BESSIE OSBORNE was the first of the family, characteristically, to hear the story. She heard it in town early the next morning, or rather as early as she could get on the telephone. And it was characteristic of her, too, that she lost no time over it. She sat up in bed—she was having a massage at the time. It was her substitute for exercise—and called Herbert at once.
"Come around and lunch with me," she said. "I want to talk to you."
"I'm pretty busy today."
"Well, come anyhow," she said and hung up the receiver.
She was a wise woman where young men were concerned, so she gave him an excellent cocktail and plunged into the matter while it was still, as she would have put it, getting in its work.
"Now," she said, "tell me the whole thing. And don't save me anything. I can get the surface story anywhere."
But Herbert knew disappointingly little. Tom had come, had got drunk, acted like a rowdy and disappeared.
"Where to?" said Bessie practically. "Those fellows got him tight. Why didn't they look after him?"
"I don't think they knew he was going. As a matter of fact, I believe he took my hat."
"Your hat!" said Bessie, astounded.
"His own was inside. He didn't go back, you see."
Bessie controlled her face. So there was something underneath, after all. Probably he and Herbert had had a set-to of some sort, and Herbert was not proud of it. She sat and inspected her carefully manicured nails thoughtfully.
"But it's tragic. It's terrible," she said unexpectedly. "Did he have any money?"
"I don't know. And I don't know that I care. He was tight when I saw him, tight as a drum."
"Well, he wasn't alone in that. And he knew enough to get out."
Herbert turned a trifle sulky, but she had not finished with him. She understood that this McNair had shot an Indian out there, an Indian who had been stealing their cattle. Was that true? And if it was, wasn't it up to them to defend him?
"I don't see that," he told her stiffly.
"Why not?" she demanded. "I daresay you'd just as soon see McNair jailed as not," she said shrewdly, "but I don't feel that way. I'm no keener on his marrying Kay than you are"—Herbert winced—"but I do believe in justice."
However, whatever she believed in, she found herself up against a stone wall of opposition in her brother. There was no proof that the Indian had been stealing their beef. McNair had acted on his own responsibility. Besides, the ranch was sold; he would send her an accounting soon. He personally washed his hands of the whole matter. He might have done something, but the impudence of the fellow in coming East and starting a scandal had decided him. He could take his medicine.
She never told Kay that she knew of Tom's visit. Indeed at that time she only mentioned him once, and was fairly shocked at the result. Kay turned a dead white and put out a hand to a chair to steady herself.
"Have you heard from your—western friend lately?" was what she asked.
And then Kay had turned the queer color.
"No," she said. "And I never will, now." She looked at her with painful directness. "You were quite right, Aunt Bessie. I know now. I think I always did know."
That was all. Bessie was not deceived, but she was somewhat relieved. She had her own philosophy. Time would cure Kay; she would marry Herbert or somebody else, and the handsome cowboy would be forgotten. Some day she would look back and smile at all this. She herself occasionally looked back and smiled. There had been an actor once, and she had been quite mad about him. What was his name? Anyhow, he had had a black mustache, and she had gone to all the matinées, and felt faint with jealousy when he kissed the leading woman.
On the first of November the Dowlings closed their country house and went back into town. The station wagon took the servants, happy at the end of their summer exile, and now once more to be within reach of the movies and the shops. The upholsterer's men had taken down the hangings and covered the furniture, men were stringing the doors and windows with fine wire, any tampering with which would warn a watchful individual at a switchboard in the city that something was wrong, and Henry's depleted summer store of liquors and wines had made a perilous but safe journey back to the great vault in the cellar of the town house.
Kay moved through all these activities quite normally. She talked and even laughed; if she ate rather less than ever, and if in the mornings sometimes her eyes looked a bit sunken, nobody mentioned it.
"Best thing that could have happened to her," was Henry's comment. "She's had her lesson, if she ever needed it. The fellow's a bad actor, from start to finish."
Katherine was not so certain, but whatever she suspected she kept to herself. And there had been no scandal, thank Heaven. A little talk, of course; that couldn't be helped. But the roping down the road had not come out, and mercifully the fellow had disappeared just after it. If there was any change in Kay, it was only that she seemed subdued. She was almost too acquiescent.
"I think the pink is better after all. It gives you a little color. What do you think?"
And Kay would turn herself, not before the mirror, but before Katherine instead.
"If you think so, mother."
It was during the packing that Katherine happened on the book of poetry she had brought home from the ranch, and reread the lines again: And gray dawn saw his camp fires in the rain."
She put the book down thoughtfully. Had old Lucius ever read them? Probably not. Curious how they made her think of him; she must take some flowers to the cemetery. Bessie never remembered to do it.
Strangely enough, since that visit to the ranch she had seemed to understand the old man better. Perhaps people who had fought a hostile land and conquered it had a different sense of values; had even a right to have them. Then, wasn't it possible that they were wrong about Kay and this cowboy? Why should they assume that their way was the best? Who was to know or judge? One accepted certain standards without question because it was easy. Certain things were done, certain things were not. But old Lucius had said "I do certain things," and had let it go at that.
She never spoke those thoughts of hers. She went about her small efficient arrangements for closing the house; "Don't forget to cover the drawing room chandelier, James"; watched Kay furtively and with a growing anxiety, and later on went dutifully to the cemetery and placed a dozen roses in the jar before the ugly shaft.
It was as though she propitiated some old and possibly angry God.
Perhaps even Henry was not so unobservant as he seemed. He bought some new pearls and had them added to his mother's string for Kay, and he even put them on her neck himself, with a sort of heavy jocularity. But if he noticed then how thin she was he said nothing.
The season in town had opened early. On the breakfast tray as it was brought into Kay's room would be numbers of heavy white envelopes, each containing an invitation to something or other. "Mr. and Mrs. Aurelius Fetterman request the pleasure of the company of Miss Katherine Dowling at a small dance," at dinner, at luncheon, at breakfast.
Varying these would be the times when the Dowlings entertained. When the social secretary, Miss Fane, would go about with lists in her hand and a hunted look in her eyes; when the florist's men would come in and standing in doorways with their heads on one side, surveying their work, critically, and Rutherford would be counting glasses and plates in the pantry.
"I beg your pardon, madam. Two of the sherry glasses have been broken."
"Well, don't bother me about it, Rutherford. Send down and replace them."
Then the hour arriving, and people with it, the first corners apologetic for being early, the tardy ones for being late. Bessie, bored but complaisant, wandering in late with a man or two in her train, and making up for the shortness of her skirts by the length of her onyx and diamond cigarette holder; and seeing a great deal while apparently looking at nothing at all.
She had heard the sequel of Tom's evening at the country club, and she had formed a new and higher opinion of Kay; Kay arriving at the dance, and being immediately surrounded:
"Say, Kay, the boy friend certainly got stewed!"
"Ask Herbert where his hat is!"
"Why didn't you fight him, Herb?"
And some one answering for Herbert, solemnly:
"Because he ain't got no father, he ain't got no father, he ain't got no father, to buy the clothes he wears."
And Kay in the center of the group, her head high, with a fixed smile on her face and dawning comprehension in her eyes, saying quietly:
"You seem to have had rather a thrilling time! But if you've used up father's best cow-hand he isn't going to like it."
But even Bessie knew no more than that. She did not know, for instance, that Kay had come quietly home after that, gone quietly upstairs, undressed and got into bed, or that she could not grieve, because Tom had left her nothing to grieve about. If he had died he would have left her some illusions, but he had only got drunk and disgraced her. She hadn't even the pitiful comfort of a secret sorrow. She had nothing; she was stripped bare.
The winter went on. Debutantes came out, flashed like meteors across the social sky and then settled quietly into the "among those present" lists in the society columns. New men came to town, were eligible or not eligible, the former greatly in demand, the second filling in at dinners and augmenting stag lines at balls. Some of them made their tentative overtures to Kay, sending in their small neatly engraved cards.
"Mr. Henderson calling, Miss Kay."
She would go down, talk and even laugh. She smoked a good bit, too—more than was good for her. Then, feeling that it made no difference to her if she ever saw them again, they made their polite bows, were let out of the house and went away, vaguely uncomfortable and relieved. And Kay would go upstairs again and sit in the dark until a housemaid came in to turn on the lights.
She did very little thinking, except sometimes about Herbert. There was something to be said for Herbert; he was always the same, upright and dependable. A girl would be safe with him. She would always know what he was going to do next. He would never humiliate or shame her. If he lacked imagination and humor—perhaps because he lacked them—he was as fixed as the stars.
But she was very clear about Herbert at that. He was rather like her father. He would have the same heavy figure some day. Even now he loathed exercise. She knew what life with Herbert would be; giving correct dinners and going to them; Herbert sleeping through problem plays' at the theater, and keeping unemotionally but interestedly awake at musical ones; his room adjoining hers, and his coming decorously to her with his occasional well-ordered demands; and then even that tie gradually relaxing, and the establishment of a formula between them.
"Good night, Kay."
"Good night, Herbert. Be sure to open your window."
When she reached that point she would shiver.