THE TURN OF THE BALANCE

THE TURN OF THE BALANCE

By

BRAND WHITLOCK

Author of The Happy Average Her Infinite Variety The 13th District

With Illustrations by JAY HAMBIDGE

INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT 1907 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

MARCH

TO THE MEMORY OF SAMUEL M. JONES Died July 12, 1904

On the other hand, a boy was bound to defend them against anything that he thought slighting or insulting; and you did not have to verify the fact that anything had been said or done; you merely had to hear that it had. It once fell to my boy to avenge such a reported wrong from a boy who had not many friends in school, a timid creature whom the mere accusation frightened half out of his wits, and who wildly protested his innocence. He ran, and my boy followed with the other boys after him, till they overtook the culprit and brought him to bay against a high board fence; and there my boy struck him in his imploring face. He tried to feel like a righteous champion, but he felt like a brutal ruffian. He long had the sight of that terrified, weeping face, and with shame and sickness of heart he cowered before it. It was pretty nearly the last of his fighting; and though he came off victor, he felt that he would rather be beaten himself than do another such act of justice. In fact, it seems best to be very careful how we try to do justice in this world, and mostly to leave retribution of all kinds to God, who really knows about things; and content ourselves as much as possible with mercy, whose mistakes are not so irreparable.

By WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

THE TURN OF THE BALANCE

BOOK I

THE TURN OF THE BALANCE

I

As Elizabeth Ward stood that morning before the wide hearth in the dining-room, she was glad that she still could find, in this first snow of the season, the simple wonder and delight of that childhood she had left not so very far behind. Her last glimpse of the world the night before had been of trees lashed by a cold rain, of arc-lamps with globes of fog, of wet asphalt pavements reflecting the lights of Claybourne Avenue. But now, everywhere, there was snow, heaped in exquisite drifts about the trees, and clinging in soft masses to the rough bark of their trunks. The iron fence about the great yard was half buried in it, the houses along the avenue seemed far away and strange in the white transfiguration, and the roofs lost their familiar outlines against the low gray sky that hung over them.

"Hurry, Gusta!" said Elizabeth. "This is splendid! I must go right out!"

The maid who was laying the breakfast smiled; "It was a regular blizzard, Miss Elizabeth."

"Was it?" Elizabeth lifted her skirt a little, and rested the toe of her slipper on the low brass fender. The wood was crackling cheerfully. "Has mama gone out?"

"Oh, yes, Miss Elizabeth, an hour ago."

"Of course," Elizabeth said, glancing at the little clock on the mantelpiece, ticking in its refined way. Its hands pointed to half-past ten. "I quite forgot the dinner." Her brow clouded. "What a bore!" she thought. Then she said aloud: "Didn't mama leave any word?"

"She said not to disturb you, Miss Elizabeth."

Gusta had served the breakfast, and now, surveying her work with an expression of pleasure, poured the coffee.

Beside Elizabeth's plate lay the mail and a morning newspaper. The newspaper had evidently been read at some earlier breakfast, and because it was rumpled Elizabeth pushed it aside. She read her letters while she ate her breakfast, and then, when she laid her napkin aside, she looked out of the windows again.

"I must go out for a long walk," she said, speaking as much to herself as to the maid, though not in the same eager tone she had found for her resolution a while before. "It must have snowed very hard. It wasn't snowing when I came home."

"It began at midnight, Miss Elizabeth," said Gusta, "and it snowed so hard I had an awful time getting here this morning. I could hardly find my way, it fell so thick and fast."

Elizabeth did not reply, and Gusta went on: "I stayed home last night—my brother just got back yesterday; I stayed to see him."

"Your brother?"

"Yes; Archie. He's been in the army. He got home yesterday from the Phil'pines."

"How interesting!" said Elizabeth indifferently.

"Yes, he's been there three years; his time was out and he came home. Oh, you should see him, Miss Elizabeth. He looks so fine!"

"Does he look as fine as you, Gusta?"

Elizabeth smiled affectionately, and Gusta's fair German skin flushed to her yellow hair.

"Now, Miss Elizabeth," she said in an embarrassment that could not hide her pleasure, "Archie's really handsome—he put on his soldier clothes and let us see him. He's a fine soldier, Miss Elizabeth. He was the best shooter in his regiment; he has a medal. He said it was a sharp-shooter's medal."

"Oh, indeed!" said Elizabeth, her already slight interest flagging. "Then he must be a fine shot."

Though Elizabeth in a flash of imagination had the scene in Gusta's home the night before—the brother displaying himself in his uniform, his old German father and mother glowing with pride, the children gathered around in awe and wonder—she was really thinking of the snow, and speculating as to what new pleasure it would bring, and with this she rose from the table and went into the drawing-room. There she stood in the deep window a moment, and looked out. The Maceys' man, clearing the walk over the way, had paused in his labor to lean with a discouraged air on his wooden shovel. A man was trudging by, his coat collar turned up, his shoulders hunched disconsolately, the snow clinging tenaciously to his feet as he plowed his way along. At the sight, Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders, gave a little sympathetic shiver, turned from her contemplation of the avenue that stretched away white and still, and went to the library. Here she got down a book and curled herself up on a divan near the fireplace. Far away she heard the tinkle of some solitary sleigh-bell.

When the maid came into the adjoining room a few moments later, Elizabeth said: "Gusta, please hand me that box of candy."

Elizabeth arranged herself in still greater comfort, put a bit of the chocolate in her mouth, and opened her book. "Gusta, you're a comfort," she said. "Catch me going out on a day like this!"

Mrs. Ward came home at noon, and when she learned that Elizabeth had spent the morning in the library, she took on an air of such superiority as was justified only in one who had not allowed even a blizzard to interfere with the serious duties of life. She had learned several new signals at the whist club and, as she told Elizabeth with a reproach for her neglect of the game, she had mastered at last Elwood's new system. But Elizabeth, when she had had her luncheon, returned to the library and her book. She stayed there an hour, then suddenly startled her mother by flinging the volume to the floor in disgust and running from the room and up the stairs. She came down presently dressed for the street.

"Don't be put long, dear; remember the dinner," Mrs. Ward called after her.

As she turned in between the high banks of snow piled along either side of the walk, Elizabeth felt the fine quality of the air that sparkled with a cold vitality, as pure as the snow that seemed to exhale it. She tossed her head as if to rid it of all the disordered fancies she had gathered in the unreal world of the romance with which she had spent the day. Then for the first time she realized how gigantic the storm had been. Long processions of men armed with shovels, happy in the temporary prosperity this chance for work had brought, had cleared the sidewalks. On the avenue the snow had been beaten into a hard yellow track by the horses and sleighs that coursed so gaily over it. The cross-town trolley-cars glided along between the windrows of the snow the big plow had whirled from the tracks. Little children, in bright caps and leggings, were playing in the yards, testing new sleds, tumbling about in the white drifts, flinging snowballs at one another, their laughter and screams harmonizing with the bells. Claybourne Avenue was alive; the solitary bell that Elizabeth had heard jingling in the still air that morning had been joined by countless strings of other bells, until now the air vibrated with their musical clamor. Great Russian sledges with scarlet plumes shaking at their high-curved dashboards swept by, and the cutters sped along in their impromptu races, the happy faces of their occupants ruddy in their furs, the bells on the excited horses chiming in the keen air. At the corner of Twenty-fifth Street, a park policeman, sitting his magnificent bay horse, reviewed the swiftly passing parade. The pedestrians along the sidewalk shouted the racers on; as the cutters, side by side, rose and fell over the street-crossing a party of school-boys assailed them with

a shower of snowballs.

Elizabeth knew many of the people in the passing sleighs; she knew all of those in the more imposing turnouts. She bowed to her acquaintances with a smile that came from the exhilaration of the sharp winter air, more than from any joy she had in the recognition. But from one of the cutters Gordon Marriott waved his whip at her, and she returned his salute with a little shake of her big muff. Her gray eyes sparkled and her cheeks against her furs were pink. Every one was nervously exalted by the snow-storm that afternoon, and Elizabeth, full of health and youthful spirit, tingled with the joy the snow seemed to have brought to the world.

II

His house was all illumined; the light streaming from its windows glistened on the polished crust of the frozen snow, and as Stephen Ward drove up that evening, he sighed, remembering the dinner. He sprang out, slammed the door of his brougham and dashed indoors, the wheels of his retreating carriage giving out again their frosty falsetto. The breath of cold air Ward inhaled as he ran into the house was grateful to him, and he would have liked more of it; it would have refreshed and calmed him after his hard day on the Board.

As he entered the wide hall, Elizabeth was just descending the stairs. She came fresh from her toilet, clothed in a dinner gown of white, her round arms bare to the elbow, her young throat just revealed, her dark hair done low on her neck, and the smile that lighted her gray eyes pleased Ward.

As she went for her father's kiss Elizabeth noted the cool outdoor atmosphere, and the odor of cigar smoke and Russia leather that always hung about his person.

"You are refreshing!" she said. "The frost clings to you."

He smiled as she helped him with his overcoat, and then he backed up to the great fire, and stood there shrugging his shoulders and rubbing his hands in the warmth. His face was fresh and ruddy, his white hair was rumpled, his stubbed mustache, which ordinarily gave an effect of saving his youth in his middle years, seemed to bristle aggressively, and his eyes still burned from the excitement of the day.

"What have you been doing all day?" Elizabeth asked, standing before him, her hands on his shoulders. "Battling hard for life in the wheat pit?" Her eyes sparkled with good humor.

Ward took Elizabeth's face between his palms as he said jubilantly:

"No, but I've been making old Macey battle for his life—and I've won."

His gray eyes flashed with the sense of victory, he drew himself erect, tilted back on his heels. He did not often speak of his business affairs at home, and when he did, no one understood him. During the weeks indeed, in which the soft moist weather and constant rains had prevented the rise in the wheat market on which he had so confidently gambled, he had resolutely and unselfishly kept his fear and his suspense to himself, and now even though at last he could indulge his exultation, he drew a long, deep breath.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed. "The snow came just in the nick of time for me!"

"Well, you march right up-stairs and get your clothes on," said Elizabeth as she took her father by the arm, gathering up the train of her white gown, heavy with its sequins and gracefully impeding her progress, and led him to the stairs. She smiled up into his face as she did so, and, as he turned the corner of the wide staircase, he bent and kissed her again.

Though the guests whom Mrs. Ward had asked to her dinner that night all came in closed carriages, bundled in warm and elegant furs, and though they stepped from their own doors into their carriages and then alighted from them at the door of the Wards', they all, when they arrived, talked excitedly of the storm and adjured one another to confess that they had never known such cold. The women, who came down from the dressing-room in bare arms and bare shoulders, seemed to think less of the cold than the men, who were, doubtless, not so inured to exposure; but they were more excited over it and looked on the phenomenon in its romantic light, and began to celebrate the poetic aspects of the winter scene. But the men laughed at this.

"There isn't much poetry about it down town," said Dick Ward. "No poet would have called that snow beautiful if he'd seen it piled so high as to blockade the street-cars and interrupt business generally." He spoke with the young pride he was finding in himself as a business man, though it would have been hard to tell just what his business was.

"Oh, but Dick," said Miss Bonnell, her dark face lighting with a fine smile, "the poet wouldn't have thought of business!"

"No, I suppose not," admitted Dick with the contempt a business man should feel for a poet.

"He might have found a theme in the immense damage the storm has done—telegraph wires all down, trains all late, the whole country in the grip of the blizzard, and a cold wave sweeping down from Medicine Hat."

The slender young man who spoke was Gordon Marriott, and he made his observation in a way that was almost too serious to be conventional or even desirable in a society where seriousness was not encouraged. He looked dreamily into the fire, as if he had merely spoken a thought aloud rather than addressed any one; but the company standing about the fireplace, trying to make the talk last for the few moments before dinner was announced, looked up suddenly, and seemed to be puzzled by the expression on his smooth-shaven delicate face.

"Oh, a theme for an epic!" exclaimed Mrs. Modderwell, the wife of the rector. Her pale face was glowing with unusual color, and her great dark eyes were lighting with enthusiasm. As she spoke, she glanced at her husband, and seemed to shrink in her black gown.

"But we have no poet to do it," said Elizabeth.

"Oh, I say," interrupted Modderwell, speaking in the upper key he employed in addressing women, and then, quickly changing to the deep, almost gruff tone which, with his affected English accent, he used when he spoke to men, "our friend Marriott here could do it; he's dreamer enough for it—eh, Marriott?" He gave his words the effect of a joke, and Marriott smiled at them, while the rest laughed in their readiness to laugh at anything.

"No," said Marriott, "I couldn't do it, though I wish I could. Walt Whitman might have done it; he could have begun with the cattle on the plains, freezing, with their tails to the wind, and catalogued everything on the way till he came to the stock quotations and—"

"The people sleighing on Claybourne Avenue," said Elizabeth, remembering her walk of the afternoon. "And he would have gone on tracing the more subtle and sinister effects—perhaps suggesting something tragic."

"Well, now, really, when I was in Canada, you know—" began Modderwell. Though he had been born in Canada and had lived most of his life there, he always referred to the experience as if it had been a mere visit; he wished every one to consider him an Englishman. And nearly every one did, except Marriott, who looked at Modderwell in his most innocent manner and began:

"Oh, you Canadians—"

But just then dinner was announced, and though Elizabeth smiled at Marriott with sympathy, she was glad to have him interrupted in his philosophizing, or poetizing, or whatever it was, to take her out to the dining-room, where the great round table, with its mound of scarlet roses and tiny glasses of sherry glowing ruddy in the soft light of the shaded candelabra, awaited them. And there they passed through the long courses, at first talking lightly, but excitedly, of the snow, mentioning the pleasure and the new sensations it would afford them; then of their acquaintances; of a new burlesque that had run for a year in a New York theater; then of a new romance in which a great many people were killed and imprisoned, though not in a disagreeable manner, and, in short, talked of a great many unimportant things, but talked of them as if they were, in reality, of the utmost importance.

The butler had taken off the salad; they were waiting for the dessert. Suddenly from the direction of the kitchen came a piercing scream, evidently a woman's scream; all the swinging doors between the dining-room and the distant kitchen could not muffle it. Mrs. Modderwell started nervously, then, at a look from her husband, composed herself and hung her head with embarrassment. The others at the table started, though not so visibly, and then tried to appear as if they had not done so. Mrs. Ward looked up in alarm, first at Ward, who hastily gulped some wine, and then at Elizabeth. Wonder and curiosity were in all the faces about the board—wonder and curiosity that no sophistication could conceal. They waited; the time grew long; Mrs. Ward, who always suffered through her dinners, suffered more than ever now. Her guests tried bravely to sit as if nothing were wrong, but at last their little attempts at conversation failed, and they sat in painful silence. The moments passed; Ward and his wife exchanged glances; Elizabeth looked at her mother sympathetically. At last the door swung and the butler entered; the guests could not help glancing at him. But in his face there was a blank and tutored passivity that was admirable, almost heroic.

When the women were in the drawing-room, Mrs. Ward excused herself for a moment and went to the kitchen. She returned presently, and Elizabeth voiced the question the others were too polite to ask.

"What on earth's the matter?"

"Matter!" exclaimed Mrs. Ward. "Gusta's going, that's all." She said it with the feeling such a calamity merited.

"When?"

"Now."

"But the scream—what was it?"

"Well, word came about her father; he's been hurt, or killed, or something, in the railroad yards."

"Oh, how dreadful!" the women politely chorused.

"Yes, I should think so," said Mrs. Ward. "To be left like this without a moment's warning! And then that awful contretemps at dinner!" Mrs. Ward looked all the anguish and shame she felt.

"But Gusta couldn't help that," said Elizabeth.

"No," said Mrs. Ward, lapsing from her mood of exaggeration, "I know that, of course. The poor girl is quite broken up. I hope it is nothing really serious. And yet," she went on, her mind turning again to her own domestic misfortunes, "people of her class seem to have the most unerring faculty for calamity. They're always getting hurt, or sick, or dying, or something. The servants in my house suffer more bereavement in the course of a month than all the rest of my acquaintance in a lifetime."

And then the ladies took up the servant-girl problem, and canvassed it hopelessly until the men were heard entering the library.

III