Part 29 (1/2)
”h.e.l.lo, is that the office of _The Call_? Will you let me speak to----”
Her mother interrupted almost frantically. ”Irene, you are not going to tell the papers? You mustn't do that. Think of what it means--the disgrace--a shooting affair, almost, in our home. Think of me, your mother----”
”I'll think of you on one consideration--that you explain what happened last night, and tell me where Dave Elden is.”
”I can't explain. I don't know. And I don't know----”
”And you don't want to know. And you don't care, so long as you can keep it out of the papers. I do. I'm going to find out the facts about this, if every paper in the country should print them. h.e.l.lo?
Yes, I want to speak to Miss Morrison.”
In a few words she explained Dave's sudden disappearance, stripping the incident of all but vital facts. Bert Morrison was all sympathy.
”It's a big story, you know,” she said, ”but we won't think of it that way. Not a line, so far as I am concerned. Edith Duncan is the girl we need. A sort of adopted sister to Dave. She may know more than any of us.”
But Edith knew absolutely nothing; nothing, except that her own heart was thrown into a turmoil of emotions. She spent the day and the evening down town, rotating about the points where Dave might likely be found. And the next morning she called on Irene Hardy.
In spite of all her efforts at self-control she trembled as she pressed the bell; trembled violently as she waited for the door to open. She had never met Irene Hardy; it was going to be a strange experience, introducing herself to the woman who had been preferred over her, and who had, apparently, proven so unworthy of that preference. She had difficult things to say, and even while she said them she must fight a battle to the death with the jealousy of her natural womanhood. And she must be very, very careful that in saying things which were hard to say she did not say hard things. And, most difficult of all, she must try to pave the way to a reconciliation between Dave and the woman who stood between her and happiness.
Irene attended the door, as was her custom. Her eyes took in Edith's face and figure with mild surprise; Edith was conscious of the process of a quick intellect endeavouring to cla.s.sify her;--solicitor, music teacher, business girl? And in that moment of pause she saw Irene's eyes, and a strange commotion of feeling surged through her. There was something in those eyes that suggested to Edith a new side to Dave's nature; it was as though the blind had suddenly been drawn from strange chambers of his soul. So this was the woman Dave had chosen to love.
No; one does not choose whom one will love; one loves without choosing.
Edith was conscious of that; she knew that in her own life. And even as she looked this first time upon Irene she became aware of a subtle attraction gathering about her; she felt something of that power which had held Dave to a single course through all these years. And suddenly a great new truth was born in Edith Duncan. Suddenly she realized that if the steel at any time prove unfaithful to the magnet the fault lies not in the steel, but in the magnet. What a change of view, what a reversion of all accepted things, came with the realization of that truth which roots down into the bedrock of all nature! . . .
”Won't you come in?” Irene was saying. Her voice was sweet and musical, but there was a note of sadness in it which set responsive chords atremble all through Edith's heart. Must she love this woman?
Must she, in spite of herself, love this, of all women?
”I am Edith Duncan,” she managed to say. ”I--I think I have something to say that may interest you.”
There was a quick leap in Irene's eyes; the leap of that intuitive feminine sense of danger which so seldom errs in dealing with its own s.e.x, and is yet so unreliable a defence from the dangers of the other.
Mrs. Hardy was in the living-room. ”Won't you come up to my work shop?” Irene answered without change of voice, and they ascended the stairs together.
”I draw a little,” Irene was saying, talking fast. ”Oh yes, I have quite commercialized my art, such as it is. I draw pictures of shoes, and s.h.i.+rt waists, and other women's wear which really belong to the field of a feminine artist. But I haven't lost my soul altogether. I daub in colour a little--yes, daub, that's the word. But it keeps one's soul alive. You will hardly recognize that,” she said, indicating an easel, ”but here is the original.” She ran up the blind of the window which looked from the room out to the westward, and far over the brown shoulders of the foothills rose the Rockies, majestic, calm, imperturbable, their white summits flas.h.i.+ng in the blaze of autumn suns.h.i.+ne. ”No warfare there,” Irene went on. ”No plotting, no cruelty, no cowardice, no misunderstanding. And to think that they will stand there forever; forever, as we know time; when our city, our civilization, the very memory of our age shall have gone out. I never look at them without feeling how--how--how----”
She trembled, and her voice choked; she put out her arm to a chair.
When she turned her face there were tears on it. . . . ”Tell me,--Edith,” she said. . . . ”You know” . . .
”I know some things,” Edith managed to say. ”I know, _now_, that I do not know all. Dave and I are old friends--my father took a liking to him and he used often to be in our house--he made him think of our own boy that was killed and would have been just his age--and we got to know each other very well and he told me about you, long ago. And last night I found him at his rooms, almost mad, and swearing to shoot Conward. And then he told me that--that----”
”Yes? Yes? What did he tell you? I am not afraid----”
Edith turned her eyes to where the white crests of the mountains cut like a crumpled keel through a sea of infinite blue. ”He told me he saw Conward here . . . upstairs . . . and Conward made a boast . . .
and he would have shot him but you rushed upon him and begged him not to. He said you would have taken the bullet yourself rather than it should find Conward.”
”Oh, oh,” the girl cried, in the pain of one mortally hurt. ”How could he think that? I didn't care for him--for Conward--but for Dave. I knew there had been a quarrel--I didn't know why--and I knew if Dave shot him--and he _can_ shoot--I've seen him break six bottles out of six on the gallop--it wasn't self-defence--whatever it was he couldn't plead that--and they'd hang him, and that was all I saw, Edith, that was all I saw, and I would--yes I _would_ rather have taken the bullet myself than that that should happen----”
”You poor girl!” said Edith. ”You poor girl,” and her arms found the other's neck. ”You have been hurt, hurt.” And then, under her breath, ”More than me.”
. . . ”What has he done?”
”He talked his problems over with me, and after he had talked awhile he became more reasonable. He had already been convinced that he should offer his services to his country, in these times. And I think I persuaded him that it was better to leave vengeance where it belonged.