"Your husband, Anitar? Your husband here? Why, the low-life hound! I'll go up and kill him for you if you want me to."

Kedzie explained that she didn't want to get her dear Skip into any trouble, but she did want his help. Skip found her a good boarding-place the first time he met her, and now she had to dupe him into securing her furnished rooms and board in a castle. She may have rather encouraged him to imagine that once she was free from Jim she would listen once more to Skip. But there is no evidence on that point and he must have felt a certain awe of her. His pretty duckling had become so gorgeous a swan.

Her parley with Skip had delayed her march up-stairs to the attack, but Jim and Charity could only wait in befuddled suspense, unwilling and afraid to attempt a flight.

Kedzie went up-stairs at last, backed by her father and mother and Skip and the chauffeur with the suit-case of Jim's clothes. Kedzie was dazed at the sight of Charity.

But there was no need of any oration.

After a little sniffing and nodding of the head she spoke:

"Well, I thought as much! Jim, you telephoned for some things of mine and of yours. Here they are. There's a can of gasolene down-stairs for you. Here's your suit-case, and the coat and hat for Mrs. Cheever. I presume you will go back in your own car."

Jim nodded.

"Then we needn't keep you any longer. Mr. McNiven is your lawyer still, I suppose. I'll send my lawyer to him. Come along, mother--and father."

She led her little cohort down-stairs and bade Skip a very cordial _au revoir._

CHAPTER VIII

The Dyckman divorce farce might have been as politely performed as _l'affaire Cheever_--or even more so than that, since practice makes perfect. At least a temporary secrecy could have been secured with leisureliness by a residence in another State.

But Kedzie felt as Zada did, that she simply could not wait, though her reason was well to the opposite. Zada had been afraid that a child would arrive before the divorce, but Kedzie that a gentleman would depart.

Strathdene was straining at the anchor like one of his own biplanes with the wind nudging its wings. In Europe they were shooting down airships by the score nearly every day and Strathdene wanted to go back. "It's not fair to the Huns," he said. "They haven't had a pot-shot at me for so long they'll forget I was ever over. And some of those men that were corporals when I made my Ace, are Aces now as well and they're crawling up on my score! I'll have to fly all the time to catch up."

But he wanted to take with him his beauty. He was jealous of Uncle Sam and afraid to trust Kedzie to him. The more inconvenient she became to him the more determined he grew to overcome the obstacles to her possession.

He abominated the necessity of taking his bride through the side door of the court-house to the altar, but he would not give her up. It looked, however, as if he would have to. And then he received mysteriously an a.s.signment to the inspection of flying-machines purchased in the American market. Kedzie told him that it was a Heaven-sent answer to her prayers, and he believed it.

But it was his poor mother's work; she had written to a friend in the British Emba.s.sy imploring him to keep her precious boy out of France as long as possible. Hecatombs of gallant young lords were being butchered and she had lost a son, two brothers, a nephew, and unnumbered friends.

The whole n.o.bility of Europe was as deep in mourning as all the other grades of prestige. She wanted a brief respite from terror. She did not know till later to what further risks she was exposing her boy.

Kedzie was grimly resolute about getting her freedom from Jim in order to transfer it to Strathdene. She planned to manage it quietly for the sake of her own future. But a sickening mess was made of it. For Kedzie fell into the hands of a too, too conscientious lawyer. It is impossible to be loyal in all directions, and young Mr. Anson Beattie was loyal first to his wife and children, whom he loved devotedly. They needed money and clients came slowly to him.

His wife had relatives in Newport and they chanced to be visiting there.

The relatives were shopkeepers, to whom Pet Bettany owed much money.

That was how Kedzie came to consult Mr. Beattie. Kedzie telephoned Pet the moment she got back from the Viewcrest Inn, and Pet told her of Beattie.

When Kedzie drifted into his ken with a word of introduction from Pet Bettany he hailed her as a Heaven-sent messenger. She brought him advertis.e.m.e.nt, and big fees on a platter.

The very name of Dyckman was incense and myrrh. Mr. Beattie smelled gold. When Kedzie poured out her story and explained that the famous Mrs. Charity Cheever was the wreckress of her home Mr. Beattie saw head-lines everywhere.

If the Dyckmans had been a humble couple he would have tried to reconcile them, perhaps, or he would have separated them with little noise. But it was noise he wanted. The longer and louder the trial the more free s.p.a.ce Mr. Beattie would get.

"It Pays to Advertise" is a necessary motto for all professions. The lawyer is advertised by his hating enemies, Beattie said to himself, and to his ecstatic wife when he went to her room after Kedzie left. His wife would never have taken a divorce if divorces were distributed at every door like handbills. Mr. Beattie said to Mrs. Beattie:

"Soul o' my soul, I'm going to handle this case in such a way that it will stir up a smell from here to California. I'll get that little woman an alimony that will break all known records and I'll take a percentage of the gate receipts as they come in. I wouldn't trust my little client a foot away."

"Don't trust her too close, either," said his devoted spouse, who was just jealous enough to be remembered in time of stress.

Beattie was the sort of lawyer one reads about oftener than one meets, and he wanted to be read about. He had the almost necessary lawyer gift of beginning to hate the opposition as soon as he learned what it was.

If Jim had engaged him he would have hated Kedzie with religious ardor.

Kedzie engaged him; so he abominated Jim and everybody and everything a.s.sociated with him from his name to his scarf-pin.

He warned Kedzie not to spend an hour under Jim Dyckman's roof, lest she seem to condone what she discovered. He advised her to disappear till Beattie was ready to strike.

That was the reason why there was no compromise, no concession, no politeness in the divorce. If collusion is vicious this case was certainly pure of it.

Jim was not permitted a quiet talk with Kedzie from the moment she found him at the Viewcrest Inn. Her arrival there plus her family had thrown him into a stupor. It was a situation for a genius to handle, since the honester a man is the more he is confused at being found in a situation that looks dishonest. Jim was never less a genius than then. Even Charity, who usually found a word when a word was needed, said not one.

What could she say? Kedzie ignored her, accused her of nothing, and did not linger.

When Jim and Charity, left alone together again, looked at each other they were too disgusted to regret that they had not been as guilty as they looked. Life had the jaundice in their eyes.

But they had to get back to the world by way of material things. Jim had to change his evening clothes. He asked Charity to wait in the office below. He pointed to the motor-coat and hat that Kedzie had brought and tossed on a lounge.

Charity recoiled from wearing Kedzie's cast-off clothes or from disguising as Jim's wife, but her downcast eyes revealed her bare shoulders and arms and her delicate evening gown. They had been exquisitely appropriate to night and night lights, but they were ghastly in the day.

She put on Kedzie's mantle; it blistered her like the mantle Medea sent to her successor in her husband's love. She sat in the office and some of the guests pa.s.sed through. She could see that they took her to be one of their sort, and shocks of red and white alternated through her skin.

When Jim was ready he came down with his evening clothes in the suit-case. The baggage was the final convincing touch. He picked up the gasolene-can and toted it that weary mile. One of the hotel servants offered to carry it, but Jim was in no mood for company. There are things that the wealthiest man does not want to have done for him.

They found the car studded with pools of water from the rain, and Charity shook out the cushions while Jim filled up the tank.

"Quite domestic," said Charity, in the last dregs of bitterness.

Jim did not answer. He flung the can over into a field and hopped into the car. He regretted that he had no spurs to dig into its sides, no curb bit to jerk. He owed his destruction to that car. For want of gasolene, the car was lost; for want of the car, a reputation was lost.

He thought with frenzy as he drove. He had little imagination, but it did not require an expert dreamer to foresee dire possibilities ahead.

He was so sorry for Charity that he could have wept. He wanted to enfold her in his arms and promise her security. He wanted to stand in front of her and take in his own breast all the arrows of scorn that might shower upon her.

But the nearest approach to protection in his power lay along the lines of appearing to be indifferent to her. He had not been told of Kedzie's infatuation for Strathdene and he had not suspected it.

Charity was tempted to refer to it, but she felt that it would be contemptibly petty at the moment. So Jim was permitted to hope that he could find Kedzie, throw himself on her mercy and implore her to believe in his innocence. It was a sickly hope, and his heart filled with gall and with hatred of Kedzie and all she had brought on him.

He reached Newport with a terrific speed, and left Charity at Mrs.

Noxon's to make her own explanations. Mrs. Noxon had defended Charity against gossip once before, but to defend her against appearances was too much to ask.

"Well-behaved people," she told Charity, "do not have appearances."

She was so cold that Charity froze also, and set her maid to packing.

Mrs. Noxon's frigidity was a terrifying example of what she was to expect. She returned to New York on the first train. Jim was on it, too.

He had sped home, expecting to find Kedzie. She was gone and none of the servants knew where. If he had found her in the ferocious humor he had arrived at he might have given her the sort of divorce popular in divorce-less countries, where they annul the wife instead of the marriage. He might have sent Kedzie to the realm where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage--which should save a heap of trouble.