The Lady of Big Shanty | Page 7

her
father and mother good-night and hurried to her room, leaving the two
alone. The dinner had been an ordeal to her--never before had she seen
her father so absorbed.
"You were very brilliant to-night, were you not?" exclaimed Alice as
soon as she and Thayor were alone.
Thayor continued silent, gazing into the library fire, his hands clenched
deep in his trousers pockets, his shoulders squared.
"A beautiful dinner," she continued, her voice rising--"the best I have
had this season, and yet you sat there like a log."
The man turned sharply--so sharply that the woman at his side gave a
start.
"Sit down!" he commanded--"over there where I can see you. I have
something to say."
She looked at him in amazement. The determined ring in his voice
made her half afraid. What had he to say?
"What do you mean?" she retorted.
"Just what I said. Sit down!"
The fair shoulders shrugged. She was accustomed to these outbursts,
but not to this ring in his voice.

"Go on--what is it?"
Thayor crossed the room, shut the door and turned the key in the lock.
She watched him in silence as he switched off the electric lights along
the bookcases, until naught illumined the still library but the soft glow
of the lamp and the desultory flare from the hearth.
Still he did not speak. Finally the storm broke.
"What I have to say to you is this: I'm sick of this wholesale giving of
dinners."
Alice let go her breath. After all, it was not what was uppermost in her
mind.
"Ah! So that's it," she returned.
"That's a part of it," he cried, "but not all."
"And the other part?" she asked, her nervousness returning.
"I'll come to that later," said her husband, with an accent on the last
word. "It is necessary that I should begin at the beginning."
"Go on," she murmured nervously, gazing absently into the fire, her
mind at work, her fears suddenly aroused. For the first time its
wavering light seemed restful. "Go on--I'm listening."
"The first part is that I'm sick of these dinners. I've told you so before,
and yet you had the impertinence to-night to give another and not say a
word to me about it." The voice had a cold, incisive note in it--the
touch of steel to warm flesh.
"Impertinence! Your ideas of hospitality, Sam, are peculiar." Any topic
was better than the one she feared.
"Hospitality!" he retorted hotly. "Do you call it hospitality to squander
my money on the cheap spongers you are continually inviting here? Do
you call it hospitable to force me to sit up and entertain this riff-raff

night after night, and then be dragged off to the opera or theatre when I
am played out after a hard day's work down town for the money you
spend? And just look at Margaret! Do you suppose that these people,
this sort of life you daily surround her with, is a sane atmosphere in
which to bring up our daughter? That's the first thing I've got to say to
you, and I want to tell you right here that it's got to stop."
She looked up at him in a half frightened way, wondering whether there
was not something back of this sudden tirade, something she could not
fathom--something she feared to fathom.
"The second thing that I have to tell you is this: I am at the end of my
rope, or will be if I keep on. A man can't keep up month in and month
out, living my life, and not break down. I saw Leveridge yesterday and
he wishes me to get some relief at once. Young Holcomb, who did me
a service once at Long Lake, is here, and I am going back home with
him. I intend to take a rest for a fortnight--possibly three weeks--in
camp."
For an instant she could not speak--so quick came the joyful rebound.
Then there rushed over her what his absence might, or might not, mean
to her.
"When do you start?" she asked with assumed condescension--her old
way of concealing her thoughts.
"Saturday night."
"But Saturday night we are giving a dinner," she rejoined in a positive
tone. This was one at which she wanted him present.
"You can give it, but without me," he replied doggedly.
"I tell you you'll do nothing of the sort, Sam. I'm not going to abide by
the advice of that quack, Leveridge, nor shall you!" The old dominating
tone reasserted itself now that she had read his mind to the bottom.
"Quack or not, you would not be alive to-day but for him, and it is

disgraceful for you to talk this way behind his back. And now I am
going to bed." With this