The "smart set" of Elsinore was composed of the twelve women that could afford to lose most at bridge. Mrs. Balfame, who could ill afford to lose anything, but who was both a scientific and a lucky player, insisted upon moderate stakes. The other members of this inner exclusive circle were the wives of two bankers, three contractors, two prosperous merchants, one judge, one doctor, and two commuters who made their incomes in New York and slept in Elsinore. These ladies made it a point of honor to dine at seven, dress smartly and appropriately for all occasions, attend everything worth while to which they could obtain entrance in New York, pay an occasional visit to Europe, read the new novels and attend the symphony concerts. It is superfluous to add that the very foundation of the superior social status of each was a large house of the affluent type peculiar to the prosperous annexes of old communities, half brick and half wood, shallow, characterless, impersonal; and a fine car with a limousine top. The house stood in the midst of a lawn sloping to the street, unconfined by even the box hedge and undivided from the neighbouring grounds. The garage, little less pretentious than the mansion, also faced the street, for all to see. There was hardly a horse left in Elsinore; taxi cabs awaited the traveller at the station, and people that could not afford handsome cars purchased and enjoyed the inexpensive runabout.
Mrs. Balfame had segregated her smart set for strategic reasons, but that did not mean that both she and they were not kindness itself to the less favoured. Obviously, an imposing party cannot be given by twelve families alone, especially when almost half their number are childless. On all state occasions the list of invited numbered several hundred, in that town of some five thousand inhabitants.
It said much for the innate nobility of these wealthier dames of Elsinore, who read the New York society papers quite as attentively as they did the war news, that they submitted without a struggle to the dominance of a woman who never had possessed a car and whose husband's income was so often diverted from its natural course; but Mrs. Balfame not only outclassed them in inflexibility of purpose, but her family was as old as Brabant County; the Dawbarns had never been in what might be called the cavalry regiment, consisting of those few chosen ones living in old colonial houses set in large estates and with both roots and branches in the city of New York; but no one disputed their right to be called Captains of the infantry. And Mrs. Balfame, sole survivor in the direct line, had two wealthy cousins in Brooklyn.
Once in a while Dr. Anna, a privileged character, and born at least in Brabant County, took a hand at bridge, but she was a poor player, and, upon the rare occasions when she found time to spend a Saturday afternoon at the Country Club, preferred to rest in a deep chair and watch the young folks flirt and dance until the informal supper was ready. Never had she tripped a step, but she loved youth, and it gave her an acute old maid's delight to observe the childrengrow up; snub-nosed, freckled-faced awkward school girls develop at a flying leap into slim American prettiness, enhanced with every late exaggeration of style. She also approved heartily, on hygienic grounds, of the friends of her own generation dancing, even in public, if their partners were not too young and their forms too cumbersome.
Mrs. Balfame and Dr. Anna arrived at the Club shortly after four o'clock. Young people swarmed everywhere, within and without; perhaps twenty older matrons were sitting on the veranda knitting those indeterminate toilette accessories for the Belgians which always seemed to be about to halt at precisely the same stage of progress.
Mrs. Balfame, who had set the fashion, had not brought her needles to-day. She went directly to the card room; but her partner for the tournament not having arrived, she entertained her impatient friends with a recent domestic episode.
"I have a German servant, you know," she said, removing her wraps and taking her seat at the table. "A good creature and a hard worker, but leaden-footed and dull beyond belief. Still, I suppose even the dullest peasant has spite in her make-up. I have been reading tomes of books on the war, as you learned from painful experience yesterday; most of them, as it happened—a good joke on Anna that, as she gave me the list—quite antagonistic to Germany. One day when Frieda should have been dusting I caught her scowling over the chapter heads of one of them. Of course she reads English—she has been here several years. Day before yesterday, when I was knitting, she asked me whom I was knitting for, and Itold her—for the Belgians, of course. She asked me in a sort of growl why I didn't knit for the homeless in East Prussia—it seems that is where she comes from and she has been having letters full of horrors. I seldom bandy words with a servant, for you can't permit the slightest familiarity in this country if you want to get any work out of them. But as she scowled as if she would like to explode a shrapnel under me, and as she is the third I have had in the last five months, I said soothingly that the newspaper correspondents had neglected the eastern theatre of war, but had harrowed our feelings so about the Belgians that we felt compelled to do what we could for them. Then I asked her—I was really curious—if she had no sympathy for those thousands of afflicted women and children, merely because they were the victims of the Germans. She has a big soft face with thick lips, little eyes, and a rudimentary nose; generally as expressionless as such a face is bound to be. But when I asked her this question it suddenly seemed to turn to wood—not actively cruel; it merely expressed the negation of all human sympathy. She turned without a word and slumped—pardon the expression—out of the room. But the breakfast was burned this morning—I had to cook another for poor David—and I know she did it on purpose. I am afraid I shall have to let her go."
"I would," said Mrs. Battle, wisely. "She is probably a spy and quite clever."
"Yes, but such a worker!" Mrs. Balfame sighed reminiscently. "And when you have but one servant—"
The tardy partner bustled in and the game began.
It was about six o'clock when Mrs. Balfame, steadily losing, contrary to all precedent, her mind concentrated, her features, like those of the rest of the players, as hard as the stone faces dug out of Egypt, her breath escaping in hissing jets, became vaguely conscious of a disturbance in the outer room. The young people were dancing, as was usual in the hour before supper, but the piano and fiddles appeared to be playing against the ribald interruptions of a man's voice. It was some time before the narrow flow of thought in Mrs. Balfame's brain was deflected by the powerful outer current, but suddenly she became aware that her partners were holding their cards suspended, and that their ears were cocked toward the door. Then she recognised her husband's voice.
For a moment she lost her breath and her blood ran chill. She had been apprehensive for some time of a scene in public, but she had assumed that it would occur in a friend's house of an evening; he attended her nowhere else. The Club he had deserted long since; it was much too slow for a man of his increasing proclivities, especially in a county liberally provided with saloons and road houses.
During the last month she had become sensible of a new hostility in his attitude toward her; it was as if he had suddenly penetrated her hidden aversion and all his masculine vanity had risen in revolt. Being awoman of an almost excessive tact, she had sprayed this vanity for twenty-two years with the delicately scented waters of flattery, but the springs had gone suddenly dry on that morning when she had uttered her simple and natural desire to bring the conjugal sleeping accommodations up to date.
And now he had come out here to disgrace her, she immediately concluded, to make her a figure of fun, to destroy her social leadership. This might also involve him in a loss, but when a man is both drunk and angry his foresight grows dim and revenge is sweet.
Only last night there had been an intensely disagreeable scene in private; that is to say, she had been dignified and slightly contemptuous, while he had shouted that her knitting got on his nerves, and the sight of all those books on the war made him sick. When the whole business of the country was held up by this accursed war, a man would like to forget it when at home. And every man had the same story, by God; his wife was knitting when she ought to be darning stockings; trying to be intellectual by concerning herself with a subject that concerned men alone. Mr. Balfame had always resented the Woman's Club, and all talk of votes for a sex that would put him and his kind out of business. Their intelligent interest in the war was a grievous personal indignity.
Being a woman of clear thought and firm purpose, and of a really high order of moral courage, Mrs. Balfame was daunted for a moment only. She laid down her cards, opened the door and entered the main room of the club-house. There she saw, at the head of the room, a group of men surrounding her husband; with one exception, almost as excited as he. Theexception was Dwight Rush who had a hand on one of Balfame's shoulders and appeared to be addressing him in a low tone. Little Maude Battle ran forward and grasped her arm.
"Oh, dear Mrs. Balfame," she gasped, "do take him home. He is so—so—queer. He snatched three girls away from their partners, and the boys are so mad. And his language—oh, it was something awful."
The women and girls were huddled in groups, all but Alys Crumley, who, Mrs. Balfame vaguely realised, was sketching. Their eyes were fixed on the group at the head of the room, where Rush was now trying to edge the burly swaying figure toward the door.
Mrs. Balfame walked directly up to her flushed and infuriated spouse.
"You are not well, David," she said peremptorily. "In all the years of our married life never have you acted like this. I am sure that you are getting typhoid fever—"
"To hell with typhoid fever!" shouted Mr. Balfame. "I'm drunk, that's what. And I'll be drunker when they let me into the bar. You get out of this."
Mrs. Balfame turned to Dr. Anna, who had marched up the room beside her. "I am sure it is fever," she said with decision, and the loyal Anna nodded sagely. "You know that liquor never affects him. We must get him home."
"Huh!" jeered Balfame, "you two get me home! I'm not so drunk I can't see the joke of that. The matter with you is you think I'm disgracin' you, and you want to go on bein' the high cock-alorum of thisbunch. Well, I'm sick of it, and I'm sick of bein' told to eat out when you're at matinées or that damned Woman's Club. Home's the place for women. Knittin's all right." He laughed uproariously. "But stay at home by the fire and knit your husband's socks. Smoke a pipe too, if you like it. That's what my granny did. The whole lot of you women haven't got one good man's brain between you, and yet you'd talk the head off the President of the United States—"
He was about to launch upon his opinion of Elsinore society when a staccato cough interrupted the flow. Mrs. Balfame turned away with a gesture of superb disdain, although her face was livid.
"The sex jealousy we have so often discussed!" Her clear tones from the first had carried all over the room. "He must be taken home." She looked at Dwight Rush and said graciously: "I am sure he will go with you. And he will apologise to the Club when he is himself again. I shall go back to our game."
She held her head very high as she swept down the long room, but her jaw was set, her nostrils distended, a narrow strip of eye was fixed and glaring.
An unforeseen situation had blown to flame such fires of anger as existed in her depths, and she was unable to extinguish them as quickly as she would have wished. To the intense surprise of the bridge women who had followed her out of the card-room and in again, she sank into a chair and burst into tears. But she managed to cry quietly into her handkerchief, and in a few moments had her voice under control.
"He has disgraced me!" she exclaimed bitterly. "I must resign from the Club."
"Well, I guess not." The ladies had crowded abouther sympathetically. "We'll all stand up for you," cried Mrs. Battle. "The men will give him a good talking-to, and he'll write an apology to the Club and that will end it."
These friends, old and more recent, were embarrassed in their genuine sympathy, for no one had ever seen Mrs. Balfame in tears before. Vaguely they regretted that, extreme as was the provocation, she should have descended to the level of mere womanhood. It was as if they were present at the opening of a new chapter in the life of Mrs. Balfame of Elsinore; as, in truth, they were.
Mrs. Balfame blew her nose. "Pardon me," she said. "I never believed I should break down like this—but—but—" once more she set her teeth and her eyes flashed. "I have a violent headache. I must go home. I cannot finish the game."
"I'll take you home," Dr. Anna spoke. "Oh, that beast!"
The other women kissed Mrs. Balfame, straightened her hat, and escorted her out to the runabout which Dr. Anna brought to the rear entrance of the clubhouse. She smiled wearily at the group, touching her brow with a finger. As soon as the little car had left the grounds and was beyond the reach of peering eyes, she made no further attempt at self-control, but poured forth her inmost soul to the one person she had ever fully trusted. She told the doctor all the secret horror of her life, her hatred and loathing of David Balfame; everything, in short, but her determination to kill him, which in the novel excitement that had invaded her nervous system, she forgot.
Dr. Anna, who had heard many such confessions,but who obstinately had hoped that her friend's case was not as bad as it appeared superficially, was glad that she was not driving a horse; humane as she was, she should have forgotten herself and lashed him to relieve her own feelings.
"You must get a divorce," she said through her teeth. "You really must. I saw Rush looking at you. There is no mistaking that expression in a man's eyes. You must—you must divorce that brute."
"I'll not!" Mrs. Balfame's composure returned abruptly. "And please forget that I gave way like this and—and said things." She wondered what she really had said. "I know I need not ask you never to mention it. But divorce! Oh, no. If I continue to live with him they'll be sorry for me and stand by me, but if I divorced him—well, I'd just be one more divorced woman and nothing more. Elsinore isn't Newport. Moreover, they'd feel I'd no further need of their sympathy. In time they'd let me pretty well alone."
"I don't think much of your arguments," said Dr. Anna. "You could marry Rush and go to New York."
"But you know I mean what I say. And don't worry, Anna dear." She bent over the astonished doctor and gave her a warm kiss. "And as I'm not demonstrative, you know I mean that too. You are not to worry about me. I've got the excuse I needed, and I'm going to buy some things at second hand and refurnish one of the old bedrooms and live in it. He can't say a word after this, and he'll be humble enough, for the men will make him apologise to the Club. I'll threaten him with divorce, and that alone will makehim behave himself, for it would cost him a good deal more to pay me alimony than to keep the old house going—"
"That isn't an argument that will have much effect on a man, usually in liquor. But women are queer cattle. Divorce is a great and beneficent institution, and here you elect to go on living under the same roof with a brute—Oh, well, it's your own funeral. Here we are. I've got to speed up and practise medicine. Am expecting a call from out at Houston's any minute. Baby. Good night."
Mrs. Balfame let herself into the dark house. Saturday was Frieda's night out.
Contrary to her economical habit, she lighted up the lower floor recklessly, and opened the windows; she felt an overwhelming desire for light and air. But as she wished to think and plan with her accustomed clarity she went at once to the pantry in search of food; the blood was still in her head.
The morrow would be Sunday, and the Saturday luncheon was always composed of the remains of the Friday dinner. On Saturday she dined at the Country Club. Therefore Mrs. Balfame found nothing with which to accomplish her deliberate scientific purpose but dry bread and a box of sardines. She was opening this delectable when the front door bell rang.
Her set face relaxed into a frown, but she went briskly to the door. The poison might be transpirable after all, and her alibi must be perfect; she had changed her mind about going to bed with a headache, and at ten o'clock, when she knew that several of her childless friends would be at home, she purposed to call them up and thank them sweetly and cheerfully.
When she saw Dwight Rush on the stoop, however, she almost closed the door in his scowling face.
"Let me in!" he commanded.
"No!" She spoke with sweet severity. "I shall not. After such a scene? I must be more carefulthan ever. Go right away. I, at least, shall continue to be above reproach."
"Oh!" He swallowed the natural expression of masculine irritation. "If you won't let me in I'll say what I've got to say right here. Will you divorce that brute and marry me? I can get you a divorce on half a dozen grounds."
"I'll have no divorce, now or ever." Mrs. Balfame of Elsinore spoke with haughty finality. "I abominate the word." Then she added graciously: "But don't think I am unappreciative of your kindness. Now you must go away. The Gifnings live on the corner, and they always come home early."
"A good many have left, including Balfame. He spoilt the evening." Rush stared at her and ground his teeth. "By God! I wish the old duelling days were back again. I'd call him out. If you say the word I'll pick a quarrel with him anyhow. He carries a gun, and there isn't a jury in Brabant County that wouldn't acquit me on the plea of self-defence. My conscience would trouble me no more than if I had shot a mad dog."
Mrs. Balfame gave a little gasp, which he mistook for horror. But temptation had assailed her. Why not? Her own opportunity might be long in coming. It would be like Dave Balfame to go away and stay for a month. But the temptation passed swiftly. Human nature is too complex for any mere mortal to reduce to the rule of three. While she could dispose of her husband without a qualm, her conscience revolted from turning an upright citizen like Dwight Rush into a murderer.
She closed the door abruptly, knowing that no mereverbal refusal to accept such an offer would be adequate, and he went slowly down the steps. But in a moment he ran back and a few feet down the veranda, thrusting his head through one of the open windows.
"Just one minute!"
She was passing the parlour door and paused.
"Promise me that if you are in trouble you will send for me. For no one else; no other man, that is, but me. You owe me that much."
"Yes, I promise." She spoke more softly and smiled.
"And close these windows. It is not safe to leave veranda windows open at this hour."
"I intended to close them before going up stairs. But—perhaps you will understand—the house when I came in seemed to reek with tobacco and liquor—with him!"
His reply was inarticulate, but he pulled down the windows violently, and she locked them, smiling once more before she turned out the light.
She returned to the dining-room, thinking upon food with distaste, but determined to eat until her head felt normal. She had no intention of speaking to her husband should he return, for she purposed to sleep on a sofa in the sewing-room and lock the door, but tones and brain must be lightly poised when she telephoned to her friends.
The telephone bell rang. Once more she frowned, but answered the summons as promptly as she had opened the front door. To her amazement she heard her husband's voice.
"Say," it said thickly, "I'm sorry. Promise not to take another drink for a month. Sorry, too, I've gotto go to the house for a few minutes. Didn't intend to go home to-night—thought I'd give you time to get over bein' as mad as I guess you've got a right to be. But I got to go to Albany—politics—got to go to-night—must go home and get my grip. You—you—wouldn't pack it, would you? Then I needn't stay so long. Only got to sort some papers myself."
Mrs. Balfame replied in the old wifely tones that so often had caused him to grit his teeth: "I never hold a man in your condition responsible for anything. Of course I'll pack your suitcase. What is more, I'll have a glass of lemonade ready, with aromatic spirits of ammonia in it. You must sober up before you start on a journey."
"That's the ticket. You're a corker! Put in a bromide, too. I'm at Sam's, and I guess I'll walk over—need the air. You just go on bein' sweet and I'll bring you something pretty from Albany."
"I want one of those new chiffon-velvet bags, and you will please get it in New York," she said practically. "I'll write an exact description of it and put it in the suitcase."
"All right. Go ahead." His accents breathed profound relief, and although her brain was working at lightning speed, and her eyes were but a pale bar of light, she curled her lip scornfully at the childishness of man, as she hung up the receiver.
She made the glass of lemonade, added the usual allowance of aromatic spirits of ammonia and bromide—a bottle of each was kept in the sideboard ready for instant use—then ran upstairs and returned with the colourless liquid she had purloined from Dr. Anna's cupboard.
Her scientific friend had remarked that one drop would suffice, but being a mere female herself she doubled the dose to make sure; and then set the glass conspicuously in the middle of the table. The half opened can of sardines and the plate of bread were quite forgotten, and once more she ran upstairs, this time to pack his useless clothes.
She performed this wifely office with efficiency, forgetting nothing, not even the hair tonic he was administering to a spreading bald spot, a bottle of digestive tablets, a pair of the brown kid gloves he affected when dressed up, and a volume of detective fiction. Then she wrote a minute description of the newest fashion in hand bags and pinned it to his dinner jacket. The suitcase was an alibi in itself.
When she had packed it and strapped it and carried it down to the dining-room, returned to her room and locked the door, she realised that she had prolonged these commonplace duties in behalf of her nerves. Those well-disciplined rebels of the human system were by no means driven to cover, and this annoyed her excessively.
She had no fear of not rising to precisely the proper pitch when she heard her husband fall dead in the dining-room, for she always had risen automatically to every occasion for which she was in any measure prepared, and to many that had caught her unaware. It was the ordeal of waiting for the climax that made her nerves jeer at her will, and she found that a series of pictures was marching monotonously through her mind, again, and again, and yet again: with that interior vision she saw her husband walk unsteadily up the street, swing open the gate, slam it defiantly, inserthis latch-key; she saw his eye drawn to the light in the dining-room at the end of the dark hall, saw him drink the lemonade, drop to the floor with a fall that shook the house; she saw herself running down, calling out his name, shattering the glass on the floor, then running distractedly across the street to the Gifnings'—and again and still again.
She had been pacing the room. It occurred to her that she could vary the monotony by watching for him, and she put out her light and drew aside the sash curtain. In a moment she caught her breath.
Her room was on a corner of the house and commanded not only the front walk leading down to Elsinore Avenue, but the grounds on the left. In these grounds was a large grove of ancient maples, where, dressed in white, she passed many pleasant hours in summer with a book or her friends. The trees, with their low thick branches still laden with leaves, cast a heavy shade, but her gaze, moving unconsciously from the empty street, suddenly saw a black and moving shadow in that black and almost solid mass of shadows.
She watched intently. A figure undoubtedly was moving from tree to tree, as if selecting a point of vantage, or restless from one of several conceivable causes.
Could it be her husband, summoning his courage to enter and face her? She had known him in that mood. But she dismissed the suggestion. He had inferred from her voice that she was both weary and placated, and he was far more likely to come swaggering down the avenue singing one of his favourite tunes; he fancied his voice.
Frieda never returned before midnight, and then,although she entered by the rear hall door and stole quietly up the back stairs, she would be quite without shame if confronted.
Therefore, it must be a burglar.
There could not have been a more welcome distraction. Mrs. Balfame was cool and alert at once. As an antidote to rebellious nerves awaiting the consummation of an unlawful act, a burglar may be recommended to the most amateurish assassin.
Mrs. Balfame put on her heavy automobile coat, wrapped her head and face in a dark veil, transferred her pistol from the table drawer to a pocket, and went softly down the stairs. She left the house by the kitchen door, and, after edging round the corner stood still until her eyes grew accustomed to the dark. Then, once, more, she saw that moving shadow.
She dared not risk crossing the lawn directly from the house to the grove, but made a long détour at the back, keeping on the grass, however, that her footsteps should make no noise.
A moment or two and she was within the grove. She saw the shadow detach itself again, but it was impossible to determine its size or sex, although she inferred from its hard laboured breathing that the potential thief was a man.
He appeared to be making craftily for the house, no doubt with the intention of opening one of the lower windows; and she stalked him with a newly awakened instinct, her nostrils expanding. The original resolve to kill her husband had induced no excitement at all; even Dwight Rush's love-making had thrilled her but faintly; but this adventure in the night, stalking a house-breaker, presently to confront him with thecommand to raise his hands, cast a momentary light upon the emotional moments experienced by the highly organised.
Suddenly she heard her husband's voice. He was approaching Elsinore Avenue from one of the nearby streets, and he was singing, with physiological interruptions, "Tipperary," a song he had cultivated of late to annoy his political rival, an American of German birth and terrific German sympathies. He was walking quickly, as top-heavy men sometimes will.
She drew back and crouched. To make her presence known would be to turn over the burglar to her husband and detain the essential victim from the dining-room table.
She saw the shadow dodge behind a tree. Balfame appeared almost abruptly in the light shed by the street lamp in front of his gate; and then it seemed to her that she had held her breath for a lifetime before her ears were stunned by a sharp report, her eyes blinked at a spurt of fire, before she heard David Balfame give a curious sound, half moan, half hiccough, saw him clutch at the gate, then sink to the ground.
She was hardly conscious of running, far more conscious that some one else was running—through the orchard and toward the back fence.
Hours later, it seemed to her, she was in the kitchen closing the door behind her. Something curious had happened in her brain, so trained to orderly routine that it seldom prompted an erratic course.
She should have run at once to her husband, and here she was inside the house, and once more listening intently. It was the fancied sound that swung herconsciousness back to its balance. She went to the front of the back stairs and called sharply:
"Frieda!"
There was no answer.
"Frieda," she called again. "Did you hear anything? I thought I heard some one trying to open the back door."
Again there was no answer.
Then, her lip curling at the idea of Frieda's return on Saturday night at eight o'clock, she went rapidly into the dining-room, carried the glass containing the lemonade into the kitchen, rinsed it thoroughly, and put it away.
It was not until she reached her room that it occurred to her that she should have ascertained whether or not the key was on the inside of the rear hall door.
But this was merely a flitting thought; there were loud and excited voices down by the gate. In an instant she had hung up her automobile cloak and veil, changed her dress for a wrapper, let down her hair and thrown open the window.
"What is the matter?" Her tone was peremptory but apprehensive.
"Matter enough!" John Gifning's voice was rough and broken. "Don't come out here. Mean to say you didn't hear a shot?"
Two or three men were running about nearer the house. One paused under her window, and looked up, waving his hand vaguely.
"Shot? Shot? I heard—so many tires explode—What do you mean? What is it?—Who—"
"Here's the coroner!" cried one of the group at the gate.
"Coroner?"
She ran down stairs, threw open the front door and went as swiftly toward the gate, her hair streaming behind her.
"Who is it?" she demanded.
"Now—now." Mr. Gifning intercepted her and clasped her shoulder firmly. "You don't want to go down there—and don't take on—"
She drew herself up haughtily. "I am not an hysterical woman. Who has been shot down at my gate?"
"Well," blurted out Gifning. "I guess you'll have to know. It's poor old Dave."
Mrs. Balfame drew herself still higher and stood quite rigid for a moment; then the coroner, one of her husband's friends, came up the path and said in a low tone to Gifning, "Take her upstairs. We're goin' to bring him in. He's gone, for a fact."
Mr. Gifning pushed her gently along the path, as the others lifted the limp body and tramped slowly behind. "You go up and have a good cry," he said. "I'll 'phone for the Cummacks. I guess it was bound to come. There's been hot times in Dobton lately—"
"Do you mean that he was deliberately murdered?"
"Looks like it, seeing that he didn't do it himself. The damned hound was skulking in the grove. Of course he's made off, but we'll get him all right."
Mrs. Balfame walked slowly up the stair, her head bowed, while the heavy inert mass so lately abhorrent to his wife and several politicians was laid on the sofa in the parlour whose evolutions had annoyed him.
Mr. Gifning telephoned to the dead man's brother-in-law, then for the police and the undertaker.
Mrs. Balfame sat down and awaited the inevitable bombardment of her privacy by her more intimate friends. Already shriller voices were mingling with the heavier tones down on the lawn and out in the avenue. The news seemed to have been flashed from one end of Elsinore to the other.
Mrs. Balfame sat with Mrs. Battle, Mrs. Gifning, Mrs. Frew, her sister-in-law, Mrs. Cummack, and several of her other friends in her quiet bed-chamber. It was an hour after the death of David Balfame and she had, for the seventh time, told the story of packing her husband's suit case, carrying it down stairs, returning to her room to undress, hearing the commotion down by the gate. Yes, she had heard a report, but Elsinore Avenue—automobiles—exploding tires—naturally, it had meant nothing to her at the moment. No, he did not cry out—or if he did—her window was closed; it was the side window she left open at night.
She had accepted a bottle of smelling salts from Mrs. Battle, but sat quite erect, looking stunned and frozen. Her voice was expressionless, wearily reiterating a few facts to gratify the curiosity of these well-meaning friends, as wearily listening to Lottie Gifning's reiteration of her own story: As the night was warmer than usual she and her husband and the two friends that had motored in with them had sat on the porch for awhile; they had heard "Dave" come singing down Dawbarn Street; two or three minutes later the shot. Of course the men ran over at once, but for at least ten minutes she was too frightened to move. One of the men ran for the coroner; if "poor Dave" wasn't deadthey wanted to take him at once where he would be comfortable.
Mrs. Balfame's demeanour was all these solicitous friends could have wished; although they enjoyed tears and emotional scenes as much as any women, they were gratified to be reassured that their Mrs. Balfame was not as other women; they still regretted her breakdown at the Club, although resentfully conscious of loving her the more. And if they wanted tears, here was Polly Cummack shedding them in abundance for the brother she now reproached herself for having utterly despised.
Below there was a subdued hum of voices, within and without. The police had come tearing up in an automobile and ordered the amateur detectives out of the grounds; their angry voices had been heard demanding how the qualified fools expected the original footsteps to be detected after such a piece of idiocy.
Mrs. Balfame had shaken her head sadly. "They'll find nothing," she said. "If only I had known, I could have called down to them to keep out of the yard."
"Now, who do you suppose that is?" Mrs. Battle, who was short and stout and corseted to her knees, toddled over to the window and leaned out as two automobiles raced each other down the avenue. They stopped at the gate, and in a moment Mrs. Battle announced: "The New York newspaper men!"
"Already?" Mrs. Balfame glanced at the clock and stifled a yawn. "Why, it's hardly an hour—"
"Oh, a year or so from now they'll be coming over in bi-planes. Well, if our poor old boobs of police don't unearth the murderer, they will. They are theprize sleuths. They'll find a scent, or spin one out of their brains as a spider spins his web out of his little tummy—"
Mrs. Cummack interrupted: "Sam is sure it is Old Dutch. He's gone with the constable to Dobton."
Dobton, the county seat, and the centre of the political activities of East Brabant, intimately connected with the various "towns" by trolley and telephone, embraced the domicile of Mr. Konrad Kraus, amiably known as "Old Dutch." His home was in the rear of his flourishing saloon, which was the headquarters of the county Republicans. David Balfame had patronised—rumour said financed—the saloon of an American sired by Erin.
Another automobile dashed up. "Sam, I think; yes, it is," cried Mrs. Battle.
A few moments later Mr. Cummack appeared upon the threshold.
"Nothin' doin'," he said gruffly. "Old Dutch's got a perfect alibi. Been behind the bar since six o'clock. It's up to us now to find out if he hired a gunman; and we're on the trail of others too. Poor Dave had his enemies all right."
He paused and looked tentatively at his weary but heroic sister-in-law. His own face was haggard, and the walrus moustache he had brought out of the North-west was covered not only with dust but with little moist islands made by furtive tears. With that exquisite sympathy and comprehension that men have for the failings of other men, which far surpasseth that of woman, he had loved his imperfect friend, but he had a profound admiration for his sister-in-law, whom he neither loved nor pretended to understand.He knew her surfaces, however, as well as any one, and would have been deeply disappointed if she had carried herself in this trying hour contrary to her usual high standard of conduct. Enid Balfame, indeed, was almost a legend in Elsinore, and into this legend she could retire as into a fortress, practically impregnable.
"Say, Enid," he said hesitatingly. "These reporters—the New York chaps—the local men wouldn't dare ask—want an interview. What do you say?"
Mrs. Balfame merely turned her haughty head and regarded him with icy disdain. "Are they crazy? Or you?"
"Well, not the way they look at it. You see, it's up to them to fill a column or two every morning, and there's nothing touches a new crime with a mystery. So far, they haven't got much out of this but the bare fact that poor Dave was shot down at his own gate, presumably by some one hid in the grove. An interview with the bereaved widow would make what they call a corking story."
"Tell them to go away at once." She leaned back against her chair and closed her eyes. Mrs. Gifning flew to hold the salts to her nose.
"Better see them," persisted Mr. Cummack. "They'll haunt the house till you do. They're crazy about this case—hasn't been a decent murder for months, nothin' much doin' in any line, and everybody sick of the war. The Germans take a trench in the morning papers and lose it in the evening—"
"Sam Cummack! How dare you joke at a timelike this?" His wife ran forward and attempted to push him out of the room, and the other ladies had risen and faced him with manifest indignation.
Suddenly Mrs. Cummack put her arms about him and patted the top of his head. He had burst into tears and was rubbing his eyes on his sleeve. "Poor old Dave!" he sobbed. "I'm all in. But I'll find that low-down cur who killed him, cut him off in his prime, if it takes the last cent I've got."
Mrs. Balfame rose and crossed to his side. She put her hand on his shoulder. "I never should have suspected that you had such depth of feeling, Sam," she said softly, "I am sure that the cowardly murderer will be caught and that yours will be the glory. Send those inconsiderate reporters away."
Mr. Cummack shook his head. "As well talk of calling off the police. They'll be round here day and night till the man is in Dobton jail—longer, for they know the public will want an interview with the widow. Better see them, Enid."
"I shall not." Mrs. Balfame put her hand to her head and reeled. "Oh, I am so tired! So tired! What a day. Oh, how I wish Anna were here."
Three of the women caught her and led her to her chair. "Anna!" she reiterated. "I must have something to make me sleep—"
"I'll call her up!" volunteered Mrs. Gifning. "I do hope she is at home—"
"She was to go out to the Houston farm," interrupted Mrs. Cummack. "She stopped at our house on the way out—Sammy has bronchitis—"; and Mrs. Gifning, who was as nervous as the widow should havebeen, ran down to the telephone, elated at being the one chosen to horrify poor Dr. Anna while engaged in the everlasting battle for life.
"I'll stay with Enid till Anna comes," volunteered Mrs. Cummack. "I guess she'd better be quiet. One of you might make coffee for those that are going to sit up—"
"Frieda's doin' that," said Mr. Cummack. "They're all in the dining-room—"
Mrs. Balfame had left the shelter of Mrs. Cummack's arm and was sitting very straight. "Frieda? This is her night out—"
"She was in bed with a toothache, but I routed her out. Well, I'll put the men off till to-morrow, but better make up your mind to see them then."
He left the room and when Mrs. Balfame was alone with her sister-in-law, whom she had never admitted to the sacred inner circle, but who was a kind forgiving soul, she smiled affectionately. "Don't be afraid that I shall break down," she said. "But those women had got on my nerves. It is too kind of you to have dismissed them, and to stay with me yourself till Anna comes. It has all been so terrible—and coming so soon after what happened at the Club. Thank heaven I did not permit myself to speak severely to him, and even when he telephoned for his suit case I was not cross—I never would hold a man who had been drinking to strict account—"
"Don't you worry your head. He was my brother, but I guess I know what a trial he must have been. And if he hadn't been my brother I guess I'd say we wouldn't have blamed you much if you had given him a dose of lead yourself—"
Mrs. Balfame raised her amazed eyes. But in a moment the weary ghost of a smile flitted over her firm mouth, and she asked almost lightly: "Do you then believe in removing offensive husbands?"
"Well—of course I'd never have that much courage myself if Sam wasn't any better than he should be—he's pretty decent as men go—but I know a few husbands right here in Elsinore—well, if their wives gave them prussic acid or hot lead they wouldn't losemyfriendship, and I guess any jury would let them off."
"I guess you're right." Mrs. Balfame was beginning to undress. "I think I'll get into bed—But it requires a lot of nerve. And the risk is pretty great, you know. Anna once told me of an untraceable and tasteless poison she had—"
"Oh, Lord!" Mrs. Cummack may have been too hopelessly without style and ambition to be one of the arc lights of the Elsinore smart set, but she possessed a sense of humour, and for the moment forgot the abrupt taking off of her brother. "Don't let that get round. The poison wouldn't be safe for an hour—nor a few husbands. I think I'll warn Anna anyhow—I'm not sure I can keep it."
The door opened softly and Mrs. Gifning's fluffy blonde head appeared. "I couldn't get Anna herself," she whispered. "The baby hasn't come. But Mr. Houston said he'd tell her as soon as it was over, and let her go. He was terribly shocked, and sent you his love."
"Thanks, dear," murmured Mrs. Balfame. "I'll try and sleep awhile, and Polly has promised to sit with me till Anna comes. Good-night."
There was a thin cry of life in the nursery of the Houston farm house. The mother slept and the new born was in competent hands. Mr. Houston, a farmer more prosperous and enterprising than his somewhat weedy appearance prefigured, beckoned Dr. Anna into the dining-room, where a sleepy but interested "hired girl" had brought hot coffee and sandwiches.
The battle had lasted little over three hours, but every moment had been fraught with anxiety for the doctor and the husband. Mrs. Houston's heart had revealed an unsuspected weakness and the baby had not only neglected to head itself towards the gates of life as all proper little marathons should, but had exhibited a state of suspended animation for at least twenty minutes after its arrival at the goal.
Dr. Anna dropped into a chair beside the table and covered her face with her hand.
"I'm all in, I guess," she murmured, and the farmer put down the coffee pot and ran for the demijohn.
"You drink this," he said peremptorily. His own hand was shaking, but he made no verbal attempt to release his strangled emotions until both he and the doctor had drunk of coffee as well as whiskey. Then, when half way through a thick sandwich made of slabs of bread and beef, he began to thank the doctor incoherently.
"You are just it," he sputtered. "Just about it.And your poor back must be broke. You doctors do beat me, particularly you women doctors. I'll never say nothin' against women doctors again, though I'll tell you now that although poor little Aggie was dead set on you, I opposed it for awhile—"
Dr. Anna was sitting up and smiling. She waved his apologies and protestations aside. "I can't think what came over me to collapse like that. Once or twice lately I have thought I might be getting something. I'll have my blood taken to-morrow. Now, I'll go home and get to bed quick, although that coffee has made me feel as fine as a fiddle."
"Well, I needed it too, and for more reasons than you. Say—" Mr. Houston had risen and was pulling nervously at his short and bosky beard. "I got a 'phone from Mrs. Gifning a while ago. You're wanted at the Balfames—bad."
Dr. Anna sprang to her feet, her full cheeks pale again. "Enid! What has happened to her?"
"Oh, she's all right, I guess. It's Dave—"
"Oh, another gastric attack?"
"Worse and more of it. He was shot—two or three hours ago, I guess. I didn't ask the time—was in too big a hurry to get back to Aggie—at his own gate, though, I think she said."
"Who did it?"
"Nobody knows."
"Dead?"
"No one'll ever be deader."
"H'm!" The color had come back to Dr. Anna's tired face and she shrugged her shoulders. "I'm no hypocrite, and I guess you're not either."
"I'm no more a hypocrite than I am a Democrat.His yellow streak was gettin' wider every year. It's good riddance. Still I wish he'd died in his bed. I don't like the idea of a fellow citizen, good or bad, bein' shot down like that. It's against law and order, and if the murderer's caught and I'm drawn on the jury, and it's proved he done it, I'll vote for conviction."
"Quite right," said Dr. Anna briskly, as she went out into the hall and put on her hat. "I suppose it's Mrs. Balfame who wants me?"
"Yes, that's it. I remember. But you ought to go home and get sleep. There's enough women to sit up with her. The hull town likely."
"But I know she wants me." Dr. Anna's face glowed softly. "I'll sleep there all right—on a sofa beside her bed—if she wants me to stay on."
"Well, look out for yourself," he growled. "If you don't think about yourself a little more you'll soon have no show to think so much about other people. I'm goin' for the car."
A few moments later he had brought the little runabout to the door, lighted the lamps, and given the doctor a hard grip of the hand.
She returned the pressure in kind. "Now don't worry, Mr. Houston. She's all right, and that nurse is first rate. Don't talk to her. Aggie, I mean. See you to-morrow about ten."
She drove rapidly out of the gate and into the road. There was a full moon shining and the drive was but ten miles between the farm and Elsinore. Her face was tired and grim. She had been in daily contact with typhoid fever in the poor and dirty quarter of the town. In her arduous life she had oftenexperienced healthy fatigue, but nothing like this. Could she be coming down?
She swung her thoughts to Enid Balfame, and forgot herself. Free at last, and while still young and lovely! Would she marry Dwight Rush? He had leaped into her mind simultaneously with the announcement of Balfame's death. But was he good enough for Enid? Was any man? Why, now that she was a real widow and in no need of a protector, should she marry at all? At any rate she could afford to wait. There were greater prizes to be captured by a beautiful and still girlish woman.
She was glad for the first time that Enid had never had a child, for there was a virgin and mystic appeal in the woman that had escaped the common lot. Spinsters lost it, curiously enough, but a chaste and lovely matron, who had ignored the book of experience so liberally offered her, and with eyes as unalloyed as a girl's (save when flashing with intellectual fires)—what more distracting anomaly could the world offer? Only Mrs. Balfame's indifference had kept the men away—Dr. Anna was convinced of that. Her future was in her own hands.
Dr. Anna's mind wandered to the scene of the murder. It was not difficult to construct, even from the meager details, and she shuddered. Murder! What a hideous word it was! Horrid that it should even brush the name of an exquisite creature like Enid Balfame. Would that Dave Balfame could have fallen of apoplexy while disgracing himself at the Club! But Anna frowned and shook the picture out of her mind. Doctors are too long trained in death to be haunted by its phantoms in any form.
A sharp turn and the road ran beside a salt marsh, a solemn grey expanse that lost itself far away in the grey of the sea. Suddenly Dr. Anna became aware of a man walking rapidly down the road toward her. He carried his hat in his hand as if his head were hot on this cool autumn night. There was no fear of man in Dr. Anna, even on lonely country roads; nevertheless she had no mind to be detained, and was about to increase her speed, when her curiosity was excited by something pleasantly familiar in the tall loose figure, the almost stiffly upright head. A moment later and the bright moonlight revealed the white face of Dwight Rush.
She brought the car to an abrupt halt as he too paused and nodded recognition.
"What's the matter?" she asked sharply. "You looked as if you were walking to beat time itself—as if you saw a ghost to boot—"
"Plenty of ghosts in my head. It aches like the dickens—"
"Were you there when it happened?"
"When what happened?"
"What? You pretend you don't know—when all Elsinore must have known it within five minutes—"
"I don't know what you are talking about. I followed you in from the Club and then took the train for Brooklyn, where I had to see a man. When I got back to Elsinore—off the train—my head ached so I knew I couldn't sleep—so I started out to walk it off—been walking for about two hours."
"Dave Balfame was shot down at his own gate three or four hours ago."
"Good God! Who did it? Is he dead?"
"He's dead, and that's about all I can tell you. Houston went to the 'phone but he was in such a state of mind about his wife that he didn't stay for particulars. Enid wanted me—it was Lottie Gifning that 'phoned. I gathered, however, that they haven't caught the murderer yet."
"Jove!" Rush was shaking. "I feel as if I'd been hit in the pit of the stomach. And I'm not one to go to pieces, either. But I've a good enough reason."
Dr. Anna continued to stare at him. He met her gaze and wonder grew in his. Then the blood rushed into his face and he threw back his head. "What do you mean? That I did it?"
"No—I don't see you committing murder—"
"Not in that damned skulking way—"
"Exactly. But you kind of suggest that you might know something about it. You might have been in the grove, or some other part of the grounds—with some idea of protecting Enid—"
"Why should you think that?"
"She told me—I didn't think it a bad idea myself—that you asked her to divorce Dave and marry you. But she said she wouldn't and I guess she meant it. Now, get in," she added briskly. "I'll drive you home and never say I met you. Met anybody else?"
"No one."
"Unless they get the right man at once, everybody who was known to have any reason to wish Dave Balfame out of the way will come under suspicion. For all you know, somebody may have guessed your secret; I saw it in your eyes at the clubhouse when you weretrying to get Dave out of the room for her sake; but of course I was 'on.' Those New York newspaper men, however—watch out for them. They'll fine-tooth-comb the county for the man in the case."
Rush had disposed his long legs in the little machine and it was once more running swiftly on the smooth road. "My brain is still too hot to theorise," he said. "May I smoke? What is your opinion?"
"He had many political enemies; besides, these last two years he's been growing more and more unbearable, so I guess he had more than one in his own party. But it isn't unlikely that some girl did it. For some reason the trollops liked him, and I've met him several times of late driving with a red-headed minx that looks as if she could shoot on sight."
"I don't mind telling you that I saw Mrs. Balfame a few minutes after you left her. I was boiling. Instead of piloting Balfame out to Sam's car I wished that I had run him behind the clubhouse and horsewhipped him. We are too civilised these days. I merely went to his house and asked his wife if she would divorce the brute and marry me. Two centuries ago—maybe one—I'd have picked her up and flung her on my horse and galloped off to the woods. We haven't improved; we've merely substituted the long-winded and indirect method and called it civilisation."
"Just so. Did she let you in?"
"Not she. You might know that without asking. Nor was she any nearer divorce than before. When I offered to pick a quarrel with him, she merely slammed the door in my face. But I went to the window and made her promise that if she were ever introuble I should be the first person she would send for—"
"But you weren't!" Dr. Anna's voice rang with jealous triumph. "I was the first. But never mind me. I've adored her for forty years, and you haven't known her as many weeks. Tell me, you didn't conceal yourself anywhere in the grounds to watch over her? She must have been all alone. Every servant in town takes Saturday night out."
"I inferred that Sam would keep him at his house all night. Besides, I knew she had a pistol. Balfame told me the day he bought her one in New York; when those burglaries began."
"Well, don't tell any one that you offered to dispose of her husband—a few moments before he was killed! It might make unnecessary trouble for a rising young lawyer."
"I am quite able to do my own thinking and take care of myself," he said haughtily, stung by her tone. "If you choose to think me guilty, do so. And let me tell you that if I had done it I shouldn't put my head in the ash barrel."
"No, but you might do your best to avoid the chair. Small blame to you. Well, as I said, you're safe as far as I am concerned. I wouldn't send a dog to the chair. That is—" she looked at him threateningly, "if you really do love Enid and want to marry her."
"Love her? I'd marry her if she had done it herself and I'd caught her red-handed."
"That's the real thing, I guess." She patted his hand approvingly. "I'll do what I can to help you. She's not a bit in love with you yet, but that's because she's the purest creature on earth and never would letherself even dream of a man she couldn't marry. She's one of the last grand representatives of the old Puritan stock—and when you see as much mean and secret infidelity, dose as many morbid hysterical women, as I do—Oh, Lord! No wonder I see Enid Balfame shining with cold radiance in the high heavens. I may idealise her a bit, but I don't care. It would be a sad old world if you couldn't exalt at least one human above the muck-ruck. Well, she likes you, and you have interested her. Just be on hand when she wants you, needs you. When this excitement is over and she is tired of female gabble, she'll turn to you naturally, if you manage her properly and don't butt in too soon. Quiet persistence and tact; that's your game. I'll put in a good word."
"By George, you are a good fellow!" He leaned over and kissed her impulsively. As Dr. Anna felt the pressure of those warm firm lips on her faded cheek, she astonished herself and him by bursting into tears. In an instant, however, she dashed them away and gave an odd gurgling laugh.
"Don't mind a silly old maid—who loves Enid Balfame more than life, I guess. And I'm a country doctor, Dwight, who's had a hard night bringing one more unfortunate female into the world. I feel better since I cried—first time since you boys used to tease me at school because I had cheeks like red pippins—you don't remember me over at school in your village. Renselaerville. I lived there for a spell, and I remember you. But this isn't the time for reminiscences. Where do you live? We'll be in the outskirts in three minutes."
"I have rooms at The Brabant."
"Any night clerk?"
"No; it's an apartment house."
"Good. We're somewhere in the small hours all right."
She drove swiftly through the sleeping town, slowing down on the corner of Main Street and Atlantic Avenue. Rush sprang out with a word of thanks and walked up the avenue to The Brabant. The trees here were neither old nor close, for this was the quarter of the wealthy newcomers and of the older residents that had prospered and rebuilt. But not a soul was abroad, and he let himself into the bachelor apartment house and mounted the two flights to his rooms unseen.
As Rush closed his own door behind him, his troubled spirit shifted its load. Indubitably, if Dr. Anna had not met him he should have walked until exhausted, and then boarded a train somewhere down the line and arrived in Elsinore dishevelled, haggard, altogether an object of suspicion. None knew better than he that in a small community the lightning of suspicion plays incessantly, throwing the faces of innocent and guilty alike into distorted relief. And he had half expected to find a newspaper man awaiting him in the hall below.
Before turning on his lights he felt his way to the windows and drew the curtains close. For all he knew there might be a detective or a reporter sitting on the opposite fence. His legal mind, deeply versed in criminal law, fully appreciated his danger and warned him to arm at every point.
The district attorney, one of Balfame's men, clever, ambitious, but too ill-educated to hope to graduate from Brabant County, or even, political influence lacking, to climb into the first rank at home, hated the brilliant newcomer who had beaten him twice during his brief term of office. That Rush "hailed" originally from the county only added to the grievance. If Brabant wasn't good enough for him in the first place, why hadn't he stayed where he was wanted?
But Rush dismissed him from his mind as heremembered uneasily that Alys Crumley had been sketching out there at the Club while he had been wrestling with David Balfame. He knew her ambition to get a position on a New York newspaper as a sketch artist; but the possibility that she might have guessed the secret of his interest in putting an end to the scene, or intended to sell her drawing to one of the reporters, would have given him little uneasiness had the artist not been a young woman upon whom he had ceased to call some two months since.
He had met Alys Crumley about eighteen months after he had returned to Brabant County and some three months after he had moved from Dobton to Elsinore, and at once had been attracted by her bright ambitious mind, combined with a real personality and an appearance both smart and artistic.
Miss Crumley prided herself upon being unique in Elsinore, at least, and although her thick well-groomed hair was dressed with classic severity, and she wore soft gowns of an indescribable cut in the house, and at the evening parties of her friends, she was far too astute to depart from the fashion of the moment in the crucial test of street dress and hat. In Park Row during her brief sojourn in the newspaper world, she had commanded attention among the critical press women as a girl who knew how to dress smartly and yet add that personal touch which, when attempted by those lacking genius in dress, ruins the effect of the most extravagant tailor. Miss Crumley by no means patronised these autocrats of Fifth Avenue; she bought her tailored suits at the ready-made establishments, but like many another American girl, she knew how to buy, and above all, how to wear her clothes.
She had taught for several years after graduating from the High School; then, her nerves rebelling, had abandoned this most monotonous of careers for newspaper work. To reporting her physique had not proved equal, and although she would have made an admirable fashion editor these enviable positions were adequately filled. On the advice of the star reporter of her paper, Mr. James Broderick, who, with other newspaper men had been entertained occasionally at tea of a Sunday afternoon in her charming little home in Elsinore, she had developed her talent for drawing during the past year; Mr. Broderick promising to "find her a job" as staff artist when she had improved her technique.
Then Dwight Rush appeared.
Miss Crumley lived with her mother in the family cottage next door to Dr. Anna's in Elsinore Avenue. Mrs. Crumley, who was the relict of a G. A. R. had eked out her pension during the schooldays of her daughter with fine sewing, finding most of her patrons among the newcomers. She also had cooked for the Woman's Exchange of Brooklyn, besides catering for public dinners and evening parties. For several years she enjoyed a complete rest; therefore, when Alys retired temporarily from the office of provider in order to study art, Mrs. Crumley willingly re-entered the industrial field. As both the practical mother and the clever daughter were amiable women it was a harmonious little household that Dwight Rush found himself drifting toward intimacy with soon after he met the young lady at a clubhouse dance.
The living-room—Alys long since had abolished the word parlour from her vocabulary—was furnished invarious shades of green as harmonious as the family temper; there was a low bookcase filled with fashionable literature, English and American; the magazines and reviews on the table were almost blatantly "highbrow," and the cool green walls were further embellished with a few delicate water colours conceived in the back-yard atelier by an individual mind if executed by a still somewhat halting brush.
For four months Rush had been a constant visitor at the cottage. Miss Crumley, who was as progressively modern as an automobile factory, was full of enthusiasm at the moment for the cult of sexless friendship between a man and a maid. She had considered James Broderick at one time as a likely partner for a philosophic romance (the adjective Platonic was out of date; moreover, it implied that the cult was not as modern as its devotees would wish it to appear); but the brilliant (and handsome) young reporter not only was very busy but of a mercurial and uncertain temperament. Nor did he appear to be a youth of lofty ideals; from certain remarks, uttered casually, to make matters worse, Alys was forced to conclude that he despised the man who "wasted his time" only less than he despised the "chaser." If pretty, interesting, and unnotional girls came his way and liked him enough, that was "all to the good"; a busy newspaper man at the beck and call of a city editor had no time for studying over the map of a girl's soul, the lord knew; but if a girl wasn't a "dead game sport," then the sooner a man left the field to some one with more time, or a yearning for matrimony, the better. These remarks had been deliberately thrown out by the canny Mr. Broderick, who liked "the kid" and didn't want herto "get in wrong" (particularly with himself as he enjoyed both her society and the artistic living-room—and Mrs. Crumley's confections) but who saw straight through Alys' shifting modernities to the makings of a fine primitive female.
But Rush was no student in sex psychology. He took Miss Crumley on her face value; delighted in finding a comfortable friend of the counter sex, and was more than amenable to her desire to cultivate in him a taste for modern literature; since his graduation he had hardly opened anything but law books, legal reviews, and the daily newspaper. She read aloud admirably—particularly plays—and he liked to listen; and as she convinced him that he was missing a good part of life, it was not long before he was buying for leisurely midnight consumption such work of the fashionable writers as was stimulating and intellectual, and at the same time sincere.
She also took him over to several symphony concerts, and often played classic selections to him in the twilight. He had no objection to music, as it either spurred his mind into fresh activity upon problems besetting it, or soothed him into slumber. He loved the little room with the soft green shadows; it reminded him of the woods, of which he still was passionately fond; and he found it both homelike and safe. Other houses in Elsinore, larger and more luxurious, were homelike enough, but too often were graced by marriageable daughters, who "showed their hand." Rush was as little vain and conceited as a man may be, but he was well aware that eligible men in Elsinore were few, and that everybody must know that his intake, already large, must increase with the years.
But—as the wise Mr. Broderick would have predicted had he not been interested elsewhere during this period—the tension grew too strong for Alys Crumley. Nervous and high-strung, with her reservoir of human emotions undepleted by even a hard flirtation since her early youth, idealistic, romantic, and imaginative, she began to realise that with each long uninterrupted evening—Mrs. Crumley was the most tactful of parents—she was growing more femininely sensitive to this man's magnetism and charm, to his quick responsive mind, to the mobility under the surface of his lean hard face, to the suggestion of indomitable strength which was the chief characteristic of the new American race of men.
It was not long before she was exaggerating every attractive attribute he possessed until he no longer seemed what he was, a fine specimen of his type, but a glorified superbeing and the one desirable man on earth. Her sense of superiority over this "rather crude Western specimen who knew nothing but his job," and to whom she could teach so much, had protected her for a time, held her femaleness and imagination in abeyance, but insensibly his sheer masculinity swamped her, left her without a rock but pride to cling to.
It was then that she showed her hand.
For a time after her discovery she was merely furious with herself; she was twenty-six and no weakling, neither sentiment nor passion should master her. But this phase was brief. Infatuation is not cast out either by reason or pride, and very soon her mind opened to the insidious whisper: "Why not?" What was the career of staff artist, full of liberty, excitement, andgood fellowship as it might be, to marriage with an ambitious man capable of inspiring the wildest love? Sooner or later had she not intended to make just such a marriage?