Blacksheep! Blacksheep! | Page 9

doll he had picked up on the stair landing.
He now visualized the whole scene that followed upon the receipt of the telegram; the hurried, tearful packing, the bewildered children, the panic-struck servants rushing about obeying the orders of a hysterical mistress. The more he thought of it the warmer became his defensive attitude toward the unknown Alice. She had met the situation like a woman of quick decisions,--perhaps she was a little too unyielding and this had caused the rupture; but no man worthy to be called a gentleman would commit to the wires so heartless a message directed at the mother of his children.
His attention had been arrested several times by a photograph of a young girl, of eleven or twelve, set in a silver frame on the living-room table, whom he assumed to be the Edith mentioned in the telegram. She was a lovely child, with a wealth of hair falling about her shoulders, and roguish eyes that looked at him teasingly. It was a thoroughly feminine face with an unusual perfection of line. Very likely the child was the re?mbodiment of her mother who must, he thought, be a very handsome woman indeed. His resentment hardened against the husband and father, the author of the brutal message that disposed of his marital obligations as coolly as though he had been canceling an order for a carload of merchandise, as he held up the picture for the joy of meeting the gaze of the merry eyes.
Though the breaking of eggs into the skillet had proved a fearsome matter and the bacon sizzled strangely, the cooking had proved much simpler than he had believed possible. He burnt his fingers handling the toaster, but after ruining a considerable quantity of bread he produced three slices of toast that were the equal of any offered by his favorite club. As usual when frustrated in his plans (something that had rarely happened in his whole life) he made the most of the situation, eating slowly while the rain poured in an unbroken sheet down the windows. He wished Isabel could see him and know that for once the routine of his life had been interrupted only to find him resourceful and the easy master of his fate.
He made a point of washing the dishes and cooking utensils and putting them carefully away. These matters attended to, he roamed over the house which now had a new interest for him since the Congdon family skeleton had come out of its closet and danced round the dinner table. In one way and another he found it possible to make a fair acquaintance with the late inmates of the house. In a bedroom adjoining the nursery there were books in abundance, and very good books they were--essays, poetry, a few of those novels that appeal only to sophisticated readers, and children's books, including a volume of Bible stories retold for the young. He could readily imagine Mrs. Congdon reading aloud from these volumes to her youngsters as they stood beside the wicker rocker in the bay-window. Only a few hours earlier the house had rung with the happy laughter of children; he fancied he could hear them calling to their mother up the stair. Mrs. Congdon was a blonde, he decided, from the presence in a closet of a blue peignoir overlooked in her flight and a bolt of blue ribbon that had rolled under the bed as though seeking refuge from the general confusion.
In the adjoining room he sought traces of the hard-hearted husband, but in his departure, presumably sometime earlier, Congdon had made a clean sweep; there was nothing to afford a clue to his character beyond a four-in-hand tie whose colors struck Archie as execrable. Below in the snuggery fitted up for masculine use was a table, containing a humidor half filled with dried-up cigars, and an ill-smelling pipe--Archie hated pipes--and a box of cigarettes. A number of scientific magazines lay about and a forbidding array of books on mechanics and chemistry overflowed the shelves. He threw open a cabinet filled with blue prints illustrating queer mechanical contrivances. They struck him as very silly and he slammed the thing shut in disgust, convinced that Congdon was a crank, or he wouldn't have indulged in such foolishness. In a drawer of the desk was an automatic pistol and a box of cartridges. At a country house where he once week-ended a burglar scare had inspired feverish intensive pistol practice among the guests and Archie had learned to load and fire and even developed some skill as a marksman. There were three cartridges in the magazine and Archie thrust it into his pocket thinking it not a bad idea to be prepared for invasion.
He was oppressed with a fleeting sense of his isolation as