Laura glanced wistfully at Blythe's riding clothes.
"I suppose you come here in that apparel to tantalize me, knowing that
my odious, ogreish medical man has absolutely forbidden me to ride for
the present," she said to him in mock reproach. "There is nothing in the
least subtle about that doctor man. He wants to buy my horse. That's why
he has forbidden me to ride. But I am going to thwart him by turning
Scamp over to Louise. You ride, of course, dear?"
Louise smiled her gratitude. She had become a finished rider as a young
girl during the periods when her mother would abandon her improvident
life in the city and retire to the country to enable her income
partially to catch up with her expenditures.
"I've been trying the most ambitious horse I ever saw," said Blythe,
very much the wholesome, out-of-doors looking man, dropping into a
chair. "If I buy him--and I'm going to think that over carefully--I
think I shall call him The Climber. He was very keen to accompany me up
in the elevator, but the man on guard at the door wouldn't have it.
Would you have minded my fetching him up, Laura? He has the true
artistic sense, too. He tried all he knew to climb that statue of Bobbie
Burns in the Park. Wouldn't it have been a victory for Art if he had
succeeded in demolishing that bronze libel on Burns? Then he wanted to
walk--prance, I mean--into the car of some people I stopped to pass the
time of day with. Curious psychological study, that horse. I can't
imagine where he acquired his mounting social ambition, for he's about
one-half wild horse of the pampas and the other half Wyoming cayuse."
"Louise," suggested Laura, who had been meditating during Blythe's
raillery, "would you care for a ride now?" Blythe's eyes lighted up at
the words. "I must have some excuse, you see, for driving the two of you
away, for my dressmaker is moaning piteously over the 'phone for me to
try some things on, and I'll have to go. Scamp has been eating his head
off for a fortnight, but he'll behave, I'm sure. And my habit, boots,
everything, will fit you perfectly."
Before Laura had finished Blythe was at the telephone, directing Laura's
stableman to send Scamp around and Laura was guiding Louise to her
dressing room to put her into the hands of her maid for the change into
Laura's riding things. Half an hour later Louise, well-mounted on the
breedy-looking, over-rested but tractable enough Scamp, was on the Park
bridle-path alongside Blythe, who rode the mettlesome cob he had
maligned with the stigma of cayuse.
The two horses, adaptable striders, trotted teamwise for a while, Louise
and Blythe silently giving themselves over to the enjoyment of the
eager, tingling air and the brilliant sunshine. They reined up to cross
the carriage road and for a while after that, by a sort of tacit
understanding, they reduced their horses' pace to a brisk walk.
It is a bromidic truism, but it is none the less true, that it is only
possible for a woman to be wholly at her ease in the presence of the man
in whom she is not "interested." Louise, as she rode at Blythe's side
through the bright vistas of bare, interlacing branches, perhaps would
have shrunk from being judged by the mildly accusatory terms of such an
axiom; nevertheless, alone with this man, she was wonderingly conscious
of being possessed by a speech-cancelling diffidence, a restraint not so
much superimposed as involuntarily felt, that was wholly unusual with
her in the presence of anyone else. She caught herself, not without
flushing when she became aware of her own purpose, in the act of
permitting her horse to drop a pace behind in order that she might be
free to glance at Blythe's rugged profile and the shapeliness of his
head for an instant; for she was beginning to discover that it was
oddly difficult for her to meet his frank, direct, generally cheerful
gaze. This was, of course, from no lack of candor, but, on the contrary,
because she was beginning to fear betrayal through her excessive natural
candor. It would have been impossible for her to name any other human
being with whom she would have preferred to be riding through the sunny
Park on this afternoon; yet this knowledge did not efface the other fact
that she was not at her ease with him. She endeavored, in vaguely
wondering about this, to assure herself that it was because of certain
revelations which she intended to make to Blythe concerning happenings
to herself since last she had seen him; but her inner frankness informed
her that she was merely searching for a pretext for her slightly
provoking diffidence.
Blythe was the first to break the silence.
"'On a hazy, brilliant afternoon in February, 1754, a solitary horseman
might have been seen--'" he began to quote, smiling, in a sing-song way,
as from the inevitable beginning of an antique novel. Louise laughed.
"Do you feel so lonesome as all that?" she asked him.
"Not precisely lonesome," said Blythe, "but--well, a little detached
from the picture. Speaking of pictures, please try and steady yourself
in the saddle for a moment while I say something pretty. I have been
mentally browsing for a word to describe your profile. Now I have it. It
is 'intaglio.' The beauty of that word is that I almost think I know
what it means; and also it fits. The mountain has labored and brought
forth a mouse. I think that is the first compliment I ever made in my
life," and his reddening features testified to the truth of it.
"Then I shall not deny that it pleases me," replied Louise, able now to
turn her head and look at him without the unwonted stealthiness which
had been puzzling her. "It is what numismatists would call a
'first-minted' compliment, is it not?"
"Don't ask me to analyze it, Louise, or it might come apart in my hands
and I shouldn't be able to put it together again, being so new at the
craft," replied Blythe, whimsically. She found it very natural and
agreeable that he should call her Louise; she had been conscious, in
truth, of a deep-down little fear, now dissipated, that he might resume
calling her Miss Treharne. She felt that she would not have cared for
"Miss Treharne" any more--from him.
They fell silent again for a little while, during which Blythe, infected
by the furtiveness which had actuated Louise a little while before, once
slightly drew rein in order to steal an unobserved oblique glance at
Louise's gleaming auburn hair, which refused to be confined under her
three-cornered Continental hat of felt, but moved in rebellious,
slipping coils under the impact of the occasional gusts of wind; and he
wanted, too, to get the effect of her cameo face outlined against a
patch of unusually dark shrubbery slightly ahead of them. His plotting,
however, was a dead failure. She caught him in the very article of
making this cribbed momentary inspection, and she laughed outright.
"Draw alongside, please," she commanded, and he noticed for the first
time the all but indistinguishable slant of her full eyes when they were
possessed by laughter. "You are not to criticize the fit of Laura's
habit on me, as of course you were doing."
"Of course," said Blythe, more or less unconsciously delivering himself
of a white one. "Additionally, I was wondering--" He paused a bit
abruptly.
"Well?" inquired Louise.
"You won't be annoyed?" said Blythe. "I was wondering just what you used
to think and do, and sing, and say, when, in your last-previous
incarnation, Titian was spending all of his hours painting your face and
hair."
"Now," replied Louise, smiling, "you are showing a suspicious
proficiency for one who claims to have uttered his first compliment only
three minutes ago. Annoyed? Why should I be? One might even become
used, in the course of nineteen years, to the possession of green or
blue or purple hair; so that I scarcely ever think of my ensanguined
locks unless I am reminded of them."
"I think," said Blythe, musingly, "that you have the gift of
cheerfulness."
"Oh," replied Louise, purposely misunderstanding him, "it doesn't take
such an inordinate amount of resignation, really, to tolerate one's own
red hair."
"I deny that it is red," said Blythe, assuming an impressive judicial
air. "In fact, to employ a perfectly useless legal term, I note an
exception to that statement. It isn't red. It's--it's the tint of an
afterglow; an afterglow that never was on land or sea."
At that instant they emerged upon the open road, and a mounted policeman
held up a detaining hand, holding up a huge yellow-bodied car to enable
them to cross to where the bridle-path began again. Louise, crimsoning,
saw her mother leaning back in the big car, Judd beside her. Blythe,
too, saw Mrs. Treharne--and her companion--and lifted his hat. Louise
had waved a hand at her mother; but it was a limp hand, and the sun had
suddenly darkened for her. Blythe noticed her immediate abstraction. He
understood. He rode a trifle closer to her, in silence, for a while.
Louise was gazing at the pommel of her saddle, and he observed the
tremulousness about her lips.
At a point where the path narrowed in passing a great boulder, Blythe
reined yet closer, and, reaching out, pressed for an instant her gloved
guiding hand.
"Don't worry, Louise--all of these things come right in time," he said
in a subdued tone, and as if they had already been speaking of that
which had caused her sudden distress. "Be sustained by that belief.
Everything works out right in time. I venture to touch upon that which
pains you, not because we are to have a mere legal relationship, but
because I am hoping that you view me as a friend. Do you?"
"You must know that I do," said Louise, more moved than he could guess.
The touch of his hand had strangely thrilled her. "If it were not for
you and Laura--" She paused, turning her head.
"I know," said Blythe. "It is not a matter for volunteered advice. But
perhaps you have thought of some way in which I--we--can help you; make
the course smoother for you. Have you?"
"No," replied Louise, simply. "There were some occurrences--some things
that happened last night--that I meant to tell you about. But I can't
now. Laura will tell you. You must not be too angry when she tells you.
The happenings were not the fault of my mother's; she----"
"I can easily surmise that," Blythe helped her. "But, Louise, if you had
meant to tell me these things yourself, what has altered your
determination? Perhaps, though," reflecting, "that isn't a fair
question."
"The unfairness--perhaps I should call it weakness--is on my side,"
replied Louise. "I make very brave resolutions," smiling a little
detachedly, "as to the candor I am going to reveal to you when I meet
you; but when I am with you--" The sentence required no finishing.
"There is no weakness in that," said Blythe. "Or, if there is, then I
think my own weakness must be far greater than yours. There are many
things that I want to say to you and that I find it impossible to say
when the opportunity comes. Several times, for example, I have
fruitlessly struggled to say that I hope my guardianship over you will
erect no barrier between us."
"How could it?" asked Louise, meeting his eye.
"It is just that," replied Blythe, "which I find it so difficult to
express. I fear to venture too close to the quicksands. But I might as
well take the risk. I did not exactly mean to use the word 'barrier.'
You make quite another appeal to me than as a ward to a guardian. My
imagination is far more involved than that. Perhaps I take a roundabout
method, Louise, of saying that, in spite of my approaching guardianship,
I sometimes find myself presuming to hope that a time might come when
you would be willing to accept my devotion as a man."
"That time," quietly replied Louise, pretending to adjust her hat so as
to screen her face with her arm, "has already come." She had no
_penchant_ for evasiveness, and coquetry was apart from her; she spoke
words that her heart brimmed to her lips.
Blythe, his face transfigured, caught himself reeling a bit in his
saddle. Her words, so quietly and frankly spoken, had suddenly cleared
what he had not hoped would be anything but a pathway of brambles. He
swayed so close to her that their faces almost touched, and for a mere
instant he was conscious of the fragrance of her pure breath, aware to
the core of him of an intoxicating propinquity of which he had not until
that moment dreamed.
"Perhaps I misunderstood you, Louise," he said, hoarse of a sudden,
reining out and settling himself sidewise in his saddle so that he could
see her. "It is impossible that I did not misunderstand you."
Louise, gazing straight ahead, but with misty eyes, shook her head. She
had no more words. And her silent negation told him, better than words,
that he had not misunderstood her.
They rode without speaking for the remainder of the way back to Laura's.
Just before they drew up to the curb, where he was to assist her to
dismount, Blythe broke the long reverie that had pinioned them.
"I only came to know the meaning of what is called 'the joy of living'
an hour ago, Louise," Blythe said to her then.
A moment later he was lifting her from her horse, and the sky swirled
before his eyes as, for a rocketing instant, he held her in his strong
arms and felt her warm breath (as of hyacinths, he thought) upon his
face. He rode away leading her horse, and their parting was of the eyes
only.
Louise, a happy brooding expression on her face, walked in upon Laura,
who was deeply snuggled on a many-pillowed couch, and sat down,
pre-occupiedly tapping a gloved palm with her riding-crop, without a
word.
"Well, dear?" said Laura, glancing at her.
Louise continued to tap-tap her palm with the crop, but she was devoid
of words, it appeared.
"Louise!" Laura suddenly sat up straight on the couch and directed a
startled, accusatory, yet puzzledly-smiling gaze at the wistful,
unseeing and silent girl in the riding habit.
Louise turned her abstracted gaze upon Laura.
"What is it, dear?" she asked. "You said something, didn't you?"
Laura gazed at her with an absorbed smile for nearly a minute. Then she
settled back among the pillows.
"No, sweetheart, I haven't said anything," she replied.
* * * * *
Judd prowled about his club that night in the humor of a savage, barking
at the club servants, growling at or turning his back upon cronies who
addressed him civilly enough, and almost taking the head off one of them
who, noticing the baleful Judd mood, cheerfully inquired: "What is it,
old chap--gout, liver, the market, or all three?" The market was in part
responsible; the entire "list" had gone against him persistently and
diabolically from opening to close. But the raking which Mrs. Treharne
had given him during their ride on account of his "daughtering" of
Louise on the night before was mainly responsible for the bubbling rage
which he was taking no pains to conceal and which he was adding to by
extraordinarily short-intervalled stops at the club buffet.
And so he'd been hauled over the coals again on account of that
high-and-mighty daughter of Tony's, had he? Judd reflected, his thoughts
swirling in an alcoholic seethe of self-sympathy. Well, he was getting
tired of that sort of thing--d----d tired of it. He hadn't had a
minute's peace of his life on his visits at the house on the Drive since
the arrival there of that toploftical, sulky, ridiculously haughty
daughter of Tony's. Haughty about what? Haughty for what reason? What
license had she to be haughty--especially with him, Judd? Wasn't she
living in his house? What the d----, then, did she mean by flouting him?
Yes, Jesse had been right; she had flouted him since the first day she'd
met him. And that wasn't "coming to him;" he didn't deserve it.
Didn't he fairly shower money upon her mother? Didn't her mother have
his signed blank checks to fill out at her own sweet will and option?
Didn't he humor all of Tony's extravagances without ever a word of
complaint? Well, then! What the devil did Tony mean by snarling at him
all the time about this daughter of hers that had come along and messed
everything up? Anyhow, why shouldn't he have called the young woman
"daughter" if he felt like it? That wasn't going to kill her, was it? He
had been drinking a little at the time, anyhow, and it was a slip of the
tongue; but even if it hadn't been, what was the difference? What right
did she have, anyhow, to look at him as if he were a woodtick? He
couldn't understand what Jesse saw in her; she was good-looking, of
course, but when that was said all was said; she had an unthawable
disposition, hadn't she? And a porpoise's cold-bloodedness?
But Jesse was entitled to his idiotic fancies; he, Judd, wasn't going to
interpose any obstacles in Jesse's way. She needed taming, and Jesse's
reputation as a tamer was established. Leaving all that aside, though,
she wasn't going to stay around his house creating discord and giving
her mother cherished opportunities to "open up" on him whenever she felt
like it. She would have to go somewhere else. He'd take care of her all
right. He had no idea of absolutely turning her out; Tony wouldn't have
that, and, besides, there wasn't anything mean about him. But he wasn't
going to be flouted any longer; wouldn't have it; wouldn't endure it;
wouldn't tolerate it. Fact was, he intended to have it out with Tony
that very night. He'd go over to the house on the Drive and get the
thing over with. No use in postponing it.
[Illustration: HE'D GO OVER TO THE HOUSE ON THE DRIVE AND GET THE THING
OVER WITH.]
Thus Judd, fuming, and already more than half drunk.
"Get me a taxicab," he ordered a club servant, and, with a final
libation for the tightening of his resolution, he lumbered unsteadily
into the taxicab and was catapulted to the house on Riverside Drive.
The butler admitted him and smirked behind his back with the
derisiveness of English servants in American households when he saw Judd
hold out a miscalculating hand for the banister post and miss it by a
foot, thereby almost going to his knees on the stairs. But he recovered
his equilibrium, growling, and made his way into Mrs. Treharne's sitting
room. Heloise was there alone, reading a French comic weekly of
extraordinary pictorial frankness with such gusto that she did not even
rise when Judd partly fell into the room.
Judd glared at her out of red eyes.
"Why the devil don't you get to your feet when I come in here, you
jabbering chimpanzee?" he inquired of the by no means flabbergasted
Heloise. She had often seen Judd thus and she was used to his expletives
and his fondness for comparing her to the simian species on account of
her French tongue. "Where's your mistress?"
"Madame has gone to the theatre," said Heloise, giving Judd a view of a
wide, unscreened French yawn.
"Oh, Madame has, has she?" said Judd, apeing the maid's tone with a
drunken disregard for even the most ordinary dignity. "What theatre?"
Heloise shrugged.
"What theatre?" Judd bawled at her.
"How should one know?" inquired Heloise, disdainfully enough. "Madame
did not say."
Judd plumped himself into a deep chair, cocked his evening hat at a
little more acute angle over his left ear, fumblingly loosened the
buttons of his overcoat, crossed his legs with grunting difficulty,
removed his gloves, revealing the enormous diamond rings which he wore
on the third finger of each freckled, pudgy hand; then glared at the
unruffled Heloise again.
"Is anybody at home?" he asked her.
"Mademoiselle is here," replied Heloise. "But she is retiring and is not
to be seen."
"Oh, she's not to be seen, hey?" snarled Judd. "Who says she isn't to be
seen? You?"
Heloise shrugged again. She knew that her shrugs enraged him, but she
was a dauntless maid of France.
"You tell her that I want to see her, understand?" ordered Judd,
thickly. "Want to see her right here and right now."
"Mademoiselle sent her maid out for the evening and left word that she
was not to be disturbed," protested Heloise.
"I don't care a continental hang what word she left!" raged Judd. "You
tell her that I want to see her, here and now. You take that message to
her or out you go, bag and baggage. I'm paying your wages."
Heloise, bestowing upon him a parting shrug which was artistically
designed to inform him as to just how little she cared for him or his
"wages," left the room and knocked upon Louise's sleeping-room door.
Louise, in a negligée and with her hair rippling silkily over her
shoulders, was preparing for sleep. The afternoon's reverie still
possessed her. Musing dreams lingered in her eyes.
She looked up, not surprised to see Heloise enter. The French maid,
devoted to Louise from the beginning, often came in for a chat when her
mistress was out, to the jealous concern of Louise's own maid. Now,
however, Louise was struck with the light of wrath and disgust in
Heloise's fire-darting, eloquent eyes.
"What is it, Heloise?" she asked.
Heloise broke into objurgation as to "zat Jood beast"--_cochon rouge_,
she called him, explosively.
"He demands that you come," she said to Louise. "He is not himself; that
is, he is himself; he is drunk."
"But what does he want with me?" asked Louise, apprehensively. Heloise
could furnish her with no reply to that. "Of course I shall not see
him."
Heloise, finger on lip, considered. She knew Judd exceedingly well, and
she was acquainted with his violence when in his cups. She knew that he
was quite capable of breaking in upon Louise's privacy if she did not
respond to his summons--even if he had to put his shoulder to her door.
After a moment's reflection, Heloise advised Louise to go to him. He
could not harm her, except perhaps with his tongue, and he would do that
anyhow if she refused to answer his summons; Heloise would be hovering
near to see that he offered her no other harm. Louise, who had the gift
of becoming deliberate and cool in emergent moments, decided to take the
maid's advice. She dressed hastily and Heloise quickly tucked her hair
up. She was very regal, very much in control of herself, when she swept
swiftly into her mother's sitting room and confronted Judd.
Judd did not rise. Neither did he remove his rakishly-tilted hat. He
still sat with crossed legs, and he was muttering hoarsely to himself
when Louise entered. When he heard her rustled entrance he dovetailed
his fingers on the lower portion of his evening shirt, twiddled his
thumbs, and gazed at her through his red, drink-diminished eyes.
"Oh, so you came, eh?" he wheezed, drily, continuing to regard her with
his bleary stare.
"What is it you wish of me?" Louise asked him, meeting his gaze, but
continuing to stand.
"Oh, nothing in particular--nothing in particular," said Judd with the
incoherency of intoxication. Quickly, though, he took a tone of
brazenness. "You're going to sit down, ain't you? It doesn't cost any
more to sit down."
"I shall stand," said Louise, immovable before him.
"Oh, you'll stand, hey?" sneered Judd. "All right, stand. I sent for you
because, in the first place, I wanted to see if you'd come or not. And
you're here, ain't you?" this with an air of drunken triumph. Louise
made no reply.
"Secondly," went on Judd, scowling over the drink-magnified memory of
his wrongs, "I sent for you to ask you what in blazes you mean by
continually stirring up rows and rough-houses between your mother and
me? Hey? What's the answer?"
There was no answer. Louise, literally numb from the vulgar violence of
the man, was bereft of speech. She faced him with her fingers tightly
laced behind her back, and her face had grown very pale.
"That's what I want to find out from you," went on Judd, uncrossing his
legs so that he could lean forward in his chair and wag an emphasizing
finger at her. "And there are some other things I want to find out from
you. One of 'em is why the devil you think you're licensed to treat
me--_me!_--as if I were a flunkey?"
Louise retained her frozen attitude. She had the feeling of one being
blown upon by icy blasts. Even had there seemed to be any need for her
to make reply, she could not have done so.
"You've got a tongue, haven't you?" demanded Judd, her silence adding to
the rage into which he was deliberately lashing himself. "Don't you try
your infernal haughty airs on me any more, young woman. I won't tolerate
it. I don't have to tolerate it. Didn't they teach you manners at
school? If they didn't, by God, I'll know the reason why! I paid 'em to
teach you manners!"
Involuntarily Louise pressed her hands to her temples, for she felt
suddenly faint. But she conquered the faintness. The utter
incredibleness of his words seemed to nerve her.
"What do you mean by that?" she asked him, her voice sounding in her
ears like that of someone else.
"Mean?" raged Judd, gripping the arms of his chair and half rising.
"What do I mean? I mean what I say. I paid the people who educated you,
or pretended to educate you, to drill some manners into you. And now I'm
going to take a whole lot of pains to find out why they took my money
under false pretenses!"
"Are you not beside yourself?" asked Louise quietly enough, though her
thoughts were in a vortex. "Am I to understand that you really expect me
to believe that you paid for my education?"
Judd flopped back into his chair and stared hard at her. Then he broke
into a short, jarring laugh.
"Will you listen to that?" he croaked, looking around the room as if
addressing an invisible jury. Then, lowering his head and glowering upon
Louise, he went on: "Am I to understand that you are pretending that you
don't _know_ that I paid for your education?"
"I did not know it," said Louise in so low a tone that she could hardly
hear herself.
"Am I to understand," brutally went on Judd, now entirely out of
himself, "that you are pretending not to know that I've been shovelling
out money for you for nearly five years--ever since you were in
pigtails? D'ye mean to stand there, with your damned outlandish
haughtiness, and tell me that you don't know that every hairpin, every
pair of shoes, every frippery or furbelow that you've owned in that
time, hasn't been settled for by me? That you don't know that the roof
over your head and the bed you've slept in has been paid for by me? That
you don't know that the clothes that you've got on your back right this
minute were bought for you by me?"
It was the cruelest moment in the girl's life. Her senses were reeling.
But, by an effort of pure will, of supreme concentration, she mustered
her strength to withstand the shock.
"I did not know these things," she replied in a voice that sounded in
her own ears like a mere distant echo. "They are true? I was not told.
Until this moment I had always supposed that my education and
maintenance were paid for out of funds from--" She could not mention the
name of her father in the presence of this drink-inflamed brute;--"from
other sources."
"Not by a damned sight," roared Judd, relentless, paying no attention to
the girl's drawn features and trembling lips. "I know what you're
getting at. But you're wrong. There haven't been any 'funds from other
sources,' as you call it, disbursed for you for nearly five years. And
that's easy to explain, too. I wouldn't have any 'funds from other
sources' dribbling along to an establishment I was maintaining. That's
why I chucked what you call the 'funds from other sources' back into the
sender's teeth."
Louise, under the impact of that final cowardly blow, might have fallen
prone had not her mother, eyes alight with mingled rage and compassion,
swept into the room at that instant and gently pushed her daughter into
a chair just as Louise felt that her knees were giving way beneath her.
Mrs. Treharne, standing stunned in the hall upon coming in, had heard
Judd's last few sentences; and she judged from them what he had been
saying before her return.
Judd's jaw fell when he saw Mrs. Treharne, for the moment imperious in
her anger and her solicitude for her daughter, sweep into the room in
her trailing furs. But, after an instant, he brought his twisted teeth
together with a snap and gazed at her with drunken dauntlessness. It was
one of Judd's hours when he was too far gone to think of surrendering
even to her.
"What have you done, you unspeakable brute?" Mrs. Treharne asked him,
her voice trembling, as she stood facing him, one hand on Louise's
shoulder.
Louise looked up at her mother.
"He has been telling me, mother, what I now believe to be the truth,"
she said; "that I am indebted to him for my schooling, my maintenance,
my--" She could not go on.
Mrs. Treharne's eyes blazed.
"You low cad--you vulgar coward!" she fairly hissed at Judd.
But Judd, for once, would have none of that. He rose unsteadily to his
feet and stood swaying before her.
"No more of that from you!" he thundered, the veins of his forehead
standing out purplishly. "I know what I've said, and I stand for it!
Don't you try to come that bullyragging business over me--I'm all
through standing for that! You can do as you please, go as far as you
like. But this is my house--don't you ever forget that! See that you
remember it every minute from this time on, will you?" and with a
parting glare he strode to the door, tramped down the stairs, and went
out, pulling the door after him with a crash.
Mrs. Treharne, herself used to such scenes with Judd, but hideously
conscious of what a horror this one must have been to an inexperienced
girl less than three months away from the serene atmosphere of school,
sat upon an arm of Louise's chair and began to stroke her daughter's
hair.
"But why did you never tell me, mother?" asked Louise after a long
silence.
[Illustration: "BUT, WHY DID YOU NEVER TELL ME, MOTHER?"]
Mrs. Treharne, on the defensive, tried to devise excuses, but they were
very feeble ones. She had not wanted to worry Louise by telling her; the
girl had been too young to be told while at school, and, since her
return, she had not had the courage to tell her; it would have done no
good to tell her at any rate, would it? And so on.
After a while Louise rose.
"I can't stay here, mother," she said. "I am going at once."
"That is absurd," her mother replied, flutteringly. "It is after
midnight. You must not be hasty, dear. He had been drinking. Men are
beasts when they drink. It will all pass over," she added weakly.
"No, it cannot pass over," said Louise in a wearied tone. "I am going. I
could not remain here another hour. You must not ask me to. It is
impossible."
"But, my child," cried Mrs. Treharne, beginning to dab at her eyes, "it
is out of the question--unheard of! There is no reason for it. These
things happen everywhere. You must face life as it is, not as you have
been dreaming it to be. Sleep with me tonight and think it over. You'll
view it all differently in the morning."
"I am going now, mother," replied Louise, and her mother knew then that
the girl's decision was unalterable.
"But where are you going at this hour of the night, child?" she asked,
now weeping outright.
"To Laura's," said Louise. Saying it, she was swept by a sudden wave of
feeling. "Mother," she went on in a broken voice, "come with me, won't
you? Let us go together. I want to be with you all the time. I want to
live with you only. I need you. We can be so happy together, just by
ourselves! We can get a pretty little place somewhere and be happy
together, just you and I. And I have been so unhappy, so miserable,
here! Won't you come with me--come now?"
A beautiful hour had struck for that mother, had she but known it.
But she released herself from Louise's arms and shook her head, all the
time dabbing, dabbing at her eyes with her little wad of a lace
handkerchief.
"Don't ask me such an absurd thing, Louise," she replied. "Of course I
can't do anything so outlandishly foolish."
"Then I must go alone, dear," said Louise, bitter disappointment
placarded on her drawn face. "I wanted to be always with you. I never
meant to leave you. But I can't stay now. Won't you come, mother?"
Mrs. Treharne shook her head and sobbed. Louise gazed commiseratingly at
the weak, tempestuously-crying little woman, and then went to her rooms.
She called Laura on the telephone.
"I am coming to you now, Laura," she said.
"You mean tonight, dear?" inquired Laura in her caressing contralto,
refraining, with the wisdom of a woman of experience, from giving
utterance to any astonishment.
"Yes, at once," said Laura. "I shall take a taxicab and be there within
the half hour."
"I shall be waiting, dear," replied Laura.
Louise, in hat and coat, bent over her mother, who had thrown herself
weeping on a couch, and sought to soothe her. But her mother had only
wild, broken reproaches for her for going away "so foolishly, so
unnecessarily," and Louise saw that her efforts to calm her were futile.
So she bent over and kissed her mother's tear-wet face, then walked down
the stairs and out of the house to the waiting taxicab. She never put
foot in the house on the Drive again.