“Don’t feel hurt; I lost my temper and I ask your pardon. But I’m half crazy with worry — you’ve seen to-day’s papers, I suppose — so you can understand a man’s losing his temper. Please forgive me; I’ll try to see you when I can — when it’s advisable. Does that satisfy you?”
“Yes,” she said in a dull voice.
She put away the receiver and, turning, dropped onto her bed. At eight o’clock the maid who had come to announce dinner found her young mistress lying there, clenched hands over her eyes, lying slim and rigid on her back in the darkness.
When the electric lamps were lighted she rose, went to the mirror and looked steadily at herself for a long, long time.
She tasted what was offered, seeing nothing, hearing nothing; later, in her room, a servant came saying that Mr. Gray begged a moment’s interview on a matter of importance connected with her brother.
It was the only thing that could have moved her to see him. She had denied herself to him all that winter; she had been obliged to make it plainer after a letter from him — a nice, stupid, boyish letter, asking her to marry him. And her reply terminated the attempts of Bunbury Gray to secure a hearing from the girl who had apparently taken so sudden and so strange an aversion to a man who had been nice to her all her life.
They had, at one time, been virtually engaged, after Geraldine Seagrave had cut him loose, and before Dysart took the trouble to seriously notice her. But Bunny was youthful and frisky and his tastes were catholic, and it did not seem to make much difference that Dysart again stepped casually between them in his graceful way. Yet, curiously enough, each preserved for the other a shy sort of admiration which, until last autumn, had made their somewhat infrequent encounters exceedingly interesting. Autumn had altered their attitudes; Bunny became serious in proportion to the distance she put between them — which is of course the usual incentive to masculine importunity. They had had one or two little scenes at Roya-Neh; the girl even hesitated, unquietly curious, perplexed at her own attitude, yet diffidently interested in the man.
A straw was all that her balance required to incline it; Dysart dropped it, casually. And there were no more pretty scenes between Bunny Gray and his lady-love that autumn, only sulks from the youth, and, after many attempts to secure a hearing, a very direct and honest letter that winter, which had resulted in his dismissal.
She came down to the drawing-room, looking the spectre of herself, but her stillness and self-possession kept Bunny at his distance, staring, restless, amazed — all of which very evident symptoms and emotions she ignored.
“I have your message,” she said. “Has anything happened to my brother?”
He began: “You mustn’t be alarmed, but he is not very well — —”
“I am alarmed. Where is he?”
“In the Knickerbocker Hospital.”
“Seriously ill?”
“No. He is in a private ward — —”
“The — alcoholic?” she asked quietly.
“Yes,” he said, flushing with the shame that had not burnt her white face.
“May I go to him?” she asked.
“No!” he exclaimed, horrified.
She seated herself, hands folded loosely on her lap:
“What am I to do, Bunny?”
“Nothing.... I only came to tell you so that you’d know. To-morrow if you care to telephone Bailey — —”
“Yes; thank you.” She closed her eyes; opened them with an effort.
“If you’ll let me, Sylvia, I’ll keep you informed,” he ventured.
“Would you? I’d be very glad.”
“Sure thing!” he said with great animation; “I’ll go to the hospital as many times a day as I am allowed, and I’ll bring you back a full account of Stuyve’s progress after every visit.... May I, Sylvie?”
She said nothing. He sat looking at her. He had no great amount of intellect, but he possessed an undue proportion of heart under the somewhat striking waistcoats which at all times characterised his attire.
“I’m terribly sorry for you,” he said, his eyes very wide and round.
She gazed into space, past him.
“Do you — would you prefer to have me go?” he stammered.
There was no reply.
“Because,” he said miserably, “I take it that you haven’t much use for me.”
No word from her.
“Sylvie?”
Silence; but she looked up at him. “I haven’t changed,” he said, and the healthy colour turned him pink. “I — just — wanted you to know. I thought perhaps you might like to know — —”
“Why?” Her voice was utterly unlike her own.
“Why?” he repeated, getting redder. “I don’t know — I only thought you might — it might — amuse you — to know that I haven’t changed — —”
“As others have? Is that what you mean, Bunny?”
“No, no, I didn’t think — I didn’t mean — —”
“Yes, you did. Why not say it to me? You mean that you, and others, have heard rumours. You mean that you, unlike others, are trying to make me understand that you are still loyal to me. Is that it?”
“Y-yes. Good Lord! Loyal! Why, of course I am. Why, you didn’t suppose I’d be anything else, did you?”
She opened her pallid lips to speak and could not.
“Loyal!” he repeated indignantly. “There’s no merit in that when a man’s been in love with a girl all his life and didn’t know it until she’d got good and tired of him! You know I’m for you every time, Sylvia; what’s the game in pretending you didn’t know it?”
“No game.... I didn’t — know it.”
“Well, you do now, don’t you?”
Her face was colourless as marble. She said, looking at him: “Suppose the rumour is true?”
His face flamed: “You don’t know what you are saying!” he retorted, horrified.
“Suppose it is true?”
“Sylvia — for Heaven’s sake — —”
“Suppose it is true,” she repeated in a dead, even voice; “how loyal would you remain to me then?”
“As loyal as I am now!” he answered angrily, “if you insist on my answering such a silly question — —”
“Is that your answer?”
“Certainly. But — —”
“Are you sure?”
He glared at her; something struck coldly through him, checking breath and pulse, then releasing both till the heavy beating of his heart made speech impossible.
“I thought you were not sure,” she said.
“I am sure!” he broke out. “Good God, Sylvia, what are you doing to me?”
“Destroying your faith in me.”
“You can’t! I love you!”
She gave a little gasp:
“The rumour is true,” she said.
He reeled to his feet; she sat looking up at him, white, silent hands twisted on her lap.
“Now you know,” she managed to say. “Why don’t you go? If you’ve any self-respect, you’ll go. I’ve told you what I am; do you want me to speak more plainly?”
“Yes,” he said between his teeth.
“Very well; what do you wish to know?”
“Only one thing.... Do you — care for him?”
She sat, minute after minute, head bent, thinking, thinking. He never moved a muscle; and at last she lifted her head.
“No,” she said.
“Could you care for — me?”
She made a gesture as though to check him, half rose, fell back, sat swaying a moment, and suddenly tumbled over sideways, lying a white heap on the rug at his feet.
CHAPTER XX. IN SEARCH OF HERSELF
As his train slowed down through the darkness and stopped at the snow-choked station, Duane, carrying suit-case, satchel, and fur coat, swung himself off the icy steps of the smoker and stood for a moment on the platform in the yellow glare of the railway lanterns, looking about him.
Sleigh-bells sounded near — c
himing through the still, cold air; he caught sight of two shadowy restive horses, a gaily plumed sleigh, and, at the same moment, the driver leaned sideways from her buffalo-robed seat, calling out to him by name.
“Why, Kathleen!” he exclaimed, hastening forward. “Did you really drive down here all alone to meet me?”
She bent over and saluted him, demure, amused, bewitchingly pretty in her Isabella bear furs:
“I really did, Duane, without even a groom, so we could talk about everything and anything all the way home. Give your checks to the station agent — there he is! — Oh, Mr. Whitley, would you mind sending up Mr. Mallett’s trunks to-night? Thank you so much. Now, Duane, dear — —”
He tossed suit-case and satchel into the sleigh, put on his fur coat, and climbing up beside Kathleen, burrowed into the robes.
“I tell you what,” he said seriously, “you’re getting to be a howling beauty; not just an ordinary beauty, but a miracle. Do you mind if I kiss you again?”
“Not after that,” she said, presenting him a fresh-curved cheek tinted with rose, and snowy cold. Then, laughing, she swung the impatient horses to the left; a jingling shower of golden bell-notes followed; and they were off through the starlight, tearing northward across the snow.
“Duane!” she said, pulling the young horses down into a swift, swinging trot, “what do you think! Geraldine doesn’t know you’re coming!”
“Why not?” he asked, surprised. “I telegraphed.”
“Yes, but she’s been on the mountain with old Miller for three days. Three of your letters are waiting for her; and then came your telegram, and of course Scott and I thought we ought to open it.”
“Of course. But what on earth sent Geraldine up the Golden Dome in the dead of winter?”
Kathleen shook her pretty head:
“She’s turned into the most uncontrollable sporting proposition you ever heard of! She’s up there at Lynx Peak camp, with her rifle, and old Miller. They’re after that big boar — the biggest, horridest thing in the whole forest. I saw him once. He’s disgusting. Scott objected, and so did I, but, somehow, I’m becoming reconciled to these break-neck enterprises she goes in for so hard — so terribly hard, Duane! and all I do is to fuss a little and make a few tearful objections, and she laughs and does what she pleases.”
He said: “It is better, is it not, to let her?”
“Yes,” returned Kathleen quietly, “it is better. That is why I say very little.”
There was a moment’s silence, but the constraint did not last.
“It’s twenty below zero, my poor friend,” observed Kathleen. “Luckily, there is no wind to-night, but, all the same, you ought to keep in touch with your nose and ears.”
Duane investigated cautiously.
“My features are still sticking to my face,” he announced; “is it really twenty below? It doesn’t seem so.”
“It is. Yesterday the thermometers registered thirty below, but nobody here minds it when the wind doesn’t blow; and Geraldine has acquired the most exquisite colour! — and she’s so maddeningly pretty, Duane, and actually plump, in that long slim way of hers.... And there’s another thing; she is happier than she has been for a long, long while.”
“Has that fact any particular significance to you?” he asked slowly.
“Vital!... Do you understand me, Duane, dear?”
“Yes.”
A moment later she called in her clear voice: “Gate, please!” A lantern flashed; a door opened in the lodge; there came a crunch of snow, a creak, and the gates of Roya-Neh swung wide in the starlight.
Kathleen nodded her thanks to the keeper, let the whip whistle, and spent several minutes in consequence recovering control of the fiery young horses who were racing like scared deer. The road was wide, crossed here and there by snowy “rides,” and bordered by the splendid Roya-Neh forests; wide enough to admit a white glow from myriads of stars. Never had Duane seen so many stars swarming in the heavens; the winter constellations were magnificent, their diamond-like lustre silvered the world.
“I suppose you want to hear all the news, all the gossip, from three snow-bound rustics, don’t you?” she asked. “Well, then, let me immediately report a most overwhelming tragedy. Scott has just discovered that several inconsiderate entomologists, who died before he was born, all wrote elaborate life histories of the Rose-beetle. Isn’t it pathetic? And he’s worked so hard, and he’s been like a father to the horrid young grubs, feeding them nice juicy roots, taking their weights and measures, photographing them, counting their degraded internal organs — oh, it is too vexing! Because, if you should ask me, I may say that I’ve been a mother to them, too, and it enrages me to find out that all those wretched, squirming, thankless creatures have been petted and studied and have had their legs counted and their Bertillon measurements taken years before either Scott or I came into this old fraud of a scientific world!”
Duane’s unrestrained laughter excited her merriment; the star-lit woodlands rang with it and the treble chiming of the sleigh-bells.
“What on earth will he find to do now?” asked Duane.
“He’s going to see it through, he says. Isn’t it fine of him? There is just a bare chance that he may discover something that those prying entomological people overlooked. Anyway, we are going to devote next summer to studying the parasites of the Rose-beetle, and try to find out what sort of creatures prey upon them. And I want to tell you something exciting, Duane. Promise you won’t breathe one word!”
“Not a word!”
“Well, then — Scott was going to tell you, anyway! — we think — but, of course, we are not sure by any means! — but we venture to think that we have discovered a disease which kills Rose-beetles. We don’t know exactly what it is yet, or how they get it, but we are practically convinced that it is a sort of fungus.”
She was very serious, very earnest, charming in her conscientious imitation of that scientific caution which abhors speculation and never dares assert anything except dry and proven facts.
“What are you and Scott aiming at? Are you going to try to start an epidemic among the Rose-beetles?” he inquired.
“Oh, it’s far too early to even outline our ideas — —”
“That’s right; don’t tell anything Scott wants to keep quiet about! I’ll never say a word, Kathleen, only if you’ll take my advice, feed ’em fungus! Stuff ’em with it three times a day — give it to them boiled, fried, au gratin, à la Newburg! That’ll fetch ‘em!... How is old Scott, anyway?”
“Perfectly well,” she said demurely. “He informs us daily that he weighs one hundred and ninety pounds, and stands six feet two in his snow-shoes. He always mentions it when he tells us that he is going to scrub your face in a snow-drift, and Geraldine invariably insists that he isn’t man enough. You know, as a matter of fact, we’re all behaving like very silly children up here. Goodness knows what the servants think.” Her smiling face became graver.
“I am so glad that matters are settled and that there’s enough of your estate left to keep your mother and Naïda in comfort.”
He nodded. “How is Scott coming out?”
“Why — he’ll tell you. I don’t believe he has very much left. Geraldine’s part is sufficient to run Roya-Neh, and the house in town, if she and Scott conclude to keep it. Old Mr. Tappan has been quite wonderful. Why, Duane, he’s a perfect old dear; and we all are so terribly contrite and so anxious to make amends for our horrid attitude toward him when he ruled us with an iron rod.”
“He’s a funny old duck,” mused Duane. “That son of his, Peter, has had the ‘indiwidool cultiwated’ clean out of him. He’s only a type, like Gibson’s drawings of Tag’s son. Old Tappan may be as honest as a block of granite, but it’s an awful thing that he should ever have presided over the destinies of children.”
Kathleen sighed. “According to his light he was faithful. I know that his system was almost impossible; I had to live and see my children driven into themselve
s until they were becoming too self-centred to care for anything else — to realise that there was anything else or anybody else except their wishes and themselves to consider.... But, Duane, you see the right quality was latent in them. They are coming out — they have emerged splendidly. It has altered their lives fundamentally, of course, but, sometimes, I wonder whether, in their particular cases, it was not better to cripple the easy, irresponsible, and delightfully casual social instincts of the House of Seagrave. Educated according to my own ideas, they must inevitably have become, in a measure, types of the set with which they are identified.... And the only serious flaw in the Seagraves was — weakness.”
Duane nodded, looking ahead into the star-illumined night.
“I don’t know. Tappan’s poison may have been the antidote for them in this case. Tell me, Kathleen, has Geraldine — suffered?”
“Yes.”
“Very — much?”
“Very much, Duane. Has she said nothing about it to you in her letters?”
“Nothing since she went to town that time. Every letter flies the red cross. Does she still suffer?”
“I don’t think so. She seems so wonderfully happy — so vigorous, in such superb physical condition. For a month I have not seen that pitiful, haunted expression come into her eyes. And it is not mere restlessness that drives her into perpetual motion now; it’s a new delight in living hard and with all her might every moment of the day!... She overdoes it; you will turn her energy into other channels. She’s ready for you, I think.”
They drove on in silence for a few minutes, then swung into a broader avenue of pines. Straight ahead glimmered the lights of Roya-Neh.
Duane said naïvely: “I don’t suppose I could get up to Lynx Peak camp to-night, could I?”
Kathleen threw back her head, making no effort to control her laughter.
“It isn’t necessary,” she managed to explain; “I sent a messenger up the mountain with a note to her saying that matters of importance required her immediate return. She’ll come down to-night by sleigh from The Green Pass and Westgate Centre.”
“Won’t she be furious?” he inquired, with a hypocritical side glance at Kathleen, who laughed derisively and drew in the horses under the porte-cochère. A groom took their heads; Duane swung Kathleen clear to the steps just as Scott Seagrave, hearing sleigh-bells, came out, bareheaded, his dinner-jacket wide open, as though he luxuriated in the bitter air.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 457