"At the same time," Mrs. Presbury went on, "I can't live without somebody here to stand between me and him. I'd kill him or kill myself."
Mildred muttered some excuse and fled from the room, to lock herself in.
But when she came forth again to descend to dinner, she had resolved nothing, because there was nothing to resolve. When she was a child she leaned from the nursery window one day and saw a stable-boy drowning a rat that was in a big, oval, wire cage with a wooden bottom. The boy pressed the cage slowly down in the vat of water. The rat, in the very top of the cage, watched the floor sink, watched the water rise. And as it watched it uttered a strange, shrill, feeble sound which she could still remember distinctly and terribly. It seemed to her now that if she were to utter any sound at all, it would be that one.
II
ON the Monday before Thanksgiving, Presbury went up to New York to look after one of the little speculations in Wall Street at which he was so clever. Throughout the civilized world nowadays, and especially in and near the great capitals of finance, there is a class of men and women of small capital and of a character in which are combined iron self-restraint, rabbit-like timidity, and great shrewdness, who make often a not inconsiderable income by gambling in stocks. They buy only when the market is advancing strongly; they sell as soon as they have gained the scantest margin of profit. They never permit themselves to be tempted by the most absolute certainty of larger gains. They will let weeks, months even, go by without once risking a dollar. They wait until they simply cannot lose. Tens of thousands every year try to join this class. All but the few soon succumb to the hourly dazzling temptations the big gamblers dangle before the eyes of the little gamblers to lure them within reach of the merciless shears.
Presbury had for many years added from one to ten thousand a year to his income by this form of gambling, success at which is in itself sufficient to stamp a man as infinitely little of soul. On that Monday he, venturing for the first time in six months, returned to Hanging Rock on the three-thirty train the richer by two hundred and fifty dollars—as large a "killing" as he had ever made in any single day, one large enough to elevate him to the rank of prince among the "sure-thing snides." He said nothing about his luck to his family, but let them attribute his unprecedented good humor to the news he brought and announced at dinner.
"I met an old friend in the street this afternoon," said he. "He has invited us to take Thanksgiving dinner with him. And I think it will be a dinner worth while—the food, I mean, and the wine. Not the guests; for there won't be any guests but us. General Siddall is a stranger in New York."
"There are Siddalls in New York," said his wife; "very nice, refined people—going in the best society."
Presbury showed his false teeth in a genial smile; for the old-fashioned or plate kind of false teeth they were extraordinarily good—when exactly in place. "But not my old friend Bill Siddall," said he. "He's next door to an outlaw. I'd not have accepted his invitation if he had been asking us to dine in public. But this is to be at his own house—his new house—and a very grand house it is, judging by the photos he showed me. A regular palace! He'll not be an outlaw long, I guess. But we must wait and see how he comes out socially before we commit ourselves."