know what had happened, but she was sure the Germans were destroying the city. She said another girl had seen the Zeppelins. Alfie went out at once. Oh, dear, I am so glad you are home. I was so anxious—”
“My dear child, you should be in bed,” began her uncle, taking her hand in his. He laid his other hand against her cheek, and was relieved to find it cool. “You say Alfred went out—at eleven?”
“A few minutes after eleven. He waited until all the noise had ceased. I assured him I was not the least bit nervous. He had been working so hard all evening in your study over those stupid physics.”
“And he hasn't returned? Confound him, he shouldn't have gone off and left you all alone here for two solid hours—”
“Don't be angry with him, Uncle Dawy,” pleaded the girl. “He was so excited, poor boy, he simply couldn't sit here without knowing what had happened. Besides, Hodges and two of the maids were up,—so I wasn't all alone.” She followed them into the brilliantly lighted drawing-room. “Here are the first extras. The doorman sent them up to me.”
Mrs. Carstairs dropped heavily into a chair. Her face was very white.
“How terrible,” she murmured, glancing at the huge headlines.
“I say, Frieda,” exclaimed her husband; “it's been too much for you. A drop of brandy, my dear,—”
“Nothing, thank you, Davenport. I am quite all right. The shock, you know. We were so near the place, Louise,—don't you see? Really, it was appalling.”
“What beasts! What inhuman beasts they are!” cried the girl, in a sort of frenzy. “They ought to be burned alive,—burned and tortured for hours. The last extra says that the number of dead and mutilated is beyond—”
“Now, now!” said Carstairs, gently. “Don't excite yourself, child. It isn't good for you. You've been too ill, my dear. Run along to bed, there's a sensible girl. We'll have all the details by tomorrow,—and, believe me, things won't be as bad as they seem tonight. It's always the case, you know. And you, too, Frieda,—get to bed. Your nerves are all shot to pieces,—and I'm not surprised. I will wait for—”
A key grated in the door.
“Here he is now. Hello, Alfred,—what's the latest?”
His son came into the room without removing his overcoat or hat. His dark eyes, wet from the sharp wind without, sought his mother's face.
“Are you all right, Mother? I've been horribly worried—thank the Lord! It's a relief to see that smile! You're all right? Sure?”
He kissed his mother quickly, feverishly. She put her arm around his neck and murmured in his ear.
“I am frightfully upset, of course, dear. Who wouldn't be?”
He stood off and looked long and intently into her eyes. Then he straightened up and spoke to his father.
“I might have known you wouldn't let anything happen to her, sir. But I was horribly worried, just the same. Those beastly shells went everywhere, they say. The Club must have been—”
“Nowhere near the Club, so far as I know,” said his father cheerfully. “We were all perfectly safe. Have they made any arrests? Of course, it wasn't accidental.”
“I've been downtown, around the newspaper offices,” said the young man, throwing his coat and hat on a chair. “There are all sorts of wild stories. People are talking about lynchings, and all that sort of rot. Nothing like that ever happens, though. We do a lot of talking, and that's all. It all blows over as soon as the excitement dies down. That's the trouble with us Americans.”
“America will wake up one of these days, Alfred,” said his father slowly, “and when she does, there will be worse things than lynchings to talk about.”
“Are your feet cold, Alfred dear?” inquired his mother, a note of anxiety in her voice. “You've been tramping about the streets, and—— You must have a hot water bottle when you go to bed. There is so much pneumonia—”
“Always mothering me, aren't you, good Frieda?” he said, lovingly. He pronounced it as if it were Friday. It was his pet name for her in the bosom of the family. “Warm as toast,” he added. He turned to Louise. “You didn't mind my running away and leaving you, did you, Louise?”
“Not a bit, Alfie. I tried to get Derrol on the long distance, but they said at the Camp it was impossible to call him unless the message was very important. I—I—so I asked the man if there had been any kind of an accident out there and he said no, there hadn't. I—asked him if Captain Steele was in bed, and he said he should hope so. Don't laugh, Alfie! I know it was silly, but—but it might have been an ammunition depot or something at the Camp. We didn't know—”
“Ammunition, your granny! They haven't sufficient ammunition in that Camp,—or in any of 'em, for that matter,—to make a noise loud enough to be heard across the street. How can you expect me to keep a straight face when you suggest an explosion in an Army Camp?”
“It's high time we stopped talking about explosions and went to bed,” said Carstairs, arising. He put his arm across his wife's shoulders. “We've had all the explosions we can stand for one night, haven't we, dear? Come along, everybody. Off with you!”
“Hodges should be back any moment with the latest 'extra,'” said Louise. “Can't we wait just a few minutes, Uncle Dawy? He has been gone over an hour.”
The telephone bell in Mr. Carstairs' study rang. So taut were the nerves of the four persons in the adjoining room that they started violently. They looked at each other in some perplexity.
“Probably Hodges,” said Alfred, after a moment. “Shall I go, dad?”
“See who it is,” said Carstairs.
“Wrong number, more than likely,” said his wife, wearily. “Central has been unusually annoying of late. It happens several times every day. The service is atrocious.”
Young Carstairs went into the study and snatched up the receiver. Moved by a common impulse, the others followed him into the room, the face of each expressing not only curiosity hut a certain alarm.
“Yes, this is Mr. Carstairs' residence.... What?... All right.” He sat down on the edge of the library table and turned to the others. “Must be long distance. They're getting somebody.”
Alfred Carstairs was a tall, well-built young fellow of twenty. He bore a most remarkable, though perhaps not singular, resemblance to his mother. His eyes were dark, his thick hair a dead black, growing low on his forehead. The lips were full and red, with a whimsical curve at the corners denoting not merely good humour but a certain contempt for seriousness in others. He was handsome in a strong, hold way despite a strangely colourless complexion,—a complexion that may be described as pasty, for want of a nobler word. His voice was deep, with the guttural harshness of youth; loud, unmusical, not yet fixed by the processes of maturity. A big, dominant, vital boy making the last turn before stepping into full manhood. He was his mother's son,—his mother's boy.
His father, a Harvard man, had been thwarted in his desire to have his son follow him through the historic halls at Cambridge,—as he had followed his own father and his grandfather.
Sentiment was not a part of Alfred's makeup. He supported his mother when it came to the college selection. Together they agreed upon Columbia. She frankly admitted her selfishness in wanting to keep her boy at home, but found other and less sincere arguments in the protracted discussions that took place with her husband. She fought Harvard because it was not democratic, because it bred snobbishness and contempt, because it deprived the youth of this practical age of the breadth of vision necessary to success among men who put ability before sentiment and a superficial distinction. She urged Columbia because it was democratic, pulsating, practical.
In the end, Carstairs gave in. He wanted to be fair to both of them. But he