Her loyalty to Strathdene was compromised, her delicacy was horrified.

She was distraught with her plight.

She had to tell the news to Strathdene and he went into frenzies of jealousy. She had pledged herself to be his as soon as she could lift the Dyckman mortgage. If a man is ever going to be jealous he should certainly find occasion for the pa.s.sion when he is betrothed to the wife of a returning soldier. Strathdene ought to have been on his way back to the aviation-camp, but he had earned the right to humor his nerves, and Kedzie was testing them beyond endurance.

It was a tragical-comical dilemma for Kedzie. Even she, with her gift for self-forgiveness, could not quite see how she was to explain prettily to her husband that in his absence she had fallen in love with another man. Wives are not supposed to fall in love while their husbands are at the wars. It has been done, but it is hard to prettify.

Kedzie beat her forehead in vain for a good-looking explanation. She was still hunting one when Jim came back. He telegraphed her that he would come right through to Newport, and asked her to meet him at the train.

She dared not refuse. She simply could not keep her glib promises to Strathdene. It seemed almost treason to the country for a wife to give her warrior a cold welcome after his tropical service. She met him at the Newport station. He was still in uniform. He had taken no other clothes to Texas with him and had not stopped to buy any. He was too anxious about his mother to pause in New York. He had telegraphed his tailor to fit him out and his valet to pack his things and bring them to Newport.

Kedzie found him very brown and gaunt, far taller even than she remembered. She was more afraid of him than ever. Strathdene was only a little taller than she. She was afraid to tell Jim that she was another's.

But she made a poor mimicry of perfect bliss. Jim was not critical. She was more beautiful than he remembered her. He told her so, and she was flattered by his courtship, miserably treacherous as she felt.

She was proud to be a soldier's wife. She was jealous now of his concern for his mother. He had to go see her first. He was surprised to learn that Kedzie was not living with her. His mother had begun to improve from the moment she had Jim's telegram. But her eyes on Kedzie were terrible.

Jim did not notice the tension. He was too happy. He was sick of soldiering. His old uniform was like a convict's stripes. He was childishly ambitious to get into long trousers again. For nearly half a year he had b.u.t.toned his breeches at the knee and housed his calves in puttees and his feet in army brogans.

It was like a Christmas morning among new toys for him to put on mufti, and take it off. A bath-tub full of hot water was a paradise regained.

Evening clothes with a big white shirt and a top-hat were robes of ascension. But the clothes made to his old measurements were worlds too wide for his shrunk shanks. He had lost tons, he said, in Texas.

Before daybreak the first morning he terrified his cellmate, Kedzie, by starting up in his sleep with a gasp: "Was that reveille? My G.o.d, I'll be late!"

The joy of finding himself no longer in a tent and of falling back on his pillow was worth the bad dream. Life was one long bad dream to Kedzie. She was guilty whichever way she turned, and afraid of both men.

Jim had a valet to wait on him. He had the problem of selecting his scarf and his socks for the morning. Jim had come into a lot of money.

He had been earning a bank clerk's salary, with no way of spending it.

And now he had a bank to spend and a plenty of places to throw it.

But it was hard for him to believe that he was a free man again. He was amazed to find Newport without cactus and without a scorpion. He kept looking for a scorpion on his pillow. He found one there, but did not recognize her.

Jim was as much of a parvenu in Newport as Kedzie had ever been. He swept her away at times by his juvenile enthusiasm and she neglected Strathdene atrociously for a week.

A large part of the colony had decamped for New York and Boston and Chicago, but those that remained made a throng for Jim. His mother was not well enough to be moved back to New York, but his sister had reached England safely and he was happy in his luxuries.

But he was the only one that was. His mother was bitter against Kedzie for having fed the gossips. Kedzie was a.s.sured that life with Jim had nothing new to offer and she resented him as a barrier between herself and the glory of her future with Strathdene and "the stately homes of England."

Her mother and father arrived in Newport. Kedzie tried to suppress them for fear that Strathdene might feel that they were the last two back-breaking straws. But she needed a confidante and she told her mother the situation.

Mrs. Thropp, like Kedzie, had an ambition that expanded as fast as opportunity allowed. She was dazzled by the thought of being elevated to the peerage. She supposed it made her a relative of royalty. She who had once dreamed of being neighborly with the great Mrs. Dyckman was now imagining herself exchanging crocheting formulas with Queen Mary. She was saying she had always heard the Queen well spoke of. And Adna Thropp spoke very highly of "George."

They agreed that it was their sacred duty to place the name of Thropp as high as it could go, cost what it would.

"After all," said Adna one day, looking up from an article in a Sunday paper--"after all, why ain't Thropp as likely a name as Wettin? Or Hohenzollern? And what was Romanoff but an ordinary family once?"

The only thing that seemed to stand in Kedzie's way was the odious name of Dyckman.

"What's Dyckman, anyway?" said Mrs. Thropp. "Nothin' but a common old Dutch name."

But how to shake it off was the problem. Kedzie had to cling to Strathdene with one hand while she tried to release herself from the Dyckmans with the other.

She had a dreadful feeling that she might lose them both if she were not exceedingly careful and exceedingly lucky.

Help came to her unexpectedly from Charity Coe, unexpectedly, though Charity was always helping Kedzie.

CHAPTER IV

Charity Coe had been tormented by the spectacle of her friend's wife flirting recklessly with the young Marquess of Strathdene while her husband was at the Border with the troops. But she was far more sharply wrung when she saw Kedzie flirting with her husband, playing the devoted wife with all her might and getting away with it to perfection.

There is hardly anything our eyes bring us that is more hideous than known disloyalty successfully masquerading as fidelity. The Judas kiss is not to be surpa.s.sed in human detestation.

With almost all the world in uniform, Newport welcomed the sight of one of her own men returned even from what was rather a siesta than a campaign, and old Mrs. Noxon insisted on giving a big party for Jim.

She insisted so strongly that Kedzie did not dare refuse, though she had vowed never to step inside the grounds where she had made her Newport debut as a hired nymph.

Charity tried to escape by alleging a journey to New York, but Mrs.

Noxon browbeat her into staying. Charity did not know that Strathdene was invited till she saw him come in with the crowd. Neither did Kedzie.

Old Mrs. Noxon may have invited him for spite against Kedzie or just as an international courtesy to the most distinguished foreigner in town.

She introduced Jim and the Marquess, saying, "You great warriors should know each other."

Jim felt sheepish because he had been to no war and Strathdene felt sheepish because Jim was so much taller than he. He looked up at him as Napoleon looked enviously up at men who had no glory but their alt.i.tude.

Strathdene was also sheepish because Jim said, very simply:

"Do you know my wife?"

If he had not been so tall that he saw only the top of Kedzie's coiffure he would have seen that her face was splashed with red. She mumbled something while Strathdene stammered, "Er--yes--I have had that privilege." He felt a sinking sensation as deadly as when he had his first fall at the aviation school.

Kedzie dragged Jim away and paid violent attention to him all through dinner. Her sympathy was entirely for her poor Strathdene. She was afraid he would commit suicide or return to England without her, and she could not imagine how to get rid of Jim. Then she caught sight of Charity Coe, and greeted her with a smile of sincere delight.

For once Kedzie loved Charity. Suddenly it came upon her what a beautiful solution it would be for everybody if Jim could take Charity and leave Kedzie free to take Strathdene. She told herself that Jim would be ever so much happier so, for the poor fellow would suffer terribly when he found that his Kedzie really could not pretend to love him any longer. Kedzie felt quite tearful over it. She was an awfully good-hearted little thing. To turn him over to Charity would be a charming arrangement, perfectly decent, and no harm to anybody. If only the hateful laws did not forbid the exchange--dog-on 'em, anyway!

The more Kedzie studied Charity the more suitable she seemed as a successor. Her heart warmed to her and she forced an opportunity to unload Jim on Charity immediately after dinner.

There was music for the encouragement of conversation, an expensively famous prima donna and a group of strings brought down from the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

The prima donna sang Donna Elvira's ferocious aria full of indignation at discovering Don Giovanni's Don Juanity.

Charity, noting that Kedzie had flitted straight to Strathdene and was trying to appease his cold rage, felt an envy of the prima donna, who was enabled to express her feelings at full lung power with the fortissimo reinforcement of several powerful musicians. The primeval woman in Charity longed for just such a howling prerogative, but the actual Charity was so cravenly well-bred that she dared not even say to her dearest friend, "Jim, old man, you ought to go over and wring the neck of that little cat of yours."

Jim sat beaming at Kedzie and Kedzie beamed back while she murmured sweet everythings to her little Marquess. Jim seemed to imagine that he had left her in such a pumpkin sh.e.l.l as Mr. Peter P. Pumpkineater left his wife in, and kept her so very well. But Kedzie was not that kind of kept or keepable woman.

Jim would have expected that if Kedzie were guilty of any spiritual corruption it would show on her face. People will look for such things.

But she was still young and pretty and ingenuous and seemed incapable of duplicity. And indeed such treachery was no more than a childish turning from one toy to another. The traitors and traitresses have no more sense of obligation than a child feels for a discarded doll.

Jim paid Charity the uncomfortable compliment of feeling enough at home with her to say, "Well, Charity, that little wife of mine takes to the English n.o.bility like a duck seeing its first pond, eh?"