“All snug and fast out there,” proclaimed Larry, handing back the candle. “Now, girls and boys, out into the night. All right, Lindy?”
“Oh, better than all right.”
“On our way, then. We lock these hall doors from the outside, don’t we? Sing out if your ghostly cavalier makes a snatch at you, my child.”
“I’ll sing.…”
The bright square that was the door receded slowly into the dark square that was the hall, and the great room was abruptly a cave of darkness filled with strangeness and silence save for the distant crying of the storm.
Lindy, the candle high, called clearly, “Can you hear?”
“Aye, aye!”
The gay assent pierced the walls, barely muffled.
“‘Mirror, mirror, dark and bright,’” chanted Lindy, her eyes fast on the little shield, shining and mysterious as still water, “‘Show me the man I’ll wed tonight!’”
“‘Mirror, mirror, dark and bright
Show me the man I—’”
There was a sound behind her, a stir so slight that it was hardly motion—the sound of a footfall on the bare floor. A voice that was scarcely a whisper said,
“For God’s sake, don’t stop! Don’t let them know I’m here. Finish it out, then over again.”
… “‘I’ll wed to-night!’” sang the clear voice. “Kit, but how did you find—”
“Never mind that—never mind anything but what I’m saying to you. Sing again. Don’t move. Only listen.”
“‘Mirror, mirror, dark and bright!’” The clear, unwavering voice rose again obediently, “‘Show me the man …’”
“Lindy, are you listening? Who told you that I was in Baltimore with Sunny Leighton?”
She answered, docile and unswerving, her whisper matching his, “It was Doug—Doug King. Kit, why—”
She moved her hand, and for a moment, blinding and illuminating as a searchlight, the candle caught the face behind her in the dark pool, and the mirror slipped through her fingers with a long, shivering crash, its disastrous chimes echoing delicately through a silence more terrible than speech. Outside she could hear feet running, hands at the door, and the rising clamour of voices—but she stood motionless, voiceless, candle high, staring down at the glittering fragments that for one dreadful moment had caught and held his face.
Chapter IV
Over that outer tumult of voices and laughter she could hear Doug’s lusty impatience, strong above them all.
“The damned thing’s stuck. Pull the door toward you, and jerk it upward. Nothing wrong in there, Lindy?”
She lowered the candle, her eyes still on the shining heap, and forced through stiffened lips a voice so lightly amused that she raised a startled head to listen.
“Nothing—nothing at all. The wretched thing simply slipped out of my fingers.”
“You broke the mirror? Oh, Lindy darling, how dreadful!” Chatty’s wail of horrified amusement seemed to come from a great distance, but the girl who had broken the mirror shivered suddenly and strongly, as though she felt a cold wind at her back.
“Let me have a go at that lock, Larry. Put your knee against it there, and shove, All right—shove!”
The door creaked, yielded, and the bright square that was the hall swung slowly back into place. For a moment the crowding faces on the threshold caught a glimpse of the small wraith in her misty draperies, standing in a pool of flickering light with magic shattered at her feet; the candle held before her like a shield flickered, wavered, went out, surrendering the room to darkness as though it were its natural heritage: Lindy, safe in the darkness, covered her face with her hands, letting the candle slip unheeded.
“Lord, what went then? The lights are about a foot to the right of the door, aren’t they? Oh, sorry; who did I get then?”
“You got me,” commented Trudi bitterly. “And if it’s of the slightest interest, you’re the third guy that’s got me in the last three seconds. Why don’t you stop moving around like a mob scene, and try striking a match?”
“Joel—Joel Hardy, where are you?” Ray’s voice reached out frantically toward his reassuring laughter.
“Right here, you little nut. I’ll bet I left every blessed match upstairs in my coat, too. Hasn’t anyone got even a cigarette lighter?”
Kit’s voice inquired amiably from the hall, “Who’s crying for light? And what’s all the stampeding, anyway? Trying out a new game, Doug?”
Doug said, “No—an old one. Give us a light if you’ve got one.”
“Oh, Kit, she broke the mirror, and then we couldn’t unlock the door, and then Doug opened it, and her candle went out, and—” Chatty’s jubilant recital broke off abruptly as a flame flared blue and gold against the blackness, and Kit’s long fingers reached easily for the switch.
Lindy was on her knees gathering the shining fragments into the great square of chiffon that she called a handkerchief. Her voice rose cool and serene as a hidden spring.
“Could someone get a scrap-basket? No, no, under the table…. Kit, where in the world are you going with that raincoat?”
“I’m off on a rescue party. Lindy, can’t we leave you alone for a minute without you getting into mischief? Seven years’ bad luck for little girls that throw mirrors.”
“But it was such a little mirror,” explained Lindy demurely, shaking the contents of the chiffon square into the proffered basket. “And I didn’t especially throw it—it slipped. You aren’t going out into that storm, are you, Kit? But you simply can’t!”
“Can’t I, though! I’ll have you know that I’ve just discovered that dat ole debbil wind’s gone and taken my favourite steed and thrown it clear across the road against the stone wall. I’m going to get it under cover if it’s the last deed I do! Where’s the best place to park it, Lindy?”
“There’s a tool shed near the service quarters round on the other side. But, Kit, I do think you’re mad! Did the storm really blow it over?”
“That and a few other things. This here’s a storm that merits your respectful attention, my child. Cast an eye out yonder!”
“Oh, good heavens!” mourned Lindy, her eyes straining through the still tumultuous darkness. “It’s one of the biggest cedars, isn’t it? And the holly’s down, too—oh, I ask you, just look at my favourite holly by the gate!”
“Where’s all this fine frenzy of haste about your precious motorcycle disappeared to?” inquired Doug King, still lounging in the doorway.
“Still burning bright, Doug, thanks for reminding me. See you later, won’t I?”
Doug said smoothly, “I hardly see how you can avoid it. But I certainly understood that you couldn’t even wait to see Lindy through her trick before you dashed up to get your raincoat and hurled yourself into the night! It isn’t an optical illusion that you’re still here, is it?”
“No, no, old boy—it’s a credit to your powers of observation. Tool shed’s clear on the other side, Lindy? Hold everything, everybody, when I open this window!”
He was gone, and the black wind tore by him through the great room like a wild thing, whipping the brocade curtains aside as though they were flimsy muslin, throwing the crystal chandeliers into frantic jangling, lashing flying hair and skirts and scarves into a pandemonium of despairing shrieks and, scurryings. It took Larry and Tom and Joel to swing it to and make it fast, while Jill danced like an enchanted mænad, and Chatty, spinning like a top, shouted jubilance above the storm.
“Oh, Lindy, I do think it’s too divine! Listen, couldn’t we all get raincoats and dash out just for a minute? Lindy, do let’s!”
“Chatty, I honestly think that everyone has gone perfectly mad! I wish that some of you would burn up a little of that superfluous energy by pushing all these things against the walls; we’ll simply drench them when we start after the apples.”
Doug, who had not lifted a hand from the doorway, lifted his voice.
“Who had the keys to the chapel and this room … you, Larry?”
Larry, rolling up his shirt sleeves, answered amiably, “Have ’em now, if it comes to that. Why? D’you want them?”
“There aren’t any spare ones hanging around, are there?”
“There are not. I’m the locksmith and I’ll take an oath that there’s not an extra key in Lady Court.”
“Any of the others work any of these doors.”
“No, sir. Every lock its own key is our motto around here. Why these dark suspicions, Doug? Are you hinting at foul play amongst the merrymakers?”
“I’m hinting at nothing.” He strode to the door leading to the service quarters, gave it a vicious and ineffectual rattle, crossed to the door, still slightly ajar, that led to the chapel, and stood peering into the gloom beyond it with a long scowl.
“Hand me a candle, someone. I’d like to have a look at that door to the service quarters.”
“The chapel door at the back? Oh, Lindy, he doesn’t believe it’s locked!” Chatty’s irrepressible voice soared gleefully. “He thinks Kit came through it, and made you drop the mirror! You do, Doug, don’t you? Oh, Doug, do find out if it’s locked—hurry, hurry!”
Doug’s voice, from the darkness of the chapel, answered curtly, “It’s locked.” He came back slowly, the pin point of flame preceding him; it was not until he had come within a pace or so of Lindy that he halted, and flicked it out with a heavy finger.
Lindy, not raising her head from her struggle with a folding table that would neither fold nor stay open, lamented:
“I can’t make it do anything, and it’s pinched my fingers twice. There must be a catch somewhere—”
He asked heavily, “What’s Kit Baird to you, Lindy?”
Lindy murmured with a panic-stricken glance over her shoulder, “Oh, Doug, you aren’t going to start that again? Do be careful—someone will hear you, and I’m so mortally tired of scenes. Help me with this, won’t you?”
He took it from her hands, repeating implacably, “I asked you what Kit Baird was to you?”
She replied, in the silveriest of voices, but with some bright dark fire leaping behind her eyes, “Doug, that’s sheer impertinence. I’ve asked you to be careful for my sake; I ask you now to be careful for your own. If Kit comes back and finds that you are annoying me, I don’t think that you’ll find it particularly amusing.”
“So I’m annoying you, am I?” He balanced a little unsteadily on his heels, his face so deeply flushed that it looked swollen. “It wasn’t so long ago that you didn’t look on a little talk with me as annoying, my dear.”
Lindy, pale as moonlight, her eyes on the ugly flush, whispered despairingly, “Doug, please—please! I’ll talk to you later—not now. Later, I promise—”
“You’ve been promising things for quite a while, Lindy. I’m just a dash fed up on promises … jam yesterday and jam to-morrow, but never jam to-day, what? And now that the prodigal son’s returned, you’re off even jam to-morrow, it seems! But something tells me, Lindy, that I’m going to get that jam.”
“Doug, I’ve never promised you anything at all, except to think over all that pretty nonsense. I never dreamed that it was more than nonsense. I was so sure that you—”
He said in that thickened voice, “You were wrong; when I ask a woman to marry me, I’m not trying to divert her. And I count myself in great luck to be on hand this time to prevent a second Baltimore rendezvous in your family—”
She cried frantically, her hand over her mouth to smother the words, “Oh, how dare you! How dare you say that to me!”
“I dare say a good deal more than that to you, my girl. I dare say—”
Chatty’s voice cried from the window, “Here he comes! Tom, you open this window—you catch hold of it, too, Joel. Oh, Kit, are you drowned? O-o-oh, look out for those flowers on the spinet—catch them, somebody!”
Gavin Dart caught them, and Trudi caught a whirling sofa pillow, and Sherry caught someone’s silver scarf, blown like a leaf the full length of the room. Kit, shaking the rain from him in a glittering shower, his red hair turned sleek and bronze as a seal’s coat, lifted a commanding hand for silence.
“Hey, pipe down—pipe down there! I’ve got some news for you, my fine buckaroos, that’ll give you something to sing about from now to Christmas. Take a deep breath and drive your heels into the ground.… Boys and girls, the bridge is down.”
They stood staring at the bearer of tidings in a mild stupor, groping to fit the amazing words into the neat pattern of the house party. It was Trudi who first found her voice, but even she sounded slightly incoherent.
“The bridge? The bridge to Washington? The bridge on the road?”
“The very bridge, Trudi. The bridge at the foot of the hill, on the road to Washington.”
Lindy came forward swiftly.
“But, Kit, are you sure? How do you know? It’s almost half a mile away—you can’t know! You’re joking, aren’t you?”
“Joking when we may all be cannibals before we can fight our way out of this? No, no, my child, the bridge is down all right; I was trundling the old bus round to the end of the service quarters, and I turned the lights full on to get some idea of where I was headed; there’s a clean sweep just beyond the big gate where you can see down the hill to the creek, and as a conservative statement, I’d like to assure everyone here that the creek is at present about two and a half times the size of the Potomac at its widest point. It’s torn one of the piers on the south side clear away from its moorings, and dipped the whole thing so deep in the water that the only thing that could get over it now would be an airplane.”
Lindy asked, with a sudden desperate vibration in her voice, as though a harp string had been pulled too taut, “But, Kit—but, Kit, you aren’t saying that we’re really marooned, are you? Surely there must be some other way out?”
He chided, laughing, “Is this the far-famed Southern hospitality? What other way out do you suggest?”
She made a piteous clutch at lightness.
“Oh, you know how I’d adore having you for the next five years, but we only brought food for three days, and if supplies can’t get in to us, and we can’t get out to them … Couldn’t we possibly manage the North Trail, and get the Jersey turnpike that way? Joel and Larry have cars.”
“The North Trail? My good child, how long has it been since you were at Lady Court? It used to be fairly difficult for a good active pony to negotiate in fine weather, and what it must be after these rains! No, I imagine that we can count the North Trail well out of it.”
“Well, then, isn’t there any place that we could ford?”
Something in the small frozen smile that she turned to his mockery checked him abruptly; he gave her a long scrutiny that he transferred leisurely to Doug. And after a moment he remarked thoughtfully, “Well, if worst comes to worst, we can probably manage to get over that shallow bit to the west of the bridge in a day or so. Though now that I’ve made my grand effect and put the fear of God into all you convivial souls, I don’t mind telling you that a few stout lads from Washington with some planks and mortar can shore it up so that it’ll be passable by the time we’re ready to use it.”
The frozen smile melted to tremulous and exquisite relief.
“Kit, you’re outrageous! You mean that it will be passable before we even need it?”
“Well, passable but dangerous, let’s say. But don’t let’s forget to turn in a hurry call in the morning, for the love of the Lord; the quicker those birds get at it the better. This meeting is now called to order. Who’s fixing the apples for these tubs?”
“I was just going to. Look, here they are.” Lindy swept the contents of the wicker hamper into her fragile skirts, reckless with relief. “Pull the tubs out further toward the middle, Kit. The first man and the first girl to get one get a prize, and the last one pays a forfeit. Fair warning—I’m going to drop them in!”
The clustering faces drew back as the apples fell, little crystal fountains jetting high around each rosy ball.
“There! Everyone on their knees … we’ll take seven at this tub. Doug, you call the rules and start us off, will you?”
Doug bawled obligingly above the gathering tumult, “Now get this, and get it straight, you kids! Get to the side lines the minute you catch your apple, and stay there. Lock your two hands behind you and keep ’em locked; anyone using hands for any purpose whatever pays the worst forfeit we can think up. Now is that all straight as a string? I don’t want any come-backs and alibis around here after we once get started.”
“Hey, listen!” demanded Ray despairingly. “D’you mean that we have to kneel right down on this floor and catch those apples with our faces?”
“In a nutshell, child—you’ve put it in a nutshell. Everyone down, now, and when I yell ‘go,’ we’re off, without fear or favour. Now! On your mark.” Doug’s boom rose untroubled and elate. “One for the money, March Hares, two for the show! Three to make ready—and four for to GO! Watch yourself, there, Sheridan, watch yourself. Keep away from those swinging doors, Hanna! Gangway for the Black Douglas—Gangway!”
And suddenly the still beauty of the room, lonely and lovely and a little ominous in its remoteness, was shattered by pandemonium—the joyous and outrageous pandemonium of the last five minutes of recess echoing through the red schoolhouse; of the howls of Comanchee Indians piercing the Sabbath calm from the dusty barn loft; of the maniac shrieks of the pirate crew capturing the Spanish galleon in the darkest corner of the garret—and over that din of soul-satisfying shrieks no gentle voice protesting and imploring “Children! Children, for pity’s sake!” For this once the children could shriek their untrammelled souls out, uncontrolled and unmolested, with only the room to protest with faint echoes of delicate outrage.
“Sherry, you pig, that’s mine!” “Lay off me—lay off, will you?” “Ray—Ray, cut that out now!” “Quit shoving, will you?” “Ah, go chase yourself round the block!”
Over the shrieks and splutters and gurgles rose laughter, wild and unrestrained, and a mighty clamour of voices, indistinguishable in their hilarity, shrill and clear as youth itself.
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