The Crux | Page 2

widening range of her unsalaried duties as "minister's wife," that she had never even heard of Morton Elder. .
A new resident always fans the languishing flame of local conversation. The whole shopworn stock takes on a fresh lustre, topics long trampled flat in much discussion lift their heads anew, opinions one scarce dared to repeat again become almost authoritative, old stories flourish freshly, acquiring new detail and more vivid color.
Mrs. Lane, seizing her opportunity while the sisters gasped a momentary amazement at anyone's not knowing the town scapegrace, and taking advantage of her position as old friend and near neighbor of the family under discussion, swept into the field under such headway that even the Foote girls remained silent perforce; surcharged, however, and holding their breaths in readiness to burst forth at the first opening.
"He's the nephew orphan nephew of Miss Elder who lives right back of us our yards touch we've always been friends went to school together, Rella's never married she teaches, you know and her brother he owned the home it's all hers now, he died all of a sudden and left two children Morton and Susie. Mort was about seven years old and Susie just a baby. He's been an awful cross but she just idolizes him she's spoiled him, I tell her."
Mrs. Lane had to breathe, and even the briefest pause left her stranded to wait another chance. The three social benefactors proceeded to distribute their information in a clattering torrent. They sought to inform Mrs. Williams in especial, of numberless details of the early life and education of their subject, matters which would have been treated more appreciatively if they had not been blessed with the later news; and, at the same time, each was seeking for a more dramatic emphasis to give this last supply of incident with due effect.
No regular record is possible where three persons pour forth statement and comment in a rapid, tumultuous stream, interrupted by cross currents of heated contradiction, and further varied by the exclamations and protests of three hearers, or at least, of two; for the one man present soon relapsed into disgusted silence.
Mrs. Williams, turning a perplexed face from one to the other, inwardly condemning the darkening flood of talk, yet conscious of a sinful pleasure in it, and anxious as a guest, and a minister's wife, to be most amiable, felt like one watching three kinetescopes at once. She saw, in confused pictures of blurred and varying outline, Orella Elder, the young New England girl, only eighteen, already a "school ma'am," suddenly left with two children to bring up, and doing it, as best she could. She saw the boy, momentarily changing, in his shuttlecock flight from mouth to mouth, through pale shades of open mischief to the black and scarlet of hinted sin, the terror of the neighborhood, the darling of his aunt, clever, audacious, scandalizing the quiet town.
"Boys are apt to be mischievous, aren't they?" she suggested when it was possible.
"He's worse than mischievous," Mr. Lane assured her sourly. "There's a mean streak in that family."
"That's on his mother's side," Mrs. Lane hastened to add. "She was a queer girl came from New York."
The Foote girls began again, with rich profusion of detail, their voices rising shrill, one above the other, and playing together at their full height like emulous fountains.
"We ought not to judge, you know;" urged Mrs. Williams. "What do you say he's really done?" Being sifted, it appeared that this last and most terrible performance was to go to "the city" with a group of "the worst boys of college," to get undeniably drunk, to do some piece of mischief. (Here was great licence in opinion, and in contradiction.)
"Anyway he's to be suspended!" said Miss Rebecca with finality.
"Suspended!" Miss Josie's voice rose in scorn. "Expelled! They said he was expelled."
"In disgrace!" added Miss Sallie.
Vivian Lane sat in the back room at the window, studying in the lingering light of the long June evening. At least, she appeared to be studying. Her tall figure was bent over her books, but the dark eyes blazed under their delicate level brows, and her face flushed and paled with changing feelings.
She had heard who, in the same house, could escape hearing the Misses Foote? and had followed the torrent of description, hearsay, surmise and allegation with an interest that was painful in its intensity.
"It's a shame!" she whispered under hen breath. "A shame! And nobody to stand up for him!"
She half rose to her feet as if to do it herself, but sank back irresolutely.
A fresh wave of talk rolled forth.
"It'll half kill his aunt."
"Poor Miss Elder! I don't know what she'll do!"
"I don't know what he'll do. He can't go back to college."
"He'll have to go to work."
"I'd like to know where nobody'd