The Eddy: A Novel of To-day

by Clarence Louis Cullen

  Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  THE EDDY

  A Novel of Today

  BY CLARENCE L. CULLEN

  Illustrations by CH. WEBER DITZLER

  G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

  _Copyright, 1910, By_ G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY

  _The Eddy_

  LOUISE]

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER PAGE

  I. 7

  II. 31

  III. 55

  IV. 77

  V. 102

  VI. 125

  VII. 145

  VIII. 169

  IX. 195

  X. 218

  XI. 237

  XII. 257

  XIII. 281

  XIV. 305

  XV. 326

  XVI. 348

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  PAGE

  Louise _Frontispiece_

  Laura, a woman of thirty-five, had the slender yet well-rounded structural sinuosities of a girl of twenty 20

  He'd go over to the house on the drive and get the thing over with 182

  "But, why did you never tell me, mother?" 192

  He squeaked like a rat; then he went down like a log 324

  THE EDDY

  CHAPTER I

  "If only she were a boy!"

  Mrs. Treharne almost moaned the words.

  She tugged nervously at her absurdly diaphanous boudoir jacket, vainlyattempting to fasten it with fluttering, uncontrolled fingers; and sheshuddered, though her dressing-room was over-warm.

  Heloise, who was doing her hair, juggled and then dropped a flaming redcoronet braid upon the rug. The maid, a thin-lipped young woman with ajutting jaw and an implacable eye, pantomimed her annoyance. Beforepicking up the braid she glued the backs of her hands to hersmoothly-lathed hips. Mrs. Treharne, in the glass, could see Heloise'sdrab-filmed grey-blue eyes darting sparks.

  "I shall resume," croaked the maid in raucous French, "when Madame isthrough writhing and wriggling and squirming."

  Laura Stedham--she was relaxing luxuriously in the depths of a chairthat fitted her almost as perfectly as her gown--smiled a bit wickedly.

  "Forgive me if I seem catty, Tony," said Laura in her assuagingcontralto, "but it is such a delight to find that there is some one elsewho is bullied by her maid. Mine positively tyrannizes over me."

  "Oh, everybody bullies me," said Mrs. Treharne, querulously, holdingherself rigid in order not to again draw Heloise's wrath. "Everybodyseems to find it a sort of diversion, a game, to browbeat and hector andbully-rag me."

  "Surely I don't, afflicted one--do I?" Laura tacked a little ripplinglaugh to the question.

  "You do worse, my dear--you laugh at me," plaintively replied the fadingwoman huddled before the glass. She was haggard as from a trouble thathas been unsuccessfully slept upon, and her mouth--not yet made into acrimson bow through Heloise's deft artistry--was drawn with discontent."Heaven on high, if only she were a boy!" she broke out petulantlyagain, after a little pause.

  This time there was genuine enjoyment in Laura's laugh.

  "Don't scowl, Antoinette--I know I am a beast for laughing," she said,abandoning her chair and lissomely crossing the room to glance at somenew photographs on a mantel. "But, really, you say that so often that itsounds like the refrain to a topical song. 'If only she were a boy--Ifonly she were a boy!'--don't you catch the rhythm of it? I wonder,Tony, how many times I have heard you give utterance to that phraseduring the past few years--just?"

  "You haven't heard me say it any oftener than I've meant it, my dear--bevery sure of that," said Mrs. Treharne, without a symptom of a smile.Her sense of humor was embryonic, and Laura's laughter and words,obviously meant merely in mitigation, jarred upon her. "And a remark isnone the less true for being repeated, is it?" she went on in herplaintive monotone. "I _do_ wish Louise had been born a boy. You would,too, if you were in my place. You know you would."

  "But, dear Tony, it is such a futile, such a dreadfully childish wish,"said Laura, striving to erase the smile from her face. "It is likewishing for the fairy prince, or the magic carpet, or the end of therainbow. Worry makes wrinkles, dear. That may sound bromidic, but it'strue. Why worry yourself through all the years with wishing soimpossible--I was going to say so insane--a wish? Not only that--forgiveme for saying it, dear, won't you?--but it is rather a grisly wish, too;and so unfair to the girl, really. Don't you think--don't you know--thatit is?"

  "Don't scold, Laura--please," said Mrs. Treharne, almost in a whimper."You don't know what a miserable mess I am in. You haven't given metime to tell you. Louise is coming home immediately."

  "For the holidays, naturally," said Laura. "Why shouldn't the poor childcome home for the holidays? It will be the first time she has had herholidays at home since she went away to school--nearly four years, Ithink--isn't it?"

  "I hope you are not meaning that for a reproach," accused the haggardlady, now being corseted by the lusty-armed Heloise. "You are in ashocking humor today; and I did so depend upon you for advice andcomfort, if not consolation, when I 'phoned you to come over."

  "Oh, I am in a lark's humor," protested Laura, smiling as she rested agloved hand upon one of the milky shoulders of her troubled friend. "Butyou puzzle me. Why should you make such a catastrophe of it, such averitable cataclysm, because your pretty and agreeable and, as I recallher, quite lovable daughter announces that she is coming home for theholidays? Enlighten me, dear. I seem not to discern the point of yourproblem."

  "Problem isn't the word for it!" repined the unhappy lady, upon whosenearly knee-length stays Heloise now was tugging like a sailor at acapstan. "Louise coolly announces--I had her letter yesterday--that sheis not returning to Miss Mayhew's school; that she is coming to remainwith me for good."

  "Well?" said Laura, murdering the smile that strove to break through hervisible mask.

  "'Well?'" wailed Mrs. Treharne. "Is that all you have to say--'well'?Can't you see how impossible, how utterly out of the question, how----"

  "Her quitting school now, you mean?" said Laura. "Really, I think youshould be pleased. Her announcement shows that Louise is a woman--a girlof nineteen who has spent nearly four years at a modern finishing schoolno longer is a young person, but a woman--that she is a woman with asense of humor. It is very human, very indicative of the possession ofthe humorous sense, to tire of school. I did that, myself, a full yearbefore I was through. All of the king's horses could not have dragged meback, either. I hated the thought of graduation day--the foolish,fluttery white frocks, the platitudes of visitors, the moisty weepinessof one's women relatives, the sophomoric speechifying of girls who werehoydens the day before and would be worse hoydens the day after, theshowing off of one's petty, inconsequential 'accomplishments'--I loathedthe thought of the whole fatuous performance. And so I packed and left afull year in advance of it, resolved not to be involuntarily drawn intothe solemn extravaganza of 'being graduated.' That, no doubt, isLouise's idea. She is a girl with a merry heart
. You should be glad ofthat, Antoinette."

  Laura was simply sparring with the hope of getting her friend's mind offher problem. She knew very well the nature of the problem; none better.The idea of a girl just out of school being plumped into such anenvironment as that enveloping the Treharne household perhaps was evenmore unthinkable to Laura that it was to the girl's mother, a woman whohad permitted her sensibilities to become grievously blunted with whatshe termed the "widening of her horizon." But Laura, not yet ready withadvice to meet so ticklish a situation, sought, woman-like, to divertthe point of the problem by seizing upon one of its quite minorramifications. Of course it was not her fault that she failed.

  "Laura," said Mrs. Treharne, dismissing her maid with a gesture andfumblingly assembling the materials on her dressing table wherewith toaccomplish an unassisted facial make-up, "your occasional assumption ofstupidity is the least becoming thing you do. Why fence with me? It isridiculous, unfriendly, irritating." She daubed at her pale wispyeyebrows with a smeary pencil and added with a certain hardness: "Youknow perfectly well why I dread the thought of Louise coming here."

  Laura, at bay, unready for a pronouncement, took another ditch ofevasiveness.

  "I wonder," she said in an intended tone of detachment, "if you areafraid she has become a bluestocking? Or maybe a frump? Or, worse still,what you call one of the anointed smugs? Such things--one or other ofthem, at any rate--are to be expected of girls just out of school, mydear. Louise will conquer her disqualification, if she have one. Herimagination will do that much for her. And of course she hasimagination."

  "She has eyes, too, no doubt," said Mrs. Treharne, drily. "And you knowhow prying, penetrating the eyes of a girl of nineteen are. You knowstill better how poorly this--this menage of mine can stand suchinspection; the snooping--wholly natural snooping, I grant you--of adaughter nearly a head taller than I am, whom, nevertheless, I scarcelyknow. Frankly, I don't know Louise at all. I should be properly ashamedto acknowledge that; possibly I am. Moreover, I believe I am a bitafraid of her."

  Laura assumed a musing posture and thus had an excuse for remainingsilent.

  "Additionally," went on Mrs. Treharne, a little hoarsely, "a woman, inconsidering her daughter's welfare, must become a trifle smug herself,no matter how much she may despise smugness in its general use andapplication. What sort of a place is this as a home for Louise? I amspeaking to you as an old friend. I am in a fiendish predicament. Ofcourse you see that. And I can't see the first step of a way out of it.Can you?"

  "For one thing," said Laura, mischievously and with eyes a-twinkle, "youmight permanently disperse your zoo."

  Mrs. Treharne laughed harshly.

  "One must know somebody," she said, deftly applying the rougerabbit's-foot. "One can't live in a cave. My own sort banished me. I am_declassee_. Shall I sit and twiddle my thumbs? At least the people ofmy 'zoo,' as you call it, are clever. You'll own that."

  "They are freaks--impossible, buffoonish, baboonish freaks," repliedLaura, more earnestly than she had yet spoken. "You know I am notfinical; but if this raffish crew of yours are 'Bohemians,' as theydeclare themselves to be--which in itself is _banal_ enough, isn'tit?--then give me the sleek, smug inhabitants of Spotless Town!"

  "You rave," said Mrs. Treharne, drearily. "Let my zoo-crew alone. Wedon't agree upon the point."

  "I thought you had your queer people--your extraordinary Sunday eveningparties--I came perilously near saying rough-houses, Tony--in mind inbemoaning Louise's return home," said Laura, yawning ever so slightly.

  "Oh, I'd thought of that, of course," said Mrs. Treharne, artisticallyadding a sixteenth of an inch of length to the corners of her eyes withthe pencil. "But my raffish crew, as you call them, wouldn't harm her.She might even become used to them in time. She hasn't had time to formprejudices yet, it is to be hoped. You purposely hit all around the realmark. Louise is nineteen. And you know the uncanny side-lines of wisdomgirls pick up at finishing schools nowadays. Since you maliciously forceme to mention it point-blank, in Heaven's name what will this daughterof mine think of--of Mr. Judd?"

  "Now we are at the heart of the matter," answered Laura. "Heart, did Isay? Fancy 'Pudge' with a heart!" There was little mirth in her laugh.

  "You must not call him that, even when you are alone with me, Laura,"said Mrs. Treharne, petulantly. "I am in deadly fear that some time orother he will catch you calling him that. You know how mortallysensitive he is about his--his bulk."

  "Well might he be," said Laura, drily enough. "Is there any particularreason why your daughter should have to meet Judd? Except veryoccasionally, I mean?"

  "How can it be avoided?" asked Mrs. Treharne, helplessly. "Hasn't he therun of the house? You don't for an instant suppose that, even if Iimplored him, he would forego any of his--his privileges here?"

  "I am not so imbecile as to suppose any such a thing," said Laura, witha certain asperity. "But the man might exhibit a bit of common decency.He knows that Louise is coming?"

  "I haven't told him," said Mrs. Treharne, fluttering to her feet fromthe dressing table. "You will hook me, Laura? I don't want to callHeloise. She only pretends that she doesn't understand English, and sheknows too much already. No, I haven't told him yet. He resents the ideaof my having a daughter, you know. He will be here directly to take meout in the car. I shall tell him when we are going through the Park.Then nobody but the chauffeur and I will hear him growl. I know inadvance every word that he will say," and the distraught woman lookedwan even under her liberal rouge.

  Laura impulsively placed an arm around her friend's shoulder.

  "Tony," she said, gravely, "why don't you show the brute the door?"

  "Because it is his own door--you know that," said Mrs. Treharne, hereyes a little misty.

  "Then walk out of it," said Laura. "This isn't the right sort of thing.I don't pose as a saint. But I could not endure this. Come with me. LetLouise join you with me. You know how welcome you are. I haveplenty--more than plenty. You shouldn't have permitted Judd to refuse tolet you continue to receive the allowance George Treharne provided forLouise. That wasn't fair to yourself. It was more unfair to yourdaughter. You shouldn't have allowed her to get her education withJudd's money. She is bound to find it out. She would be no woman at allif that knowledge doesn't cut her to the quick. But this is beside themark. I have plenty. She is a dear, sweet, honest girl, and she isentitled to her chance in the world. I am sure I don't need to tell youthat. What chance has she in this house? The doors that are worth whileare closed to you, my dear. You know I say that with no unkind intent.It is something you yourself acknowledge. The same doors would be closedto your daughter if she came here. She could and would do so much betterwith me. Neither you nor she would be dependent. We are too old friendsfor that. And I know George Treharne. He would renew the allowance thatyou permitted Judd to thrust back at him through yourself and hislawyer. Leave this place, this sort of thing, once and forever. I wantyou to--for your own sake and your daughter's."

  Mrs. Treharne wept dismally, to the sad derangement of herelaborately-applied make-up. But she wept the tears of self-pity, thanwhich there are none more pitiful. The reins of a great chance, forherself and her daughter, were in her hands. Perhaps it was theintensity of her perturbation that did not permit her to hold them. Verylikely it was something else. But, at any rate, hold them she did not.

  "You are a dear, Laura," she said, fighting back her tears for the sakeof her make-up. "It was what I might have expected of you. Of all thefriends I used to have, you are the only one who never has gone back onme. But you must see how impossible it all is. I am in over my head. Sowhat would be the use?"

  "You speak for yourself only, Antoinette," said Laura, a little coldly."What of your daughter?"

  "Oh, if only she were a boy!" the wretched woman harped again.

  Laura Stedham removed her arm from her friend's shoulder and shrugged abit impatiently.

  "That refrain again?" she said, the warmth departing from her to
ne. "Imust be going before I become vexed with you, Tony. Your own positionwould be quite the same in any case--if you had a son instead of adaughter, I mean. For my part, I fail to perceive any choice betweenbeing shamed in the eyes of a son of in the eyes of a daughter. True, ason would not have to tolerate so humiliating a situation. A son could,and unquestionably would, clap on his hat the moment he became aware ofthe state of things here, and stamp out, leaving it all behind him. Ason could and would shift for himself. But a girl--a girl just out ofschool--can't do that. She is helpless. She is at the mercy of thesituation you have made for her. I fear you are completely losing yourmoorings, Tony. When is Louise arriving?"

  "Tonight," replied Mrs. Treharne, who had subsided into a sort of apathyof self-pity. "At nine something or other. I shall meet her at thestation in the car."

  Laura turned a quizzical, slitted pair of eyes upon her friend, now busyagain with her tear-smudged make-up.

  "Not in Judd's car, surely, Tony?" she said, in earnest expostulation."Why do that? Why not let the girl in upon your--your tangled affairs alittle more gradually? How could she help wondering at the extravagant,vulgar ornateness of Judd's car? For of course she knows perfectly wellthat your own finances are not equal to such a whale of a machine asthat."

  "It will not take her long to find out everything," said Mrs. Treharne,a little sullenly. "She need not be uncommonly observant to do that.And you remember how embarrassingly observant she was even as a child."

  "Give her a chance to observe piecemeal, then," said Laura, laconically."I shall be with you at the station. One of my poor accomplishments, youknow, is the knack of ameliorating difficult situations. And I wasalways so fond of the child. I am stark curious to see how she hasdeveloped. She was a starchy Miss of fifteen when last I saw her. We'llfetch her home in a taxicab. That will be better. It is arranged, then?"

  "Everything that you suggest is as good as arranged,' Laura," repliedMrs. Treharne, with a wan smile. "Your gift of persuasion isirresistible--I wish I knew the secret of it. It is extremely good ofyou to want to meet the child. If I could only meet her with--with suchclean hands as--well, as I should have!"

  "Never mind--there'll be a way out of it," said Laura, cheerily. "I amoff."

  She grazed the adeptly-applied artificial bloom of the other woman'scheek with her lips.

  As they stood side by side in the juxtaposition of a caress--they werefriends from girlhood--the contrast between the two women wassufficiently striking. Laura Stedham, a woman of thirty-five, had theslender yet well-rounded structural sinuosities of a girl of twenty whopasses all her days in the open air--minus the indubitable blowsinesswhich some open-air young women can't help but reveal to the dissectingeye. Unusually tall, she had the gliding grace of movement which so manywomen of uncommon stature lack. Even in the cluttered dressing room ofher friend she made nothing of the obstacles that barred her path, but,walking always with a sort of nervous swiftness, passed around them toher point of destination--a mantel, a table, a hanging picture--with athreading ease of locomotion that made it seem oddly doubtful if shewere dependent upon the ground at all for a base. There are tall womenwho, if they do not collide with stationary objects when they undertakea tour of a room, at least arouse the fear that they will infallibly doso. Laura possessed an eye for the measurement of distances, and thelitheness perfectly to follow her measurement. Her complexion was thatof a woman to whom a long tramp, even in the city, in the mist or in theblinding rain, was not a task, but a delight. Her hair, all her own, yetworn in the final perverse mood of exaggeration of the coiffure"artist," was of an incredible burnished black, in unusual contrast withher full, kindling, Celtic-grey eyes. A certain irregularity in theoutline of her features--especially of her nose, which, far from beingaquiline, was too short by the merest fraction--lent a certain piquancyto her expression, even when her face was in repose. She had the habit,growing rare in a world of social avoidances and white lies, of lookingthe person addressing her straight in the eye. It was not an impaling,disquieting gaze, but one that fairly demanded truthfulness and candor;a gaze unconsciously calculated to cause the liar to stutter in themanufacture of his lie.

  LAURA, A WOMAN OF THIRTY-FIVE, HAD THE SLENDER YETWELL-ROUNDED STRUCTURAL SINUOSITIES OF A GIRL OF TWENTY.]

  Mrs. Treharne, four years older than Laura, had the somewhat hollow-eyedplumpness of an indoor woman who wars fiercely but hopelessly andunequally upon ever-threatening _embonpoint_. Her triumphs over theenemy never were better than drawn battles; she was compelled to devoteat least three hours a day to her determined, almost hysterical warfareupon the natural process of accretion, solely that she might not gain;long before she had abandoned hope of achieving the fragility of outlineshe pined for. The nostrums she employed in this incessant conflict hadmade her fragile, however, in at least one respect: her health; besidesimparting a certain greenish-yellow tint to her skin which made hermake-up box almost as necessary a part of her equipment as the handswherewith she applied the mitigating tints. Five years before she hadbeen a fresh-skinned, clear-eyed, naturally pretty woman of a somewhatinconsequential type; but the necessity--the hideous duty, as shedeemed it--of banting without cessation or intermission had left hermerely her regular features upon which artificially to create theillusion of a youthfulness she was far from feeling. With the finaltouch added for an appearance in a company, she still looked dainty,certainly of impeccable grooming. But she had learned to be uneasy underthe scrutiny of eyes that she felt to be unfriendly, and she had becomeexceptionally partial to veils. Her hair, originally a light,unaggressive red, had been "done over" into a sort of vivid, brittle"Titian." There were occasional reddish gleams in her slightly furtive,small eyes of hazel. She had a child's foot, and she was inordinatelyproud of her tiny, waxy, too-white hands. In a company she smiledcontinuously in order to display her teeth, which were perfectlyassembled and of an almost porcelain whiteness. Mrs. Treharne was calleda pretty woman even by those who perhaps entertained unexpressedmisgivings as to how she might look at her rising hour.

  After Laura had gone Mrs. Treharne tried, before her glass, the effectof a smile--somewhat frozen and quickly obliterated--upon her carefullystudied and artfully executed make-up mask; then sighed drearily as shesank into a chair and began polishing her nails upon her palms.

  "Of course Laura is right, as usual--it wouldn't help mattersparticularly if Louise were a boy," she mused with puckered brows. "Aboy might be longer in finding out how affairs stood here; but when hedid find out--what a storm, what heroics, what juvenile reproaches, whata stagey to-do there would be! Perhaps, after all, it is as well thatLouise is--Louise. She can adapt herself to--to things as they are. Shemust. There's no other way. She can't have lost the tact she possessedas a child. I wish I knew her better, so that I could have some sort ofan idea just what to expect from her. I hope she understands the goodsense of closing one's eyes to things that can't be improved by lookingat them. Perhaps I shall be lucky enough to marry her off quickly. Thatwould be almost too easy a solution for me, with my vile luck, toexpect."

  She rang for Heloise to have her furs in readiness.

  "It was thoroughly decent of Laura," she thought on, finger at lip, "toadvise me to bolt all this and take refuge with her. But I haven't thenerve--that's the plain truth of it. How could I ask Treharne to renewthe allowance? What a triumph it would be for him if I were to do that!He would be too Quixotic to view it as a triumph, but that wouldn'talleviate my humiliation in asking him. And what would the three or fourthousand a year be in comparison with--"

  "The car is at the door, Madame," announced Heloise, appearing with thesables. Mrs. Treharne smiled at herself before the glass to smooth outthe wrinkles of her musing, tripped lightly down the stairs, and washumming blithely when she nodded indulgently at the ponderous,shaggy-furred man who was waiting to help her into the huge,over-lavish, pulsing car.

  "You take your time, don't you?" grumbled Judd, his breath vaporing intobroken clouds in the raw Dec
ember air. "Does that monkey-chattering maidof yours sleep all the time, or has she a case on with the butler? I'vebeen tooting here for ten minutes."

  His tone was snarling, and his thin lips were drawn away from gnarledteeth. Judd was one of those physical anomalies, a man of Falstaffiangirth with sharp, peaked, predatory features. He pulled off his fur capto readjust it before stepping into the car, showing a head wholly baldexcept for crinkly wisps of mixed red and gray hair at the sides andback. There was a deep crease at the back of his neck where the scanthair left off, and his deep-set, red-rimmed little watery-blue eyes werealert and suspicious.

  Mrs. Treharne laughed so carelessly that it almost seemed as if shedeliberately sought to intensify his irritation.

  "Still in your villanous humor?" she asked him, a taunt in her tone. "Ibelieve this is one of the days--they grow rather frequent--when youshould be allowed--required, I should say--to ride alone."

  "Well, that's easy enough to do," grumbled Judd in a voice curiouslyhigh-pitched for so vast a man. "See here, perhaps you are conceitedenough to think--"

  Very deliberately, and still smiling, Mrs. Treharne rose to leave thecar. Judd looked blankly nonplussed.

  "Oh, stop this infernal nonsense, Tony," he said in a tone tinged withalarm. Then his ruddy face expanded into a grin behind which thereseemed to be little mirth. "D'ye know, I believe you would be cat enoughto step out, before we start, and--"

  "No names, if you please," Mrs. Treharne interrupted, choppily."Decidedly I shall leave the car if you feel that it is impossible foryou to behave yourself like a human being. I have ceased to extractenjoyment from your growling humors."

  It was a tone she might have taken in addressing a menial. Obviously,however, it was the tone required for the proper subjugation of Judd. Heexuded a falsetto laugh and patted her hand, at the same time motioningthe chauffeur to start.

  "I don't complain of your hellish moods, do I, Tony?" he asked her,still chuckling unpleasantly. "In fact, I believe I rather like the feelof your claws. All the same, there may come a day when--"

  "When I shall enjoy the sight of your back," calmly interrupted theapparently complaisant woman at his side. "Speed the day!"

  Judd's face took on a half-chagrined, half-worried look. It generallydid when Mrs. Treharne was operating upon him what she privately calledher "system." This "system," in essence, consisted in her invariablehabit of quarreling with him and reducing him to abjectness by more orless veiled threats of abandoning him to a lonesome fate whenever shehad something to ask of him, or to tell him, that she knew quite wellwould arouse his surliness. It was a neatly-devised balancing method,and Mrs. Treharne as well understood the vital advantage of striking thefirst blow as she apprehended the extent of her power over him.

  "I say, Tony," said Judd, patting her gloved hands again, "you wouldn'treally cut and run just because--"

  "Spare me your elephantine sentimentalities, please," she put in, alittle less indifferently. "You were never ordained for that sort ofthing. Anyhow, I would like a sane word or two with you. I've somethingto tell you."

  "It's money, of course," said Judd, sulkily, leaving off patting herhands with ludicrous suddenness. "More damned extravagance, eh?"

  "No, it's neither money nor extravagance, beautifully as those two wordstrot in tandem," she said, airily, yet with a new soothing note in hertone. "It is this: Louise is coming home. At once. Tonight."

  "The devil she is!" blurted Judd. "What for? Who sent for her? How longis she going to stay? What's it all about?"

  "One question at a time, please," Mrs. Treharne replied, lookingindifferently out toward the bleak river as they shot by Claremont. Itwas a palpably assumed air of indifference; but Judd, unskilled atpenetrating feminine subtlety, did not discern the nervousnessunderlying her careless manner. "My daughter is coming home because shewants to. Nobody sent for her. She is not going back to school. Sheannounces that in her letter to me; and she is old enough to know hermind and to be entitled to freedom of action. She is remainingpermanently with me."

  She had expected him to storm upon hearing the news in full. Judd,however, was an individual who owed a considerable part of his immensesuccess as a man of affairs to his studied and carefully-elaboratedhabit of never doing the obvious.

  He leaned back in the car and half-screened his turkey-like eyes withtheir small, veinous lids. Mrs. Treharne, surprised at his silence, wenton hastily:

  "I am wretchedly disturbed over it. I know that I have no fit home tooffer her. I know that I have completely undermined her chance in life.But what can I do? She can't live alone. And she merely brings thedifficulty to a head by coming now. She must come home some time, ofcourse. The child has not spent her holidays or her summer vacationswith me for four years. Always she has been pushed about among schoolfriends, who, glad as they and their people may have been to have her,surely must have wondered why she did not come home."

  Judd fluttered his eyelids and leaned forward in his seat.

  "I understand perfectly, of course," he said with a sort of leer. "Iunderstand, you understand, we understand, they understand, everybodyunderstands. Then what are you making such a devil of a rumpus about itfor?"

  "Well," said Mrs. Treharne, making the mistake, in dealing with Judd, offalling into a slightly apologetic tone, "I thought that perhaps youmight----"

  "Wait a minute, Antoinette," interrupted Judd with suave brutality,leaning back again among the cushions and once more half-closing hiseyes. "It doesn't matter a damn what I think. I can stand it if you can.She isn't my daughter, you know. She's your daughter. I suppose she hasbeen taught to mind her own business? Very well. I can stand thesituation if you can."

  The slur cut like a rattan, as Judd, perceiving a rare advantage,thoroughly intended that it should. He made it worse by patting herhands as he spoke. She hated him with an almost virtuous intensity as heuttered the sneer. But she said no more about her daughter's impendingarrival during the remainder of the ride.