It was about six o'clock when Mrs. Balfame, steadily losing, contrary to all precedent, her mind concentrated, her features, like those of the rest of the players, as hard as the stone faces dug out of Egypt, her breath escaping in hissing jets, became vaguely conscious of a disturbance in the outer room. The young people were dancing, as was usual in the hour before supper, but the piano and fiddles appeared to be playing against the ribald interruptions of a man's voice. It was some time before the narrow flow of thought in Mrs. Balfame's brain was deflected by the powerful outer current, but suddenly she became aware that her partners were holding their cards suspended, and that their ears were cocked toward the door. Then she recognised her husband's voice.
For a moment she lost her breath and her blood ran chill. She had been apprehensive for some time of a scene in public, but she had assumed that it would occur in a friend's house of an evening; he attended her nowhere else. The Club he had deserted long since; it was much too slow for a man of his increasing proclivities, especially in a county liberally provided with saloons and road houses.
During the last month she had become sensible of a new hostility in his attitude toward her; it was as if he had suddenly penetrated her hidden aversion and all his masculine vanity had risen in revolt. Being a woman of an almost excessive tact, she had sprayed this vanity for twenty-two years with the delicately scented waters of flattery, but the springs had gone suddenly dry on that morning when she had uttered her simple and natural desire to bring the conjugal sleeping accommodations up to date.
And now he had come out here to disgrace her, she immediately concluded, to make her a figure of fun, to destroy her social leadership. This might also involve him in a loss, but when a man is both drunk and angry his foresight grows dim and revenge is sweet.
Only last night there had been an intensely disagreeable scene in private; that is to say, she had been dignified and slightly contemptuous, while he had shouted that her knitting got on his nerves, and the sight of all those books on the war made him sick. When the whole business of the country was held up by this accursed war, a man would like to forget it when at home. And every man had the same story, by God; his wife was knitting when she ought to be darning stockings; trying to be intellectual by concerning herself with a subject that concerned men alone. Mr. Balfame had always resented the Woman's Club, and all talk of votes for a sex that would put him and his kind out of business. Their intelligent interest in the war was a grievous personal indignity.
Being a woman of clear thought and firm purpose, and of a really high order of moral courage, Mrs. Balfame was daunted for a moment only. She laid down her cards, opened the door and entered the main room of the club-house. There she saw, at the head of the room, a group of men surrounding her husband; with one exception, almost as excited as he. The exception was Dwight Rush who had a hand on one of Balfame's shoulders and appeared to be addressing him in a low tone. Little Maude Battle ran forward and grasped her arm.
"Oh, dear Mrs. Balfame," she gasped, "do take him home. He is so—so—queer. He snatched three girls away from their partners, and the boys are so mad. And his language—oh, it was something awful."
The women and girls were huddled in groups, all but Alys Crumley, who, Mrs. Balfame vaguely realised, was sketching. Their eyes were fixed on the group at the head of the room, where Rush was now trying to edge the burly swaying figure toward the door.
Mrs. Balfame walked directly up to her flushed and infuriated spouse.
"You are not well, David," she said peremptorily. "In all the years of our married life never have you acted like this. I am sure that you are getting typhoid fever—"