CHAPTER XVIII
EDITH'S COUSIN
That was to be Margery's last evening at Fred's. Edith had kept her aslong as she could, but the girl felt that her place was with MissLetitia. Edith was desolate.
"I don't know what I am going to do without you," she said that nightwhen we were all together in the library, with a wood fire, for lightand coziness more than heat. Margery was sitting before the fire, andwhile the others talked she sat mostly silent, looking into the blaze.
The May night was cold and rainy, and Fred had been reading us a poem hehad just finished, receiving with indifference my comment on it, andbasking in Edith's rapture.
"Do you know yourself what it is about?" I inquired caustically.
"If it's about anything, it isn't poetry," he replied. "Poetry appealsto the ear: it is primarily sensuous. If it is more than that it ceasesto be poetry and becomes verse."
Edith yawned.
"I'm afraid I'm getting old," she said, "I'm getting the nap habit afterdinner. Fred, run up, will you, and see if Katie put blankets over theboys?"
Fred stuffed his poem in his pocket and went resignedly up-stairs. Edithyawned again, and prepared to retire to the den for forty winks.
"If Ellen decides to come down-stairs," she called back over hershoulder, "please come and wake me. She said she felt better and mightcome down."
At the door she turned, behind Margery's back, and made me a sweepingand comprehensive signal. She finished it off with a double wink, Edithhaving never been able to wink one eye alone, and crossing the hall,closed the door of the den with an obtrusive bang.
Margery and I were alone. The girl looked at me, smiled a little, anddrew a long breath.
"It's queer about Edith," I said; "I never before knew her to get drowsyafter dinner. If she were not beyond suspicion, I would think it adeep-laid scheme, and she and Fred sitting and holding hands in acorner somewhere."
"But why--a scheme?" She had folded her hands in her lap, and theeternal ring sparkled malignantly.
"They might think I wanted to talk to you," I suggested.
"To me?"
"To you--The fact is, I do."
Perhaps I was morbid about the ring: it seemed to me she lifted her handand looked at it.
"It's drafty in here: don't you think so?" she asked suddenly, lookingback of her. Probably she had not meant it, but I got up and closed thedoor into the hall. When I came back I took the chair next to her, andfor a moment we said nothing. The log threw out tiny red devil sparks,and the clock chimed eight, very slowly.
"Harry Wardrop was here last night," I said, poking down the log with myheel.
"Here?"
"Yes. I suppose I was wrong, but I did not say you were here."
She turned and looked at me closely, out of the most beautiful eyes Iever saw.
"I'm not afraid to see him," she said proudly, "and he ought not to beafraid to see me."
"I want to tell you something before you see him. Last night, before hecame, I thought that--well, that at least he knew something of--thethings we want to know."
"Yes?"
"In justice to him, and because I want to fight fair, I tell youto-night that I don't believe he knows anything about your father'sdeath, and that I believe he was robbed that night at Bellwood."
"What about the pearls he sold at Plattsburg?" she asked suddenly.
"I think when the proper time comes, he will tell about that too,Margery." I did not notice my use of her name until too late. If sheheard, she failed to resent it. "After all, if you love him, hardlyanything else matters, does it? How do we know but that he was introuble, and that Aunt Jane herself gave them to him?"
She looked at me with a little perplexity.
"You plead his cause very well," she said. "Did he ask you to speak tome?"
"I won't run a race with a man who is lame," I said quietly. "Ethically,I ought to go away and leave you to your dreams, but I am not going todo it. If you love Wardrop as a woman ought to love the man she marries,then marry him and I hope you will be happy. If you don't--no, let mefinish. I have made up my mind to clear him if I can: to bring him toyou with a clear slate. Then, I know it is audacious, but I am going tocome, too, and--I'm going to plead for myself then, unless you send meaway."
She sat with her head bent, her color coming and going nervously. Nowshe looked up at me with what was the ghost of a smile.
"It sounds like a threat," she said in a low voice. "And you--I wonderif you always get what you want?"
Then, of course, Fred came in, and fell over a hassock looking formatches. Edith opened the door of the den and called him to herirritably, but Fred declined to leave the wood fire, and settled downin his easy chair. After a while Edith came over and joined us, but shesnubbed Fred the entire evening, to his bewilderment. And whenconversation lagged, during the evening that followed, I tried toremember what I had said, and knew I had done very badly. Only one thingcheered me: she had not been angry, and she had understood. Blessed bethe woman that understands!
We broke up for the night about eleven. Mrs. Butler had come down for awhile, and had even played a little, something of Tschaikovsky's, asinging, plaintive theme that brought sadness back into Margery's face,and made me think, for no reason, of a wet country road and a plodding,back-burdened peasant.
Fred and I sat in the library for a while after the rest had gone, and Itold him a little of what I had learned that afternoon.
"A second wife!" he said, "and a primitive type, eh? Well, did she shoothim, or did Schwartz? The Lady or the Democratic Tiger?"
"The Tiger," I said firmly.
"The Lady," Fred, with equal assurance.
Fred closed the house with his usual care. It required the combinedefforts of the maids followed up by Fred, to lock the windows, it beinghis confident assertion that in seven years of keeping house, he hadnever failed to find at least one unlocked window.
On that night, I remember, he went around with his usual scrupulouscare. Then we went up to bed, leaving a small light at the telephone inthe lower hall: nothing else.
The house was a double one, built around a square hall below, whichserved the purpose of a general sitting-room. From the front door ashort, narrow hall led back to this, with a room on either side, andfrom it doors led into the rest of the lower floor. At one side thestairs took the ascent easily, with two stops for landings, andup-stairs the bedrooms opened from a similar, slightly smaller squarehall. The staircase to the third floor went up from somewhere back inthe nursery wing.
My bedroom was over the library, and Mrs. Butler and Margery Fleming hadconnecting rooms, across the hall. Fred and Edith slept in the nurserywing, so they would be near the children. In the square upper hall therewas a big reading table, a lamp, and some comfortable chairs. Here, whenthey were alone, Fred read aloud the evening paper, or his latest shortstory, and Edith's sewing basket showed how she put in what womenmiscall their leisure.
I did not go to sleep at once: naturally the rather vital step I hadtaken in the library insisted on being considered and almost regretted.I tried reading myself to sleep, and when that failed, I tried thesoothing combination of a cigarette and a book. That worked like acharm; the last thing I remember is of holding the cigarette in a deathgrip as I lay with my pillows propped back of me, my head to the light,and a delightful languor creeping over me.
I was wakened by the pungent acrid smell of smoke, and I sat up andblinked my eyes open. The side of the bed was sending up a steady columnof gray smoke, and there was a smart crackle of fire under me somewhere.I jumped out of bed and saw the trouble instantly. My cigarette haddropped from my hand, still lighted, and as is the way with cigarettes,determined to burn to the end. In so doing it had fired my bed, the rugunder the bed and pretty nearly the man on the bed.
It took some sharp work to get it all out without rousing the house.Then I stood amid the wreckage and looked ruefully at Edith's prettyroom. I could see, mentally, the spot of water on the
library ceilingthe next morning, and I could hear Fred's strictures on the heedlessnessand indifference to property of bachelors in general and me inparticular.
Three pitchers of water on the bed had made it an impossible couch. Iput on a dressing-gown, and, with a blanket over my arm, I went out tohunt some sort of place to sleep. I decided on the davenport in the halljust outside, and as quietly as I could, I put a screen around it andsettled down for the night.
I was wakened by the touch of a hand on my face. I started, I think, andthe hand was jerked away--I am not sure: I was still drowsy. I lay veryquiet, listening for footsteps, but none came. With the feeling thatthere was some one behind the screen, I jumped up. The hall was darkand quiet. When I found no one I concluded it had been only a vividdream, and I sat down on the edge of the davenport and yawned.
I heard Edith moving back in the nursery: she has an uncomfortable habitof wandering around in the night, covering the children, closingwindows, and sniffing for fire. I was afraid some of the smoke from myconflagration had reached her suspicious nose, but she did not come intothe front hall. I was wide-awake by that time, and it was then, I think,that I noticed a heavy, sweetish odor in the air. At first I thought oneof the children might be ill, and that Edith was dosing him with one ofthe choice concoctions that she kept in the bath-room medicine closet.When she closed her door, however, and went back to bed, I knew I hadbeen mistaken.
The sweetish smell was almost nauseating. For some reason orother--association of certain odors with certain events--I found myselfrecalling the time I had a wisdom tooth taken out, and that when I camearound I was being sat on by the dentist and his assistant, and thelatter had a black eye. Then, suddenly, I knew. The sickly odor waschloroform!
I had the light on in a moment, and was rapping at Margery's door. Itwas locked, and I got no answer. A pale light shone over the transom,but everything was ominously quiet, beyond the door. I went to Mrs.Butler's door, next; it was unlocked and partly open. One glance at theempty bed and the confusion of the place, and I rushed without ceremonythrough the connecting door into Margery's room.
The atmosphere was reeking with chloroform. The girl was in bed,apparently sleeping quietly. One arm was thrown up over her head, andthe other lay relaxed on the white cover. A folded towel had been laidacross her face, and when I jerked it away I saw she was breathing veryslowly, stertorously, with her eyes partly open and fixed.
I threw up all the windows, before I roused the family, and as soon asEdith was in the room I telephoned for the doctor. I hardly rememberwhat I did until he came: I know we tried to rouse Margery and failed,and I know that Fred went down-stairs and said the silver was intact andthe back kitchen door open. And then the doctor came, and I was put outin the hall, and for an eternity, I walked up and down, eight steps oneway, eight steps back, unable to think, unable even to hope.
Not until the doctor came out to me, and said she was better, and wouldI call a maid to make some strong black coffee, did I come out of mystupor. The chance of doing something, anything, made me determine tomake the coffee myself. They still speak of that coffee at Fred's.
It was Edith who brought Mrs. Butler to my mind. Fred had maintainedthat she had fled before the intruders, and was probably in some closetor corner of the upper floor. I am afraid our solicitude was long incoming. It was almost an hour before we organized a searching party tolook for her. Fred went up-stairs, and I took the lower floor.
It was I who found her, after all, lying full length on the grass in thelittle square yard back of the house. She was in a dead faint, and shewas a much more difficult patient than Margery.
We could get no story from either of them that night. The two rooms hadbeen ransacked, but apparently nothing had been stolen. Fred vowed hehad locked and bolted the kitchen door, and that it had been opened fromwithin.
It was a strange experience, that night intrusion into the house,without robbery as a motive. If Margery knew or suspected the reason forthe outrage, she refused to say. As for Mrs. Butler, to mention theoccurrence put her into hysteria. It was Fred who put forth the moststartling theory of the lot.
"By George," he said the next morning when we had failed to find tracksin the yard, and Edith had reported every silver spoon in its place, "byGeorge, it wouldn't surprise me if the lady in the grave clothes did itherself. There isn't anything a hysterical woman won't do to rouse yourinterest in her, if it begins to flag. How did any one get in throughthat kitchen door, when it was locked inside and bolted? I tell you, sheopened it herself."
I did not like to force Margery's confidence, but I believed that theoutrage was directly for the purpose of searching her room, perhaps forpapers that had been her father's. Mrs. Butler came around enough bymorning, to tell a semi-connected story in which she claimed that twomen had come in from a veranda roof, and tried to chloroform her. Thatshe had pretended to be asleep and had taken the first opportunity,while they were in the other room, to run down-stairs and into the yard.Edith thought it likely enough, being a credulous person.
As it turned out, Edith's intuition was more reliable than myskepticism,--or Fred's.
The Window at the White Cat Page 18