The Wolf Woman by Stringer Arthur

Author:Stringer, Arthur
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction, adventure, North America
Publisher: Distributed Proofreaders Canada
Published: 1928-06-11T00:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER XI

Joan, in treading a path of her own, made that path an arrestingly wide one. She sought out her own friends, and kept her own hours, and let it be known to Westbrook and the world in general that both her happiness and her habits were entirely in her own hands.

That valiant fight for freedom, however, could come only at a cost. For the shadowy-eyed Joan, returning from an all-night dance when a rind of pearl and gold was showing itself in the eastern sky, stumbled over a rust-colored puppy blithely dragging a gray-squirrel sports-coat along the polished floor. The girl with the unnaturally bright eyes decided, as she recognized the coat as her own and realized what ecstatic young teeth had done to its contours, that she had endured more than reason demanded. She captured Rusty and imprisoned him in her bathroom, smoked three cigarettes in succession, and finally let the frustrations of more than one unhappy day flower in unequivocal and passionate action. And when she acted, she did so with a promptness and a completeness entirely her own.

It was Mary, with her morning's lessons over, who first became conscious of Rusty's absence. She had whistled for him as she hurried out to the quiet nook between the Chinese pagoda and the tennis-courts where Martie, after being duly bathed and dressed and fed, slept of a morning while his nurse sat in the slanting November sunlight acquiring a tan and reading Meredith.

"I want him to be an open-air boy," Aurora Mary had proudly proclaimed when she first led Betty Wilder to this retreat.

"He's a darling," acknowledged Betty as she stooped over the plump pink face with the carelessly cooing lips. Then her face saddened, as the faces of childless women sadden before the ancient miracle of unfolding life.

But Aurora Mary missed Rusty. She was worried about him and decided to round him up without loss of time.

Her first cursory search, however, proved a fruitless one. And then she made it a more methodic one.

"Anybody see my dog?" she demanded of the tight-lipped Mrs. Pusey.

"No, madam," was the prompt but impersonal reply.

She stopped Hadley in the hall a minute later and confronted him with a challenging eye.

"Have you seen my dog to-day, Hadley?" she demanded, remembering that that functionary had never taken kindly to Rusty's presence at Westbrook.

"No, madam," answered the impassive Hadley. And she was compelled to believe him, but she did not give up the search. She transferred it to the gardens, and then to the garage, and then to the stables. But she met always with the same answer. And an absurd new sense of desolation crept over her at the thought that Somer's pup, her pup, could be slipping out of her life. She even went to the lodge, and wandered out past the great iron gates, looking disconsolately for that rusty-colored wanderer who meant so much in her life and so much to her happiness.

She turned back along the empty drive and stopped before the young Scotch under-gardener.

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