The Dim Lantern. Temple Bailey
of this?” The strong sweep of her arm seemed to indicate her bridal finery.
He sat in unhappy silence, and suddenly she laughed. “I might have known when he kept sending me orchids. When a man loves a woman he knows the things she likes.”
It was then that Towne made his mistake. “You ought to thank your lucky stars——”
She blazed out at him, “Uncle Fred, if you say anything more like that—it’s utterly idiotic. But you won’t face facts. Your generation never does. I’m not in the least thankful. I’m simply furious.”
There was an hysterical note in her voice, but he was unconscious of the tension. She was not taking it in the least as he wished she might. She should have wept on his shoulder. Melted to tears he might have soothed her. But there were no tears in those blue eyes.
She trod on her flowers as she left the car. Looking straight ahead of her she ascended the steps. Within everything was in readiness for the wedding festivities. The stairway was terraced with hydrangeas, pink and white and blue. In the drawing-room were rose garlands with floating ribbons. And there was a vista of the dining-room—with the caterer’s men already at their posts.
Except for these men, a maid or two—and a detective to keep his eye on things, the house was empty. Everybody had gone to the wedding, and presently everybody would come back. The house would be stripped, the flowers would fade, the caterers would carry away the wasted food.
Edith stopped at the foot of the stairs. “How did they announce it at the church?”
“That it had been postponed. It was the only thing to do at the moment. Of course there will be newspaper men. We’ll have to make up a story——”
“We’ll do nothing of the kind. Tell them the truth, Uncle Fred. That I’m not—wanted. That I was kept—waiting—at the church. Like the heroine in a movie.”
She stood on the steps above him, looking down. She was as white as her dress.
“I don’t want to see anybody. I don’t mind losing Del. He doesn’t count. He isn’t worth it. But can you imagine that any man—any man, Uncle Fred, could have kept me—waiting?”
CHAPTER V
THE UGLY DUCKLING
The thing that Frederick Towne got out of his niece’s flight was this. “She wouldn’t let anybody sympathize with her. Simply locked the door of her room, and in the morning she was gone. It has added immeasurably to the gossip.”
His listeners had, however, weighed him in the balance of understanding and sympathy, and had found him wanting. The youth in them sided with Edith. But none of this showed in their manner. They were polite and hospitable to the last. Frederick, ushered out into the storm by Baldy, still saw Jane like a bird, warm in her nest.
“You see,” Baldy said to his sister, when he came back, “how he messed things up.”
Jane nodded. “He doesn’t know——”
“Unemotional”—Baldy’s voice seemed to call on all the gods to listen, “you should see her eyes——”
“Well, he’s rather an old dear,” said Jane, and having thus disposed airily of the great Frederick Towne, she went about the house setting things to right for the night.
“Merrymaid’s out,” she told her brother; “you’d better get her.”
He opened the door and the storm seemed to whirl in upon him. He called the old cat and was presently aware, as he stood on the porch, that she danced about him in the dark. He chased her blindly, and at last got his hands on her. She was wet to the thighs, where she had waded in the drifts, but galvanized like a small electric motor by the intense chill of the night.
The wind shrieked and seemed to shake the world. Before Baldy entered the house he turned and faced the night—“Edith” was his voiceless cry, “Edith—Edith——”
By morning the violence of the storm had spent itself. But it was still bitterly cold. The snow was blue beneath the leaden sky. The chickens, denied their accustomed promenade, ate and drank and went to sleep again in the strange dusk. Merrymaid and the kitten having poked their noses into the frigid atmosphere withdrew to the snug haven of a basket beneath the kitchen stove. Sophy sent word that her rheumatism was worse, and that she could not come over. Jane, surveying the accumulated piles of dishes, felt a sense of unusual depression. While Frederick Towne had talked last night she had caught a glimpse of his world—the great house—six servants—gay girls in the glamour of good clothes, young men who matched the girls, money to meet every emergency—a world in which nobody had to wash dishes—or make soup out of Sunday’s roast.
She was cheered a bit, however, by the announcement that her brother had decided to stay home from the office.
“I’ll have a try at that magazine cover——”
Her spirits rose. “Wouldn’t it be utterly perfect if you got the prize——?”
“Not much chance. The thing I need is a good model——”
“And I won’t do?” with some wistfulness.
They had talked of it before. Baldy refused to see possibilities in Jane. “Since you bobbed your hair, you’re too modern——” She was, rather, medieval, with her straight-cut frocks and her straight-cut locks. But she was a figure so familiar that she failed to appeal to his imagination.
“Editors like ’em modern, don’t they?”
But his thoughts had winged themselves to that other woman whom his fancy painted in a thousand poses.
“If Edith Towne were here—I’d put her on a marble bench beside a sapphire sea.”
“I’ll bet you couldn’t get an editor in the world to look at it. Sapphire seas and classic ladies are a million years behind the times——”
“They are never behind the times——”
Jane shrugged, and changed the subject. “Darling—if you’ll put your mind to mundane things for a moment. To-morrow is Thanksgiving Day, the Follettes are to dine with us, and we haven’t any turkey.”
“Why haven’t we?”
“You were to get it when you went to town, and now you’re not going——”
“I am not—not for all the turkeys in the world. We can have roast chickens. That’s simple enough, Janey.”
“It may seem simple to you. But who’s going to cut off their heads?”
“Sophy,” said Baldy. Having killed Germans in France he refused further slaughter.
“Sophy has the rheumatism——”
“Oh, well, we can feast our souls——” Young Baldwin’s mood was one of exaltation.
Jane leaned back in her chair and looked at him. “Your perfectly poetic solution may satisfy you, but it won’t feed the Follettes.”
With some irritation, therefore, he promised, if all else failed, to himself decapitate the fowls. “But your mind, Jane, never soars above food——”
Jane, with her chin in her hands, considered this. “A woman,” she said, “who keeps house for a poet—must anchor herself to—something. Perhaps I’m like a captive balloon—if you cut the cable, I’ll shoot straight up to the skies——”
She liked that thought of herself, and smiled over it, after Baldy had left her. She wondered if the cable would ever be cut. If the captive balloon would ever soar.
So