Mrs. Balfame Part 8

"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 were trying 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 subst.i.tuted 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 in trouble 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 let herself 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 b.u.t.t 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.

CHAPTER IX

As Rush closed his own door behind him, his troubled spirit s.h.i.+fted 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 he remembered 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 cla.s.sic 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 in various shades of green as harmonious as the family temper; there was a low bookcase filled with fas.h.i.+onable 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 s.e.xless friends.h.i.+p 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 her to "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' s.h.i.+fting modernities to the makings of a fine primitive female.

But Rush was no student in s.e.x psychology. He took Miss Crumley on her face value; delighted in finding a comfortable friend of the counter s.e.x, 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 fas.h.i.+onable writers as was stimulating and intellectual, and at the same time sincere.

She also took him over to several symphony concerts, and often played cla.s.sic 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 pa.s.sionately 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 pa.s.sion 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, and good fellows.h.i.+p 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?

From this inception her deductions followed in logical feminine sequence. If she loved him with a completeness which was both preadamic and neoteric, it was of course because he was consumed with a similar pa.s.sion; in other words he was her mate. He might be too comfortable and content to have realised it so far, but only one awakening was possible, and hers was the entrancing part to reveal him to himself.

She knew that while by no means a beauty, she was as far from commonplace in colouring at least as in style. Her eyes were an odd opaque olive, their tint so p.r.o.nounced that it seemed to invade the pale ivory of her skin and the smooth ma.s.ses of her hair. It was a far more subtle face than American women as a rule possess, and the eyes in spite of a curious inscrutability that might mean anything were capable of a play of lights directed from a battery more archaic than modern; and late one evening after she had read him an impa.s.sioned drama (ancient) and there was a dusky rose in either cheek, she turned them on.

Rush immediately took fright. She had not roused a responsive spark of pa.s.sion in him. Moreover, he was now haunted continually by the image of a sweet, remote, and (to him) far more mysterious woman, whom he wors.h.i.+pped as the ideal of all womanhood.

There was none of the old time American suavity about Rush. He was abrupt, forthright, and impatient. But he was kind and innately chivalrous. He "let Miss Crumley down" as gently as he could; but he let her down. No doubt of that. In less than a week she faced the bewildering fact that a man could strike loose a woman's emotional torrents while his own depths awaited the magical touch of another. It was incredible, preposterous.

For a time Alys, in the privacy of her atelier, raged like a fury. She cursed Rush, particularly when engaged in a violent struggle with the pride which alone held her from grovelling at his feet.