Mrs. Balfame Part 22

"I had quite forgotten him."

"Ha! Is he married?"

"Oh, no. And he was born and brought up over in Rennselaerville, by the way, but went West to some college or university and practised out there for several years."

"How old is he?"

"Oh, about thirty-three or thirty-four."

"Must have been away a good many years. Would return quite fresh--must have had a lot made over him here--looks clever and built for success--that concentrated driving type that always gets there--"

"He goes very little into society and no one possibly could lionise him."

"Is he interesting to talk to or just another specialist?"

"That's about it. But he was more a friend of mother's than mine. That is her picture."

"Oh! He likes older women, then? Looks as if he might. Never would take the trouble, that type, to adapt himself to girls, try to understand them. Could it be--Alys, you must know if he knows Mrs. Balfame!"

Alys was cold again but laid violent hands on her nerves. "No better than he knew any one else, if as well, for Mrs. Balfame never talked to the younger men. She doesn't attract them, anyhow. Do you realise, dear, that you are asking if Mr. Rush committed murder?"

"With that jaw and those nostrils, he could--oh, rather! And it is one of those cast-iron, pa.s.sionate faces; when those men do let go--"

"Oh, really!" Alys dropped her arm, and her subtle face expressed disdain. "Mr. Rush is quite too steel clad to be carried away even if he were capable of committing a low and cowardly murder. He happens to be a gentleman and about as astute and poised as they are made. Do please send your romantic imagination off on another flight."

"Not I. I'm going to account for every moment he spent that night."

"Would you like to see Mr. Rush go to the chair?" asked Miss Crumley sternly.

"Oh, good Lord no." Miss Austin turned pale. "I don't believe in capital punishment, anyhow. No, I'll not tell a thing if I find him out. But how interesting to know! I'd write a corking story--fiction--about it.

Those deep glimpses into life--into those terrible abysses of the human heart--no writer can become great without them."

"Well, don't waste your time trying to find the criminal in this excellent citizen. You might set some of the newspaper men on his trail and blacken his name while you discovered nothing. Better get on the track of the potential woman in New York."

"Not half so interesting. Just one of those apartment-house misalliances. No, I'm out for Mr. Rush, and when I have the proof, I'll extract a confession; but I'll dig a little grave in my brain and bury his secret--then when it has ripened, exhume and toss it into that crucible through which facts pa.s.s and come out--fiction. Get me, dear?"

"You talk like a literary ghoul. But I know you don't mean a word of it.

Good-bye, girls. Do drop in whenever you are over on the case." She kissed them all, and Miss Lauretta Lea exclaimed innocently:

"You've lost that lovely dusky colour you had awhile ago, dear. You look more like old ivory than ever--old ivory and olive. I wonder all the artists don't paint you. I suppose every young man in Elsinore is in love with you. Marry, my dear, marry. I've been in this game twelve years. Show me a willing would-be husband and I'd take him so quick he'd never know what struck him. Give my hopes of being a man in the next incarnation for ten babies to weep over when they had croup or got lost in the woods of New York City. Hate sob stuff. Cut it out, kid, before you begin it."

She talked all the way to the gate and for several yards down the avenue, waving a final farewell with a somewhat tragic smile.

"Why doesn't that girl marry?" she asked as they walked rapidly to the station. "Still fresh, if she is twenty-six. I'm only thirty-four and I look like a hag beside her."

"Maybe she can't get the man she wants," replied the potential novelist, who was thinking deeply.

CHAPTER XXII

Alys borrowed a horse and cart from her cousin Mr. Phipps, Chief of Police in Elsinore, who kept a livery stable, and took the shortest cut into the country. She wanted to think out many things and think them out alone. She drove rapidly until she came within sight and sound of the sea. Then she let the lines lie loosely on the back of her old friend Colonel Roosevelt, who had been named in his fiery colt-hood, but in these days, save under compulsion, was as slow as American law. He ambled along, and Alys, in the booming stillness and the fresh salt air, felt the humid waves roll out of her brain. She saw clearly, but she was aghast and depressed.

Presented by nature with an odd and arresting exterior, in color and feature as well as in subtlety of expression, sketched and flattered by such artists as she met, she had, ever since old enough for introspection, striven for uncommon personal developments that should justify her obverse and set her still farther apart from mere woman. If not born with an intense aversion from the commonplace (and it is safe to say that no one is), she had conceived it early enough to train a rarely plastic mind to striking viewpoints, while a natural tact saved her from isolation. If she had been as original as she thought herself, she would have antagonised many people.

a.s.suredly a certain n.o.bility of nature and a revulsion from all that was base were innate; although, soon learning of the many pitfalls yawning for humanity, she had a.s.siduously cultivated these her higher inclinations, an enterprise measurably a.s.sisted by the equable temper, the feminine charm, the bright intelligence and the quick sympathies that made her many friends. Moreover, her freedom from the usual yearnings of her s.e.x in the matter of riches and subservience to the race, which wreck the lives of so many women, and her love of the arts and delight in her own little talent, all served to deponderate the burden of life.

She had liked many men as friends, and was proud of the fact that only the more intelligent were attracted to her, but she had arrived at the age of twenty-six without even imagining herself seriously in love, so intense was her idealism. This was another of her deliberate cultivations, for here also was she resolute that as nature had done so much for her, marking her as a girl apart, so should she insist upon having an uncommon mate. It was to this end even more than for the barren satisfaction of pleasing Mother Nature that she had tilled the garden of her mind with both science and imagination. When she loved, it should be like a woman, of course; she had no delusions about making over human nature to suit pa.s.sing fas.h.i.+ons in woman; but while she never ignored the vital pa.s.sions that formed the basis of her unique personality and strong will, she was determined that they should be quickened only by a man who would make equal demands upon all that was fine in her character and aspiring in her mind.

The awful collapse of this cherished structure, her spiritual house, under her hopeless and violent pa.s.sion for Dwight Rush had almost demoralised her. After she had won herself to reason once more, she still had sat, stunned, among the ruins. It was true that Rush was all that she had demanded of man and that he emanated a promise of happiness along strictly modern lines--which was all she asked, being no romantic fool; but not only had she loved him unasked, sacrificing the first and perhaps the dearest of her dreams, to be wooed and awakened and surprised, but, accepting the inevitable (the man being overburdened, like most busy young Americans, and unselfconscious), she deliberately had set herself to awaken _him_--and for nought. For worse than nought: he had instantly taken fright and withdrawn.

Of the terrific upheaval of that time, like some graveyard of the sea flung putrid and phosph.o.r.escent to the surface by submarine vulcanism, she had ceased to think as soon as her will was reinstated in command.

Immediately she had striven to rebuild her house lest she be swamped in mere femaleness, so permanently demoralised that life would be quite unendurable. She had cultivated the heights too long. She might tumble off occasionally, but in no other atmosphere could she breathe deeply and realise herself, find any measure of content. It had occurred to her that if she had been born in the gutter and grown to adolescence with no enn.o.bling influence, she would have developed into a notable force for evil. At all events, she liked to think so; many women of stainless lives do.

She guessed this, having a saving sense of humour, but did not expand upon it, not being inclined to humour at the moment. Accompanying her resolution to be finer and better than ever, to fortify herself against life with some degree of satisfaction in herself, was the hope of complete deliverance from what she called the Dwight Rush Idea. In due course she had conquered the obsession, for pride and self-disgust served her like first-aid surgeons on the battlefield; and although she felt amputated and scarred, she had lost her sense of humiliation. But her heart still accelerated its beats when she met Rush, and no will is strong enough to prevent the recurrence of the mental image; only time can dim it. But it was not until Broderick had left her alone in her studio with the poisons of fear and jealousy implanted that she had admitted she still loved him, probably must continue to love him for years to come.

In that hour she had hated Mrs. Balfame, although she neither believed her guilty nor was tempted to the dastardly course of helping to force the appearance of guilt upon her. And for a time that night she had hoped she hated Dwight Rush also, so utterly disgusted and indignant was she that he could prefer a faded woman of forty-odd to a unique and beautiful girl like herself.

But once more Miss Crumley's sense of proportion enforced itself, and she reflected sternly that men had fallen in love with women older than themselves since the world began, and that some of those transcendent--and lasting--pa.s.sions had made history. She was no green village girl to be astounded at the least common phase of the s.e.xual adventure. It was then she had given way to tears, for although she might be intelligent enough to admit this most unpardonable of nature's informalities, she could regret it with bitterness and despair.

Later had come her fear for Rush's safety. Not for a moment did she suspect him of the crime, but if accused of it during the process of elimination, there was the appalling doubt that he could prove an alibi.

As likely as not he had missed his man in Brooklyn--she knew that he had expected to dine and spend the evening at the Country Club--or had not gone there; knowing Balfame's ugly temper when drunk, what more natural than that he should hide in the grounds to be near at hand in case the man were disposed to wreak vengeance on his wife for his own humiliation. It was Alys's theory that the murder was political.

Until to-day! From the moment that she saw Mrs. Balfame empty and rinse the vial, she was convinced that Broderick was right in his deductions and that for some reason the terrible woman had changed her mind and used the revolver. It was a stupider act than she would have expected of Mrs. Balfame, for Dave was a man whose sudden death would excite little suspicion, nor would Mrs. Balfame be the woman to use a common poison.

Her intimacy with Dr. Anna would put her on the track of one of those organic potions that were too subtle for chemical a.n.a.lysis. She had heard doctors talk of them herself.

Then abruptly she recalled the sinister change in Mrs. Balfame's smiling countenance on that day she sketched her at the Friday Club; her mind opened and closed on the conviction that in that moment Mrs. Balfame had conceived the purpose of murder.

But why the change of method? She dismissed the riddle. It was not for her to unravel. Nor did she care. The fact was enough. This good friend of her family was an abominable creature from whom in even mental contact she shuddered away with a spasm of spiritual nausea.

But that was not her own problem. No doubt Mrs. Balfame would be acquitted; Alys hoped so, at all events, for she wanted no such a stain on Elsinore, where, she thanked G.o.d, she lived, although she sought knowledge and income in the City of New York. For the same reason, she had no desire that the guilty woman should pay her debt by even a brief term in Auburn; but all that was beside the point. What Alys felt she would give her soul to ravish from this thrice accursed woman, so formidable in her peril, were the services of Dwight Rush. If he were Mrs. Balfame's chief counsel he would see her constantly, and alone--for hours on end, perhaps, for he must consult with her, rehea.r.s.e her, instruct her, keep up her spirits, console her. This might not be the whole duty of counsel, but in the circ.u.mstances no doubt she had underestimated, if anything. And even if he believed her guilty, he might in that intimacy love her the more; not only would he pity her profoundly and see himself her natural protector, but he would be heart and soul in the great case, and it would not be long before the case and the woman were one.

If, however, Rush could be made to believe now that the woman was a murderess, would he not decline to take the case? He was hardly the man to defend man or woman whom from the outset he knew to be guilty, although when immersed in the case he would keep on, whatever the revelations. Alys believed that it was possible for her to convince him.

She could inform him of the needle-witted Mr. Broderick's suspicions and of her own confirmations; and she could tell him of her certain knowledge that Mrs. Balfame had a revolver; she had seen it eight months ago, when Balfame brought it home from New York and told his wife to discharge it in the air if, when alone, she heard a man breaking in.

It had signified little to her at the moment that Mrs. Balfame had denied to police and reporters that she possessed a revolver, for it might by chance be a .41, and it was not to be expected that even an innocent woman would challenge public doubt and possible arrest. But her denial and probable concealment of the weapon were significant to Alys now. She remembered that Dr. Anna had spent the early hours of Sunday alone with Mrs. Balfame. No doubt the wicked woman had found both relief and counsel in confessing to a friend like Anna Steuer, a creature so strong and staunch that the secret would be as safe as in her own guilty soul. Anna, of course, had taken the pistol and dropped it in the marsh when she visited Farmer Houston's wife later in the day. If she could but get Dr. Anna to speak.

Alys raised her eyes under their bent and frowning brows and looked up to where the Brabant Hospital stood on rising ground beside the sea. She gave a gasp as she found herself turning the horse's head in that direction. What did she intend to do? Denounce Mrs. Balfame to Dwight Rush? She fancied she heard an inner crash. Could she do this and escape final demoralisation? Heretofore she had at least committed no act involving moral degradation; her upheavals had affected herself alone and were her inviolate secret; but if she made a last desperate throw to win Dwight Rush by first filling him with loathing of her rival, she would be committed to a course of conduct from which there would be no escape for months, perhaps years to come. For if she won him,--toward which end she must plan with every female art she knew,--she never could ease her soul with confession. Her only chance of keeping a man like that, after the first effulgence had merged into the healthy temperateness of practical married life, was to avoid the major disillusions.

And if she by her own deliberate act went to pieces morally, could she play up? Should she even want to play up? Could one deliberately knock the foundations from under one's cherished spiritual structure, reared with infinite pains upon natural inclinations, and continue to be even a pale reflection of one's higher self? She might, after the first excitement of striving to achieve her immediate object was over, hate herself too deeply to love or even to live.

She drew her brows more closely and expelled her breath through her teeth. For the moment, at least, she felt all female, ready to defy the future and her own soul to obtain possession of her mate. That he was her mate she obstinately believed, temporarily deflected from his natural progress toward herself by one of those powerful delusions that afflict every man in the course of his life. And if she did not open his eyes at once, the temporary deflection would merge into the straight course toward marriage with a she-demon....

She drove into the hospital yard, threw the reins over Colonel Roosevelt's back and asked for the superintendent, Mrs. Dissosway, who happened to be her aunt.