Ewing's Lady Part 26

She had listened in consternation, a rage for battle rising in her. She was sure Teevan must have some end in view hurtful to Ewing. Yet this was cunningly hidden. She was still puzzling over this when Sydenham recalled her. He had forgotten Ewing, and studied the red light that fell across the table through a shade of silk.

"What fools we are to think of painting shadows! If heaven's the place it's said to be they'll have real shadows put in up tubes, and then--well, _think_ of it!"

She laughed at him, her brief laugh, with a sigh to follow.

"We must go to the others. But, Herbert, you'll watch him as well as you can, won't you? I feel responsible for him in a way."

He hesitated, but the light came. "Oh, you mean Ewing? Of course I'll watch him. I dare say he'll paint some day, after a fas.h.i.+on." He fumbled for the k.n.o.b and awkwardly opened the door for her.

When the men went Mrs. Laithe asked if she might not linger a moment.

"Dear Aunt Kitty!" she said, going to the other's chair. "_Old_ Kitty!"

she repeated meaningly. The elder woman glanced quickly at her in faint alarm, half questioning, half defiant.

"Oh, Aunt Kitty! I know--I _know_! and I must talk of him. I suspected something almost from the first, and then I made sure. But I thought that perhaps no one else would find it out. And he was worth it--he is worth it. I couldn't have left him there, even if I'd been sure that everyone would know. He was a man--he had the right to live."

"My child, my child! Oh, you didn't know what you were doing! It was a monstrous thing, an impossible thing!"

"He's Kitty's son. You must feel for him."

"Feel? What haven't I felt since that day he came here?" There had been a break in her voice, but she went quietly on. "I can't make you know, dear. You've torn me--it will hurt to the end. Can you understand that in a terrible, an unspeakable way, my Kitty is still alive, is near me, and yet is not to be known? But you can't understand it. You've never had a child."

"Ah! but I've been one. I know what he would feel."

"Please, dear!" She put up a hand in protest. "As if I don't feel his hurt and Kitty's as well as mine. I shall be ground between the two every day of my life. Do you think my old arms didn't cry out to be around the mother in him? But think if I had yielded! Picture his own suffering--his own shame. Can you see us meeting, our eyes falling? Even for his own sake, he must never know."

"Isn't there a way, Aunt Kitty? Some way? He's worth finding a way for."

She leaned over to stroke the other's hand.

"No way, my girl. Be the world a moment, be cool. He's a nameless thing.

You might know him, but nothing more. Could he make a life? Could a woman--come, face it without prejudice--could you see your own sister marry him?" Mrs. Laithe looked blank.

"You see how impossible it is. You, yourself, could _you_ stand before the world with him? Could you face the shame?"

The younger woman dropped the hand she held and turned away. The elder regarded her shrewdly.

"There--you see how impossible----"

But the other faced her suddenly, clear-eyed and defiant, her head back.

"Eleanor!" It was a cry of consternation that was yet softened by tenderness, an amazed but comprehending tenderness, for the face of the younger woman was incarnadined, flagrantly, splendidly.

A moment they held each other. But there was no mistaking the thing, for, though the blush had quickly faded, an after glow lingered.

The older woman rose quickly to throw her arms about the other.

"My mad, mad child!" She stood off to search her face incredulously.

"He's alone, Aunt Kitty, and he's so defenseless. He believes in everyone more than in himself. He'll be cured of that some time, but just now I'm his only defender. Others are against him or stand neutral with talk of the 'world.' I can't blame you, dear, I think you must be right for yourself. But when he does awaken"--she narrowed her eyes on the other a moment in calculation--"then I shan't be ashamed to have him know it was always safe to believe in me--whether he was boy or man or no one at all--or less than no one. I'd never bother about names, dear--I'd never bother about names."

She smiled and drew the other close with little rea.s.suring caresses.

"You see names aren't much--the directory is full of them, and dreary enough reading they'd make. No, I'd not care for that. I'd only ask that he believe in himself as much as I believe in him, and care as little for names. And I warn you I mean to help him to that if I can."

The eyes of the other sparkled now. There was in her glance the excited admiration of a timid child who watches a reckless playmate dare some dark pa.s.sage of evil repute for goblins.

"You mad--dear mad girl!" she said.

CHAPTER XXI

THE DRAMA IN NINTH STREET

Ewing knew that his lady had come back. She had sent him a note the first day: "I am dining to-night with an old friend. But come to-morrow night."

The next day, while he was saying, "To-night I shall see her--actually see her...." there had come another note in her careless, scrawled writing: "I find, after all, that I shall be engaged to-night. Can you not come to-morrow night instead? I am eager for a talk with you."

"Could" he come! He laughed as he put the thing tenderly away. Could he come, indeed! Could he stay away?

But early in the evening of that same forbidden day he walked to Ninth Street, entering that thoroughfare furtively. He might not see her for another day, but at least he could look fondly at the door by which she had entered, and gaze on the stanch house that enfolded her, even on the steps that must have felt her light, quick tread, perhaps within the hour.

These things would help him to believe in her actuality--she had so come to seem but a dream lady to him.

Thrice he pa.s.sed the house on the opposite side of the street. A dim light glowed through the curtained windows. Beyond them, he thought, she would be talking; laughing, perhaps; perhaps even thinking of him at that very moment as she gazed absently at some speaker who thought to have her attention. If only she, too, could be counting the hours! But that was too unlikely. He warned himself not to imagine that. He recalled some of Teevan's speeches about women--"Shallow, pretty fools, for man's amusing--the Oriental alone, my boy, has a sane theory of women; creatures to be kept as choice cabinet bits--under lock and key."

Poor Teevan, not to have known the one woman who could have illumined his darkness! Poor Teevan, indeed! He idly wondered if his affair--that troublesome affair of which the little man had spoken so feelingly--had been "broken off."

He slowly walked once more past the Bartell house, beholding a splendid vision of himself as he would leap up those steps the next evening. Then he continued on past Teevan's house, regarding that, also, with great kindness. He stopped a little beyond this, meaning to return. As he did so the door opened and a woman came out. He thought there was something furtive in her glance up and down the street as she paused to gather up her skirts. Then something familiar in the feminine grace of that movement chained him. Surely, but one person had ever done the thing in just that way. There could be no other. He stood staring while she came down the steps and into the light of a street lamp. It was Mrs. Laithe, walking briskly now, toward her own home. He could not mistake that free-swinging, level, deliberate stride, with the head so finely up.

He almost cried out to her in his gladness. He felt as a lost child who wildly claims its own again in some crowded street. He walked back quickly, watching her until her own door swallowed her up.

He felt a lively rejoicing. The unpromising evening had done well by him after all. Thinking but to look tenderly at a house front he had veritably seen his lady--watched her with secret, unrestrained fondness.

He had an impulse to follow now and demand her at the door. But he remembered in time; she would be engaged and he would see her soon. That long look was adventure enough for one night.

But he could ring Teevan's bell. That would be a fine thing to do, for Teevan had seen her. Teevan would speak of her, little knowing how his words were hungered for. He was admitted and found the little man on the hearth rug in the library, talking to himself with great animation. He showed surprise, but his welcome was warmer than usual, Ewing thought.

He seated his guest and proffered him brandy, pouring a gla.s.s for himself from a decanter almost empty. As he drank he beamed shrewdly on Ewing--kindly but shrewdly. "He must have seen her--he must have seen her ..." the little man was saying. Then a vagrant, elfish vanity smote him. He smiled inscrutably on Ewing--Ewing, who had been waiting to say lightly, "I happened to see Mrs. Laithe leaving...." But he did not say this, for the little man's smile came to life in speech.

"Gad! my boy--I'm deuced glad you came. You can make me forget a most distressing half hour I've just gone through."

The light in Ewing's eyes changed perceptibly.

"Oh, these women!" grumbled Teevan pleasantly, with the fine, humorous resignation of a persecuted gallant.

"Women--women?" muttered Ewing, slightly aghast. Teevan's heart beat blithely within his breast.

"Silly, romantic fools! What _do_ they see in a man of my years?" He flourished a gesture of magnificent deprecation. "I think I once mentioned a very irksome affair--" How he blessed, now, that bit of boasting, vague and aimless at the time! "The lady, I blush to say it, becomes exigent. But I'm rightly served. Heaven knows I've seen enough of that sort of thing to know how it ends. But come"--he rose to a livelier manner--"I shouldn't bore you with a matter I'm half ashamed of, man of the world as I am. You'll sound the ennui of it, all in your own good time, when you've lost a few of those precious illusions." He broke off to ring, and directed the man to replenish the decanter.

Ewing gazed stupidly at him, failing of speech. The little man drank again when the brandy came, and Ewing wondered if he could be drunk. He feared not. The men he had known in the hills were noisy in drink--they chiefly yelled. And Teevan was quiet. If his eyes stared vacantly at intervals, if he clipped syllables from his words, and seemed to attack his speech with extreme caution, those might be only the results of his emotion. But what monstrous stuff was this he uttered! What unbelievable stuff! In a fever of apprehension he wondered what Teevan would say next.