call up the _Times_ and give "em the news. Martha, call up old man Adams--and I"ll take a bell to-morrow and go calling it up and down Market Street.
Then, Cap, you tell Mrs. Herd.i.c.ker. This is the big news." As he spoke he was gathering the amazed Ruth and Martha under his wing and kissing them, crying, "Take that one for luck--and that to grow on." Then he let out his laugh. But in vain did Emma Morton try to squirm from his grasp; in vain she tried to quiet his clatter. "Say, girls, cl.u.s.ter around Brother George"s knee--or knees--and let"s plan the wedding."
"You are going to have a wedding, aren"t you, Emma?" burst in Ruth, and George cut in:
"Wedding--why, this is to be the big show--the laughing show, all the wonders of the world and marvels of the deep under one canvas. Why, girls--"
"Well, Emma, you"ve just got to wear a veil," laughed Martha hysterically.
"Veil nothing--shame on you, Martha Morton. Why, George hasn"t asked--"
"Now ain"t it the truth!" roared Brotherton. "Why veil! Veil?" he exclaimed. "She"s going to wear seven veils and forty flower girls--forty--count "em--forty! And Morty Sands best man--"
"Keep still, George," interrupted Ruth. "Now, Emma, when--when, I say, are you going to resign your school?"
Mr. Brotherton gave the youngest and most practical Miss Morton a look of quick intelligence. "Don"t you fret; Ruthie, I"m hog tied by the silken skein of love. She"s going to resign her school to-morrow."
"Indeed I am not, George Brotherton--and if you people don"t hush--"
But Mr. Brotherton interrupted the bride-to-be, incidentally kissing her by way of punctuation, and boomed on in his poster tone, "Morty Sands best man with his gym cla.s.s from South Harvey doing ground and lofty tumbling up and down the aisles in pink tights. Doc Jim in linen pants whistling the Wedding March to Kenyon Adams"s violin obligato, with the General hitting the bones at the organ! The greatest show on earth and the baby elephant in evening clothes prancing down the aisle like the behemoth of holy writ! Well, say--say, I tell you!"
The Captain touched the big man on the shoulder apologetically. "George, of course, if you could wait a year till the Household Horse gets going good, I could stake you for a trip to the Grand Canyon myself, but just now, "y gory, man!"
"Grand Canyon!" laughed Brotherton. "Why, Cap, we"re going to go seven times around the world and twice to the moon before we turn up in Harvey. Grand Canyon--"
"Well, at least, father," cried Martha, "we"ll get her that tan traveling dress and hat she"s always wanted."
"But I tell you girls to keep still," protested the bride-to-be, still in the prospective groom"s arms and proud as Punch of her position.
"Why, George hasn"t even asked me and--"
"Neither have you asked me, Emma, ""eathen idol made of mud what she called the Great G.o.d Buhd."" He stooped over tenderly and when his face rose, he said softly, "And a plucky lot she cared for tan traveling dresses when I kissed her where she stud!" And then and there before the Morton family a.s.sembled, he kissed his sweetheart again, a middle-aged man unashamed in his joy.
It was a tremendous event in the Morton family and the Captain felt his responsibility heavily. The excited girls, half-shocked and half-amused and wholly delighted, tried to lead the Captain away and leave the lovers alone after George had hugged them all around and kissed them again for luck. But the Captain refused to be led. He had many things to say. He had to impress upon Mr. Brotherton, now that he was about to enter the family, the great fact that the Mortons were about to come into riches. Hence a dissertation on the Household Horse and its growing popularity among makers of automobiles; Nate Perry"s plans in blue print for the new factory were brought in, and a wilderness of detail spread before an ardent lover, keen for his first hour alone with the woman who had touched his bachelor heart. A hundred speeches came to his lips and dissolved--first formal and ardent love vows--while the Captain rattled on recounting familiar details of his dream.
Then Ruth and Martha rose in their might and literally dragged their father from the room and upstairs. Half an hour later the two lovers in the doorway heard a stir in the house behind them. They heard the Captain cry:
"The hash--George, she"s the best girl--"Y gory, the best girl in the world. But she will forget to chop the hash over night!"
As George Brotherton, b.u.mping his head upon the eternal stars, turned into the street, he saw the great black hulk of the Van Dorn house among the trees. He smiled as he wondered how the ceremonies were proceeding in the Temple of Love that night.
It was not a ceremony fit for smiles, but rather for the tears of G.o.ds and men, that the priest and priestess had performed. Margaret Van Dorn had taken Kenyon home, then dropped Lila at the Nesbit door as she returned from South Harvey. When she found that her husband had not reached home, she ran to her room to fortify herself for the meeting with him. And she found her fortifications in the farthest corner of the bottom drawer of her dresser. From its hiding place she brought forth a little black box and from the box a brown pellet. This fortification had been her refuge for over a year when the stress of life in the Temple of Love was about to overcome her. It gave her courage, quickened her wits and loosened her tongue. Always she retired to her fortress when the combat in the Temple threatened to strain her nerves. So she had worn a beaten path of habit to her refuge.
Then she made herself presentable; took care of her hair, smoothed her face at the mirror and behind the shield of the drug she waited. She heard the old car rattling up the street, and braced herself for the struggle. She knew--she had learned by bitter experience that the first blow in a rough and tumble was half the battle. As he came raging through the door, slamming it behind him, she faced him, and before he could speak, she sneered:
"Ah, you coward--you sneaking, cur coward--who would murder a child to win--Ach!" she cried. "You are loathsome--get away from me!"
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 shield--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 rushing 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,"