The Crux | Page 7

the varying tastes of a combined ancestry, made the place somehow suggestive of excavations at Abydos.
It was much the kind of parlor Vivian had been accustomed to from childhood, but Mrs. St. Cloud was of a type quite new to her. Clothed in soft, clinging fabrics, always with a misty, veiled effect to them, wearing pale amber, large, dull stones of uncertain shapes, and slender chains that glittered here and there among her scarfs and laces, sinking gracefully among deep cushions, even able to sink gracefully into a comjmon Bainville chair this beautiful woman had captured the girl's imagination from the first.
Clearly known, she was a sister of Mrs. Williams, visiting indefinitely. Vaguely and very frequently hinted, her husband had "left her," and "she did not believe in divorce." Against her background of dumb patience, he shone darkly forth as A Brute of unknown cruelties. Nothing against him would she ever say, and every young masculine heart yearned to make life brighter to the Ideal Woman, so strangely neglected; also some older ones. Her Young Men's Bible Class was the pride of Mr. Williams' heart and joy of such young men as the town possessed; most of Bainville's boys had gone.
"A wonderful uplifting influence," Mr. Williams called her, and refused to say anything, even when directly approached, as to "the facts" of her trouble. "It is an old story," he would say. "She bears up wonderfully. She sacrifices her life rather than her principles."
To Vivian, sitting now on a hassock at the lady's feet and looking up at her with adoring eyes, she was indeed a star, a saint, a cloud of mystery.
She reached out a soft hand, white, slender, delicately kept, wearing one thin gold ring, and stroked the girl's smooth hair. Vivian seized the hand and kissed it, blushing as she did so.
"You foolish child! Don't waste your young affection on an old lady like me."
"Old! You! You don't look as old as I do this minute!" said the girl with hushed intensity.
"Life wears on you, I'm afraid, my dear. . . . Do you ever hear from him?"
To no one else, not even to Susie, could Vivian speak of what now seemed the tragedy of her lost youth.
"No," said she. "Never now. He did write once or twice at first."
"He writes to his aunt, of course?"
"Yes," said Vivian. "But not often. And he never says anything."
"I understand. Poor child! You must be true, and wait." And the lady turned the thin ring on her finger. Vivian watched her in a passion of admiring tenderness.
"Oh, you understand!" she exclaimed. "You understand!"
"I understand, my dear," said Mrs. St. Cloud.
When Vivian reached her own gate she leaned her arms upon it and looked first one way and then the other, down the long, still street. The country was in sight at both ends the low, monotonous, wooded hills that shut them in. It was all familiar, wearingly familiar. She had known it continu-V ously for such part of her lifetime as was sensitive to landscape effects, and had at times a mad wish for an earthquake to change the outlines a little.
The infrequent trolley car passed just then and Sue Elder joined her, to take the short cut home through the Lane's yard.
"Here you are," she said cheerfully, "and here are the books."
Vivian thanked her.
"Oh, say come in after supper, canl: you? Aunt Rella's had another letter from Mort."
Vivian's sombre eyes lit up a little.
"How's he getting on? In the same business he was last year?" she asked with an elaborately cheerful air. Morton had seemed to change occupations oftener than he wrote letters.
"Yes, I believe so. I guess he's well. He never says much, you know. I don't think it's good for him out there good for any boy." And Susie looked quite the older sister.
"What are they to do? They can't stay here."
"No, I suppose not but we have to."
"Dr. Bellair didn't," remarked Vivian. "I like her tremendously, don't you?" In truth, Dr. Bellair was already a close second to Mrs. St. Cloud in the girl's heroworshipping heart.
"Oh, yes; she's splendid! Aunt Rella is so glad to have her with us. They have great times recalling their school days together. Aunty used to like her then, though she is five years older but you'd never dream it. And I think she's real handsome."
"She's not beautiful," said Vivian, with decision, "but she's a lot better. Sue Elder, I wish-
"Wish what?" asked her friend.
Sue put the books on the gate-post, and the two girls, arm in arm, walked slowly up and down. Susie was a round, palely rosy little person, with a delicate face and soft, light hair waving fluffily about her small head. Vivian's hair was twice the length, but so straight and fine that its mass had no