Читать книгу Mrs. Balfame - Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton - Страница 5

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A fortnight passed before Mrs. Balfame found the opportunity for a chat with Dr. Anna.

On Saturday afternoons it was the pleasant custom of the flower of Elsinore to repair to the Country Club, a building of the bungalow type, with wide verandas, a large central hall, several smaller rooms for those that preferred cards to dancing, a secluded bar, a tennis court—flooded in winter for skating—and a golf links. It was charmingly situated about four miles from the town, with the woods behind and a glimpse of the grey Atlantic from the higher knolls.

The young unmarried set that danced at the Club or in the larger of the home parlours every night would have monopolised the central hall of the bungalow on Saturdays as well had it not been for the sweet but firm resistance of Mrs. Balfame. Lacking in a proper sex vanity she might be, but she was far too proud and just to permit her own generation to be obliterated by mere youth. Having no children of her own, it shocked her fine sense of the fitness of things to watch the subservience of parents and the selfishness of offspring. One of the most notable results of her quiet determination was that she and her friends enjoyed every privilege of the Country Club when the mood was on them, and that a goodly number of the men of their own generation did not confine their attentions exclusively to the bar, but came out and danced with their neighbours' wives. The young people sniffed, but as Mrs. Balfame had founded the Country Club, and they were all helpless under her inflexible will and skilful manipulation, they never dreamed of rebellion.

During the fortnight Mrs. Balfame had cunningly replaced the vial, the indifferent Cassie leaving the sitting-room at her disposal while she wrote a note reminding Dr. Anna of the promised list of war books, adding playfully that she had no time to waste in a busy doctor's waiting-room. In truth Dr. Anna was a difficult person to see at this time. There was an epidemic of typhoid in the county, and much illness among children.

However, on the third Saturday after the interrupted supper, as Mrs. Balfame was motoring out to the Club with her friend, Mrs. Battle, wife of the President of the Bank of Elsinore, she saw Dr. Anna driving her little runabout down a branching road. With a graceful excuse she deserted her hostess, sprang into the humbler machine, and gaily ordered her friend to turn and drive to the Club.

"You take a rest this afternoon," she said peremptorily. "Otherwise you will be a wreck when your patients need you most. You look just about fagged out. And I want a little of your society. I've been thinking of taking to a sick bed to get it."

Dr. Anna looked at her brilliant friend with an expression of dumb gratitude and adoration. She was worth one hundred per cent. more than this companion of her forty years, but she never would know it. She regarded Enid Balfame as one of the superwomen of Earth, astray in the little world of Elsinore. Even when Mrs. Balfame had done her own work she had managed to look rare and lovely. Her hair was neatly arranged for the day before descent to the lower regions, and her pretty print frock was half covered by a white apron as immaculate as her round uncovered arms.

And since the leader of Elsinore had "learned things" she was of an elegance whose differences from those of women born to grace a loftier sphere were merely subtle. Her fine brown hair, waved in New York, and coiled on the nape of her long neck, displayed her profile to the best possible advantage; like all women's women she set great store by her profile. Whenever possible it was framed in a large hat with a rolling brim and drooping feathers. Her severely tailored frocks made her look aloof and stately on the streets (and in the trains between Elsinore and New York); and her trim white shirt waists and duck skirts, or "one piece suits" for colder weather, gave her a sweet feminine appeal in the house. At evening entertainments she invariably wore black, cut chastely about the neck and draped with a floating scarf.

Poor Dr. Anna, uncompromisingly plain from youth, worshipped beauty; moreover, a certain mental pressure of which she was quite unaware caused her to find in Enid Balfame her highest ideal of womanhood. She herself was never trim; she was always in a hurry; and the repose and serenity the calm and sweet dignity of this gifted being both fascinated and rested her. That Mrs. Balfame took all her female adorers had to offer and gave nothing but enhanced her worth. She knew the priceless value of the pedestal, and although her wonderful smile descended at discreet intervals her substantial feet did not.

Dr. Anna, who had never been sought by men and had seen too many of them sick in bed to have a romantic illusion left, gave to this friend of her lifetime, whom the years touched only to improve—and who never was ill—the dog-like fidelity and love that a certain type of man offers at the shrine of the unattainable woman. Mrs. Balfame was sometimes amused, always complacent; but it must be conceded that she took no advantage of the blind devotion of either Dr. Anna or her numerous other admirers. She was far too proud to "use" people.

Mrs. Balfame seldom discussed her domestic trials even with Dr. Anna, but this most intimate of her friends guessed that her life with her husband was rapidly growing unendurable. She was, naturally, the family doctor; she had nursed David Balfame through several gastric attacks, whose cause was not far to seek.

But despite much that was highly artificial in her personality, Enid Balfame was elementally what would be called, in the vernacular of the day, a regular female; for a fortnight she had longed to talk about Dwight Rush. This was the time to gratify an innocent desire while watching sharply for an opportunity to play for higher stakes.

"Anna!" she said abruptly, as they sped along the fine road, "women like and admire me so much, and I am passably good looking—young looking, too—what do you suppose is the reason men don't fall in love with me? Dave says that half the men in town are mixed up with those telephone and telegraph girls, and they are pretty in the commonest kind of way—"

"Enid Balfame!" Dr. Anna struggled to recover her scandalised breath. "You! Do you put yourself in the class with those trollops? What's got into you? Men are men. Naturally they let your sort alone."

"But I have heard more than whispers about two or three of our good friends—women of our age, not giddy young fools—and in our own set. Why do Mary Frew and Lottie Gifning go over to New York so often? Dave says it isn't only that women from these dull little towns go over to New York to meet their lovers, but that some of them are the up-town wives of millionaires, or the day-time wives of all sorts of men with money enough to run two establishments. It is a hideous world and I never ask for particulars, but the fact remains that Lottie and Mary and a few others have as many partners among the young men at the dances as the girls do; and I can recall hints they have thrown out that they could go farther if they chose."

"This is a busy country," remarked Dr. Anna drily. "Men don't waste time chasing the prettiest of women when convinced there is nothing in it—to borrow the classic form. Young chaps, urged on by natural law to find their mate, will pursue the indifferent girl, but men looking for a little play after business hours will not. Why, you—you look as cold and chaste as Cæsar's wife. They couldn't waste five minutes on you."

"That's what he said—that I was like Cæsar's wife—"

"Enid!" Dr. Anna stopped the little machine and turned upon her friend, her weary face compact and stern. "Enid Balfame! Have you been letting a man make love to you?"

"Well, I guess not." Mrs. Balfame tossed her head and bridled. "But the other night, when I left your house, Mr. Rush was passing and saw me home. He nearly took my breath away by asking me to get a divorce and marry him, but he respected me too much to make love to me."

"I should hope so. The young fool!" But Dr. Anna was unspeakably relieved. She had turned faint at the thought that her idol might be as many other women whose secrets she alone knew. "What did you say to him?" she asked curiously, driving very slowly.

"Why, that I would not be a divorced woman for anything in the world."

"You're not the least bit in love with him?" asked Dr. Anna jealously.

Mrs. Balfame gave her silvery shallow care-free laugh. It might have come from any of the machines passing, laden with young girls. "Well, I guess not! That sort of foolishness never did interest me. I guess my vanity was tickled, but vanity isn't love—by a long sight."

Dr. Anna looked at the pure cold profile, the wide cool grey eyes, and laughed. "He did have courage, poor devil! It must have been—no, there was no moonlight. Must have been the suggestion of that old Lovers' Lane, Elsinore Avenue. But if you wanted men to make love to you, my dear, you could have them by the dozen. Nothing easier—for pretty women of any age who want to be made love to. As for Rush—" She hesitated, then added generously, "he has a future, I think, and could take you somewhere else."

"I should be like a fish out of water anywhere but in Elsinore. I have no delusions. Forty-two is not young—that is to say, it is long past the adaptable age, unless a woman has spent her life on the move and filling it with variety. I love Elsinore as a cat loves its hearth-rug. And I can get to New York in an hour. I think this would be the ideal life with about two thousand dollars more a year, and—and—"

"Dave Balfame somewhere else! Pity Sam Cummack didn't turn him into a travelling salesman instead of planting him here."

"He's never been interested in anything in his life but politics. But I don't really bother about him," she added lightly. "I have him well trained. After all, he never comes home to lunch, he interferes with me very little, he goes to the Elks every night soon after dinner, and he falls asleep the minute he gets into bed. Why, he doesn't even snore. And he carries his liquor pretty well. I guess you can't expect much more than that after twenty-two years of matrimony. I notice that if it isn't one thing it's another."

"Good Lord! Well, I wish he'd break his neck."

"Oh, Anna!"

"Well, of course I didn't mean it. But I see so many good people die—so many lovely children—I'm sort of callous, I guess. I make no bones of wishing that he'd died of typhoid fever last week, instead of poor Joe Morton, who had a wife and two children to support, and was the salt of the earth—"

"You might give Dave a few germs in a capsule!" Mrs. Balfame interrupted in her lightest tones, although she turned her face away. "Or that untraceable poison you once showed me. A bottle of that would finish him!"

"A drop and none the wiser." Dr. Anna's contralto tones were gloomy and morose. "Unfortunately, I am not scientific enough for cold-blooded murder. I'm a silly old Utopian who wishes that a plague would come and sweep all the undesirables from the earth and let us start fair with our modern wisdom. Then I suppose we'd bore one another to death until original sin cropped out again. Better speed up, I guess. I've a full evening ahead of me."