Watchfires Read Free Page A

tone with the family, but it was perfectly clear that her concession could go no further than that.
    The short rest of breakfast passed in the same silence. Rosalie and Dexter read the newspaper, and the boys departed for school. Their father was about to rise to leave for his daily walk to Wall Street when Bridey hurried in with the unexpected news that Mr. Charles Fairchild was waiting to see him in his study.

2

    "C HARLEY ?" Rosalie asked in surprise. "Tell him to come in here."
    "Please, mum, he said he wanted to see Mr. Fairchild alone."
    "I hope there's no trouble with Annie or little Kate!"
    "I'll let you know at once if there is," Dexter assured her.
    He found Charley pacing up and down in his study, obviously in great agitation. Charley was Dexter's first cousin, as well as Rosalie's brother-in-law; he was also a junior partner in the family law firm. Having lost his father early, he had grown up to look upon Dexter, although only six years his senior, as a kind of guardian. Charley was handsome and blond, with soft blue eyes and curly hair, and, when he was not drinking, he seemed younger than his thirty-four years. But his marriage with the beautiful Annie Handy, promoted by Dexter, had not worked out as the guardian had hoped. Annie was spoiled and easily bored, and Charley seemed to be becoming dependent on parties and drinking.
    "Will you read that!" he exclaimed shrilly, throwing a piece of note paper at Dexter. "Will you just kindly read
that!
"
    "What is it?"
    "Read it! It came by hand for Annie last night. The writer obviously didn't know she'd gone to her father's. I opened it, thinking it might be something important. It was. But not the kind of something important that a husband can handle. Except by kicking his wife's ass the hell out of his home!"
    Dexter put the letter down at once and stared coldly at Charley's flushed countenance. "I can imagine nothing that would justify such disgusting language about your wife."
    "Well, read the letter, damn it! Judge for yourself."
    Dexter continued to eye his cousin fixedly for a moment and then, slowly, took up the letter. He read the following in a flowing, thick script, not devoid of a certain showy distinction:
Darling, what can you mean? You're not going back on your word? If I can't believe in you, what can I believe in? Tell me you're true! Your faithful, tortured Juley.
    Dexter's left hand crept slowly up to his heart. Then, seeing Charley's red eyes fixed on him, he drummed on his chest with his fingers as if he were simply preoccupied. But there was an ugly pain there, and he swallowed hard.
    "Juley?"
    "Jules Bleeker. You know, the journalist? The one who writes society pieces for the
Observer?
"
    When Dexter at last found his voice it was to exclaim, "But that man's the most obvious kind of bounder! We met him at the Van Rensselaers'. He's not even a poor excuse for a gentleman. I told Lily she was going too far."
    "Oh, he gets around. Society has no standards anymore. People just want to be amused. And Bleeker, I suppose, can be amusing when he wants to be. I couldn't take the man seriously at first. When Lily's fat old mother-in-law tucked her lorgnette into her big bosom, he actually leaned over and murmured, 'Happy lorgnette!' He and Annie were always giggling together in corners. I never dreamed there was anything serious between them. He looked too much like a ladies' man to
he
a ladies' man, if you know what I mean. Big and dark and slinky-eyed."
    Dexter shuddered. He brought back the image of Bleeker with an effort. Oh, yes, he remembered the man! Bleeker had even rather made up to him. He was intelligent, certainly, and curious, and polite, too polite. He was somehow soft as well as crude, with the affectations of a dandy and the build of a bull.
    "And you deduce from this...?" Here Dexter dropped the note on his desk as if it were something alive and venomous. "You deduce from this florid epistle that Annie has actually...?"
    "Fallen?"