which they had accorded to Steve's Mamie. Her life till now had been
sheltered and unruffled, and disaster, swooping upon her, had found her
an easy victim.
She was trying to be brave, but her powers of resistance were small
like her body. She clung to Ruth as a child clings to its mother. Ruth,
as she tried to comfort her, felt curiously old. It occurred to her
with a suggestion almost of grotesqueness that she and Sybil had been
debutantes in the same season.
They walked up to the house. The summer cottage which Bailey had taken
was not far from the station. On the way, in the intervals of her sobs,
Sybil told Ruth the disjointed story of what had happened.
Bailey had not been looking well for some days. She had thought it must
be the heat or business worries or something. He had not eaten very
much, and he had seemed too tired to talk when he got home each
evening. She had begged him to take a few days' rest. That had been the
only occasion in the whole of the last week when she had heard him
laugh; and it had been such a horrid, ugly sort of laugh that she
wished she hadn't.
He had said that if he stayed away from the office for some time to
come it would mean love in a cottage for them for the rest of their
lives, and not a summer cottage at Tuxedo at that. ''My dear child,''
he had gone on, 'and you know when Bailey calls me that,' said Sybil,
'it means that there is something the matter; for, as a rule, he never
calls me anything but my name, or baby, or something like that.'
Which gave Ruth a little shock of surprise. Somehow the idea of the
dignified Bailey addressing his wife as baby startled her. She was
certainly learning these days that she did not know people as
completely as she had supposed. There seemed to be endless sides to
people's characters which had never come under her notice. A sudden
memory of Kirk on that fateful afternoon came to her and made her
wince.
Mrs. Bailey continued: ''My dear child,' he went on, 'this week is
about the most important week you and I are ever likely to live
through. It's the show-down. We either come out on top or we blow up.
It's one thing or the other. And if I take a few days' holiday just now
you had better start looking about for the best place to sell your
jewellery.'
'Those were his very words,' she said tearfully. 'I remember them all.
It was so unlike his usual way of talking.'
Ruth acknowledged that it was. More than ever she felt that she did not
know the complete Bailey.
'He was probably exaggerating,' she said for the sake of saying
something.
Sybil was silent for a moment.
'It isn't that that's worrying me,' she went on then. 'Somehow I don't
seem to care at all whether we come out right or not, so long as he
gets well. Last night, when I thought he was going to die, I made up my
mind that I couldn't go on living without him. I wouldn't have,
either.'
