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.
Assuredly a certain nobility of nature and a revulsion from all that
was base were innate; although, soon learning of the many pitfalls
yawning for humanity, she had assiduously cultivated these her higher
inclinations, an enterprise measurably assisted 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 sex 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 passing fashions in woman; but while she never
ignored the vital passions 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 passion 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 phosphorescent 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
ennobling 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--passions had made history. She was no green
village girl to be astounded at the least common phase of the sexual
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 analysis. 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 God, 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, rehearse her,
instruct her, keep up her spirits, console her. This might not be the
whole duty of counsel, but in the circumstances 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.