Part 41 (2/2)
”Then what, in heaven's name, is it?” she demanded. ”My friends are all treating me as if I had the smallpox.”
”Cheerful lot of friends we've made in this town!” he said bitterly.
”What is the matter with them?” she persisted.
”The matter is they've taken me for a fool they could order around to suit themselves. They found they couldn't. Now they're through with me, even Cal Bennett,” he added in a lower tone that revealed his hurt.
She paused, biting her underlip.
”Is the trouble anything to do with this Cora case?” she asked, suddenly enlightened by some vague, stray recollection.
”Of course!” he replied crossly, exasperated at the nagging necessity of arousing himself to explanations. ”There's no use arguing about it.
I'm going to see it through in spite of that hound McDougall and his whole pack of curs!”
”But why have you turned so against your friends?” she asked more gently, struck by his careworn look as he sprawled in the easy chair under the lamp. ”I don't see! You'll get yourself disliked!”
She did not press the matter further for the moment, but three days later she brought up the topic again. In the interim she had heard considerable direct and indirect opinion. She selected after dinner as the most propitious time for discussion. As a matter of fact, earlier in the day would have been better, before Keith's soul had been rubbed raw by downtown attrition.
”I don't believe you quite realize how strongly people feel about the Cora case,” she began. ”Isn't it possible to drop it or compromise it or something, Milton?”
In the reaction from argument and--coldness downtown he felt he could stand no more of it at home.
”I wish you'd let that matter drop!” he said decidedly. ”You couldn't understand it.”
She hesitated. A red spot appeared in either cheek.
”I must say I _don't_ understand!” she countered. ”It is inconceivable to me that a man like you should turn so easily against his cla.s.s!”
”My cla.s.s?” he echoed wearily.
”What do such creatures as Cora and Yankee Sullivan amount to?” she cried hotly, ”I suppose you'll say _they_ are in your cla.s.s next! How you can consider them of sufficient importance to go dead against your best friends on their account!”
”It is because I am right and they are wrong.”
She was a little carried beyond herself.
”Well, they all think the same way,” she pointed out. ”Aren't you a little--a little--”
”Pig-headed,” supplied Keith bitterly.
”--to put your opinion against theirs?” she finished.
Keith did not reply.
This was Nan's last attempt. She did not bring up the subject again.
But she withdrew proudly and completely from all partic.i.p.ation in society. She refused herself to callers. Once the situation was thoroughly defined, she accepted it. If her husband decided to play the game in this way, she, too, would follow, whether she approved or not.
Nan was loyal and a thoroughbred. And she was either too proud or too indifferent to fight it out with the other women, in the rough and tumble of social ambition.
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