The Precipice | Page 6

determined to believe her home the best and dearest in the world, as children will, she had overlooked the fact--had pretended that what was a habit was only a mood, and that if "father was cross" to-day, he would be pleasant to-morrow. Now he began questioning Kate about college, her instructors and her friends. There was conversation enough, but the man's wife sat silent, and she knew that Kate knew that he expected her to do so.
Custard was brought on and Mrs. Barrington diffidently served it. Her husband gave one glance at it.
"Curdled!" he said succinctly, pushing his plate from him. "It's a pity it couldn't have been right Kate's first night home."
Kate thought there had been so much that was not right her first night home, that a spoiled confection was hardly worth comment.
"I'm dreadfully sorry," Mrs. Barrington said. "I suppose I should have made it myself, but I went down to the train--"
"That didn't take all the afternoon, did it?" the doctor asked.
"I was doing things around the house--"
"Putting flowers in my room, I know, mummy," broke in Kate, "and polishing up the silver toilet bottles, the beauties. You're one of those women who pet a home, and it shows, I can tell you. You don't see many homes like this, do you, dad,--so ladylike and brier-rosy?"
She leaned smilingly across the table as she addressed her father, offering him not the ingratiating and seductive smile which he was accustomed to see women--his wife among the rest--employ when they wished to placate him. Kate's was the bright smile of a comradely fellow creature who asked him to play a straight game. It made him take fresh stock of his girl. He noted her high oval brow around which the dark hair clustered engagingly; her flexible, rather large mouth, with lips well but not seductively arched, and her clear skin with its uniform tinting. Such beauty as she had, and it was far from negligible, would endure. She was quite five feet ten inches, he estimated, with a good chest development and capable shoulders. Her gestures were free and suggestive of strength, and her long body had the grace of flexibility and perfect unconsciousness. All of this was good; but what of the spirit that looked out of her eyes? It was a glance to which the man was not accustomed--feminine yet unafraid, beautiful but not related to sex. The physician was not able to analyze it, though where women were concerned he was a merciless analyst. Gratified, yet unaccountably disturbed, he turned to his wife.
"Martha has forgotten to light up the parlor," he said testily. "Can't you impress on her that she's to have the room ready for us when we've finished inhere?"
"She's so excited over Kate's coming home," said Mrs. Barrington with a placatory smile. "Perhaps you'll light up to-night, Frederick."
"No, I won't. I began work at five this morning and I've been going all day. It's up to you and Martha to run the house."
"The truth is," said Mrs. Barrington, "neither Martha nor I can reach the gasolier."
Dr. Barrington had the effect of pouncing on this statement.
"That's what's the matter, then," he said. "You forgot to get the tapers. I heard Martha telling you last night that they were out."
A flush spread over Mrs. Barrington's delicate face as she cast about her for the usual subterfuge and failed to find it. In that moment Kate realized that it had been a long programme of subterfuges with her mother--subterfuges designed to protect her from the onslaughts of the irritable man who dominated her.
"I'll light the gas, mummy," she said gently. "Let that be one of my fixed duties from now on."
"You'll spoil your mother, Kate," said the doctor with a whimsical intonation.
His jesting about what had so marred the hour of reunion brought a surge of anger to Kate's brain.
"That's precisely what I came home to do, sir," she said significantly. "What other reason could I have for coming back to Silvertree? The town certainly isn't enticing. You've been doctoring here for forty years, but you havn't been able to cure the local sleeping-sickness yet."
It stung and she had meant it to. To insult Silvertree was to hurt the doctor in his most tender vanity. It was one of his most fervid beliefs that he had selected a growing town, conspicuous for its enterprise. In his young manhood he had meant to do fine things. He was public-spirited, charitable, a death-fighter of courage and persistence. Though not a religious man, he had one holy passion, that of the physician. He respected himself and loved his wife, but he had from boyhood confused the ideas of masculinity and tyranny. He believed that women needed discipline, and he had little by little destroyed the integrity of the woman he would