Bruce was incensed at the cool manner in which Katherine had taken leave of him without so much as hinting at her purpose. In offering her aid and telling her his plans he had made certain advances. She had responded to these overtures by telling nothing. He felt he had been snubbed, and he resented such treatment all the more from a woman toward whom he had somewhat relaxed his dignity and his principles.
As he sat alone on his porch that night he breathed out along with his smoke an accompanying fire of profanity; but for all his wrath, he could not keep the questions from arising. Why had she gone? What was she going to do? Was she coming back? Had she given up her father’s case, and had she been silent to him that afternoon about her going for the simple reason that she had been ashamed to acknowledge her retreat?
He waited impatiently for the return of his uncle, who had been absent that evening from supper. He thought that Hosie might answer these questions since he knew the old man to be on friendly terms with Katherine. But when Old Hosie did shuffle up the gravel walk, he was almost as much at a loss as his nephew. True, a note from Katherine had been thrust under his door telling him she wished to talk with him that afternoon; but he had spent the day looking at farms and had not found the note till his return from the country half an hour before.
Bruce flung away his cigar in exasperation, and the dry night air was vibrant with half-whispered but perfervid curses. She was irritating, erratic, irrational, irresponsible—preposterous, simply preposterous—damn that kind of women anyhow! They pretended to be a lot, but there wasn’t a damned thing to them!
But he could not subdue his curiosity, though he fervently informed himself of the thousand and one kinds of an unblessed fool he was for bothering his head about her. Nor could he banish her image. Her figure kept rising before him out of the hot, dusty blackness: as she had appeared before the jury yesterday, slender, spirited, clever—yes, she had spoken cleverly, he would admit that; as she had appeared in her parlour that afternoon, a graceful, courteous, self-possessed home person; as he had seen her in Mr. Huggins’s old surrey, with her exasperating, non-committal, cool little nod. But why, oh, why, in the name of the flaming rendezvous of lost and sizzling souls couldn’t a woman with her qualities also have just one grain—only one single little grain!—of the commonest common-sense?
The next morning Bruce sent young Harper to inquire from Doctor West in the jail, and after that from Katherine’s aunt, why Katherine had gone to New York, whether she had abandoned the case, and whether she had gone for good. But if these old people knew anything, they did not tell it to Billy Harper.
Westville buzzed over Katherine’s disappearance. The piazzas, the soda-water fountains, the dry goods counters, the Ladies’ Aid, were at no loss for an explanation of her departure. She had lost her case—she had discovered that she was a failure as a lawyer—she had learned what Westville thought of her—so what other course was open to her but to slip out of town as quietly as she could and return to the place from which she had come?
The Women’s Club in particular rejoiced at her withdrawal. Thank God, a pernicious example to the rising young womanhood of the town was at last removed! Perhaps woman’s righteous disapproval of Katherine had a deeper reason than was expressed—for what most self-searching person truly knows the exact motives that prompt his actions? Perhaps, far down within these righteously indignant bosoms, was unconsciously but potently this question: if that type of woman succeeds and wins man’s approval, then what is going to become of us who have been built upon man’s former taste? At any rate, feminine Westville declared it a blessing that “that terrible thing” was gone.
Westville continued to buzz, but it soon had matters more worth its buzzing. Pressing the heels of one another there came two amazing surprises. The city had taken for granted the nomination of Kennedy for mayor, but the convention’s second ballot declared Blake the nominee. Blake had given heed to Mr. Brown’s advice and had decided to take no slightest risk; but to the people he let it be known that he had accepted the nomination to help the city out of its water-works predicament, and Westville, recognizing his personal sacrifice, rang with applause of his public spirit. The respectable element looked forward with self-congratulation to him as the next chief of the city—for he would have an easy victory over any low politician who would consent to be Blind Charlie’s candidate.
Then, without warning, came Bruce’s nomination, with a splendid list of lesser candidates, and upon a most progressive platform. Westville gasped again. Then recovering from its amazement, it was inclined to take this nomination as a joke. But Bruce soon checked their jocularity. That he was fighting for an apparently defunct cause seemed to make no difference to him. Perhaps Old Hosie had spoken more wisely than he had intended when he had once sarcastically remarked that Bruce was “a cross between a bulldog and Don Quixote.” Certainly the qualities of both strains were now in evidence. He sprang instantly into the campaign, and by the power and energy of his speeches and of his editorials in the Express, he fairly raised his issue from the dead. Bruce did not have a show, declared the people—not the ghost of a show—but if he maintained the ferocious earnestness with which he was starting out, this certainly was going to be the hottest campaign which Westville had seen since Blake had overthrown Blind Charlie Peck.