Her eyes flamed back up into his.
"Because you are the stronger?"
"Because I am the stronger--and because I am right," he returned grimly.
"I admit that you are the superior brute," she said with fierce pa.s.sion. "But you will never break me to your wishes!"
"And I tell you I will!"
"And I tell you you will not!"
There was a strange and new fire in her eyes.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I mean this," she returned, and the hands that gripped her shoulders felt her tremble through all her body. "I should not expect you to marry a woman who was so unreasonable as to demand that you, for her sake, should give up your loved career. And, for my part, I shall never marry a man so unreasonable as to make the same demand of me."
He fell back a pace.
"You mean----"
"Was I not plain enough? I mean that you will never have the chance to crush me into your iron mould, for I will never marry you."
"What!" And then: "So I"m fired, am I?" he grated out.
"Yes, for you"re as narrow and as conventional as the rest of men,"
she rushed on hotly. "You never say a word so long as a woman"s work is unpleasant! It"s all right for her to scrub, and wash dishes, and wear her life away in factories. But as soon as she wants to do any work that is pleasant and interesting and that will gain her recognition, you cry out that she"s unwomanly, uns.e.xed, that she"s flying in the face of G.o.d! Oh, you are perfectly willing that woman, on the one hand, should be a drudge, or on the other the pampered pet of your one-woman harem. But I shall be neither, I tell you. Never!
Never! Never!"
They stared at one another, trembling with pa.s.sion.
"And you," he said with all the fierce irony of his soul, "and you, I suppose, will now go ahead and clear your father, expose Blake, and perform all those other wonders you"ve talked so big about!"
"That"s just what I am going to do!" she cried defiantly.
"And that"s just what you are not!" he blazed back. "I may have admired the woman in you--but, for those things, you have not the smallest atom of ability. Your father"s trial, your failure to get evidence--hasn"t that shown you? You are going to be a failure--a fizzle--a fiasco! Did you hear that? A pitiable, miserable, humiliated fiasco! And time will prove it!"
"We"ll see what time will prove!" And she swept furiously past him out of the room.
CHAPTER XX
A SPECTRE COMES TO TOWN
For many an hour Katherine"s wrath continued high, and she repeated, with clinched hands, all her invectives against the bigotry of Bruce.
He was a bully--a boor--a brute--a tyrant. He considered himself the superman. And in pitiable truth he was only a moral coward--for his real reason in opposing her had been that he was afraid to have Westville say that his wife worked. And he had insulted her, for his parting words to her had been a jeering statement that she had no ability, only a certain charm of s.e.x. How, oh, how, had she ever imagined that they two might possibly share a happy life together?
But after a season her wrath began to subside, and she began to see that after all Bruce was no very different man from the Bruce she had loved the last few weeks. He had been thoroughly consistent with himself. She had known that he was c.o.c.ksure and domineering. She had foreseen that the chances were at least equal that he would take the position he had. She had foreseen and feared this very issue. His virtues were just as big as on yesterday, when she and he had thought of marriage, and his faults were no greater. And she realized, after the first pa.s.sion of their battle had spent its force, that she still loved him.
In the long hours of the night a pang of emptiness, of vast, irretrievable loss, possessed her. She and Love had touched each other for a s.p.a.ce--then had flung violently apart, and were speeding each in their eternally separate direction. Life for her might be rich and full of honour and achievement, but as she looked forward into the long procession of years, she saw that life was going to have its dreariness, its vacancies, its dull, unending aches. It was going to be such a very, very different business from that life of work and love and home and mutual aid she had daringly dreamed of during the two weeks she and Bruce had been lovers.
But she did not regret her decision. She did not falter. Her resentment of Bruce"s att.i.tude stiffened the backbone of her purpose.
She was going straight ahead, bear the bitterness, and live the life she had planned as best she could.
But there quickly came other matters to share her mind with a lost love and a broken dream. First was the uproar created by Bruce"s defiant announcement in the _Express_ of Blind Charlie"s threatened treachery. That sensation reigned for a day or two, then was almost forgotten in a greater. This second sensation made its initial appearance quite un.o.btrusively; it had a bare dozen lines down in a corner of the same issue of the _Express_ that had contained Bruce"s defiance and Doctor Sherman"s departure. The substance of the item was that two cases of illness had been reported from the negro quarter in River Court, and that the doctors said the symptoms were similar to those of typhoid fever.
Those two cases of fever in that old frame tenement up a narrow, stenchy alley were the quiet opening of a new act in the drama that was played that year in Westville. The next day a dozen cases were reported, and now the doctors unhesitatingly p.r.o.nounced them typhoid.
The number mounted rapidly. Soon there were a hundred. Soon there was an epidemic. And the Spectre showed no deference to rank. It not only stalked into the tenements of River Court and Railroad Alley--and laid its felling finger on starveling children and drink-shattered men--It visited the large and airy homes on Elm and Maple Streets and Wabash Avenue, where those of wealth and place were congregated.
In Westville was the Reign of Terror. Haggard doctors were ever on the go, s.n.a.t.c.hing a bite or a moment"s sleep when chance allowed. Till then, modern history had been reckoned in Westville from the town"s invasion by factories, or from that more distant time when lightning had struck the Court House. But those milestones of time are to-day forgotten. Local history is now dated, and will be for many a decade, from the "Days of Fever" and the related events which marked that epoch.
In the early days of the epidemic Katherine heard one morning that Elsie Sherman had just been stricken. She had seen little of Elsie during the last few weeks; the strain of their relation was too great to permit the old pleasure in one another"s company; but at this news she hastened to Elsie"s bedside. Her arrival was a G.o.d-send to the worn and hurried Doctor Woods, who had just been called in. She telegraphed to Indianapolis for a nurse; she telegraphed to a sister of Doctor Sherman to come; and she herself undertook the care of Elsie until the nurse should arrive.
"What do you think of her case, Doctor?" she asked anxiously when Doctor Woods dropped in again later in the day.
He shook his head.
"Mrs. Sherman is very frail."
"Then you think----"
"I"m afraid it will be a hard fight. I think we"d better send for her husband."
Despite her sympathy for Elsie, Katherine thrilled with the possibility suggested by the doctor"s words. Here was a situation that should bring Doctor Sherman out of his hiding, if anything could bring him. Once home, and unnerved by the sight of his wife precariously balanced between life and death, she was certain that he would break down and confess whatever he might know.
She asked Elsie for her husband"s whereabouts, but Elsie answered that she had had letters but that he had never given an address. Katherine at once determined to see Blake, and demand to know where Doctor Sherman was; and after the nurse arrived on an afternoon train, she set out for Blake"s office.
But Blake was out, and his return was not expected for an hour. To fill in the time, Katherine paid a visit to her father in the jail.
She told him of Elsie"s illness, and told at greater length than she had yet had chance to do about the epidemic. In his turn he talked to her about the fever"s causes; and when she left the jail and returned to Blake"s office an idea far greater than merely asking Doctor Sherman"s whereabouts was in her mind.
This time she was told that Blake was in, but could see no one.
Undeterred by this statement, Katherine walked quickly past the stenographer and straight for his private door, which she quickly and quietly opened and closed.
Blake was sitting at his desk, his head bowed forward in one hand. He was so deep in thought, and she had entered so quietly, that he had not heard her. She crossed to his desk, stood opposite him, and for a moment gazed down upon his head.
"Mr. Blake," she remarked at length.
He started up.
"You here!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.
"Yes. I came to talk to you."
He did not speak at once, but stood staring a little wildly at her.
She had not spoken to him since the day of her father"s trial, nor seen him save at a distance. She was now startled at the change this closer view revealed to her. His eyes were sunken and ringed with purple, his face seemed worn and thin, and had taken on a tinge of yellowish-green.