Was she a bubble coming up for air? Curious. Were those men’s voices? What were they saying?
“Nothing serious, evidently been through a tremendous nervous strain, kept up like a Thoroughbred in a race. Now that it’s over she’s gone to pieces, emotionally exhausted, that’s all. Happens that way sometimes. Nothing in that dislocated shoulder to make you look so white, Nick. It snapped into place all right. No. No concussion. Dazed by pain and shock. What’s that phoney claimant coming here for?”
Down, down again into smothering space. When next the bubble rose, Sandra forced her eyes open. How dim the room was! Was that Philippe Rousseau? Was the little fat man with a hand on his arm the doctor? Where was Nicholas Hoyt? How far away their voices seemed!
“I tell you, she can’t be moved.”
“Mrs. Newsome would want her taken to Seven Chimneys.” Philippe’s voice; the bubble recognized it.
“It makes no difference what any one but the doctor wants. He says that Miss Duval is not to be moved tonight. She stays here.”
She was glad she wasn’t combating the ultimatum which came from behind her head. Nicolas Hoyt, of course. Curious that she didn’t care where she stayed. Some one was lifting her. She was close in tender arms, close in a refuge from all terrifying things—loneliness, fear, pain. Distant music … flags flying … Ooch! The bang of a door made her jump. How it hurt!
Now she was floating through space. Heavenly to have her head down again. Her right hand was gripped tight. The touch held her mind steady. It must be Philippe. He had said that he loved her. But—she had hated his touch when—she—had fallen.—Things were jumbled. Hadn’t she been thinking of marriage just before … She must hold tight … to something or she would float away again.
She drew closer the hand holding hers, cuddled her cheek against it. Said drowsily in a voice which came from a great distance:
“I think perhaps … I’d better marry you …”
Curious how the fingers under her cheek twitched; curious how deep, how fathoms deep a husky voice seemed:
“I think perhaps you’d better, darling.”
Darling! Some one had called her that before … Some one bent and kissed her gently on her lips. In a blind, unreasoning effort to evade the passion of response which shook her, she jerked away. What had she said? She didn’t really love Philippe. Pain tore through the haze. She sank back into smothering space.
CHAPTER XII
Sandra, her left arm in a sling, leaned her head, which still had its merry-go-round seconds, against the red leather back of a chair in the library at Stone House. She watched the reflection of licking tongues of flame in the melon-pattern silver tea-service on a table near the window. Late sunlight sifted through the diamond panes to checker the lace cloth with gold. One vagrant ray warmed the slaty eyes of the portrait of the Puritan between the bookshelves.
They caught and held the girl’s for a moment. She turned her head away with a little shiver. Through the feverish hours since the accident, the phantom figure she had seen at the pool had flitted and quaked and waved. Should she tell Mr. Damon of the experience? This was her chance. Back to the fire, he was frowning thoughtfully at space.
She couldn’t do it. He had called her valiant the first day they had met. There had been no valor in the way she had scuttled from that pool. Were she to tell him, doubtless he would scoff to himself:
“Hmp! Neurotic! Never would have thought it of Jim Duval’s daughter.”
No, she would not confide in him yet—if ever.
He looked at her sharply—had her mind touched his—and straightened as if shrugging a load from his shoulders. His eyes behind the strong lenses shone with friendly light.
“How are you feeling, Sandra?”
“Wonderful, thank you. My shoulder is stiff but not painful; my mind is quite clear again, praise be to Allah! I feel as if my thinking machine had been smothered in cotton wool for an aeon or two, but you assure me that Happy Landing playfully tossed me over his head only two days ago. Nanny O’Day says that you arrived soon after I was carried upstairs. It was sweet of you to come.”
“I had to know how you were. Aren’t you my protegee? Wasn’t I responsible for your going to Seven Chimneys? Nick phoned me immediately after he brought you here and suggested that I come and stay until you went back to the other house. Guess he feared you might be kidnaped.”
“Kidnaped! Who would want me?”
“Is that merely a rhetorical question, or are you asking for information? I will leave it for you to answer. You are a lovely sight in that pale blue costume. I like to see women in velvet.”
“I’m thrilled that I please you. Bridie brought these pyjamas from Seven Chimneys. She’s a dear. She wept salty tears over me till I feared I would do the Lot’s-wife act.”
“She is a privileged character. She came here when Nick was a boy. She worships him. Has Mrs. Newsome phoned?”
“Yes, from town. She returns to Seven Chimneys at noon tomorrow, but the car is to come for me in the morning. She wanted to send it today, but evidently she had talked with the doctor and he had vetoed that.”
“She was swearing mad, I suspect, when she heard that you were in the camp of the enemy?”
“Had she been broadcasting over the radio, she would have been cut off at the second word for using language unfit for the air.”
“It is a treat to hear you laugh. I suppose you’ve been told hundreds of times that you have a lovely laugh. You will be glad to return to Seven Chimneys?”
“Yes. I like my work there; besides, I want to help on that eight hundred piece jig-saw puzzle Mrs. Pat brought back from town the last time she came. She thinks that puzzles keep her husband interested. They do. At any time when he isn’t practicing, you may find Curtis Newsome bending over that table. We’ve all picked up the germ. Philippe, Mrs. Carter, and I stop when we go through the library to fit in a piece or two.”
“A picture puzzle! Going back to second childhood?”
“Jeer if you like, but wait till you have tried it. One can’t read or be in the open all one’s spare time, and I’m never conscious of an inferiority complex until I start to play cards at Seven Chimneys, Mrs. Pat and her pals are such demons at the game. I have sent to New York for a puzzle for Nanny O’Day. She will love it. She will need diversion after my departure. She must be worn to shreds. I’ll wager she has been up and down stairs a thousand times since my spectacular arrival. She has taken care of me as if I were a baby.”
“Or a young filly. She is as horse-mad as the rest of us. Doubtless she has had the time of her life. It must have been a let-up for Nick. Usually she spends her time fussing over him. He is the very light of her eyes.”
“Too bad that he wasn’t here to enjoy the respite. As you know, he fled from the invalid.”
“Hmp! You an invalid! Put you in a race today and I’ll bet you’d pound past the judges with a good head to spare. You don’t hit it off with Nick, do you?”
Sandra resented the touch of acid humor in the question. She rose, went to the piano, and to emphasize her indifference, ran her fingers lightly over the keys. “It is mutual. The first time we met he pretended he was a trainer—”
“And a crack-a-jack trainer he is, my dear.”
“I mean a professional trainer. He disliked me at once. I felt it, and all he saw was my outer self on parade. I was flippant and indignant at being obliged to accept his ungracious help. After a few moments I realized that for some reason he was playing a part, though I couldn’t understand why a mere secretary was worth the trouble. I resented it. It may have been my fault but I was in the mood to see small things large.”
“And you are letting resentment befog your common sense now. The man who claims he is Philip Hoyt made a grand row because you were brought here when you were hurt. He insisted that his friendship with your father gave him a prior right to look after you. The fact that Nick showed him the door when he burst into this room to renew his protes
t didn’t serve as oil on the troubled waters. Great Scott, he acted as if he thought bandits had snitched you! Can’t you imagine what he would have said had Nicholas stayed on here? As for Nick’s pretending he was a trainer the day you two met, don’t blame him. Lay the whip on me. I phoned him to be at the station when you arrived to look you over.”
“Look me over! Did you think me an imposter? Didn’t you believe that I was Jimmy Duval’s daughter?”
“Take it easy! I did, but—well, I wanted you and Nick to meet without knowing each other’s identity. Instead of helping, guess I put my foot into it. No, I didn’t think we had another imposter on our hands.”
“ ‘Another imposter,’ Mr. B.D.? Of course, I know that you mean Philippe. I wish you liked him. I can’t bear to have you and … and others think him a fraud,” Sandra deplored wistfully.
“The ‘others’ are coming to heel fast. He’s getting popular in the neighborhood.” Damon glared his bird-of-prey glare. “Are you in love with him?”
“No!” A startling memory of the fervor with which she had responded to the kiss she had thought Philippe’s sent the blood in a warm wave to Sandra’s hair. She bit her lips to steady them. How could she be so silly! Didn’t she know now that it had been but a part of the nightmare of her accident? That he had not been in the house?
“You needn’t answer that question.” Damon looked white and old and tired as he regarded her. “You are loyal to your friends, aren’t you, but remember what I told you about the under dog.”
Sandra ignored the reminder. “Loyal? I hope so. Dad used to say that I kept a candle burning in my heart for each friend. Perhaps I do, but—he didn’t know that if through disillusionment one goes out, never can I relight it. Horrid disposition to have, isn’t it?”
“Horrid only because you are bound to be hurt. We’ll shelve Rousseau for the present; it is evident that you and I see him with different eyes. Let’s talk about the races. That won’t do either. Of course you are hoping that his horse will win?”
“To be honest, I am. Apart from my friendship for him, suppose the Court decides against Philippe—I don’t see how it can with that diary as evidence—but suppose it does? He would have no money. If Iron Man wins this race he would win others; then the gray could be retired for breeding and earn a nice little income for his owner, couldn’t he?”
“He could. What made you think of that?”
“Oh, I have been improving my opportunities. I’ve been taking an Extension Course on the Horse from the old books in the library at Seven Chimneys. They are interesting, but something tells me that most of them are a bit out of date.”
Damon’s face wrinkled into a smile. His eyes twinkled. “You’re an amusing child, Sandra. Something tells you right. You won’t find anything in those textbooks about ultra-violet-ray glass which Mrs. Pat has put into her stables, nor about the direct ultra-violet-ray treatments given to some of the horses daily. But to return to Fortune; he must win. To use your argument, suppose the Court decides against the man in possession—I don’t see how it can—that black stallion must bring in the money. Not that Nick is thinking that alone; he is out to show the world that stamina, courage, and a great heart go to the making of a champion as well as to the making of a great man.”
“You adore Nicholas Hoyt, don’t you?”
“If you weren’t confoundedly prejudiced, you would understand why. I love that boy as if he were my own. He is so worth while, so fitted to inherit a big estate. He is like the old aristocrats, the best of them, who believed that privilege carried with it civic responsibility. He’s slated to represent this county in the legislature. There is a driving force within him that will keep him going on and up. That’s what is needed now. Militant souls who, instead of lambasting every one connected with the government, will get to work and make this country safe for women and children and celebrities! It isn’t his losing the money I care so much about; it’s the injustice of the thing.”
He brushed his handkerchief across his hot forehead. “Here I am steaming up on the subject of the estate fight again. We were talking horse before I switched to Nick and his ambitions. There’s no maybe about that Hunt Club course, but Fortune has an 8 to 1 chance with Eddie Sharp up if—if—” His voice thinned to silence as he scowled at the fire.
“Now you’ve gone Kipling,” Sandra teased. As he looked up to regard her sombrely, she regretted: “I’m sorry. Forgive my flippancy. I was trying to cheer you. Tell me the ‘if’ about Sharp.”
Damon’s smile had the effect of sunlight dispelling clouds. “No apology needed, my dear. Glad to see you getting back your light heart. You’ve had me worried these last two days. As I was saying, Eddie is a jock in a thousand, he has an uncanny insight into the mind of his mount; never saw any one to beat him—and I’ve been about stables and tracks all my life—except Curt Newsome, that boy’s a wizard. Slow motion pictures have shown him to be almost faultless. But Sharp is unpredictable.”
“Do you mean that he might dope a horse?”
“Where did you pick up the knowledge of that ugly trick, Sandra? In your Extension Course?”
“Sandy to you, Mr. B.D.; it was Dad’s name for me and I love it.” She steadied her voice. “I read about it in a newspaper. When you said that Eddie Sharp was unpredictable, I thought of that.”
“You thought wrong. That jockey would kill himself before he would tamper with a Thoroughbred. Drink is his Waterloo. Who was it said that he could be a total abstainer, but that he didn’t know the first letter of the word temperance? Eddie is like that. Nick will stay down and guard him and watch Fortune’s workouts until after the race. If the jock can be kept sober he will ride that horse to a smashing victory.”
“Why does Nicholas Hoyt bother with the man? Aren’t there other jockeys who could win?”
“Yes, but—hulloa, Nick! Glad you’ve come. I was succumbing to the anecdotal urge. Sandra’s—Sandy’s sympathetic attention lured me on.”
Nicholas Hoyt looked at the girl who stood with her hand on the back of a chair.
“Ought you to stand? How are you?”
Something deep in his steady eyes quickened Sandra’s pulses. It was an effort to answer lightly.
“I’m marvelous, thank you. Behold a slightly cracked-up, but a wiser, far wiser rider. Catch me dreaming on a horse’s back again!”
“Dreams are an extravagant indulgence any way you look at them, aren’t they, B.D.?”
Damon’s heavy white brows met. “Indulgence! How do you get that way, Nick? Dreams are the source of much of the new thinking, new convictions, new power in the world. They send the adventurous out on uncharted seas, dangerous seas, and it is danger, not security, which develops strength in mind and spirit. No, I wouldn’t say that dreaming was an extravagance. I’d list it under the head of a non-taxable necessity. I suppose you young people think that just some of a sixty-five-year-old codger’s hokum.”
“Mr. Hoyt may speak for himself. I’m not so juvenile as to consider sixty-five old, and I’ve had that ‘uncharted seas’ idea myself. But why think of those seas entirely in terms of danger and treacherous reefs and sinister whirlpools? I’m perched on the lookout spying for goodwill ships and treasure islands, and priceless friends, and lovely summer seas with just enough squalls to make me appreciate fair weather.”
“Hmp! You’re something of a poet, aren’t you? I’ll wager you get what you are looking for, Sandy. By the way, what does Sandy stand for?”
“Cassandra. Nothing poetic about that. Outrageous, isn’t it? Imagine it in a marriage service. ‘I, Cassandra, take thee …’ Could anything be more unglamorous? The bad fairy must have popped the name of her grandmother into Mother’s mind when I arrived from playing with the angels. Luckily the good fairy headed off Cassie as a nickname.”
Sandra colored as she met Nicholas Hoyt’s intent eyes. Did he think her a confirmed chatterbox?
“I like Cassandra; it has character,” Damon approved. “Now that y
ou have come to play watch-dog, Nick, I’ll go out to the stables and pay my respects to Fortune.”
“May I go?” Sandra asked eagerly. “I’ve never seen the inside of the Seven Chimneys stables. Mrs. Pat almost bit my head off the first time I asked if I might visit them.”
“Do you mean that you haven’t seen Iron Man since you came?”
“Why the third-degree edge to your voice, Mr. Hoyt? I have seen the gray only on the fairway exercising. Cross-my-throat-an’-hope-to-die!”
Nicholas laughed. “You needn’t swear to the statement. I believe you. I remember now that Mac Donovan, Mrs. Pat’s manager, hates women; he told her once that he would throw up the job if she permitted any skirts in the stables. He wouldn’t, but she humors him.”
“But he likes her?”
“Likes her! He’s off his head about her. I don’t mean in love,” Nicholas amended. “She put him on his feet when he was down and out, he and his brother Sam. She brought them along when she married Uncle Mark. They would lay down their lives for her. She is worth devotion. She’s straight as a string if she did have a brainstorm over Curt Newsome.”
“You like her and yet you won’t forgive her for that?”
“It isn’t a question of forgiveness. Let’s not talk about it. Here comes tea. Have that first and then if you’re very good we may let you walk to the stables. How about it, Nanny O’Day?”
The chunky little woman in the gray silk gown set the squat silver kettle over the alcohol lamp. Her blue eyes twinkled above her ruddy cheeks which looked like wrinkled winter apples.
“Certain, certain she can go, if she’s a good girl and drinks her tea and eats some of those nice little tomato sandwiches I made for her. Will you pour, child?”
Sandra slipped into the chair before the table. “I’d love to. I’m glad that some one in the house has the sense to realize that I am not an invalid if I am one-armed. Sugar, Mr. B.D.?”
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