In all high-strung Irish souls there is a bit of the old wife, the
foreteller; the gift of prescience; and Kitty possessed this in a mild
degree. Something held her here, when for a dozen reasons she should
have gone elsewhere.
She strained the coffee, humming a tune out of The Mikado, the revival
of which she had seen lately:
My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time
To make the punishment fit the crime.
The punishment fit the crime.
And make the prisoner pent
Unwillingly represent
A source of innocent merriment.
Of innocent merriment!
And there you were! To make the punishment fit the crime. Wall in the
Bolsheviki, the I.W.W.'s, the Red Socialist, the anarchists--and let
them try it for ten years. Those left would be glad enough to embrace
democracy and sanity. The poor benighted things, to imagine that they
were going forward there in Russia! What kind of mentality was it that
could conceive a blessing to humanity in the abolition of baths and
work? And Cutty felt sorry for them. Well, as for that, so did Kitty
Conover; and she would continue feeling sorry for them so long as they
remained thousands of miles away. But next door!
"Grapefruit, eggs on toast, and coffee; mademoiselle is served!" she
cried, gayly, sitting down and attacking her breakfast with the zest of
healthy youth.
Often the eyes are like the lenses of a camera minus the sensitized
plate; they see objects without printing them. Thus a dozen times
Kitty's glance absently swept the range and the racks on each side of
the stovepipe, one rack burdened with an empty pancake jug and the other
cluttered with old-fashioned flatirons; but she saw nothing.
She was carefully reviewing the events of the night before. She could
not dismiss the impression that Cutty knew Stefani Gregor or had heard
of him; and in either case it signified that Gregor was something more
than a valet. And decidedly Two-Hawks was not of the Russian peasantry.
By the time she was ready to leave for the office the Irish blood in
her was seething and bubbling and dancing. She knew she would do crazy,
impulsive things all day. It was easy to analyze this exuberance. She
had reached out into the dark and touched danger, and found a new thrill
in a humdrum world.
The Great Dramatist had produced a tremendous drama and she had watched
curtain after curtain fall from the wrong side of the lights. Now she
had been given a speaking part; and she would be down stage for a moment
or two--dusting the furniture--while the stars were retouching
their make-up. It was not the thought of Cutty, of Gregor, of Johnny
Two-Hawks, of hidden treasure; simply she had arrived somewhere in the
great drama.