The Blood Red Dawn Part 6

"She must subscribe to the _Ladies' Home Journal_," Nellie Whitehead had commented one day. "You know that 'go-up-into-the-garret-and-get-five- yards-of-grandmother's-wedding-gown' column. Well, she's a walking ad for it. She's no raving beauty, but if she would throw out her chest and chuck those flat-heeled clogs of hers, and put a marcel wave in her hair, maybe the old man would sit up and take notice."

To which Miss Munch had replied:

"Well, she's a mighty sweet woman, anyway!" in a tone calculated to freeze the irrepressible Nellie Whitehead into silence.

"Who says she isn't? And at that, a good tailor-made suit and a decent-looking hat won't spoil her disposition any...."

The children, too, were what Nellie Whitehead had termed "perfect guys."

On warm days Mrs. Flint would drag these two daughters of hers into the office, dressed in plaid suits and velveteen hats; and when a cold north wind blew it seemed inevitable that they would appear in gay and airy costumes up to their knees, with impossible straw bonnets trimmed with daisies and faded cornflowers, reminiscent of the white-leghorn-hat era.

"Men don't marry women for their clothes," Miss Munch used to say, challengingly, to Nellie.

"Oh, don't they, indeed! Well, I've lived longer than sixteen and a half years and I've noticed that it's the up-to-the-minute dame that gets away with it and holds onto it every time, just the same. And any woman silly enough to work the rag-bag game when her husband can afford seven yards of taffeta and a b.u.t.terick pattern is a fool!"

Claire knew women who looked dowdy on dress-parade and yet managed to be quite charming in their own houses. She was wondering whether this might not be Mrs. Flint's case; anyway, she had hoped for a chance to decide this point, and now Mrs. Flint was not at home.

As she settled into her matting-covered seat in the train she began to wonder just who _would_ be home at the Flint establishment. And she thought suddenly of the disagreeable emphasis that Mrs. Richards had seen fit to give the fact that Mrs. Flint was bound cityward. At this stage she became lost in discovering so many points of contact between Mrs. Richards and her cousin, Miss Munch. Then the train started with a quick lurch, and a view of the rapidly darkening landscape claimed her utterly.

Claire always took a childish delight in watching the panorama of the countryside unroll swiftly before the s.p.a.ce-conquering flight of a train. And to-night the quick close of the December day warned her to make the most of her opportunity. The wind was whipping the upper reaches of the bay into a shallow fury, and the water in turn was beating against the slimy mud and swallowing it up in gray, futile anger. This part of the ride just out of Sausalito was always more or less depressing unless a combination of full tide and vivid sunshine gave its muddy stretches the enlivening grace of sky-blue reflections.

Worm-eaten and tottering piles, abandoned hulks, half-swamped skiffs, all the water-logged dissolution of stagnant sh.o.r.e lines the world over, flashed by, to be succeeded by the fresher green of channel-cut marshes.

The hills were wind-swept, huddling their scant oak covering into the protecting folds of shallow canons. At intervals, clumps of eucalyptus-trees banded together or drew out in long, thin, soldier-like lines.

Presently it began to rain. There was no preliminary patter, but the storm broke suddenly, hurling great gray drops of moisture against the windows. Claire withdrew from any further attempt to watch the whirling landscape. It was now quite dark, the short December day dying even more suddenly under a black pall of lowering clouds.

She began to have distinctly uncomfortable thoughts about her visit to the Flints'. But the more uncomfortable her thoughts became, the more reason she brought to bear for conquering them. Surely one was not to be persuaded into a panic by any such person as Mrs. Richards! And by the time the brakeman announced the train's approach to Yolanda, Claire had recovered her common sense. What of it if Mrs. Flint had gone to town?

There must be other women in the household--at least a maid. It was absurd! The train stopped and Claire got off.

Flint's car was waiting, and Jerry Donovan, the chauffeur, stood with a dripping umbrella almost at Claire's elbow as she hopped upon the platform.

As they swished through the inky blackness, Claire said to Jerry, with as inconsequential an air as she could muster:

"I thought I saw Mrs. Flint get off the boat in town. But I guess I was mistaken. She wouldn't be leaving Mr. Flint alone ... when he's ill."

"Ill?" Jerry chuckled. "Well, he ain't dead by a long shot. Just a case of sniffles, and a good excuse for hitting the booze. He's in prime condition, I can tell you."

Claire had never seen Flint in "prime condition," but she had it from Nellie Whitehead that there were moments when the gentleman in question could "go some," to use her predecessor's precise terms.

"About twice a year," Nellie had once confided to Claire, "the old boy starts in to cure a cold. I helped him cure one ... but _never_ again!"

Jerry's observations aroused fresh anxiety, but they did not settle the issue for Claire. She felt that she could not turn back at the eleventh hour. There was nothing else for her to do but go through with the game.

Yet she still hoped for the best.

"_Did_ Mrs. Flint go to town to-day?" she finally asked, point-blank.

"Sure thing," said Jerry, swinging the car past the Flint gateway.

Claire refused to be totally lacking in faith.

"There must be a maid," flashed through her mind, as Jerry stopped the car and swung down to help her out.

A j.a.panese boy threw open the door as they scrambled up the rain-soaked steps. But the fine, orderly, Colonial interior rea.s.sured Claire. The few country homes she had seen had been of the rambling, unrelated bungalow type, with paneled redwood walls either stained to a dismal brown or quite frankly left to their rather characterless pink. This home was different. Even the pungent oak logs crackling in the fireplace did so with indefinable distinction. The general tone of the surroundings was as little in keeping with the patchwork personality of its mistress as one could imagine. It was as if the singular completeness of Mrs. Flint's home left no time nor energy for a finished individuality. Claire got all this in the briefest of flashes, just a swift, inclusive glance about the entrance hall and through the doorways leading into the rooms beyond. Particularly did she sense the severe opulence of the dining-room, twinkling at a remoter distance than the living-room--its perfectly polished silver, its spotless linen, its wonderfully blue china, not to mention the disconcerting fact that the table in the center was laid for but two.

And then Flint himself came forward with a very red face and an absurdly cordial greeting.

"Well, I began to wonder whether you'd risk it. This will be a storm and no mistake.... Here, let me have your coat. Come, you're quite wet....

Shall you warm up on a hot toddy or something cooler--a c.o.c.ktail?"

She felt his hand sliding down her arm as she released the coat to his too-eager fingers. "Oh no, Mr. Flint! Thank you, nothing. It's only a bit of rain on the surface. I'm quite dry."

"Quite dry!" He echoed her words with a guffaw. "Well, then, we'll have to moisten you up. I always say everything's a good excuse for a drink.

If you're cold you take a drink to warm up; if you're warm you take one to cool off. You dry out on one, and you wet up on one. I don't know of any habit with so many good reasons back of it. I'm dry, too.... We'll have a Bronx! That's a nice, ladylike drink."

Claire weighed her reply. She did not want to strike the wrong note; she wanted to let him have a feeling that she was accepting everything in a normal, matter-of-fact way, as if she saw nothing extraordinary in the situation.

"You're very kind, but really you know ... if I'm to get my dictation straight...."

"Well, perhaps there won't be any dictation. We're not slaves, you and I. Maybe it will be much pleasanter to sit before the fire and listen to the storm. What do you say to that?"

She turned from him deliberately, under the fiction of fluffing up her hair before a gilt mirror near the door. She was thinking quickly and with a tremendous, if concealed, agitation. "Why," she laughed back, finally, "that _would_ be pleasant. But I came to take dictation, Mr.

Flint. And women ... women, you know, are so funny! If they make up their minds to one thing, they can't switch suddenly to another idea."

He was paying no attention to her remark, a remark which she felt would have fallen flat in any event, since it was so palpably studied.

"The living-room is in there," he said, pointing. "Make yourself at home."

She went in and sat before the fire. Flint disappeared. She tried hard to a.n.a.lyze the situation. It was unthinkable that Mr. Flint had deliberately planned this piece of foolishness. He must have had some idea of work when he had telephoned her; perhaps he still had. It was his way of being facetious, she argued, this fine pretense that it was all to be a pleasant lark, or it may have been his idea of hospitality.

Of course he had been drinking, but she took comfort in the thought that there must be instinctive standards in a man like Flint that even whisky could not swamp. At least he must respect his wife--surely it was not possible for Flint, drunk or sober, to offer such an affront to _her_, however little he respected the women in his employ. She dismissed Mrs.

Richards's exaggerated insinuations with their well-deserved contempt, but she could not thrust aside quite so readily the eye-lifting tone with which Stillman had met the announcement of Mrs. Flint's absence from home.

This was the first time that Claire had seen Stillman since the musicale. She had thought a great deal about him and particularly about his problem. She felt a great desire to know everything--all the details of the unfortunate circ.u.mstance that had driven his wife into a madhouse, and yet whenever her mother broached the subject Claire changed the topic with curious panic. She seemed to dread the hard, almost triumphant manner that her mother a.s.sumed in tracking misfortune to its lair and gloating over it. She began to wonder whether Stillman would be swinging back to the city on a late boat ... or would the storm keep him at Edington's sister's home all night?

She was in the midst of this speculation when Flint came into the room.

"We'll eat early and have that off our minds," he announced. His manner was brusk and business-like again. Claire felt rea.s.sured.

But she was disturbed to find a c.o.c.ktail at her place at the table.

"Well, here's glad to see you!" Flint raised his gla.s.s and tilted it ever so slightly in her direction. Claire lifted the c.o.c.ktail to her lips and set it down untasted. "What's the matter? Getting unsociable again?"

"No, Mr. Flint. I don't care for c.o.c.ktails."

"Oh, all right! We'll send down-cellar and get some wine."

"Thank you, not for me."

"I suppose you don't care for wine, either?" His voice had a bantering quality, with a shade of menace in it. "Or maybe the right party isn't here. I've noticed that makes a difference. Females are d.a.m.ned moral with the wrong fellow."

His attack was so direct and insolent that Claire missed the trepidation that might have come with a more covert move. She was no longer uncertain. There was a sharp relief in realizing that all the cards were on the table. She felt also that there was no immediate danger. Flint was far from sober, but he was in his own home. She had the conviction that he was merely skirmishing, testing the strength or weakness of the line he hoped to penetrate. Her reply was rather more of a challenge than she could have imagined herself giving under such a circ.u.mstance.