“Then the coryphée wasn’t painted for that otherwise perfect room?”
“I’ll say she wasn’t. Nicholas Hoyt’s portrait hung there, Nick in the colors of his hunt club when he was Master of Fox Hounds. Doubtless you have heard of him?”
Was he testing her knowledge of conditions here? “One thing I haven’t heard,—your name. Do you realize how frightfully handicapped I am when I want to speak to you? Of course I could say, ‘Hi, Jed!’ but it is rather too soon in our acquaintance, even for these informal times, isn’t it?”
“Sheering away from the family complications, aren’t you? Either you are a superb actress, or you really didn’t know that Rousseau is claiming the Hoyt estate.”
Sandra looked across the table at Philippe engrossed in conversation with his hostess. “Believe it or not, I really didn’t know,” she responded curtly.
“I’m on my knees in apology. I believe you. I’ll bet Mrs. Pat has tried to justify herself with you already. She knows she’s wrong so she is clutching her mistake tighter; that’s human nature.” He twisted the stem of a crystal goblet. “My name is Langdon. Jed, to you,—I hope.”
His laugh was delightful. If he had not commenced their acquaintance with suspicion of her, she could have liked him immensely, Sandra told herself.
“Are you here for the races?”
“Partly for the races. Of course you know that Mrs. Pat went the limit when she championed Rousseau’s cause. She not only took him in here but took his stallion, Iron Man, with his jockey and trainer into her stables.”
“Really! Did Philippe bring Iron Man? That gray will lead the field.”
“Rousseau has another champion in you, all right, Miss Duval.”
“He has. He is my friend. He was wonderful to my father and me last winter. Some one was forging Dad’s name to cheques, and when … what is it, Mr. Langdon? Are you faint?”
Even Jed Langdon’s lips were white. His laugh was shaky.
“Don’t notice me, please, Miss Duval. I’m quite all right now. I have a turn like that occasionally. Heart. Forged cheques! So it’s being done in London too! Hope you didn’t lose much money?”
“The bank made good—but I pity the forger if ever he is caught.”
“How did Rousseau help?”
“He went with me to our consul; Dad was not able to go. He was most kind to take the trouble when he was terribly worried about his own affairs. Not one of his horses made good. The English tracks are so different from the American that it was not to be wondered at.”
“He was in luck to be able to help. Aiding beauty in distress didn’t go out when the new woman came in. Will you excuse me for a few moments, Mrs. Pat? Got to get a man on long distance at this hour or not at all.”
“Sure, Jed, but don’t make any heavy date for this evening. I’m counting on you for contract after dinner,” his hostess reminded.
Sandra’s eyes followed Langdon as he left the room. Some of his color had returned but he was still too white. Tragic that a man so fit as he seemed should have a tricky heart. His was not the only tragedy which was being dragged into the spotlight tonight. One felt Mrs. Newsome’s unhappiness as her wistful eyes sought those of the young man slouched at the head of the table, as she listened eagerly for his voice. From her tirade earlier in the afternoon, it was easy to deduct that Nicholas Hoyt was giving his uncle’s widow the cold shoulder because she had married a jockey. What business was it of his? He must be detestable. Serve him right if he lost the estate. If only Philippe could prove his claim! Could she help?
Jed Langdon returned as the last delectable course was being served.
“Better?” Sandra asked.
“Okay. Curious the way those darned attacks come and go. Sometimes I wonder if I am having proper advice. There’s a man in France … sure, I’ll play with you, Mrs. Pat. Luck at cards, like industrial activity, swings through a cycle; it is time you and I were on the up-and-up.”
In the living room after dinner Estelle Carter and Curtis Newsome drifted to the piano. Philippe Rousseau was authoritatively discussing horse-breeding with his hostess; Jed Langdon was busy at the cigarette table.
Sandra opened the French window and slipped out to the terrace grotesquely patterned with the shadows of prim box-trees. The last glow of sunset color tinted the horizon; faint sounds rustled in shrubs and hedges. A perfect night. Her mind was a jumble of impressions; it was time she straightened them out. Was it only this morning that she had hesitantly entered the office of Damon and Hoyt? That episode seemed years behind her.
Voices drifted through the open windows, overtones to the sensuous rhythm of the Barcarolle from the Tales of Hoffman, played softly with exquisite feeling. Was Estelle Carter at the piano, or Curtis Newsome? Whoever it was had the touch of an artist.
She leaned against a pillar and drew a long breath of the heavenly, scented air. Flowers were pale blurs in the garden. The spray of a distant fountain glittered in the moonlight like an eruption of blue diamonds before it showered down to tinkle on the gleaming surface of a basin. From the stables drifted a faint whinny, followed by a soft reply. The sky hung low like a gold-spangled canopy.
On a night like this under the stars her father seemed very near. Sandra’s throat tightened. Where was he? They had been gay and understanding comrades for years. If he had shaken his head at her stormy outbursts, he had been tenderly sympathetic with her quick, passionate repentances. Now he was gone and she was like thousands of others in these United States, a girl on her own.
“Coffee?”
“Philippe! How you startled me! No coffee, thank you. I ought to go in. Mrs. Newsome may want me. I am here to help her, you know.”
Rousseau caught up a dark velvet cape lying across a chair. “I told her that I wanted to talk with you, that I had not seen you since your father—went. So that’s all right. Huckins is setting out the card table. Mrs. Pat is a contract addict. Let’s go down to the pool. We can talk there without being overheard. Sometimes I suspect that the very walls of this house have ears.”
“The pool looks like a mammoth black mirror flecked with gold stars. I’d love to get nearer.”
Side by side they crossed the terrace, descended the broad steps, followed the garden path. Once Sandra stopped to press her cheek against the golden, fragrant heart of a mammoth pink rose. Rousseau piled a scarlet cushion upon a white one on the parapet and threw the wrap over her shoulders.
“Better keep this on. It is apt to be chilly here; sometimes little mists float up from the river.”
He seated himself beside her. The flame of his cigarette-lighter illuminated his face for an instant, long enough for Sandra to note his contracted brow, the deep lines etched between his nose and mouth. Did being a long lost son make him look like that?
“What was Langdon saying to you in the library before dinner?”
Suspicion stuck out of his soft voice like a jagged rock in a smooth stream. The question brought her thoughts, which had been lazily luxuriating in the scent and hushed beauty of the night, right-about-face.
“What was Mr. Langdon saying? My mind is still rocking from the shock. He said that you claim to be the son of Mark Hoyt, to be the child who, it was supposed, died in France years ago.”
“Claim! I am the son of Mark Hoyt.”
“How do you know? What proof have you? Mrs. Newsome told me—”
“What?”
“Of Mark Hoyt’s first marriage; the death of the child; the flight of the nurse with her lover; that a man had appeared who claimed to be Philip Hoyt. I almost had the jitters when Mr. Langdon told me that you were the claimant. When Dad used to tell you of the exploits of the Three Musketeers of Melton, talk of Mark Hoyt, why didn’t you tell us that you were his son? At least you might have hinted that you had heard of him.”
“I wasn’t talking then. I was investigating. My mother—the woman who through the years I had thought my mother—Anne Pardoe, told me as she was dying that I was
Mark Hoyt’s son, that at the time of his accident she was so terrified at thought of the consequences to her when the boy’s parents should see him so cruelly scarred, that, intimidated by her lover, Raoul Rousseau, who had to leave the country furtively, she had fled with him and the child to South America, leaving a mound and a letter behind her.”
“What a hideous, brutal thing to do!”
“A few years later the Rousseaus moved north to Kentucky, bought an old plantation, boarded and bred horses. They brought me up as their son. In spite of the fact that they spoke French to each other, they insisted that I learn to speak, read, and write English. Now I understand why. They meant sometime to tell me the truth about my parents.”
“I can’t believe it’s real. It sounds too old-fashioned, too like nineteenth century melodrama.”
“Old-fashioned! Don’t you read the papers? Don’t you know that a case was recently tried in New York courts with thirteen ‘rightful heirs’ fighting for a fortune? Each one claimed that he was the long-lost son.”
“Do you resemble either Mark Hoyt or his wife?”
“I have her dark eyes—the Hoyt eyes are gray—and hair like his. Anne Pardoe told me that I looked as he did when he was young. Even if I didn’t, lack of resemblance to parents counts for nothing, often a child is a throw-back to a great-great-grandfather or a colateral.”
“What does the present heir, Nicholas Hoyt, think of your story?”
“He is fighting it, of course. Who wouldn’t try to hang on to a fortune? Two months before I came here, I wrote to him telling him what had been told me. Later I came in good faith with my mother’s—Anne Pardoe’s—diary in which day by day she had recorded her emotions of guilt and terror. I supposed that would be enough to establish my claim but Hoyt’s lawyers refused to accept it as the sole evidence. Not until then did I engage counsel and bring suit to recover my inheritance.”
“Of course you will come into your own, Philippe, but I can’t quite understand why Mrs. Newsome invited you to stay at Seven Chimneys until your claim had been proved. It seems so disloyal to her first husband’s nephew.”
There was assurance and self-satisfaction in the way Rousseau stroked his clipped dark mustache.
“That was easy. I discovered that she was furious with Nicholas Hoyt because he had objected to her marrying one of his uncle’s young jockeys. I didn’t jump into this fight without having my campaign planned to the minutest detail. When I wrote Mrs. Newsome asking if I might come, I asked also if I might bring Iron Man to enter him against Nicholas Hoyt’s Fortune in the Charity Races; then I had her cold.”
“The contest may help with her, but won’t it make Nicholas Hoyt more determined than ever to discredit you?”
“What can he do against that diary?”
“Has the Court passed on it?”
He smothered an imprecation. “No. They call this a hustling country! Try to push a law case along and see how fast it is. We come to trial the day after the big races. Hoyt’s counsel asked for more time. Time! Time! As if time would help them. Langdon is one of the lawyers.”
“He is! That accounts for his third-degree manner. He suspects that I have come to Seven Chimneys to help you, Philippe.”
“Didn’t you come here for that purpose?”
It was more an assertion than a question. Something in his voice brought Sandra to her feet.
“No! No! How could I know anything about your claim? Dad gave me a letter to his old friend, Ben Damon. Mr. Damon offered me this position. It sounded interesting and I took it. I hadn’t a suspicion that you were within a thousand miles of this town.”
“You’ll have a hard time making Hoyt and his lawyers believe that.”
“They can’t be so—”
“Mrs. Newsome would like you to take a hand at cards, sir. Mr. Langdon has been called to the phone for long distance.”
Sandra’s breath caught as she looked at the butler. His lips were set in a thin, pinched smile. A hateful smile. Had he heard Philippe’s intimation that she had come to help him? She felt as if a net were closing about her.
“All right, Huckins! I’ll come.”
Rousseau waited until the servant had disappeared as silently as he had materialized from the shadows, before he complained irritably:
“I don’t trust that butler. He’s too smug. Let’s forget him. Now that you are here, you will help me, won’t you?”
“If I can without being disloyal to my employer.”
“You can’t hurt her. Whether I am judged the heir or whether Nicholas Hoyt is, will make no difference to her materially. The law would uphold the widow’s rights even if I wanted to push her out, which I don’t. The old Stone House will suit me till she gets through here. Coming in?”
“Not yet. I’ll stay out under the stars for a while. Things have happened so fast today that like the old woman in Mother Goose I am wondering if I be really I.”
“Don’t stay too long, and think of me, Sandra. I’m poor, I’ve always been poor; don’t let rich Nick Hoyt push me out of your heart. When I get this fortune …” He left the sentence unfinished and pressed his lips to her hand.
Sandra watched him thoughtfully as he hurried along the path. That reference to his poverty was characteristic. In London he had complained of his luck. “Luck always had been against him.” She had been sorry for him. Could she help him now? He might be the son—undoubtedly he was of the New England Hoyts, but he was incurably French in his manner. She couldn’t imagine Jed Langdon or—or the gentleman trainer kissing a girl’s hand like that. Why shouldn’t Philippe have French manners? Hadn’t he grown up as the son of the Rousseaus?
Seated on the parapet, she drew the velvet cape closer about her bare shoulders. It was chilly by the pool but incomparably lovely. The lighted windows of the house seemed like bright, kindly eyes looking down upon her; there was hardly a sound in the dusky, scented garden which was walled in by high hedges clipped to the smoothness of a velvet arras. It must have taken years and years for that hedge to grow. She had seen … What was that? That … that mist … floating.…
On her feet she clutched the cape tight about her throat. Her heart jangled to a stop. Galloped furiously on. She brushed her hand over her eyes. She was awake. Was that a shrouded white figure against the hedge? She fought creeping horror. The thing was waving a skeleton hand! It floated!
“The old house has a ghost too,” the trainer had said.
Couldn’t she move? The night was uncannily still. As if waiting—waiting! She must make a sound.
With a stifled shriek she fled. A voice behind her? A muffled voice? Was the thing following? She charged up the terrace steps. Pulled open the French window.
Mrs. Newsome looked up from her cards. There were four flesh and blood persons about that table. Nothing spectral about them. Sandra’s world steadied.
“Been exploring, Miss Duval?” Mrs. Newsome’s voice was real too.
“Yes. If you don’t need me, I—I will say good-night.”
She left the room without waiting for a response. She met Jed Langdon coming down the curved stairway. He stopped.
“Calling this a day, Miss Duval? What’s the matter? You’re ghastly.”
She met his eyes and tried to laugh. “Am I? Perhaps I have heart attacks too. Perhaps there is something about Seven Chimneys which brings them on.”
She looked back as she reached her door. He was standing where she had left him, watching her with startled eyes.
CHAPTER VI
One week had rained itself away in a torrential downpour. Another had changed the colors in the rock garden. In the perennial borders it had brought out boltonia, fluffy clouds of it; monkshood, pale as aquamarine, purple as Persian amethysts; marigolds, running the scale of topaz tints; giant zinnias in melting aquarelles; helenium, rusty as the red of carnelian; cosmos, all mother-of-pearl or tourmaline pink; spikes of aster tataricus, looming like glorious violet mists; also it had lighted an occasional scar
let flame among the maples. August had checked out.
She had learned much in the two weeks since her arrival at Seven Chimneys, Sandra reflected, as, hands in the pockets of her honey-colored cardigan, she swung along a woodsy road into which she had turned from the highway to avoid the automobiles whoozing endlessly along the shining black macadam. It was evidently a by-path; she didn’t know where it led. What difference did that make? She couldn’t lose her way. The woods were fragrant and still; the noise of traffic was reduced to a purr.
Lovely country. She filled her lungs with the sparkling air scented with balsam and pine, crisped with a hint of September chill. Rather nice to be on her own, not to care where the road went. Usually at this hour she was pouring tea for the cronies of the lady of the manor—she had them by the sporty score—but Mrs. Newsome, when departing early in the morning to attend a sale of horses, had told her to take the day off. Apparently she had gained the affection of her employer. Mrs. Pat consulted her, confided her deepest thoughts, thoughts so deep and intimate that sometimes her confidante scorched with embarrassment.
Mr. Damon had cautioned her to watch her step in regard to Curtis Newsome. He need not have worried; except for a nod of greeting, his wife’s secretary apparently did not intrude into the world in which the youthful husband was dwelling, a world of perplexity and disappointment and high spots of gaiety which swept the other members of the household into their contagious hilarity. She had not laughed so much in months as she had since she came to Seven Chimneys. Estelle Carter was keyed to a pitch of incessant activity; when she was in the mood—and men were present—she could be fascinating. Curtis and she rode, golfed, and played tennis together. Was the girl—girl, she was a divorcee—really attracted to him, or was it the thrill of a new chase? Some of his moods were as stormy as the music of his violin. He was brutally discourteous to his wife, then remorsefully, caressingly tender.
Lately he had been consistently rude to Philippe Rousseau who was making himself quite at home on the estate he was claiming. Mrs. Pat must be aware of her husband’s attitude. There had been a triumphant gleam in her eyes when Curtis had been particularly raw. Did she think that by sponsoring the “Peerless Pretender,” as Estelle Carter called him, she was arousing the jealousy of the man she had married? Poor, tortured woman grasping at a straw of hope.
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