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Mrs. Balfame

[Pg 233] <h2>CHAPTER XXVI</h2> Miss Austin remained but a few moments in the studio. She was embarrassed and angry, and Rush was not the sole object of her wrath: she anathematised herself not only for permitting her literary enthusiasm to carry her to the point of attempting coercion and running the risk of being called bad names by an expert in crime, but for speaking out impulsively in the first place and throwing her cards on the table. It had been her intention to cultivate the wretch's acquaintance and lead him on with excessive subtlety; but he had proved impervious to her maidenly hints that she would like to know him better; equally so to her boyish invitation to come over some evening and meet a number of the newspaper girls who were all fighting for his client. Fifteen minutes alone with him in the quiet streets of Elsinore at night was an opportunity that might never come again, and she had surrendered to impulse. She was now more deeply convinced than ever that he had killed David Balfame, but although she had no intention of denouncing him even if she found her proofs in the course of persistent sleuthing, she thought it wise to "keep him guessing," as the uneasiness of mind caused by this constant pressure from without might eventually drive him to her for counsel and aid. Like all healthy young American writers of fiction, she was an incurable optimist, and as yet untempered in the[Pg 234] least by the practical experiences of a New York reporter. After a few moments' desultory conversation, she announced that she "must run," and as Alys opened the door, Miss Austin turned to the lawyer, who had risen and stood by the stove. "Good night, Mr. Rush," she said sweetly. "So glad you are defending poor Mrs. Balfame, but you know I never did believe she did it, and I have good reason to hope that we shall all know the truth in about a fortnight." Rush bowed politely, as she did not offer her hand. "You would save me much trouble and Mrs. Balfame much expense. I wish you all good luck." Her brows met and her dark grey eyes turned black, but she swung on her heel and marched out with her head in the air. Rush remained behind, as it was evident the two girls wanted a last mysterious word together. Alys returned in a few moments, and with a swift step. Her face was radiant. She too held her head high, but as if she lifted her face to drink in some magic elixir of the night. This was the first time she had seen Rush since he had immersed himself in the case, and now he had come to her unasked, and as naturally as in the old days when weary with work and the sordid revelations of the courts. Her mercurial spirits, which had hung low in the scale for weeks, had gone up with a rush that filled her with a reckless unreasoning happiness. Perhaps intimacy with Mrs. Balfame had disillusioned him in little ways. Perhaps he had discovered the truth for himself and despised her for a cold-blooded liar where he might have forgiven her honest[Pg 235] admission of the actual crime. It would be just like his exaggerated idealism. There never was any love that could not be killed by transgression of some pet prejudice, some violation of secret fastidiousness. At all events, he was here and with every appearance of spending a long evening. What did the rest matter? He was still standing as she entered, staring at a water colour of a bit of the woods west of Elsinore. The trees were stately and old, the shadows green and shot with the gold of some stray beam of the sun dancing down through that heavy canopy with Puckish triumph. A rocky brook crossed the glade, and behind was a subtle suggestion of the uninterrupted forest, deserted and absolutely still. Rush had recognised the spot. "My village, Rennselaerville, is on the other side," he said, turning a boyish face to Alys. "I have been fourteen again for a few moments. Last summer I only got a day off now and again to loaf in those woods. I wish I had been with you when you painted this." She unhooked the picture and handed it to him. "Please let me give it to you. I'd like so much if you would hang it in one of your rooms,—say behind your desk,—so that when you are tired or puzzled you can wheel about and lose yourself for a moment. I am sure it wouldn't be a bad substitute for the real thing." She spoke with a shy eagerness and an entire absence of coquetry. He put out both hands for the picture. "I should think it wouldn't. It is just like you to think of it. Indeed I will accept it." And he remembered how many cases he had forgotten under her kindly tact, both in this cool green studio and that other[Pg 236] room of woodland shades in the cottage. He was wondering if he had not been a conceited ass and misconstrued an increasing warmth of friendship in this fine impulsive creature, when he remembered Miss Austin's insinuations and sat down abruptly, recalled to the object of his visit. Alys had invited him to smoke but had not produced her box of Russian cigarettes. Miss Austin, who was determined to keep her nerves in order and her efficiency at high-water mark, did not smoke, and Rush had his prejudices. While he puffed away at his cigar and stretched his long legs out to the fire, she leaned back against a mass of pillows on the divan and congratulated herself that she had put on a charming primrose-yellow gown in honour of her Aunt Dissosway and two other guests entertained by her mother at supper. It was rhythmical in its harmony with the olives of the room and of her own rare colouring. Rush, who had been studying his picture, looked up and smiled at the other picture on the divan. In the soft lamplight Alys' smooth dark hair looked as olive as her eyes, and there was a faint stain of pink on the ivory of her cheeks. Beneath the lace that covered her slender bust was a delicate note of ribbons and fine lawn, and the little feet in pointed bronze slippers showed through transparent stockings. More by instinct than calculated effect Alys on such occasions managed to create an aura of fastidious and dainty femininity while stopping short of invitation. Rush scowled as his mind leaped to the substantial and sensibly clad feet of his beautiful client, and to a pile of stout unribboned underwear that had been brought into the jail sitting-room one day when he[Pg 237] awaited her tardy appearance. For the first time he wondered if such things really counted in human happiness—not so much, perhaps, for the artistic delight in them that a plain man like himself might be able to feel as for all that they stood: the elusive but auspicious signal. He shook himself angrily and sat up. "Your young friend thinks I murdered Balfame," he announced. Alys started under this frontal attack, but smiled ironically. "I knew she had conceived some such nonsensical theory, mainly because she wanted to have it so. Sarah intends to be a novelist." "So she did me the honour to confide. She even promised me all the immunity that lay within her jurisdiction if I would reward her with a full confession." "Really, she is too absurd. Don't let it worry you. You have nothing to fear." "I'm not so sure." Alys sat up as rigidly as if armoured like Mrs. Battle. "What do you mean?" she breathed. "Miss Austin has arrived at the conclusion that I am in love with Mrs. Balfame. She is an outsider with no data whatever to work on; it is reasonable to suppose that sooner or later our good fellow citizens will work round to the same theory." "That is just the one theory they never will conceive or accept. They know better. That sort of thing never was in Mrs. Balfame's line. The women know that if she doesn't exactly hate men, she has a quiet but profound contempt for them. I wish you could have seen them—her particular crowd—at Mrs. Battle's the day of the arrest. Just to draw them out,[Pg 238] I suggested that some man who was in love with her might have fired the shot. They nearly annihilated me. Mrs. Balfame, guilty of the crime of murder or not, is fairly screwed on her pedestal so far as the women are concerned. As for the men, such a theory will never occur to them for the simple reason that not one has ever been attracted by her; she's the very last woman they would expect any man to commit murder for." Rush, wondering if these observations were dictated by venom or a mere regard for facts, shot a veiled glance at the divan; Miss Crumley's soft carefully de-Americanised voice had not sharpened, but her face was very mobile for all its reserve. She was looking almost aggressively impersonal and had sunk back against the high pillows in a limp indolent line. Facts, of course! "It is very like a political campaign," said he. "Nobody is quite sane in this town just now, and the wildest conclusions are bound to be jumped at. It is not only embryo novelists that have romantic imaginations. Just reflect that I am Mrs. Balfame's counsel, that I am still a young man and unmarried, and that she is a beautiful woman and looks many years younger than her age. There you are." Alys made an abrupt change of position which in one less graceful would have suggested a wriggle. However, her voice remained impersonal. "But this community, including her friends, believe that she did it. They want her to get off, but they have settled the question in their own minds and are not looking around for any one else." "Cummack and several of the other men are, [Pg 239]besides Balfame's old political pals—and his enemies, for that matter. Old Dutch, who is far shrewder than his son, is by no means certain of Mrs. Balfame's guilt and has put a detective on the job—against her acquittal, having no desire to see suspicion pointing at his house again. He is just the old sentimentalist to settle on me." He saw the pink fade out of her cheeks, leaving her face like cold ivory, but she answered steadily: "You have your alibi. You went to Brooklyn that evening to keep an appointment." "I don't mind telling you that although I went to Brooklyn that night I did not see the man I was after. I went on the spur of the moment, more because I wanted to get out of Elsinore than anything else; I didn't have time to telephone before catching the train, but when I left it in Brooklyn, I telephoned and found that he had gone to New York. I gave no name; it was a matter of no importance. Then as there was no one else I cared to talk to I took the next train back, and as my head ached and I felt as nervous as a cat—from overwork and other things—tramped for hours until I met Dr. Anna out by the marsh and she drove me in—" "Dr. Anna?" "Yes, and I have reason to believe she thinks I shot Balfame, but she would never denounce any one if she could help it." "Oh, you are all wrong. She believes—like everybody else—that Mrs. Balfame did it. My Aunt Dissosway is superintendent out there and has been listening to her delirious mutterings; she's never mentioned you. I drove out there for the second[Pg 240] time on Sunday. I haven't told Mother, as she is one of the few that believe Mrs. Balfame innocent—but when Dr. Anna is coherent at all, that is the impression my aunt gets—but—Oh—of course she's only guessing like everybody else. She couldn't know—she was out at the Houston farm—" Rush was sitting up very straight. "Has any one been permitted to see her?" "Of course not." "Not that it would matter. Delirious people all have insane fancies. But I don't believe she had any such idea before she came down, and besides it is not true. Mrs. Balfame is innocent." "Of course as her lawyer you must persuade yourself that she is." "If I had not believed in her, I would not have taken the case, great as my desire would be to help her. I am no good at pleading against my convictions; I'd fail with the jury. If I had believed her guilty, I should have got her the best counsel possible and helped him all I could." Alys had a curious sense of physical paralysis, or of spiritual dissociation from her body, she made no attempt to decide which; but that the cause was an intense nervous excitement she was well aware. As she stared at him with dilated eyes, he was suddenly convinced that Miss Austin was right in assuming that Alys had some secret and important knowledge bearing upon the crime. Was her reticence due to the common Elsinore loyalty? If so, why her reserve with him who would have parted with his life rather than with any facts that still further would incriminate Mrs. Balfame. [Pg 241] Then in a flash he understood, for his keen faculties were on edge, concentrated to one point, and as sensitive as magnets. He recalled his high estimate of this girl during the weeks of their intimacy, and the instinctive doubts that had assailed him in his rooms on the night of the murder. And as he realised the fierce battle that was raging in that passionate but disciplined soul, he knew that she loved him, and he scorned himself for attributing her former tentative advances to calculation or that compound of nerves and imagination which so many women call love. She had given him her heart, and it had betrayed her. But while the knowledge gave him an unexpected thrill, he ruthlessly determined to try and to test her to the utmost. He stood up and walked about the room for a moment, and then halted directly in front of her. "Do you know anything?" he asked abruptly. "About what? Do you think I suspect you?" "No, I don't. I mean Mrs. Balfame." "I told you we all believe she did it. We can't help ourselves." "I don't understand the attitude of any of you women who were her friends, her intimates. You—they, rather—have let her lead this community for years, believed her to be little short of perfection. And now with one accord they accept her guilt as a matter of course." "I think they came to with a sort of shock and realised they never had understood her at all. She had them hypnotised. I think she's one of those Occidentals with terrible latent powers for whom new laws will have to be made when they awake to [Pg 242]consciousness of them and begin to develop them with the power and skill of the Orientals—" "Beg pardon, but let's keep to the present." "Well, I mean it rather excites them to be able to believe, not so much that she did it, as that she was capable of it, that while uniformly sweet and serene, she had those terrible secreted depths. She reminds one of Lucrezia Borgia, or Catherine de Medici—" "Why poisoners? You don't mean to say they take any stock in that story of the poisoned lemonade?" And before Alys could collect her startled faculties she had stammered: "Oh, of course, not. They laugh at that. Balfame was shot—what's the use of—the water in the vial no doubt was put there to rinse it, and Dr. Anna absently put it back in place. I merely mentioned the names of the first wicked women that occurred to me. Somehow Mrs. Balfame suggests that historic tribe to our friends. No doubt this crime in their midst has irritated what little imagination they have." Her chest was rising under quick heartbeats, stirring the soft nest of ribbon and lawn under the lace of her gown, a part of the picture that he did not appreciate until later; at the moment he was observing her dilated eyes, the strained muscles of her nostrils and mouth. He found himself interested in feminine psychology for the first time in his life; and as he hated a liar above all transgressors, he wondered why he inconsistently delighted in not being able to comprehend this complex little creature, and at the same time hoped, his own breathing almost as irregular as hers, that she would continue to lie. But he pushed[Pg 243] on. He had a dim sense that far more tremendous issues were at stake than further proof of his client's guilt, and deep in his soul was an ache to feel reassured that staggering old ideals might yet be reinforced with vitality. "Have you told Jim Broderick that Dr. Anna accuses Mrs. Balfame?" "Of course not. He would be climbing the porch the first dark night." "Have you been tempted to tell him?" She shrank farther back and looked up at him under lowered lids. "Tempted? What—why should I? Well, I haven't told him, or any one. That is all that matters." "Exactly. I only meant, of course, that I have a reprehensible masculine disbelief in the ability of a woman to keep a secret. I might have known you would be the exception, as you are to so many rules. And I mean that. But Broderick is an old friend of yours and preternaturally keen on the case." "Oh!" "You haven't told me why you in particular believe so firmly in my client's guilt. You are the last person to be influenced by either the ravings of a typhoid patient—hallucinations, generally—or any of the sentimental and romantic theories of these half-baked women that spend their leisure taking on flesh, playing bridge, and running over to New York. If you believe Mrs. Balfame is guilty you must have some fairly good reason—perhaps proof." She could not guess that he was trying her; she imagined his insistence due to apprehension, a desire to know the worst. The hour she had dreaded and[Pg 244] desired had come—and she had almost let its opportunities escape! These last weeks in New York filled with work and novel distraction had repoised her, unconsciously. She had begun to doubt, some time since, if she would be able to violate her old standards when the test came; but not for a moment had she ceased with all the concentrated forces of her being to long for his desertion of Mrs. Balfame. And if she had rejoiced sometimes that she was incapable of a demoralising act, she had at others been equally disgusted with her failure in inexorable purpose. She told herself that the big brains were ruthless, able to hold down and out of sight one side of the character they governed while giving the hidden forces for evil full play; never in wantonness, of course, but in sternly calculated necessity. She had a suspicion that this was just the form of greatness Mrs. Balfame possessed, and it increased her disesteem of self and inspired her with a second form of jealousy. The bitter tides were welling to the surface once more. She asked abruptly: "Is Sarah Austin's theory true? Are you in love with Mrs. Balfame?" "What has that to do with it?" "It has its bearings." "I don't think I should be expected to answer that question. I can say this, however: that as long as she is my client and in jail, I shall have no time to think of personal matters—of love, above all. My job is to get her off, and it occupies about sixteen hours out of the twenty-four. I oughtn't to be here, but relief—distraction—is imperative, now and again—" "It would be too delightful if you would come here when you wanted both." Her tones were polite [Pg 245]without being eager, but she found it impossible to smile. "Yes, I will; but I shall ignore the subject we are discussing—rest doesn't lie precisely that way! For that reason we'll finish up now. Why do you believe Mrs. Balfame guilty?" "If I could prove to you that she was, would you throw over the case?" He hesitated and regarded her fixedly for a moment through narrowed lids. "Yes," he said finally. "I would get one of the men whose firm I expect to join the first of the year to take the case." She sat erect once more and twisted her hands together, but tried to smile impersonally as she returned his gaze. "Would you then have time to love her?" Again he hesitated, although he was beginning to hate himself; he felt as if he had some beautiful wild thing of his woods in a trap, but an imperious inner necessity urged him on. "Probably not. Now will you tell me?" "Now?" She slipped to the floor and confronted him, holding her small head very high. No doubt the upward movement was unconscious in its expression, but he thought her very lovely and proud as she stood there, and for the first time he took note of the subtlety in that delicate mobile face. "I really know nothing," she said lightly. "It is just this: if you or any other innocent person were in danger, I should feel called upon to unravel certain clues. Naturally I should make no move otherwise. Mrs. Balfame is an old friend of ours—and then—well, our local pride may be absurd, but there it is. We must watch Jim Broderick. He has discovered[Pg 246] the intimacy between Dr. Anna and Mrs. Balfame, and also—what all know here—that they were alone together during those last morning hours following the murder. I'll warn my aunt. He really couldn't get at her—not now, at all events; what he is after, of course, is not so much corroboration, but a new and sensational story to keep the case going. And, of course, as it was the press that ran Mrs. Balfame to earth, a statement from a woman of Dr. Anna's standing justifying it would be an immense triumph." She had moved over to a table against the farther wall, and she struck a match and applied it to the wick of an alcohol lamp. "I am going to make you a cup of tea. It will rest without overstimulating you, and you must go right from here to bed. I'm sorry Mother doesn't keep whisky in the house—" "I don't drink when I'm on a case. That's one advantage I generally have over the other side. It will be delightful to drink tea with you once more, although I'm free to say that outside of this house I never drank a cup of tea in my life." The atmosphere was as agreeably light as if ponderable clouds had suddenly rolled out of the room. Two young people drew up to a smaller table and drank several cups of tea that had stood three minutes, nibbled excellent biscuit, and talked about the War. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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