The Hollow of Her Hand

by George Barr McCutcheon

  CHAPTER XIX

  VIVIAN AIRS HER OPINIONS

  Chief among Booth's virtues was his undeviating loyalty to a setpurpose. He went back to America with the firm intention to clearup the mystery surrounding Hetty Castleton, no matter how irksomethe delay in achieving his aim or how vigorous the methods he wouldhave to employ. Sara Wrandall, to all purposes, held the key; hisobject in life now was to induce her to turn it in the lock andthrow open the door so that he might enter in and become a sharerin the secrets beyond.

  A certain amount of optimistic courage attended him in his campaignagainst what had been described to him as the impossible. He couldsee no clear reason why she should withhold the secret under thenew conditions, when so much in the shape of happiness was at stake.It was in this spirit of confidence that he prepared to confronther on his arrival in New York, and it was the same unbounded faithin the belief that nothing evil could result from a perfectly justand honourable motive that gave him the needed courage.

  He stayed over night in New York, and the next morning saw him onhis way to Southlook. There was something truly ingenuous in hisdesire to get to the bottom of the matter without fear or apprehension.At the very worst, he maintained, there could be nothing morereprehensible than a passing infatuation, long since dispelled, orperhaps a mildly sinister episode in which virtue had been triumphantand vice defeated with unpleasant results to at least one person,and that person the husband of Sara Wrandall.

  Pat met him at the station and drove him to the little cottage onthe upper road.

  "Ye didn't stay long," said he reflectively, after he had put thebag up in front. He took up the reins.

  "Not very," replied his master.

  After a dozen rods or more, Pat tried again.

  "Just siventeen days, I make it."

  "Seems longer."

  "Perhaps you'll be after going back soon."

  "Why should you think that, Patrick?"

  "Because you don't seem to be takin' much interest in your surroundin'shere," said Pat loftily. He delivered a smart smack on the crupperwith his stubby whip, and pursed his lips for the companionship tobe derived from whistling.

  "I suppose you know why I went to Europe," said Booth, laying hishand affectionately on the man's arm.

  "Sure I do," said Pat, forgetting to whistle. "And was it bad luckyou had, sor?"

  "A temporary case of it, I'm afraid."

  "Well," said the Irishman, looking up at his employer with the mostprofound encouragement in his wink, "if it's anny help to you,sor, I'll say that I've niver found bad luck to be annything buttimporary. And, believe ME, I've had plinty of it. Mary was domnear three years makin' up her mind to say yis to me."

  "And since then you've had no bad luck?" said Booth, with a smile.

  "Plinty of it, begob, but I've had some one besides meself to blamefor it. There's a lot in that, Mr. Brandon. Whin a man marries, hesimply divides his luck into two parts, good and bad, and if he'slike most men he puts the bulk av the bad luck on his wife andkapes to himself all he can av the good for a rainy day. That'swhat makes him a strong man and able to meet trouble when it comes.The beauty av the arrangement is that bad luck is only timporaryand a woman enjoys talking about it, while good luck is wid usnine-tinths of the time, whether we know it or not, and we don'thave to talk about it."

  This was fine philosophy, but Booth discerned the underlying motive.

  "Have you been quarrelling?"

  "I have NOT," said Pat wrathfully. "But I won't say as much forMary. The point av me argument is that I have all the good luck inhavin' married her, and she claims to have had all the bad luck inmarryin' me. Still, as I said before,'tis but timporary. The goodluck lasts and the bad don't. She'll be after tellin' me so beforesundown. That's like all women. You'll find it out for yourselfwan o' these days, Mr. Brandon, and ye'll be dom proud ye're a manand can enjoy your good luck when ye get it. The bad luck's alwaysfallin' behind ye, and ye can always look forward to the good luck.So don't be down-hearted. She'll take you, or me name's not whatit ought to be."

  Booth was inclined to accept this unique discourse as a fair-weathersign.

  "Take these bags upstairs, Pat," said he on their arrival at thecottage, "and then come down and drive me over to Mrs. Wrandall's."

  "Will ye be after stayin' for lunch with her, Mr. Brandon?" inquiredPat, climbing over the wheel.

  "I can't answer that question now."

  "Hiven help both av us if Mary's good luncheon goes to waste,"said Pat ominously. "That's all I have to say. She'll take it outav both av us."

  "Tell her I'll be here for lunch," said Booth, with alacrity. Fromwhich it may be perceived that master and man were of one mind whenit came to considering the importance of Mary.

  Pat studied his watch for a moment with a calculating eye.

  "It's half-past eliven now, sor," he announced. "D'ye think ye canmake it?"

  Booth reflected. "I think not," he said. "I'll have luncheonfirst." Whereupon he leaped from the trap and went in to tell Maryhow happy he was to be where he could enjoy home-cooking.

  At four he was delivered at Sara's door by the astute Patrick,announced by the sedate Watson and interrogated by the intelligentMurray, who seemed surprised to hear that he would NOT have anythingcool to drink. Sara sent word that she would be down in fifteenminutes, but, as a matter of fact, appeared in less than three.

  She came directly to the point.

  "Well," she said, with her mysterious smile, "she sent you back tome, I see." He was still clasping her hand.

  "Have you heard from her?" he asked quickly.

  "No. But I knew just what would happen. I told you it would proveto be a wild goose chase. Where is she?"

  He sat down beside her on the cool, white covered couch.

  "In Switzerland. I put her on the train the night before I sailed.Yes, she did send me back to you. Now I'm here, I want the wholestory, Sara. What is it that stands between us?"

  For an hour he pleaded with her, all to no purpose. She steadfastlyrefused to divulge the secret. Not even his blunt reference toChallis Wrandall's connection with the affair found a vulnerablespot in her armour.

  "I shan't give it up, Sara," he said, at the end of his earnestharangue against the palpably unfair stand both she and Hetty weretaking. "I mean to harass you, if you please, until I get what I'mafter. It is of the most vital importance to me. Quite as much so,I am sure, as it appears to be to you. If Hetty will say the word,I'll take her gladly, just as she is, without knowing what all thisis about. But, you see, she won't consent. There must be some wayto override her. You both admit there is no legal barrier. Youtell me to-day that there is no insanity in her family, and a lotof other things that I've been able to bring out by questioning,so I am more than ever certain that the obstacle is not so seriousas you would have me believe. Therefore, I mean to pester you untilyou give in, my dear Sara."

  "Very well," she said resignedly. "When may I expect a renewal ofthe conflict?"

  "Would to-morrow be convenient?" he asked quaintly.

  She returned his smile. "Come to luncheon."

  "Have I your permission to start the portrait?"

  "Yes. As soon as you like."

  He left her without feeling that he had gained an inch along theroad to success. That night, in the gloaming of his star-lit porch,he smoked many a pipeful and derived therefrom a profound estimateof the value of tact and discretion as opposed to bold and impulsivemeasures in the handling of a determined woman. He would make hasteslowly, as the saying goes. Many an unexpected victory is gained bydilatory tactics, provided the blow is struck at the psychologicalmoment of least resistance.

  The weeks slipped by. He was with her almost daily. Other peoplecame to her house, some for rather protracted visits, others inquest of pillage at the nightly bridge table, but he was seldommissing. There were times when he thought he detected a tendencyto waver, but each cunning attempt on his part to encourage theimpulse invariably brought a certa
in mocking light into her eyesand he veered off in defeat. Something kept telling him, however,that the hour was bound to come when she would falter in herresolution; when frankness would meet frankness, and the veil belifted.

  A rather impossible relative in the person of an aunt came tospend the month of August with Sara--her father's sister. She wasa true, unvarnished Gooch. Booth shuddered at times when she emergedflat-foot from the background and revelled in the Goochiness thatwould not stay put, no matter how hard she tried to subdue it. Shewas a good soul,--much too good, in fact,--and her efforts to liveup to requirements were not only ludicrous but exasperating. Sarawas quite serene about her, however. She made no excuses for theold lady; in fact, she appeared to be quite devoted to her. Boothwas beginning to appreciate something of the horror the Wrandallsmust have felt when Challis took unto himself a Gooch. He beratedhimself in secret for his snobbishness and in public made atonementby being expansively polite to Mrs. Coburn. The good lady had thehabit of telling every one what a wonderful person Sebastian Goochhad been, sometimes comparing him not unfavourably with NapoleonBonaparte and George Washington: he was like the Corsican in gettingthe better of his adversaries, no matter how he had to go aboutit, but like the Father of his Country in the matter of veracity.So far as she knew, Sebastian had never told a lie. To Mrs. Coburn,Sebastian was Saint Sebastian.

  The portrait was finished before Mrs. Coburn left. She likedeverything about it except the gown, the drapery and--yes, thehands. They were too long and tapering. No Gooch ever had a handlike that. The Gooch hands were broad and strong: like her own.All this, notwithstanding the fact that Sara's hand lay exposed allthe time she was speaking, a physical contradiction to her assertion.

  She stayed the month and then re-entered Yonkers.

  There were no letters from Hetty, no word of any description. IfSara knew anything of the girl's movements she did not take Boothinto her confidence.

  Leslie Wrandall went abroad in August, ostensibly to attend theaviation meets in France and England. His mother and sister sailedin September, but not before the entire colony of which they werea part had begun to discuss Sara and Booth with a relish that wasobviously distasteful to the Wrandalls.

  Where there is smoke there is fire, said all the gossips, andforthwith proceeded to carry fagots.

  A week or so before sailing, Mrs. Redmond Wrandall had Boothin for dinner. I think she said en famille. At any rate, Sara wasnot asked, which is proof enough that she was bent on making it afamily affair.

  After dinner, Booth sat in the screened upper balcony with Vivian.He liked her. She was a keen-witted, plain-spoken young woman,with few false ideals and no subtlety. She was less snobbish thanarrogant. Of all the Wrandalls, she was the least self-centred.Leslie never quite understood her for the paradoxical reason thatshe thoroughly understood him.

  "You know, Brandon," she said, after a long silence between them,"they've been setting my cap for you for a long, long time." Sheblew a thin stream of cigarette smoke toward the moon.

  He started. It was a bolt from a clear sky. "The deuce!"

  "Yes," she went on in the most casual tone, "mother's had her heartset on it for months. You were supposed to be mine at first sight,I believe. Please don't look so uneasy. I'm not going to proposeto you." She laughed her little ironic laugh.

  "So that is the way things stood, eh?" he said, still a littleamazed by her candour.

  "Yes. And what is more to the point, I am quite sure I shouldhave said yes if you had asked me. Sounds odd, doesn't it? Ratheramusing, too, being able to discuss it so unreservedly, isn't it?"

  "Good heavens, Viv!" he cried uncomfortably. "I--I had no idea youcared--"

  "Cared!" she cried, as he paused. "I don't care two pins for youin that way. But I would have married you, just the same, becauseyou are worth marrying. I'd very much rather have you for a husbandthan any man I know, but as for loving you! Pooh! I'd love you injust the way mother loves father, and I wouldn't have been a bitmore trouble to you than she is to him."

  "'Gad, you don't mind what you say!"

  "Failing to nab you, Brandy, I dare say I'll have to come down toa duke or, who knows? maybe a mere prince. It isn't very enterprising,is it? And certainly it isn't a gay prospect. Really, I had hopedyou would have me. I flatter myself, I suppose, but, honestly now,we would have made a rather nice looking couple, wouldn't we?"

  "You flatter me," he said.

  "But," she resumed, calmly exhaling, "you very foolishly fell inlove with some one else, and it wasn't necessary for me to pretendthat I was in love with you--which I should have done, believe me,if you had given me the chance. You fell in love, first with HettyCastleton."

  "First?" he cried, frowning.

  "And now you are heels over head in love with my beautifulsister-in-law. Which all goes to prove that I would have made justthe kind of wife you need, considering your tendency to fluctuate.But how dreadful it would have been for a sentimental, loving girllike Hetty!"

  He sat bolt upright and stared hard at her.

  "See here, Viv, what the dickens are you driving at? I'm not in lovewith Sara--not in the least,--and--" He checked himself sharply."What an ass I am! You're guying me."

  "In any event, I am right about Hetty," she said, leaning forward,her manner quite serious.

  "If it will ease your mind," he said stiffly, "I plead guilty withall my heart."

  She favoured him with a slight frown of annoyance.

  "And you deny the fluctuating charge?"

  "Most positively. I can afford to be honest with you, Viv. You area corker. I love Hetty Castleton with all my soul."

  She leaned back in her chair. "Then why don't you dignify your soulby being honest with HER?"

  "What do you mean?"

  For a half-minute she was silent. "Are you and I of the same stripe,after all? Would you marry Sara without loving her, as I would havedone by you? It doesn't seem like you, Brandon."

  "Good heaven, I'm not going to marry Sara!" he blurted out. "It'snever entered my head."

  "Perhaps it has entered hers."

  "Nonsense! She isn't going to marry anybody. And she knows how Ifeel toward Hetty. If it came to the point where I decided to marrywithout love, 'pon my soul, Viv, I believe I'd pick you out as thevictim."

  "Wonderful combination!" she said with a frank laugh. "Thequintessence of 'no love lost.' But to resume! Do you know thatpeople are saying you are to be married before the winter is over?"

  "Let 'em say it," he said gruffly.

  "Oh, well," she said, despatching it all with a gesture, "if that'sthe way you feel about it, there's no more to be said."

  He was ashamed. "I beg your pardon, I shouldn't have said that."

  "You see," she went on, reverting to the original topic, "peoplewho know Sara are likely to credit her with motives you appear tobe totally ignorant of. She set her heart on my brother Challis,when she was a great deal younger than she is now, and she got him.If age and experience count for anything, how capable she must beby this time."

  He was too wise to venture an opinion. "I assure you she has nodesigns on me."

  "Perhaps not. But I fancy that even you could not escape as St.Anthony did. She is most alluring."

  "You don't like her."

  "Obviously. And yet I don't dislike her. She has the virtue ofconsistency, if one may use the expression. She loved my brother.Leslie says she should have hated him. We have tried to likeher. I think I have come nearer to it than any of the others, notexcepting Leslie, who has always been her champion. I suppose youknow that he was your rival at one time."

  "He mentioned it," said Booth drily.

  "I should have been very much disappointed in her if she had acceptedhim."

  "Indeed?"

  "I sometimes wonder if Sara spiked Leslie's guns for him."

  "I can tell you something you don't know, Vivian," said he. "Sarawas rather keen about making a match there."

  Vivian's smile was slow but triumphant. "T
hat is just what I thought.There you are! Doesn't that explain Sara?"

  "In a measure, yes. But, you see, it developed that Hetty caredfor some one else, and that put a stop to everything."

  "Am I to take it that you are the some one else?"

  "Yes," said he soberly.

  "Then, may I ask why she went away so suddenly?"

  "You may ask but I can't answer."

  "Do you want my opinion? She went away because Sara, failing inher plan to marry her off to Leslie, decided that it would be fatalto a certain project of her own if she remained on the field ofaction. Do I make myself clear?"

  "Oh, you are away off in your conclusions, Viv."

  "Time will tell," was her cabalistic rejoinder.

  Her father appeared on the lawn below and called up to them.

  "You are wanted at the telephone, Brandon. I've just been talkingto Sara."

  "Did she call you up, father?" asked Vivian, leaning over the rail.

  "Yes. About nothing in particular, however."

  She turned upon Booth with a mocking smile. He felt the colour rushto his face, and was angry with himself.

  He went in to the telephone. Almost her first words were these:

  "What has Vivian been telling you about me, Brandon?"

  He actually gasped. "Good heavens, Sara!"

  He heard her low laugh. "So she HAS been saying things, has she?"she asked. "I thought so. I've had it in my bones to-night."

  He was at a loss for words. It was positively uncanny. As he stoodthere, trying to think of a trivial remark, her laugh came to himagain over the wire, followed by a drawling "good-night," and thenthe soughing of the wind over the "open" wire.

  The next day he called her up on the telephone quite early. He knewher habits. She would be abroad in her gardens by eight o'clock.He remembered well that Leslie, in commenting on her absurdly earlyhours, had once said that her "early bird" habit was hereditary:she got it from Sebastian.

  "What put it into your head, Sara, that Vivian was saying anythingunpleasant about you last night?"

  "Magic," she replied succinctly.

  "Rubbish!"

  "I have a magic tapestry that transports me, hither and thither,and by night I always carry Aladdin's lamp. So, you see, I see andhear everything."

  "Be sensible."

  "Very well. I will be sensible. If you intend to be influenced bywhat Vivian or her mother said to you last night, I think you'd bewise to avoid me from this time on."

  Prepared though he was, he blinked his eyes and said something shedidn't quite catch.

  She went on: "Moreover, in addition to my attainments in the blackart, I am quite as clever as Mr. Sherlock Holmes in some respects.I really do some splendid deducing. In the first place, you wereasked there and I was not. Why? Because I was to be discussed. Yousee--"

  "Marvellous!" he interrupted loudly.

  "You were to be told that I have cruel designs upon you."

  "Go on, please."

  "And all that sort of thing," she said sweepingly, and he couldalmost see the inclusive gesture with her free hand. He laughedbut still marvelled at the shrewdness of her perceptions.

  "I'll come over this afternoon and show you wherein you are wrong,"he began, but she interrupted him with a laugh.

  "I am starting for the city before noon, by motor, to be gone atleast a fortnight."

  "What! This is the first I've heard of it."

  Again she laughed. "To be perfectly frank with you, I hadn'theard of it myself until just now. I think I shall go down to theHomestead with the Carrolls."

  "Hot Springs?"

  "Virginia," she added explicitly.

  "I say, Sara, what does all this mean? You--"

  "And if you should follow me there, Vivian's estimate of us willnot be so far out of the way as we'd like to make it."

  True to her word, she was gone when he drove over later on inthe day. Somehow, he experienced a feeling of relief. Not that hewas oppressed by the rather vivacious opinions of Vivian and herilk, but because something told him that Sara was wavering in herdetermination to withhold the secret from him and fled for perfectlyobvious reasons.

  He had two commissions among the rich summer colonists. One, a fulllength portrait of young Beardsley in shooting togs, was nearlyfinished. The other was to be a half-length of Mrs. Ravenscroft,who wanted one just like Hetty Castleton's, except for the eyes,which she admitted would have to be different. Nothing was said ofthe seventeen years' difference in their ages. Vivian had put offposing until Lent.

  The Wrandalls departed for Scotland, and other friends of hisbegan to desert the country for the city. The fortnight passed andanother week besides. Mrs. Ravenscroft decided to go to Europe whenthe picture was half-finished.

  "You can finish it when I come back in December, Mr. Booth," shesaid. "I'll have several new gowns to choose from, too."

  "I shall be busy all winter, Mrs. Ravenscroft," he said coldly.

  "How annoying," she said calmly, and that was the end of it all.She had made the unpleasant discovery that it WASN'T going to bein the least like Hetty Castleton's, so why bother about it?

  Booth waited until Sara came out to superintend the closing of herhouse for the winter. He called at Southlook on the day of herarrival. He was struck at once by the curious change in her appearanceand manner. There was something bleak and desolate in the vividlybrilliant face: the tired, wistful, harassed look of one who hasbegun to quail and yet fights on.

  "Will you go out with me to-morrow, Brandon, for an all-day tripin the car?" she asked, as they stood together before the openfireplace on this late November afternoon. Her eyes were moody,her voice rather lifeless.

  "Certainly," he said, watching her closely. Was the break about tocome?

  "I will stop for you at nine." After a short pause, she looked upand said: "I suppose you would like to know where I am taking you."

  "It doesn't matter, Sara."

  "I want you to go with me to Burton's Inn."

  "Burton's Inn?"

  "That is the place where my husband was killed," she said, quitesteadily.

  He started. "Oh! But--do you think it best, Sara, to open old woundsby--"

  "I have thought it all out, Brandon. I want to go there--just once.I want to go into that room again."