"I judge, then, that you are inclined to accept."
"I have accepted," said Bruce.
"I hope it will turn out better than worst suspicion might make us fear."
"Oh, it will!" he declared. "And mark me, it's going to turn out a far bigger thing for your father than you seem to realize."
"I hope that more fervently than do you!"
"I suppose you are going to keep up your fight for your father?"
"I expect to do what I can," she answered calmly.
"What are you going to do?"
She smiled sweetly, apologetically.
"You forget only one day has passed since the trial. You can hardly expect a woman's mind to lay new plans as quickly as a man's."
Bruce looked at her sharply, as though there might be irony in this; but her face was without guile. She glanced at her watch.
"Pardon me," he said, noticing this action and standing up. "You have your hat on; you were going out?"
"Yes. And I'm afraid I must ask you to excuse me." She gave him her hand. "I hope you don't mind my saying it, but if I were you I'd keep all the eyes I've got on Mr. Peck."
"Oh, I'll not let him fool me!" he answered confidently.
As he walked out of the yard he was somewhat surprised to see the ancient equipage of Mr. Huggins waiting beside the curb. And he was rather more surprised when a few minutes later, as he neared his home, Mr. Huggins drove past him toward the station, with Katherine in the seat behind him. In response to her possessed little nod he amazedly lifted his hat. "Now what the devil is she up to?" he ejaculated, and stared after her till the old carriage turned in beside the station platform. As he reached his gate the eastbound Limited came roaring into the station. The truth dawned upon him. "By God," he cried, "if she isn't going back to New York!"
CHAPTER XIII
THE DESERTER
Bruce was incensed at the cool manner in which Katherine had taken leave of him without so much as hinting at her purpose. In offering her aid and telling her his plans he had made certain advances. She had responded to these overtures by telling nothing. He felt he had been snubbed, and he resented such treatment all the more from a woman toward whom he had somewhat relaxed his dignity and his principles.
As he sat alone on his porch that night he breathed out along with his smoke an accompanying fire of profanity; but for all his wrath, he could not keep the questions from arising. Why had she gone? What was she going to do? Was she coming back? Had she given up her father's case, and had she been silent to him that afternoon about her going for the simple reason that she had been ashamed to acknowledge her retreat?
He waited impatiently for the return of his uncle, who had been absent that evening from supper. He thought that Hosie might answer these questions since he knew the old man to be on friendly terms with Katherine. But when Old Hosie did shuffle up the gravel walk, he was almost as much at a loss as his nephew. True, a note from Katherine had been thrust under his door telling him she wished to talk with him that afternoon; but he had spent the day looking at farms and had not found the note till his return from the country half an hour before.
Bruce flung away his cigar in exasperation, and the dry night air was vibrant with half-whispered but perfervid curses. She was irritating, erratic, irrational, irresponsible--preposterous, simply preposterous--damn that kind of women anyhow! They pretended to be a lot, but there wasn't a damned thing to them!
But he could not subdue his curiosity, though he fervently informed himself of the thousand and one kinds of an unblessed fool he was for bothering his head about her. Nor could he banish her image. Her figure kept rising before him out of the hot, dusty blackness: as she had appeared before the jury yesterday, slender, spirited, clever--yes, she had spoken cleverly, he would admit that; as she had appeared in her parlour that afternoon, a graceful, courteous, self-possessed home person; as he had seen her in Mr. Huggins's old surrey, with her exasperating, non-committal, cool little nod. But why, oh, why, in the name of the flaming rendezvous of lost and sizzling souls couldn't a woman with her qualities also have just one grain--only one single little grain!--of the commonest common-sense?
The next morning Bruce sent young Harper to inquire from Doctor West in the jail, and after that from Katherine's aunt, why Katherine had gone to New York, whether she had abandoned the case, and whether she had gone for good. But if these old people knew anything, they did not tell it to Billy Harper.
Westville buzzed over Katherine's disappearance. The piazzas, the soda-water fountains, the dry goods counters, the Ladies' Aid, were at no loss for an explanation of her departure. She had lost her case--she had discovered that she was a failure as a lawyer--she had learned what Westville thought of her--so what other course was open to her but to slip out of town as quietly as she could and return to the place from which she had come?
The Women's Club in particular rejoiced at her withdrawal. Thank God, a pernicious example to the rising young womanhood of the town was at last removed! Perhaps woman's righteous disapproval of Katherine had a deeper reason than was expressed--for what most self-searching person truly knows the exact motives that prompt his actions? Perhaps, far down within these righteously indignant bosoms, was unconsciously but potently this question: if that type of woman succeeds and wins man's approval, then what is going to become of us who have been built upon man's former taste? At any rate, feminine Westville declared it a blessing that "that terrible thing" was gone.
Westville continued to buzz, but it soon had matters more worth its buzzing. Pressing the heels of one another there came two amazing surprises. The city had taken for granted the nomination of Kennedy for mayor, but the convention's second ballot declared Blake the nominee. Blake had given heed to Mr. Brown's advice and had decided to take no slightest risk; but to the people he let it be known that he had accepted the nomination to help the city out of its water-works predicament, and Westville, recognizing his personal sacrifice, rang with applause of his public spirit. The respectable element looked forward with self-congratulation to him as the next chief of the city--for he would have an easy victory over any low politician who would consent to be Blind Charlie's candidate.
Then, without warning, came Bruce's nomination, with a splendid list of lesser candidates, and upon a most progressive platform. Westville gasped again. Then recovering from its amazement, it was inclined to take this nomination as a joke. But Bruce soon checked their jocularity. That he was fighting for an apparently defunct cause seemed to make no difference to him. Perhaps Old Hosie had spoken more wisely than he had intended when he had once sarcastically remarked that Bruce was "a cross between a bulldog and Don Quixote." Certainly the qualities of both strains were now in evidence. He sprang instantly into the campaign, and by the power and energy of his speeches and of his editorials in the _Express_, he fairly raised his issue from the dead. Bruce did not have a show, declared the people--not the ghost of a show--but if he maintained the ferocious earnestness with which he was starting out, this certainly was going to be the hottest campaign which Westville had seen since Blake had overthrown Blind Charlie Peck.
People recalled Katherine now and then to wonder what she was doing and how mortified she must feel over her fiasco, and to laugh good-naturedly or sarcastically at the pricked soap-bubble of her pretensions. But the newer and present excitement of the campaign was forcing her into the comparative insignificance of all receding phenomena--when, one late September Sunday morning, Westville, or that select portion of Westville which attended the Wabash Avenue Church, was astonished by the sight of Katherine West walking very composedly up the church's left aisle, looking in exceedingly good health and particularly stunning in a tailor-made gown of rich brown corduroy.
She quietly entered a vacant pew and slipped to a position which allowed her an unobstructed view of Doctor Sherman, and which allowed Doctor Sherman an equally unobstructed view of her. Worshippers who stared her way noticed that she seemed never to take her gaze from the figure in the pulpit; and it was remarked, after the service was over, that though Doctor Sherman's discourses had been falling off of late--poor man, his health was failing so!--to-day's was quite the poorest sermon he had ever preached.
The service ended, Katherine went quietly out of the church, smiling and bowing to such as met her eyes, and leaving an active tongue in every mouth behind her. So she had come back! Well, of all the nerve!
Did you ever! Was she going to stay? What did she think she was going to do? And so on all the way home, to where awaited the heavy Sunday dinner on which Westville gorged itself python-like--if it be not sacrilege to compare communicants with such heathen beasts--till they could scarcely move; till, toward three o'clock, the church paper sank down upon the distended stomachs of middle age, and there arose from all the easy chairs of Westville an unrehearsed and somewhat inarticulate, but very hearty, hymnal in praise of the bounty of the Creator.
At about the time Westville was starting up this chorus, Old Hosie Hollingsworth, in Katherine's parlour, deposited his rusty silk hat upon the square mahogany piano that had been Doctor West's wedding gift to his wife. The old lawyer lowered himself into a rocker, crossed his attenuated legs, and shook his head.
"Land sakes--I certainly was surprised to get your note!" he repeated.
"When did you get back?"
"Late last night."
He stared admiringly at her fresh young figure.
"I must say, you don't look much like a lawyer who has lost her first case and has sneaked out of town to hide her mortification!"
"Is that what people have been saying?" she smiled. "Well, I don't feel like one!"
"Then you haven't given up?"
"Given up?" She lifted her eyebrows. "I've just begun. It's still a hard case, perhaps a long case; but at last I have a start. And I have some great plans. It was to ask your advice about these plans that I sent for you."
"My advice! Huh! I ain't ever been married--not even so much as once,"
he commented dryly, "but I've been told by unfortunates that have that it's the female way to do a thing and then ask whether she should do it or not."
"Now, don't be cynical!" laughed Katherine. "You know I tried to consult you before I went away. But it still is not too late for your advice. I'll put my plans before you, and if your masculine wisdom, whose superiority you have proved by keeping yourself unmarried, can show me wherein I'm wrong, I'll change them or drop them altogether."
"Fire away," he said, half grumbling. "What are your plans?"
"They're on a rather big scale. First, I shall put a detective on the case."
"That's all right, but don't you underestimate Harrison Blake," warned Old Hosie. "Since you've come back Blake will be sure you're after him. He will be on his guard against you; he will expect you to use a detective; he will watch out for him, perhaps try to have his every move shadowed. I suppose you never thought of that?" he demanded triumphantly.
"Oh, yes I did," Katherine returned. "That's why I'm going to hire two detectives."
The old man raised his eyebrows.
"Two detectives?"