At the Age of Eve Part 28

"That train leaves at six-thirty, I believe?"

Again he looked at Mrs. Chalmers and she again nodded her head. But she did not speak.

"Then I shall not have an opportunity of seeing you in the morning,"

and he walked over and shook hands with his hostess, making his adieus in a wretchedly forced way.

She shook hands with him and allowed him to pa.s.s on to me. I gave him my hand in a mechanical fashion, and my eyes were fixed upon Mrs.

Chalmers' face. She was evidently frightened at the thought of the thing she was doing; but she was just as evidently going to see it through.

"Good-by, Miss Fielding," Mr. Maxwell said simply, then turned toward the door.

I was still looking at her as I heard the sound of his hand upon the door-k.n.o.b, but as I realized in that instant that he was really _going_ and that neither of us had lifted a finger to set him right, a sudden power over which it seemed that I had no control came and caught me, almost physically forcing me out of my place. I ran across the room.

"Mr. Maxwell!" I called.

He came back a few steps and stood facing us.

"You were leaving--that is, we were about to let you leave--under a false impression," I stammered breathlessly, all the time a sense of my doing something very much out of place strong upon me.

"False impression?" His eyes were glittering feverishly.

"Yes. It is true that we found the--the thing you mentioned in Sophie's bag that night, but she is no--dope-fiend."

He stood still as if he were petrified.

"Physicians carry those things in instrument cases," I went on, feeling that my explanation sounded very tame and inadequate.

"Physicians carry them and so do _nurses_."

He looked at me a moment in utter bewilderment, then, slowly, comprehension dawned in his eyes. Even the understanding was going to be bitter to him, for there would be the humiliating confession that he would have to make to her that he had misjudged her.

As I said the word "nurses" Mrs. Chalmers moved a step forward and held up a warning hand.

"Ann," she exclaimed in a frightened whisper, "Richard said that this affair was _not_ to be mentioned."

"A professional nurse!" Mr. Maxwell cried, his face lighting up as a hundred hazy memories came flooding over him. "In El Paso--my G.o.d!

_Of course!_"

He came up to me and caught my arm.

"This is what you mean?" he asked.

Mrs. Chalmers' eyes were fixed on me in a kind of fascinated wonder.

How _could_ any one go against Richard's expressed wish? But my own eyes were meeting hers steadily as I turned to answer Mr. Maxwell's pleading question.

"Yes, that is what I mean. Sophie belongs to the great army of the Red Cross!"

CHAPTER XV

THE DOUGLAS IN HIS HALL

As is frequently the case when I have gone to bed late and in a perturbed state of mind, I awake early, with a heavy feeling between my eyes and a marked distaste to getting up. It was so this morning, except I had an indistinct impression that, instead of waking normally, I had been awakened by some unusual noise.

I turned over in bed and looked around the room for a few minutes before I began to think of the effort of getting up. I had by no means forgotten that Richard was coming--might already be here, as the spasmodic bursts of sunshine indicated that it was at least seven o'clock--but he would not expect me to do anything so unusual as to dress this early and meet him down-stairs for a few minutes' stolen happiness before we should meet and shake hands formally at the breakfast table. The bliss of such a secret little reunion might, doubtless would, appeal to most lovers, but not to Coeur de Lion.

He would see in it only the impropriety of a young woman meeting a man in a deserted library in the early hours of the morning. Richard has this way of throwing--well, not exactly cold water, but _iced lemonade_, over the exuberance of my youthful feelings! I wish this were not so, but--

I looked around the beautiful, befrilled bedroom, with its handsome furniture of Circa.s.sian walnut and its dainty blue silk hangings--and I thought, with a quick little pang of longing, of my severely plain sleeping apartment at home. This Spartan bareness is in imitation of Alfred's cell-like bedroom, which Ann Lisbeth had once shown me, and which had attracted me by the air of wholesomeness the immaculate cleanliness gave it. Alfred and I have often planned a house so plain and sanitary that we could turn the hose all through it. Housekeeping would be a delightfully simple affair with him, for he and I agree so perfectly in our dislike of complicated things. Dear me! I wonder what kind of house Richard and I will keep? It will be--expensive, but will it be harmonious?

The events of last night came crowding before me and I remembered with a most disagreeable little chill that Mrs. Chalmers' eye had held a look of terror as she thought of Richard's commands being disobeyed.

Was Richard a monster then? Did he _eat_ people when they dared to go contrary to his wishes? I also recalled the day he and I had had our first actual quarrel--about the volume of Byron which Alfred had given me. His eyes grow very cold and glittering when he is angry, and--yes, I can understand that a certain cla.s.s of women might be very much afraid of him. Especially if they had him to live with! And I wondered if, at last, after months of struggling, I, too, might not find it more restful and peaceable to become a groveling sort of hypocrite to my lord and master?

"Never, never!" I cried aloud, jumping out of bed as I heard again the same sounds which had awakened me--hurrying footsteps down-stairs through the halls, and the sound of many doors being hastily opened and closed. "I'll give him up if I find him as they say he is."

Just then I recognized the heavy, dignified slam of the ma.s.sive front door, a kind of m.u.f.fled protest against the impertinence of using haste with such an august portion of that house; then, a moment after, there was the sound of an automobile starting.

"Evelyn must be much worse," I thought uneasily, as I hurried through with my bath and slipped into my clothes. If this were so I knew that I should not have to meet Mrs. Chalmers at the breakfast table, and I should be relieved of the ordeal of coming in contact with her bland smile. I instinctively felt that she would meet us all exactly as if nothing had happened the night before. She is entirely too well-bred to bear malice.

Now, for my part, I have a nervous distaste to whited sepulchers, aside from any question of morality, and I always have a sense of being brought face to face with the rottenness and dead men's bones whenever I am forced to _smooth_ over a situation which has not been thoroughly explained and threshed out. When I have a grievance against any one, my first desire is to "have it out" with the offender, and I always want any one whom I have offended to offer me the same privilege of setting myself straight.

But Mrs. Chalmers would, I know, sit for ever at the mouth of such whited sepulcher with a bottle of vera-violet held to her nose before she would face anybody in helping to rid the place of its pestilence.

These thoughts were running through my mind as I was dressing, and I will say that I had the grace to feel ashamed of them as I ran down the steps and met her in the hall, her face looking old and drawn with anxiety, her hair in disarray, and her figure enveloped in a fantastic kimono.

"Evelyn is very much worse," she said in a trembling voice as I came up with her and inquired after the patient. "It is an acute attack of appendicitis and Doctor Cooley has just telephoned to the city for Doctor Gordon to come out on the first train. He says--she can't--_live_ without an operation; and, even so, he is very much afraid that it--the appendix--has ruptured."

She broke down here and sobbed miserably, burying her face in her hands and wiping away the tears upon one long silken sleeve of her flowered kimono.

"Evelyn is all I have in this world," she moaned, and I suddenly felt infinitely sorry for her--and forgiving. "She is all I have to comfort me in my miserable life, and now Richard has come home and blames this trouble on me."

"Blames you?" I questioned, looking down upon her disordered hair in amazement at the thought.

"He says that I ought to have known better than to let her dance so much the other night," she explained, lifting a tear-stained face to me for a moment, as if to acknowledge the sympathy in my voice.

Clearly she was not accustomed to sympathy.

"Dance!" I said again in surprise. "Why, people have appendicitis who have never seen inside a ball-room! That is a most absurd idea."

"Not nearly so absurd as some things he hatches up against us two,"

she broke out, her anger toward Richard making her forget, for a moment, her anxiety for Evelyn. "Oh, Ann, he leads us _such_ a life!

He is exactly like his father--and he was a _despot_!"

We were interrupted by the quick footsteps of Sophie, as she came hurrying through the hall. She had an ice-cap in her hand, and there was a thermometer-case thrust through her belt. There was no trained nurse in Charlotteville, so she had quietly explained to Doctor Cooley her qualifications to act in that capacity. Mrs. Chalmers whispered this to me, as Sophie pa.s.sed by; also that Mr. Maxwell had left on the same train that brought Richard, but not before he and Sophie had spent a long hour together in the quiet library.

"She was up nearly all night," Mrs. Chalmers said, "so they came face to face here in the hall at daybreak. She is a good girl, and he will make her happy. I am glad they have come to an understanding."

"But I thought--" I began, then stopped, not knowing how to express my idea about her plans for Mr. Maxwell and Evelyn; but she read my mind.