A gentle snore had come from behind the screen.
“We are not alone,” I whispered. “Some one is over there on the lounge.”
Sinclair had already bounded across the room. I pressed hurriedly behind him, and together we rounded the screen and came upon the recumbent figure of Mr. Armstrong, asleep on the lounge, with his paper fallen from his hand.
“That accounts for the lights being turned out,” grumbled Sinclair. “Dutton must have done it.”
Dutton was the butler.
I stood contemplating the sleeping figure before me.
“He must have been lying here for some time,” I muttered.
Sinclair started.
“Probably some little while before he slept,” I pursued. “I have often heard that he dotes on the firelight.”
“I have a notion to wake him,” suggested Sinclair.
“It will not be necessary,” said I, drawing back, as the heavy figure stirred, breathed heavily and finally sat up.
“I beg pardon,” I now entreated, backing politely away. “We thought the room empty.”
Mr. Armstrong, who, if slow to receive impressions, is far from lacking intelligence, eyed us with sleepy indifference for a moment, then rose ponderously to his feet and was, on the instant, the man of manner and unfailing courtesy we had ever found him.
“What can I do to oblige you?” he asked; his smooth, if hesitating tones, sounding strange to our excited ears.
I made haste to forestall Sinclair, who was racking his brains for words with which to propound the question he dared not put too boldly.
“Pardon me, Mr. Armstrong, we were looking about for a small pin dropped by Miss Camerden.” (How hard it was for me to use her name in this connection only my own heart knew.) “She was in here just now, was she not?”
The courteous gentleman bowed, hawed, and smiled a very polite but unmeaning smile. Evidently he had not the remotest notion whether she had been in or not.
“I am sorry, but I am afraid I lost myself for a moment on that lounge,” he admitted. “The firelight always makes me sleepy. But if I can help you,” he cried, starting forward, but almost immediately pausing again and giving us rather a curious look. “Some one was in the room. I remember it now. It was just before the warmth and glow of the fire became too much for me. I can not say that it was Miss Camerden, however. I thought it was someone of quicker movement. She made quite a rattle with the chairs.”
I purposely did not look back at Sinclair.
“Miss Murray?” I suggested.
Mr. Armstrong made one of his low, old-fashioned bows. This, I doubt not, was out of deference to the bride-to-be.
“Does Miss Murray wear white tonight?”
“Yes,” muttered Sinclair, coming hastily forward.
“Then it may have been she, for as I lay there deciding whether or not to yield to the agreeable somnolence I felt creeping over me, I caught a glimpse of her skirt as she passed out of the room. And that skirt was white—white silk, I suppose you call it. It looked very pretty in the firelight.”
Sinclair, turning on his heel, stalked in a dazed way toward the door. To cover this show of abruptness which was quite unusual on his part, I made the effort of my life, and, remarking lightly, “She must have been here looking for the pin her friend has lost,” I launched forth into an impromptu dissertation on one of the subjects I knew to be dear to the heart of the bookworm before me, and kept it up, too, till I saw by his brightening eye and suddenly freed manner that he had forgotten the insignificant episode of a minute ago, never in all probability to recall it again. Then I made another effort and released myself with something like deftness from the long-drawn-out argument I saw impending, and, making for the door in my turn, glanced about for Sinclair. So far as I was concerned the question as to who had taken the box from the library was settled.
It was now half-past eight. I made my way from room to room and from group to group, looking for Sinclair. At last I returned to my old post near the library door, and was instantly rewarded by the sight of his figure approaching from a small side passage in company with the butler, Dutton. His face, as he stepped into the full light of the open hall, showed discomposure, but not the extreme distress I had anticipated. Somehow, at sight of it, I found myself seeking the shadow just as he had done a short time before, and it was in one of the recesses made by a row of bay trees that we came face to face.
He gave me one look, then his eyes dropped.
“Miss Camerden has lost a pin from her hair,” he impressively explained to me. Then turning to Dutton he nonchalantly remarked. “It must be somewhere in this hall; perhaps you will be good enough to look for it.”
“Certainly,” replied the man. “I thought she had lost something when I saw her come out of the library a little while ago holding her hand to her hair.”
My heart gave a leap, then sank cold and almost pulseless in my breast. In the hum to which all sounds had sunk, I heard Sinclair’s voice rise again in the question with which my own mind was full.
“When was that? After Mr. Armstrong went into the room, or before?”
“Oh, after he fell asleep. I had just come from putting out the gas when I saw Miss Camerden slip in and almost immediately come out again. I will search for the pin very carefully, sir.”
So Mr. Armstrong had made a mistake! It was Dorothy and not Gilbertine whom he had seen leaving the room. I braced myself up and met Sinclair’s eye.
“Dorothy’s dress is gray tonight; but Mr. Armstrong’s eye may not be very good for colors.”
“It is possible that both were in the room,” was Sinclair’s reply. But I could see that he advanced this theory solely out of consideration for me; that he did not really believe it. “At all events,” he went on, “we can not prove anything this way; we must revert to our original idea. I wonder if Gilbertine will give me the chance to speak to her.”
“You will have an easier task than I,” was my half-sullen retort. “If Dorothy perceives that I wish to approach her she has but to lift her eyes to any of the half-dozen fellows here, and the thing becomes impossible.”
“There is to be a rehearsal of the ceremony at half-past ten. I might get a word in then; only, this matter must be settled first. I could never go through the farce of standing up before you all at Gilbertine’s side, with such a doubt as this in my mind.”
“You will see her before then. Insist on a moment’s talk. If she refuses—”
“Hush!” he here put in. “We part now to meet in this same place again at ten. Do I look fit to enter among the dancers? I see a whole group of them coming for me.”
“You will in another moment. Approaching matrimony has made you sober, that’s all.”
It was some time before I had the opportunity, even if I had the courage, to look Dorothy in the face. When the moment came she was flushed with dancing and looked beautiful. Ordinarily she was a little pale, but not even Gilbertine, with her sumptuous coloring, showed a warmer cheek than she, as, resting from the waltz, she leaned against the rose-tinted wall and let her eyes for the first time rise slowly to where I stood talking mechanically to my partner.
Gentle eyes they were, made for appeal, and eloquent with a subdued heart language. But they were held in check by an infinite discretion. Never have I caught them quite off their guard, and tonight they were wholly unreadable. Yet she was trembling with something more than the fervor of the dance, and the little hand which had touched mine in lingering pressure a few hours before was not quiet for a moment. I could not see it fluttering in and out of the folds of her smoke-colored dress without a sickening wonder if the little purple box which was the cause of my horror lay somewhere concealed amid the airy puffs and ruffles that rose and fell so rapidly over her heaving breast. Could her eye rest on mine, even in this cold and perfunctory manner, if the drop which could separate us for ever lay concealed over her heart? She knew that I loved her. From the first hour we met in her aunt’s for
bidding parlor in Thirty-sixth Street, she had recognized my passion, however perfectly I had succeeded in concealing it from others. Inexperienced as she was in those days, she had noted as quickly as any society belle the effect produced upon me by her chill prettiness and her air of meek reserve under which one felt the heart-break; and though she would never openly acknowledge my homage and frowned down every attempt on my part at lover-like speech or attention, I was as sure that she rated my feelings at their real value, as that she was the dearest, yet most incomprehensible, mortal my narrow world contained. When, therefore, I encountered her eyes at the end of the dance I said to myself:
“She may not love me, but she knows that I love her, and, being a woman of sympathetic instincts, would never meet my eyes with so calm a look if she were meditating an act which must infallibly plunge me into misery.” Yet I was not satisfied to go away without a word. So, taking the bull by the horns, I excused myself to my partner, and crossed to Dorothy’s side.
“Will you dance the next waltz with me?” I asked.
Her eyes fell from mine directly and she drew back in a way that suggested flight.
“I shall dance no more tonight,” said she, her hand rising in its nervous fashion to her hair.
I made no appeal. I just watched that hand, whereupon she flushed vividly and seemed more than ever anxious to escape. At which I spoke again.
“Give me a chance, Dorothy. If you will not dance come out on the veranda and look at the ocean. It is glorious tonight. I will not keep you long. The lights here trouble my eyes; besides, I am most anxious to ask you—”
“No, no,” she vehemently objected, very much as if frightened. “I can not leave the drawing-room—do not ask me—seek some other partner—do, tonight.”
“You wish it?”
“Very much.”
She was panting, eager. I felt my heart sink and dreaded lest I should betray my feelings.
“You do not honor me then with your regard,” I retorted, bowing ceremoniously as I became assured that we were attracting more attention than I considered desirable.
She was silent. Her hand went again to her hair.
I changed my tone. Quietly, but with an emphasis which moved her in spite of herself, I whispered: “If I leave you now will you tell me tomorrow why you are so peremptory with me tonight?”
With an eagerness which was anything but encouraging, she answered with suddenly recovered gaiety:
“Yes, yes, after all this excitement is over.” And, slipping her hand into that of a friend who was passing, she was soon in the whirl again and dancing—she who had just assured me that she did not mean to dance again that night.
CHAPTER III
A SCREAM IN THE NIGHT
I turned and, hardly conscious of my actions, stumbled from the room. A bevy of young people at once surrounded me. What I said to them I hardly know. I only remember that it was several minutes before I found myself again alone and making for the little room into which Beaton had vanished a half-hour before. It was the one given up to card-playing. Did I expect to find him seated at one of the tables? Possibly; at all events I approached the doorway and was about to enter when a heavy step shook the threshold before me and I found myself confronted by the advancing figure of an elderly lady whose portrait it is now time for me to draw. It is no pleasurable task, but one I can not escape.
Imagine, then, a broad, weighty woman of not much height, with a face whose features were usually forgotten in the impression made by her great cheeks and falling jowls. If the small eyes rested on you, you found them sinister and strange, but if they were turned elsewhere, you asked in what lay the power of the face, and sought in vain amid its long wrinkles and indeterminate lines for the secret of that spiritual and bodily repulsion which the least look into this impassive countenance was calculated to produce. She was a woman of immense means, and an oppressive consciousness of this spoke in every movement of her heavy frame, which always seemed to take up three times as much space as rightfully belonged to any human creature. Add to this that she was seldom seen without a display of diamonds which made her broad bust look like the bejeweled breast of some Eastern idol, and some idea may be formed of this redoubtable woman whom I have hitherto confined myself to speaking of as the gorgon.
The stare she gave me had something venomous and threatening in it. Evidently for the moment I was out of her books, and while I did not understand in what way I had displeased her, for we always had met amicably before, I seized upon this sign of displeasure on her part as explanatory, perhaps, of the curtness and show of contradictory feelings on the part of her dependent niece. Yet why should the old woman frown on me? I had been told more than once that she regarded me with great favor. Had I unwittingly done something to displease her, or had the game of cards she had just left gone against her, ruffling her temper and making it imperative for her to choose some object on which to vent her spite? I entered the room to see. Two men and one woman stood in rather an embarrassed silence about a table on which lay some cards, which had every appearance of having been thrown down by an impatient hand. One of the men was Will Beaton, and it was he who now remarked:
“She has just found out that the young people are enjoying themselves. I wonder upon which of her two unfortunate nieces she will expend her ill-temper tonight?”
“Oh, there’s no question about that,” remarked the lady who stood near him. “Ever since she has had a reasonable prospect of working Gilbertine off her hands, she has devoted herself quite exclusively to her remaining burden. I hear,” she impulsively continued, craning her neck to be sure that the object of her remarks was quite out of earshot, “that the south hall was blue today with the talk she gave Dorothy Camerden. No one knows what about, for the girl evidently tries to please her. But some women have more than their own proper share of bile; they must expend it on someone.” And she in turn threw down her cards, which up till now she had held in her hand.
I gave Beaton a look and stepped out on the veranda. In a minute he followed me, and in the corner facing the ocean, where the vines cluster the thickest, we held our conversation.
I began it, with a directness born of my desperation.
“Beaton,” said I, “we have not known each other long, but I recognize a man when I see him, and I am disposed to be frank with you. I am in trouble. My affections are engaged, deeply engaged, in a quarter where I find some mystery. You have helped make it.” (Here a gesture escaped him.) “I allude to the story you related the other morning of the young girl you had seen hanging over the verge of the cliff, with every appearance of intending to throw herself over.”
“It was as a dream I related that,” he gravely remarked.
“That I am aware of. But it was no dream to me, Beaton. I fear I know that young girl; I also fear that I know what drove her into contemplating so rash an act. The conversation just held in the card-room should enlighten you. Beaton, am I wrong?”
The feeling I could not suppress trembled in my tones. He may have been sensitive to it or he may have been simply good-natured. Whatever the cause, this is what he said in reply:
“It was a dream. Remember that I insist upon its being a dream. But some of its details are very clear in my mind. When I stumbled upon this dream-maiden in the moonlight her face was turned from me toward the ocean, and I did not see her features then or afterwards. Startled by some sound I made, she crouched, drew back and fled to cover. That cover, I have good reason to believe, was this very house.”
I reached out my hand and touched him on the arm.
“This dream-maiden was a woman?” I inquired. “One of the women now in this house.”
He replied reluctantly.
“She was a young woman and she wore a long cloak. My dream ends there. I can not even say whether she was fair or dark.”
I recognized that he had reached the limit of his explanations, and, wringing his hand, I started for the nearest window, which proved to be that of the musi
c-room. I was about to enter when I saw two women crossing to the opposite doorway, and paused with a full heart to note them, for one was Mrs. Lansing and the other Dorothy. The aunt had evidently come for the niece and they were leaving the room together. Not amicably, however. Harsh words had passed, or I am no judge of the human countenance. Dorothy especially bore herself like one who finds difficulty in restraining herself from some unhappy outburst, and as she disappeared from my sight in the wake of her formidable companion my attention was again called to her hands, which she held clenched at her sides.
I was stepping into the room when my impulse was again checked. Another person was sitting there, a person I had been most anxious to see ever since my last interview with Sinclair. It was Gilbertine Murray, sitting alone in an attitude of deep, and possibly not altogether happy thought.
I paused to study the sweet face. Truly she was a beautiful woman. I had never before realized how beautiful. Her rich coloring, her noble traits and the spirited air, which gave her such marked distinction, bespoke at once an ardent nature and a pure soul.
I did not wonder that Sinclair had succumbed to charms so pronounced and uncommon, and as I gazed longer and noted the tremulous droop of her ripe lips and the faraway look of eyes which had created a great stir in the social world when they first flashed upon it. I felt that if Sinclair could see her now he would never doubt her again, despite the fact that the attitude into which she had fallen was one of great fatigue, if not despondency.
She held a fan in her hand, and as I stood looking at her she dropped it. As she stooped to pick it up, her eyes met mine, and a startling change passed over her. Springing up, she held out her hands in wordless appeal—then let them drop again as if conscious that I would not be likely to understand either herself or her mood. She was very beautiful.
Entering the room, I approached her. Had Sinclair managed to have his little conversation with her? Something must have happened, for never had I seen her in such a state of suppressed excitement, and I had seen her many times, both here and in her aunt’s house when I was visiting Dorothy. Her eyes were shining, not with a brilliant, but a soft light, and the smile with which she met my advance had something in it strangely tremulous and expectant.
The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack Page 93
