“You’re a disarming little beggar, aren’t you?” inquired Trudi somewhat rhetorically. “I can already feel you worming your way into our affections. As one purist to another, however, I don’t believe that fascinating was the right word for Sunny—it sounds too darned deliberate. Would you call primroses fascinating?”
“Was Sunny like primroses?”
“She had hair like primroses—that soft, pale yellow—and she was little, too, and sweeter than spring. You see, if she could make me talk like this what she must have done to Joel and Sherry and Doug and Kit and every man that ever laid eyes on her.”
Hanna Dart said gently and sadly, “We could tell you about her for a hundred years, Rachel, and not make you see her. No one ever danced like Sunny; no one ever laughed like her or sang like her. When she and Kit waltzed together, everyone in the room used to stop to watch them, and when she laughed it was simply too lovely to be true.”
Ray, a little shiver in her voice, asked desolately, “And she was drowned when she was only nineteen?”
It seemed suddenly strange to be alive with all that loveliness dead.
“She drowned herself when she was nineteen,” said Trudi, her face abruptly grim and tired.
“Oh, Trudi, no one ever really knew!” murmured Hanna. “She might have fallen—there’s an awfully sharp drop just below the falls, isn’t there, Lindy?”
Lindy, her face turned to the shadows, said in a voice so low that it was almost lost, “Yes.”
“I thought that you had all grown up by now,” commented Trudi, ruthless and scornful. “Lindy, do you think she stepped off that nice sharp drop?”
“No,” said the small lost voice.
“There’s enough mystery about her death without adding to it,” commented Trudi trenchantly. “Certainly everyone knows that she had some dreadful shock two or three days before—before it happened. I saw her the night before Hanna’s party… she was like a child caught in a nightmare; something had happened that made her realize that the human race wasn’t precisely the superb affair that she believed it to be. And Sunny wouldn’t have known what to do in a rotten world, so she slipped out of it and left it to the rest of us.”
“Was she Jill’s younger sister?” inquired Ray, her voice still desolate. It would have been a pleasanter world with Sunny in it.
“She was a year younger, but she wasn’t her sister, as a matter of fact. Half-sister, though hardly anyone knew it then. Jill idolized her, and I suppose that none of them wanted the ravishing Mrs. Leighton’s past affairs explored more than necessary.”
“I think that a lot of that may have been very unfair gossip,” murmured Hanna, her lovely, tranquil eyes vaguely concerned.
“Gossip my eye! It wasn’t gossip that Jill’s real name was Cavendish, and that Mrs. Cavendish ran off to South America with an Englishman called Leighton with Jill tucked under her arm when the wretched mite was six months old, was it? It wasn’t gossip that young Cavendish blew out his brains and left her free to marry Leighton, was it? It wasn’t gossip that Leighton was killed in a railroad accident, that when Cavendish’s old father died, he left every cent of his fortune to Jill, and that Sunny and Mrs. Leighton were as dependent on Jill as though they were paupers? That wasn’t gossip, was it?”
“No,” said Lindy from the shadows. “That wasn’t gossip.”
“But I’ll wager that everyone in Washington but Lindy thought that Sunny was Jill’s own sister till they dug all this up at the inquest. I know that I did, and I,” confessed Mrs. Sheridan, “am not one of those little Japanese monkeys that speak no evil, hear no evil, and see no evil. If any gossip is flying around I’m crouched right in the vicinity, all ready to sink my teeth in it and worry it like a bone! Now, if it’s all right with you, Ray, and seeing as how this is supposed to be a bright, giddy, hilarious reunion, suppose we pass lightly on to another topic? Such as what in Hades is keeping those brave lads out there with their treasure trove, and how cold you have to get before you lose all sensation and the robins begin to cover you up?”
“I see them!” announced Chatty triumphantly, her snub nose pressed against the window pane. “They’re just coming around the corner—mercy, they’ve brought the wood pile with them! They have to go slowly, because they’re absolutely doubled up with the wind; it’s blowing a gale, honestly! Listen, they’re singing.”
Faint and far off came the lusty chorus, and Trudi cocked an attentive ear.
“When I walks dat levee round, round, round, round,” she hummed deeply and reminiscently. “When I walks dat levee round, round, round, round …”
Her brief skirts swung free and wide as her swaggering strut circled wider—wider. The chorus outside was almost on her heels.
“‘When I walks dat levee ROUND,
I’m lookin’ for a bully
And dat bully mus’ be found!’”
They were in the room, with the wind at their heels, stamping mightily in her circling wake, drowning out her lighter voice, prancing, exultant, crimson-faced, the frosty air still in their eyes.
“‘When I walks dat levee round, round, round, round …’”
“Come along, girls—step lively there, Ray—everybody in, high, wide, and fancy does it—”
“‘When I walks dat levee round …’”
Ray lifted her voice valiantly, stamping and shouting with the best of them, carolling lustily in the wake of these hilarious children, whose lifted voices drowned the wind, whose arms were full of the logs that meant warmth and light, whose laughter swept about her, scattering the shadows before it.
“‘I’m looking for a bully and dat bully can’t be found! …’”
“Jill Leighton, whatever in the world—here, give her a hand, Doug! What in the world is it?”
“It’s the tub—for the apples!” Jill was as rosy and breathless as any of them. “I found it in the closet under the stairs—all the Hallowe’en things are there; the flour for the ring, and the mirror and the candles, and two old jack-o’-lanterns and driftwood for the fire. Lindy, it’s going to take simply buckets to fill this thing.”
“Well, let’s stick it over there now and get at the fire, shan’t we? We aren’t going to bob before supper. It isn’t really properly dark yet.”
“Oh, Kit,” cried Chatty exultantly, “I found your guitar; it still has the red ribbons on it—look! Let’s have one song before we get ready for supper. Lindy—Lindy, can’t we?”
“Oh, let’s have two; that’s an inspiration. Want matches, Kit?”
The fire builder, from his knees on the hearth, shook his head.
“Thanks, I’m amply provided with everything, apparently, including a guitar. There, is that the best fire since the little affair in Chicago, or isn’t it?”
“It is, it is! Quick, someone, turn out the lights. Cushions, everyone! Kit?”
In the friendly darkness a voice at Jill Leighton’s elbow asked quietly:
“Another cushion, Jill?”
She turned her face in the direction from which it came, saying in a voice so low that it was barely audible:
“No.” After a long moment she spoke again, lower still. “Larry, if I had known that you were going to be here, I should never have come.”
The man said quietly, “I know. That’s why I told Lindy that I wasn’t coming.”
Across the room someone called impatiently, “Got the guitar, Kit?”
The guitar itself answered, a small, silvery plaint at the touch of fingers long forgotten.
“Gosh, that’s terrible! Hold everything while I have another go at it. How’s that, Joel?”
“Ah!” fretted the guitar softly. “Ah! Ah-h!”
“Filthy,” pronounced Joel judicially. “Worse than that. Don’t pay any attention to it—it sounds to me as though it were doing it on purpose. Let’s have ‘The Policeman’s Child.’”
“No, I want ‘The Drunkard’s Remorse’!”
The fire, leaping, soaring, dancing in the great
chimney, lit up the ring of faces, flushed with warmth, with laughter—with memory, suddenly joyous.
“Oh, Kit, the one about the Jack of Diamonds.”
“All in good time,” said the red-headed young man. “In good time, if and when you behave yourselves. In the meantime, peace and be still. Want your song, Lindy?”
“Yes, please,” said a shadowy voice from the shadows.
“All right—catch!” He leaned his head against the corner of the mantel and lifted his voice—a voice as effortless, as careless, as haunting as the tune, drifting up across the years and the mountains to ring once more through Lindy’s room.
“‘Down in the valley,
The valley below—”
Lean your head over,
Hear the wind blow.’”
From what far hills did it come, the little song? What far-off girl had bent her head at its behest?
“‘Hear the wind blow, dear,
Hear the wind blow—
Lean your head over,
Hear the wind blow.’”
Against the coolness of the marble his hair burned like bright coals—his eyes like dark ones.
“‘If you don’t love me,
Love whom you please,
Put your arms’round me
Give my heart ease—
“‘Put your arms’round me
Ere it’s too late—
Put your arms’round me—
Feel my heart break.’”
Feel it break, feel it break, sang the guitar, all the forlorn gallantry in the world turning its silvery mockery to tears.
“‘Roses love sunshine,’” sang Kit Baird, his eyes on those far-off hills,
“‘Violets love dew,
Angels in Heaven
Knows I love you!
“‘Knows I love you, dear,
Knows I love you—
Angels in Heaven
Knows—I—love—you.…’”
It drifted off as lightly and aimlessly as it had come, leaving not even an echo behind it in the great room, but in the leaping circle of the flames no other voice was lifted, no finger stirred, as though those who listened were loath to have it go. It was the singer who broke the spell.
“That’s that!” he said briefly, swinging to his feet. “The rest will keep till after supper; they’ve kept ten years. Are we dressing. Lindy?”
“Of course we’re dressing,” said Trudi sternly. “How is anyone going to know what perfectly divine clothes we’ve got if we don’t dress? The March Hares never go native, and I’ve got a lacquer-red brocade dinner dress in that bag that is calculated to make strong men shriek and clutch at their hearts.”
“Me, too!” concurred Chatty blithely. “Only mine are going to shriek with horror and surprise. Outside of the fact that mine isn’t red and isn’t brocade, and that it looks more like a bungalow apron than a dinner dress it’s a perfectly lovely little affair. I can’t wait to get into it!”
If she had turned her curly head an inch she would have encountered something in the tense whiteness of Tom’s face that would have given her pause; but it was Trudi who turned—and then averted her eyes quickly as though she had cheated.
“Oh, you’ve got curly hair,” she replied, swiftly careless. “If I had curly hair I’d slip into the eldest child’s rompers, tie a blue sash around my tummy, and let it go at that. Your nose turns up, too. Some people in this vale of tears have all the luck! Come on, Sheridan, if someone doesn’t get started we’ll all be drifting back in time for a nice late breakfast. Where do we go, Lindy?”
“East India room. You have the Half Moon, Doug. Joel and Ray in the Cubby Hole and the Darts in Seventh Heaven. Kit, you and Larry have the Ghost’s Walk, next to me, because I don’t dare put anyone else in it. That’s all of us, isn’t it?”
“Oh, Lindy, are you taking the Priest’s room?” Chatty’s guileless voice lifted in amazement. “That’s always been Jill’s and—”
“I know—I’m being selfish.” Lindy’s soft serenity bridged the stricken pause. “I’ve always coveted it, and I’m too old now to be a perfect hostess. Jill has Journey’s End. Help me with this bag, will you, Doug? Coming, Kit?”
“As soon as I get this built up. My professional pride isn’t satisfied; by the time you sybarites get back you’ll be needing ice-packs and palm-leaf fans.” He knelt on the hearth, flinging a last gibe over his shoulder into the jubilant tumult that was dissolving itself into a confusion of racing footsteps, slamming doors, and receding clamour.
“Hey, Larry, put some salt on the ghost’s tail and keep him for me, will you?”
From the distance came an answering shout, a final burst of laughter, the echo of the last door … silence. The man on the hearth bent forward, his hands as light and skilful as though it were a heart that he was teaching to flame into gayety and beauty instead of a fire. Deep as he was in his task, at the light step behind him he lifted his head and turned to flash the girl in the shadows that unforgotten smile. And as of old she stopped to greet it, hand against her heart, suddenly and startlingly pale.
He asked easily, “Forgotten something, little Lindy?”
Lindy, steadying herself against the end of the couch, replied as easily in her velvety little voice, “Yes, gloves and a purse. Seen them anywhere?”
“Not yet.” He was on his feet in one swift move. “Here, let’s have some light and we’ll institute a search party.”
But at that she lifted her hand. “No, no, the fire’s light enough. I think I left them over by the window.”
Kit, leaning against the mantel, asked in that mocking tone that was still a caress, “D’you put them on when you fix your hair? Or did you want to buy something before dinner?”
Even that did not colour the small face. She said tranquilly, “It has my powder. Kit, look, that’s a strange sky, isn’t it? What does it mean?”
“Trouble,” he said, not stirring. “Storm. There’s been a wind rising ever since we got here.”
“That’s why it got so inky dark a little while ago, isn’t it? See, that jagged streak behind the cedars is as red as fire.”
“Oh, redder; red as blood.” And as the slim hand on the dim brocade tightened, he laughed. “Still hate blood, Lindy?”
“Oh, it’s worse than hating. I can’t stand it. That sounds idiotic, but it’s really an understatement! Something in me dies a little every time I even hear the word.”
“Remember the time I cut my wrist in Rock Creek?”
“Yes,” said Lindy, her eyes still on the strange streak in the sky, “I remember.”
“You tied it up with as pretty a little bandage as anyone ever made out of four inches of pocket hand-kerchief, and then pitched straight over at my feet as though someone had pushed you.”
“I remember.”
“You very nearly scared the lights out of me,” murmured Kit, tilting his red head back against the mantel, and drawing a long luxurious breath of the aromatic smell of dancing flame. “Lord, what a—”
“Kit, this catch is stuck—help me, won’t you? I want to smell the frost in the box-trees.”
“No frost to-night, my lamb, not with that wind. Still, anything to help a lady!”
He was at her side in three long strides; a second later the wind, cold and sweet and wild, was all about them.
“There!” Her voice rose, softly triumphant. “You can smell it now—oh, heavenly! What do they call it—the odour of eternity?”
“I doubt whether eternity smells so sweet to some of us,” said Kit Baird.
“The last time I saw you we were standing here.” The little voice was suddenly edged with magic. “Right here, only you were—closer. It was a green sky, so still and clear and sad, and there was one star. I wished on it—”
Suddenly his fingers were linked about hers, careless and possessive. His low laughter was in her ears.
“Lindy, Lindy, those gloves… wherever did you put those gloves?”
“You
knew all the time, didn’t you, Kit? Did it amuse you that I was so shameless as to leave them? So shameless as to come back? They’re on the couch, in the left-hand corner. Get them, will you?”
He said, still laughing, “No.”
“Ten years ago …” she whispered. “The star was right over those holly trees…. I thought that you were going to kiss me.”
“I thought so, too,” he told her. “What did you wish on the star, little Lindy?”
“I wished that you would kiss me,” said the small lovely voice.
“Let’s find the star again, Lindy—look, over the holly, isn’t that something shining?”
“You were bending your head,” the dreaming voice told him. “And I was lifting mine. And then, in the hall, someone started playing ‘Underneath the Stars.’ And that was that.…”
“And that,” said Kit Baird, slowly and evenly as their hands swung apart, “was that.… Not forgotten Sunny yet, Lindy?”
Lindy, pale in the shadows, pulled the dark furs closer.
“It’s cold. Close the window—come back to the fire.” After a long moment she said, in a stilled tone of wonder, as though the question itself were a reply, “Forgotten Sunny?” And after a longer moment still, with her hands stretched out to the dancing flames: “Have you, Kit?”
He said, “No. Not in this world. Nor the next either, if the devil gives us one to play with.… Pretty hands you’ve got, little Lindy.”
She looked at them as though she were seeing them for the first time, wrung them hard together, and asked in a small voice shaken with something deeper than terror, “Was it you that made Sunny kill herself, Kit?”
Chapter II
“I made Sunny kill herself?” He stared down at her, his face frozen to a white mask of incredulity. “I? Sunny never looked at me, never thought of me, never knew I was there unless there was music playing. What in God’s name made you think that?”
“Something—something I heard.… Were you in Baltimore the Saturday before Sunny died, Kit?”
“Yes. I was there with—” He pulled up abruptly. “Let’s get this straight. Someone told you that I was there with Sunny?”
“Sunny was there, Kit. She was there with a man. She motored over from Washington to meet him—she thought he was going to marry her. It wasn’t you?”
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