The Brute. Kummer Frederic Arnold
her husband’s friend as completely as though he had never come into her life at all. He, on the contrary, had thought of her continually, for his life in the West had been too keenly devoted to business to leave either time or opportunity for dalliance with the opposite sex. Hence the memory of his first and last love had not been effaced by the passage of time, but remained in his heart as a sweet and pleasing memory, gathering increased strength from the years as they rolled swiftly by. It should not be inferred from this, however, that William West had the slightest thought of ever renewing his courtship of Edith, now that she had become Donald Rogers’ wife. His love for her was like a pleasant recollection, a package of old letters, a book read and closed forever. For all that, he was conscious of a queer feeling in the region of his heart as he followed Donald into the tiny living-room of the Rogers’ apartment in Harlem.
Mrs. Rogers had not been apprised of her husband’s intention to bring a guest home for dinner, least of all so unexpected a one as Billy West. The reason for this was that the Rogers’ apartment boasted no telephone. The servant problem they had solved by the simple expedient of not keeping any. Hence it was that West’s first glimpse of the Edith of his dreams was of a tired little woman, flushed from her efforts over the gas range, and in no sweet temper with her husband for having taken her unawares and at such a disadvantage. It is a fact worthy of record, however, that West found her, in this homely garb, more humanly delightful and attractive than would have been the case had she spent hours of preparation at her toilette table. He had been living for five years among men who found women more attractive as helpmates than as ornaments, and she appealed to him accordingly. As for Donald, no thought crossed his mind that these two were, or ever had been, anything more to each other than the best of friends.
“Billy!” Mrs. Rogers had gasped as she came into the room to greet her husband on his arrival, and had thus, by using the old familiar title, established a footing between them that somehow refused to return to the more formal one of “Mrs. Rogers” and “Mr. West.” After all it was of no great importance – Billy and Edith they had always been to each other, and Billy and Edith they remained. Donald, if he noticed it at all, was glad of the fact that his wife and his old friend liked each other so well. The meeting became a little reunion, in the pleasure of which Mrs. Rogers soon forgot her plain, cheap house-gown and her flushed face, and entered into the spirit of the occasion with an unwonted gayety. She was a beautiful woman, in spite of her twenty-eight years; perhaps it would be more correct to say because of them, for while at twenty she had been exceedingly pretty, it was little more than a youthful promise of what she had now become.
Her grandmother had been a Southern woman, and a noted beauty in those much talked of days “before the war,” and whether this lady’s beauty had, as time passed, taken on added glory, like most other things of that hallowed period, certain it is that Edith Rogers had received from some source a priceless inheritance as far as the perfection of her figure or the beauty of her coloring was concerned. Perhaps it was some forgotten strain of Irish blood that was responsible for her deep violet eyes and her dark chestnut hair, although her dusky complexion belied it.
West observed the change which the years had made in her, at once, and complimented her on it. “I have never seen you look so well,” he said, as he grasped her hand. “You were a rosebud when I went away, now you are an American beauty.” It pleased her mightily, for she felt that he meant it, and, like most married women, she heard few compliments from her husband. Mrs. Pope, her mother, never lost an opportunity to tell her that with her looks she could have married any man she pleased, but she paid no attention to remarks of this nature, knowing as she did that her mother was only trying to hit, indirectly, at Donald, whom she affected not to like.
She knew from West’s voice that he was very glad to see her, and after all these years, when he grasped her hand, and pressed it in his strong, firm grip, she felt the old familiar shock, the sensation of gladness for she knew not what, that almost took her breath away. It had always been that way with him. He was very different from Donald in many ways, for, while Donald was serious and earnest and very conscientious, West was always merry and gay and careless, never seeming to worry about money, although his income, at the time of her marriage, had been smaller even than Donald’s.
There was something about him that always attracted women. She felt this whenever she was with him, yet it did not come from any appreciation of his character, or his mind, for she knew very little about either. There was some sort of psychic magnetism about the man, some vibrating sense of physical vitality, which she felt whenever she was near him. His mere presence made her strangely silent and in a way afraid, yet, whatever it was that she feared, it at the same time attracted her, and made her sorry when it had passed. She had never felt that way with Donald, although always she had liked to be with him, for somehow she felt more comfortable and sure, and could talk things over better, and plan out the future. She had not thought much about the future when she was with West – there did not seem to be any need for a future – the present had been all she had desired, but that she had desired very much. All this had passed, years ago, but still it came back to her, in a measure, when she thus first met him again.
He looked at her, in that curiously intimate way he had, and even his smile made her happy. She felt his glance sweep over her face, her whole body, and almost embrace her in its pleasant radiance – it thrilled her, yet she almost resented the way in which it left her helpless and confused. In a moment he had looked beyond her, at Donald, and was making some laughing inquiry about their boy – and then she felt sorry and wanted him to look at her again.
Mrs. Pope had taught her daughters many things, but cooking was not one of them. Edith had been forced, like many another married woman, to learn it in the school of hard practical experience, and, to her credit be it said, she had learned it surprisingly well. She excused herself after the first greetings had been said, added an extra dish to the partially prepared meal, and hastened to her room to change her dress. Of West’s new fortunes she as yet knew nothing; it was to the man that she wanted to appeal, to the old friend, before whom her natural woman’s vanity made her wish to appear at her best. When she served the dinner half an hour later, it was in a light-green pongee that seemed to West a triumph of the dressmaker’s art. As a matter of fact she had made the dress herself, but it would have taken a far worse costume to have spoiled the lines of her superb figure, or dulled the sparkling mobility of her face.
Donald, with a father’s pride in his boy, dug out Bobbie from the recesses of his mother’s room, and brought him to West to be admired. He was a manly little fellow, with a large share of his mother’s good looks, and West took him upon his knee, wondering inwardly if he would ever have a son of his own to inherit his newly acquired fortune.
To the boy he told stories about the Indians that made the youngster open his eyes very wide indeed, and Uncle Billy, as West admonished him to call him, became at once a very important personage in his childish eyes.
It was when dinner had progressed to the stage of the salad that Donald mentioned the matter of West’s sudden rise to fortune. “Billy had made a ten-strike in the West,” he remarked to his wife. “Discovered a gold mine.”
“Really!” Edith laughed. “Is there any gold in it? Almost all the gold mines I ever heard of were lacking in that important particular.”
“This one wasn’t.” Donald looked at West and laughed. “Billy tells me it’s made him worth half a million.”
Mrs. Rogers gasped, then turned to her guest. “You are not in earnest?” she inquired wonderingly. “Half a million?”
“About that,” said West, trying to look as if he were speaking of the price of a new hat, or something equally unimportant.
“But you – you don’t seem a bit excited about it, or anything.” Mrs. Rogers’ own eyes were big with interest. “I should think you would be simply overcome. I know I should. Half a million!” She glanced unconsciously about the poorly furnished little room and sighed. Donald noticed it; her thoughts, for the moment, had been his own.
“I was excited enough when I found it,” remarked West with a chuckle. “It came like a snowstorm in August. Last thing in the world I had expected – at least just then.”
“I suppose you just stood up