Affinities, and Other StoriesRinehart, Mary Roberts
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Affinities, and Other Stories
Rinehart, Mary Roberts
Fiction; Short stories
"I didn't make the Ten Commandments," said a voice from the rear of the
room, "but I'll get hell just the same if I break them. What have you
got to say about that?"
Poppy was stumped for once. I believe it was the most humiliating moment
of her public life.
Luckily the lock broke just then, and we were hustled out of the room.
There was a crowd in the hall, and it was most disagreeable. I expected
to be arrested, of course--although I'd been arrested before, and if one
is sensible and eats, it is not so bad--but the crowd, feeling it had
the best of things with the Ten Commandments, was in high good humor.
They let us by without a word and the Sheriff himself stood on the steps
while we got into our car.
Just as Poppy's chauffeur got the engine started, the landlord ran out
and demanded the key. Poppy told the chauffeur to go on, in a frantic
voice, but he hesitated. All the majesty of British law was there on the
steps, and the gold coach was waiting. Of course, to be arrested for
disturbing the peace with a suffrage speech is one thing, but theft is
another. I threw a pleading glance at the Sheriff, and he came slowly
down the steps. Men with wands kept the crowd back. The fat coachman
with the wig did not turn his head, but the footman at the coach door
leered and avenged his calves. Even Poppy went a little pale.
"Quick," said the Sheriff, ferociously, in a low tone, "give me
something that looks like a key, and then get away as quickly as you
can."
I opened my pocketbook. The only thing that was even the size of a key
was my smelling salts bottle. So I gave him that, and he covered it with
his big hand. Then, still frowning savagely, he made us a lordly gesture
to move on.
(Have you ever been in the Forum Club building that Poppy decorated? The
staircase walls are wonderful--crowds of women, poor and old, young and
rich with clouds around them and so on, all ascending toward a saintly
person with a key--Saint Peter, or somebody. Well, the saint is the
Sheriff at Guildford, and the key is a salts bottle, if you look
closely.)
We slept at Bournemouth that night. Or rather, we didn't sleep. Poppy
sat up half the night trying to think of an answer to the ten
commandment thing. She said she'd get that again--she felt it--and what
was she to say? I had recovered the key and my good humor by that time,
but I could not help much. Seeing her so disturbed, I had not the heart
to tell her what I suspected. But I was sure that I had seen Vivian
Harcourt on the edge of the crowd at Guildford. It would have made her
furious to think that she was under any sort of espionage. But Vivian
was following us, I felt confident, with enough money to bail us out if
she did anything reckless. He knew her, you see.
That is why all the rest of it seems so silly. Vivian knew Poppy; he
knew her convictions, and her courage. For him to do the baby thing
later was stupid. And anyhow, if it was hard on him, what was it for me?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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