The Eddy: A Novel of To-day

by Clarence Louis Cullen

The butler inclined his head with butler-like gravity, detoured to get behind Jesse, and Jesse, patting the top of his hat again to emphasize, in the menial's presence, the insult of wearing it, stalked down the hall.

The broken, faded woman tottered to her sleeping room and fell upon a couch in an agony of tears.

It was on the day following this scene that Jesse, inconceivably persistent in the pursuit of such a purpose as he had in mind, and now roused by obstacles to the point where he swore to himself that he would "win out," made the call at Blythe's office which the latter purposely glossed over in describing it in his letter to Laura.

Jesse's purpose in seeking out Blythe was two-fold. In the first place, he wanted to measure the man who, he knew, had been appointed Louise's guardian. He only recalled Blythe in a general sort of a way, and he wanted to "size him up" from this new angle. He was aware that Blythe was not only the guardian but an admirer of Louise, and he wanted to ascertain, from the contact of an interview, whether Blythe's admiration was of a piece with his own; the manifestation of a mere predatory design, that is to say; for men of the Jesse type are ever prone to drag the motives of other men to a level with their own. Secondly, if he found, as he hoped to find, that Blythe was a mere supple and sycophantic young lawyer, eager to succeed, and therefore capable of being impressed by a call from a man looming large in the financial world, Jesse prefigured that probably Blythe, by means of credentials that would have the weight of a guardian's advice, might very easily aid him in his "little affair" (so he thought of it) with Louise when he reached London. Jesse was not in the least fearful of the consequences, so far as his standing with Louise was concerned, of his unmasking in the presence of her mother. He was under the impression that Louise had left the house on the Drive at odds with her mother and that no correspondence existed between them. So that he felt sure that Louise would not hear from her mother of his brutality toward her.

It took Jesse something less than thirty seconds, when he called upon Blythe, to discover that that young lawyer was neither sycophantic nor supple, and that, so far from being impressed by a visit from Jesse in his capacity of financial magnate, Blythe was coldly but distinctly hostile toward him. The interview had terminated with startling abruptness. After having mentioned Louise's name once, and been forbidden to repeat the offense, Jesse had involuntarily let slip her name again. Blythe, seated in his desk-chair with his hands on his knees, viewed Jesse calmly, but with eyes that showed cold glints of steel.

"Are you going to get out now, or are you waiting for me to throw you out?" Blythe inquired of him in much the same tone that he would have employed in asking for a match.

Jesse, it appeared, was not waiting to be thrown out. He went at once. But when he reached the street level and got into his waiting car, he was in almost as pretty a state of passion as any sepulchral-voiced stage villain. And he was quite as resolved to win the baffling battle, even under the lash of unintermittent scorn, as he had been from the hour of his first meeting with Louise Treharne.

An hour after Jesse had gone, leaving the stunned, shattered woman weltering in his litter of cowardly words, Judd walked into Antoinette Treharne's apartments. He found her dishevelled and still weeping convulsively. He sat down and regarded her with the bewildered helplessness of the male when the woman's tears are streaming. She scarcely saw him, but lay, huddled and shaking, a mere wraith of the woman whom he had beckoned to this present disaster and despair but a few years before.

Judd, a gross, fleshly man not without human traits, felt sorry for her as he sat watching her. Also, he felt sorry for himself. It was not agreeable that a woman—this woman—should be weeping and moaning and shaking her shoulders in her grief in such a manner. It was disturbing. It destroyed the poise of things. It created a sort of sympathy which was bad for the digestion of the sympathizer. But Judd felt sorry for her. He really did. He had been watching, with a sort of mystified concern, how her health had been going to pieces lately. He wondered why that was. Surely, she had everything that she wanted? Well, then. Anyhow, Judd was sorry. He was extremely fond of Tony. She had touched a certain responsive chord in him, and he knew that his chords were pretty well insulated; and here she was weeping and staining her face with tears, her hair all mussed, and all that—Judd was decidedly disturbed, and sorry as well.

"I say, Tony, what is it?" he asked her, after keeping vigil for fifteen minutes without emitting a word.