Then my door closed, and I sank down on my pillow, opened the gates wide, and let the torrent of sobs rush through.
Can any one realise the torture of my mind during the long dark hours of that night? I hardly can realise it now, myself. The fact, "ALEC IS ENGAGED TO EDITH CAMPBELL!" glared at me horribly as if it were printed in enormous white letters on a black ground, like a big sign on a factory, and I stared and stared, hypnotised, beyond power of thought. I was so stunned and overcome by the fact itself that at first I was unable to comprehend what it would mean to me. I hated Edith Campbell. All my life I had hated her. She had always treated Alec like the dirt under her feet—forever flaunting Palm Beach and Poland Springs in his face and eyes, parading to church every other Sunday with smart stylish-looking men and planting them down in the pew two rows in front of ours to show them off.
Of course I had guessed that Alec had liked Edith Campbell. As long ago as I can remember he used to call on her when she came home from her fashionable New York boarding-school. Alec invited her to be his special guest, at his Class-Day, when he graduated from college. But she elected to go with somebody else, and pranced down there with a millionaire's son. Poor Alec didn't invite any other girl. I was in knee skirts then, but I was old enough to hate her for it. Not that I wanted such a creature to be nice to Alec. I didn't. I knew my brother was miles too good for her, but I couldn't bear to have such a flashy, worldly, inferior girl show scorn toward a prince. I never understood why Alec had admired her. She's absolutely opposite from my brother in every possible way. She has the most confident, cock-surest manner I ever witnessed. Her clothes are dreadfully flashy and her father is a mere upstart who squeezes money out of everybody he knows. Hilton used to criticise Edith Campbell before it commenced bowing and scraping to her. When she came home from boarding-school, she let it be known that her intimate friends lived outside of Hilton. She advertised that she visited at some of the big places in the Berkshires. She merely tolerated Hilton and its people.
Oh, I hate her! I never saw why men ran after her so frantically. It used to make me absolutely sick when the younger girls in Hilton got the Edith Campbell craze. They used to try to copy everything she wore. But I didn't. I wouldn't as much as turn my head to look at her. I was delighted when Alec stopped going to see her. I had thought, when Alec announced his engagement to me, that that little romance of his had been dead and buried for five years. It hadn't even worried me.
When I awoke the morning after Alec told me his astonishing news, and saw the sun shining in a square on the wall opposite me, I lay very still for a moment. "You've had a horrible dream," I said. "Alec didn't come home last night. Just a minute, and things will get themselves fixed." I sat up, but the dream didn't fade. There was the tell-tale towel with which I had bathed my eyes; there the glass of water; there the dissipated-looking candle burned down to its very last; here the confused tossed bed-clothes, and when I staggered to the mirror, there were my swollen red eyes and awful tangled hair. I dressed slowly, with a very heavy heart, and unable to cry any more, smiled at myself once or twice in the glass out of grim spite.
I had not gone to sleep until it had begun to grow light. I remembered now. And it was nine o'clock when I went downstairs for an attempt at breakfast. Ruth was devouring eggs when I went into the dining-room. I had thought she would be at school, but I had forgotten that it was Saturday. Alec had already gone to the factory. His eggy plate and half-filled coffee-cup stood at his deserted place.
"My, but you're late," said Ruth, emptying the cream-pitcher into her coffee. "Say, isn't it corking about Alec? We've been sitting here hours talking about it. I think it's simply dandy. Just imagine—Edith Campbell!"
I became very busy fixing my cuff-link, for I was ashamed of my swollen eyes; but Ruth was sure to see them. She glanced up.
"I might have known you'd take it like that," she broke out, though I hadn't said a word; "always acting like a thunder-cloud, and throwing wet blankets on everything. Now why in the world shouldn't Alec get married?"
"I didn't say he shouldn't," I murmured.