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Mrs. Balfame

[Pg 76] <h2>CHAPTER IX</h2> 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 he [Pg 77]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 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. [Pg 78] 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 in[Pg 79] various 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 her[Pg 80] 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' 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. [Pg 81] 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, and[Pg 82] good 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? 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 passion; 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 pronounced that it seemed to invade the pale ivory of her skin and the smooth masses 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 impassioned 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 passion in him. Moreover, he was now haunted continually by the image of a sweet, remote, and (to him) far more mysterious woman, whom he worshipped 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[Pg 83] 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. She was further incensed that he had revealed her to herself as a mere morbid unsatisfied girl, whose quarter of a century should be crowned by a little family of three; and at last she doubted if she had ever loved him at all. That she had been a mere female principle unable to escape its impersonal destiny disgusted her with life, but it served to restore her balance and philosophy. Being a girl of brains and character she emerged from the encounter with pride still crested in the eyes of the man; and if his image was too deeply stamped into her imagination to prevent a recurrence of wild desire whenever she was so imprudent as to let her mind wander, she remembered that all great physical upheavals are followed by many minor shocks, and waited with what patience she could command for full delivery. Of the sanguinary condition of the battle ground in his young friend's soul Rush had a mere glimpse before she took heed and dissembled. He assumed that she either had fallen in love with him after the fashion of girls when they saw too much of a man, or that she was eager to marry and improve her condition. He reproached himself for thoughtlessness, renounced the long evenings in the pretty room with a sigh, and in[Pg 84] his bachelor quarters read the books of her choice. He had a very kindly feeling for her, for he knew that he owed her a debt; if he had not met the other woman—who could tell? Moreover, as he conceived it to be his duty to shield her from spiteful comment, he danced with her in public and joined her on the street whenever they met. But if he knew nothing of the intricate and interminable ramifications of sex psychology, the infinite variety of moods peculiar to a woman in love, he was well enough aware that love is easily turned to hate, particularly when vanity has been deeply wounded; and although he had conceived a high esteem for Alys Crumley's character during the weeks of their intimacy, he knew that men had been mistaken in their estimate of women before this, and that if she discovered that he loved another woman she might be capable of taking the basest revenge. It was possible that she was the noblest of her sex, and he hoped she was, but as he considered her that night, he realised that it behooved him to walk warily nevertheless. By the time he could marry Enid Balfame, or even betray his desire to marry her, this crime would have passed into county history. Of the real danger he never thought. The vision evoked of Alys Crumley was accompanied by that of her home, and he looked round his stark bachelor quarters with a sigh. The untidy sitting-room was crowded with law books and legal reviews; the maid had given it up in despair long since, and only swept out the ashes daily and dusted once a week. In the small bedroom was an iron bed like a soldier's;[Pg 85] neckties hung from the chandelier; on the bureau and table beside the bed were more books, several by the young British authors of the moment for whom Miss Crumley had communicated some of her rather perfunctory enthusiasm. He flung his clothes all over the room as he undressed. He hated bachelor quarters. Six months hence he would be the master of a home as exquisite as the woman he loved. Balfame! The man was dead, but as Rush thought of him his face turned almost black and his hands tingled and clenched. It would be long before he could hear that name mentioned without a hot uprush of hatred and loathing. But it subsided and he took a bath and "turned in." <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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