THE TRAIL OF CONFLICT by EMILIE BAKER LORING (classic fiction .txt) 📕

"You are wasting your sympathy. 'I scorn to change my state with kings!'" he declaimed dramatically before he disappeared into the path which had swallowed up Peggy.

Jerry rested her elbows on the table, her chin on her clasped hands, and gazed thoughtfully after him. Subconsciously she noted the sound of horses' hoofs on the hard road in front of the house. Who was arriving at ten o'clock in the morning, she wondered idly before she returned to thoughts of Peg and Tommy. She sat motionless for so long that Goober rose, stretched and poked his cold nose under her hands. She stroked his head gently.

"Where is your master?" she whispered into one of his big ears. The dog shook his head, sneezed violently and looked up, his eyes eloquent with reproach. "Did it tickle? I'm sorry." She reached for a lump of sugar in the squatty Dutch silver bowl. "If you could say please----" Goober rose on his hind feet, dangled his crossed forepaws and with head on one side avidly regarded the enticing white morsel in the girl's fingers. He gave a short, sharp bark. She tossed him the sugar which he crunched between his strong teeth. She patted his head. "Do you know, Goober, I think that any dog is more interesting than the average human. Wait for me. I'll get my hat and we'll take Patches a lump of sugar."

Obediently the dog took up his position beside her chair. Humming lightly Jerry went toward the house. What a glorious morning. The nightmare of yesterday already seemed like an impossible dream. Some day she would explain that elopement business to Steve and they would laugh about it together. She caught her breath as a vision of his face as he had held her in his arms crowded itself into her mind. She raced up the court steps to elude her clamorous thoughts. At the door of the living-room she stopped as though galvanized. She brushed her hand impatiently across her eyes. Coming into the shadowy room from the gleaming world outside certainly did queer things to one's vision. That--that couldn't be Steve with a woman's arm about his neck! There was an inarticulate sound in her throat as she took a step forward. Courtlandt heard it. With a muttered imprecation he loosened the clinging arm. His face was white, his eyes inscrutable as they met Jerry's.

"Felice, here is Mrs. Courtlandt. I have been telling Mrs. Denbigh of her husband's----" the woman beside him interrupted.

"Steve forgets that I haven't had a husband for several years. I confess the news was a shock. I had no idea that he was in this part of the country. I suppose that detestable Fairfax man knew it when he suggested to Bruce Greyson that he invite me here for the summer. Does that surprise you, Steve?" as Courtlandt stifled an exclamation.

"If--if I can do anything to help you----" Jerry had produced an apology for a voice at last.

"Thank you, no. Steve is all I need. He is such a comfort. Would anyone but he have had the sympathetic understanding to wait until he thought I would be awake before coming with such news to the X Y Z? But I came here to help him. I have had his happiness on my mind since I found this on the bench outside the door just after Mr. Greyson had received a mysterious summons." She held out Steve's campaign hat with its black and gold cord and the band of silver filigree which Jerry had added the day before. There was malice thinly disguised with solicitude in the tone in which she added, "Then--then I understood that--that you and he had gone----"

"Felice, cut that out! When I want your intervention in my affairs I'll ask for it," Courtlandt's tone lashed. "Now that you have returned the hat you may go. Greyson has made arrangements for you to leave on the east-bound train in the early afternoon. Your maid is packing for you."

"But why should I go East, Steve? Phil Denbigh is nothing to me, while you----" her tone was drenched with significance. She looked defiantly at Jerry who was conscious that she was giving an excellent imitation of an automaton. Only her eyes felt alive, they burned, and the pulses in her throat throbbed. She knew that if she opened her lips it would be to hurl words at Felice of which she would be utterly ashamed later, that if she unclenched her hands it would be to strike the mocking woman. She was terrified at the tumult which shook her. Without a glance toward the two near the window she crossed the room, entered her boudoir and closed the door behind her. She leaned against it and listened. She heard the front door close, footsteps on the porch, voices, then the sound of horse's hoofs. They had gone!

With the realization, something inside her seemed to crash. The barrier of ice which she had erected between her heart and Steve was swept away in a surge of passionate emotion. She knew now why she had been so terrified last night when she had heard that a man had been wounded, she had feared it might be Steve; why she had been so furiously angry at Felice; why it had hurt so intolerably to see her in Steve's arms. It wasn't because she thought him false and untrue--it was because she loved him.

With confused consciousness that she must escape from her own thoughts she ran into the living-room. She and Goober would take that sugar to Patches and then----The smiling, tender eyes of the portrait over the fireplace drew her like a magnet. She crossed her arms on the mantel and smiled back at them, valiantly.

"Mother dear----" she implored breathlessly. "Mother!"

Comforted in some inexplicable way she dropped her head on her arms. In retrospect she went back to that evening in her father's apartment when she and Steve had entered into their matrimonial engagement. He had staked his future for money, she for social advancement. Old Nick had been right. How could a man love or respect a girl who would marry for position? Now that Felice was really free, not merely legally free, would Steve----Absorbed in her thoughts she was conscious of nothing in the room till Courtlandt's voice behind her announced authoritatively:

"I have something to say to you, Jerry."

To the girl's taut nerves it was the voice of the conqueror laying down terms of surrender and clemency. In a flash she was back in the library of the Manor, hearing Steve's cool, determined voice announce, "I shall consider myself in a position to dictate terms to one member of the family." If he had meant separation then, what would he mean now with her silly elopement declaration of the night before to infuriate him? Was he about to reproach her again for that? Felice had supplied the last shred of evidence he needed when she produced the hat, if he needed more than her own statement to the brakeman to convict her. Her anger flamed. He shouldn't get a chance to indict her. To put one's opponent on the defense meant strategic advantage. Before he could speak she fended:

"You can't reproach me for last night, Steve, after--after what I saw when I came into this room. Honors are even," flippantly.

He caught her by the shoulders and looked steadily into her angry eyes. They met his defiantly. His voice was grave as he probed:

"After last night and--and this morning, Jerry, do you still--still want to go on with it?"

"Go on with it? Do you--you mean our comedy of marriage? Why not? 'Rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.' You see I have contracted Tommy's pernicious habit of borrowing from the classics when I wish to express myself with force and distinction. Let me go!"

Courtlandt's grip on her shoulders tightened. His face was white. There was a rigidity about his jaws which should have warned her.

"Flippancy won't save you. You are to listen to me now, girl."

"While you boast to me again as you did last night that you had not made love to another woman? Not a chance!" she twisted away from him and gained the threshold of her own room. "Don't--don't let me keep you from your alluring--friend," she flung back at him before she closed and locked her door on the inside with grating emphasis.

Then she listened with hands clasped tight over her heart. The anger which was so foreign to her character had been a mere flash in the pan. Already she was sorry and humiliated and ashamed. She had maintained always that a girl who could not keep her temper, who wrangled, belonged in the quarter where shrewish women, with shawls over their heads and forlorn little babies forever under their feet, fought and brawled. Hadn't she seen them in her childhood? And she--she who thought herself superior hadn't been much better under the skin. She could have scratched Felice's eyes out and as for Steve----

Where was he now? The living-room was portentously still. Had he gone? Why couldn't she have listened to his explanation, have assumed a friendliness which this new, disturbing riot in her veins made impossible as a reality? Her eyes which still smarted with unshed tears traveled round the dainty, chintz-hung boudoir. In a detached way she noted that the one picture on the wall, which served as the key-note to the color scheme of the room, needed straightening. She must speak to Ming Soy----Her heart hopped to her throat, then did a tail-spin to her toes as a low, stern voice outside her room commanded:

"Open the door, Jerry."

She stood rigid, motionless.

"Open the door!" there was an undercurrent in Courtlandt's words which seemed to paralyze her muscles. In a voice the more compelling because of its repression he threatened, "If you don't open it at once--I'll break it in!" The shake he gave the barrier between them broke the spell which held the girl. She turned the key and flung open the door.

With a sudden fierce movement he caught her hands. She had a confused sense of flinging herself against an inflexible, determined will as she struggled to free them. She met his steady, dominant eyes.

"Steve! What--what rank melodrama! Are you qualifying for the movies?" she essayed a nonchalant tone which to her hypercritical senses seemed horribly frightened. "What--what do you want?"

"That door open. Nothing else--now," Courtlandt answered as he dropped her hands and turned away.

"What shall we do this afternoon, Jerry?" Peggy Glamorgan asked as she, her sister and Benson sat at luncheon three hours later. The table was spread on the broad, shadowy veranda on the north side of the ranch-house. The sun beat down upon fields and white roads; insects droned lazily to the accompaniment of the faint roar of the stream swollen by the heavy rain of the night before. "Ye gods! If here isn't Abdul the Great," she mocked saucily as Courtlandt appeared at the door. "Are his humble slaves to be honored with his presence at the noonday meal? Allah, oh Allah! Jerry, aren't you overwhelmed at this tribute to our charms?"

"Can't a