The Crux | Page 2

tones of her sisters. "I always said he'd
never get through college."
"But who is Morton Elder, and what has he done?" asked Mrs.
Williams as soon as she could be heard.
This lady now proved a most valuable asset. She was so new to the
town, and had been so immersed in the suddenly widening range of her
unsalaried duties as "minister's wife," that she had never even heard of
Morton Elder. .
A new resident always fans the languishing flame of local conversation.
The whole shopworn stock takes on a fresh lustre, topics long trampled
flat in much discussion lift their heads anew, opinions one scarce dared
to repeat again become almost authoritative, old stories flourish freshly,
acquiring new detail and more vivid color.
Mrs. Lane, seizing her opportunity while the sisters gasped a
momentary amazement at anyone's not knowing the town scapegrace,
and taking advantage of her position as old friend and near neighbor of
the family under discussion, swept into the field under such headway
that even the Foote girls remained silent perforce; surcharged, however,
and holding their breaths in readiness to burst forth at the first opening.
"He's the nephew orphan nephew of Miss Elder who lives right back of
us our yards touch we've always been friends went to school together,
Rella's never married she teaches, you know and her brother he owned
the home it's all hers now, he died all of a sudden and left two children
Morton and Susie. Mort was about seven years old and Susie just a
baby. He's been an awful cross but she just idolizes him she's spoiled
him, I tell her."
Mrs. Lane had to breathe, and even the briefest pause left her stranded
to wait another chance. The three social benefactors proceeded to

distribute their information in a clattering torrent. They sought to
inform Mrs. Williams in especial, of numberless details of the early life
and education of their subject, matters which would have been treated
more appreciatively if they had not been blessed with the later news;
and, at the same time, each was seeking for a more dramatic emphasis
to give this last supply of incident with due effect.
No regular record is possible where three persons pour forth statement
and comment in a rapid, tumultuous stream, interrupted by cross
currents of heated contradiction, and further varied by the exclamations
and protests of three hearers, or at least, of two; for the one man present
soon relapsed into disgusted silence.
Mrs. Williams, turning a perplexed face from one to the other, inwardly
condemning the darkening flood of talk, yet conscious of a sinful
pleasure in it, and anxious as a guest, and a minister's wife, to be most
amiable, felt like one watching three kinetescopes at once. She saw, in
confused pictures of blurred and varying outline, Orella Elder, the
young New England girl, only eighteen, already a "school ma'am,"
suddenly left with two children to bring up, and doing it, as best she
could. She saw the boy, momentarily changing, in his shuttlecock flight
from mouth to mouth, through pale shades of open mischief to the
black and scarlet of hinted sin, the terror of the neighborhood, the
darling of his aunt, clever, audacious, scandalizing the quiet town.
"Boys are apt to be mischievous, aren't they?" she suggested when it
was possible.
"He's worse than mischievous," Mr. Lane assured her sourly. "There's a
mean streak in that family."
"That's on his mother's side," Mrs. Lane hastened to add. "She was a
queer girl came from New York."
The Foote girls began again, with rich profusion of detail, their voices
rising shrill, one above the other, and playing together at their full
height like emulous fountains.

"We ought not to judge, you know;" urged Mrs. Williams. "What do
you say he's really done?" Being sifted, it appeared that this last and
most terrible performance was to go to "the city" with a group of "the
worst boys of college," to get undeniably drunk, to do some piece of
mischief. (Here was great licence in opinion, and in contradiction.)
"Anyway he's to be suspended!" said Miss Rebecca with finality.
"Suspended!" Miss Josie's voice rose in scorn. "Expelled! They said he
was expelled."
"In disgrace!" added Miss Sallie.
Vivian Lane sat in the back room at the window, studying in the
lingering light of the long June evening. At least, she appeared to be
studying. Her tall figure was bent over her books, but the dark eyes
blazed under their delicate level brows, and her face flushed and paled
with changing feelings.
She had heard who, in the same house, could escape hearing the Misses
Foote? and had followed the torrent of description, hearsay, surmise
and allegation with an interest that was painful in its intensity.
"It's