“Answer me,” she insisted. “Of what use am I to you?”
For a full minute the girl lay there looking up at her without stirring. Then a smile glimmered in her eyes; she lifted both arms and laid them on the older woman’s shoulders.
“You are useful — this way,” she said; and kissed her lightly on the forehead.
The effect on Aunt Hannah was abrupt; she caught the girl to her breast and held her there fiercely and in silence for a moment; then, releasing her, tucked her in with mute violence, turned off the light and marched out without a word.
Day after day Desboro’s guests continued to turn the house inside out, ransacking it from garret to cellar.
“We don’t intend to do anything in this house that anybody has ever done here, or at any house party,” explained Reggie Ledyard to Jacqueline. “So if any lady cares to walk down stairs on her head the incident will be quite in order.”
“Can she slide down the banisters instead?” asked Helsa Steyr.
“Oh, you’ll have to slide up to be original,” said Betty Barkley.
“How can anybody slide up the banisters?” demanded Reggie hotly.
“You’ve the intellect of a terrapin,” said Betty scornfully. “It’s because nobody has ever done it that it ought to be done here.”
Desboro, seated on the pool table, told her she could do whatever she desired, including arson, as long as she didn’t disturb the Aqueduct Police.
Katharine Frere said to Jacqueline: “Everything you do is so original. Can’t you invent something new for us to do?”
“She might suggest that you all try to think,” said Mrs. Hammerton tartly. “That would be novelty enough.”
Cairns seized the megaphone and shouted: “Help! Help! Aunt Hannah is after us!”
Captain Herrendene, seated beside Desboro with a half smile on his face, glanced across at Jacqueline who stood in the embrasure of a window, a billiard cue resting across her shoulders.
“Please invent something for us, Miss Nevers,” he said.
“Why don’t you play hide and seek?” sneered Mrs. Hammerton, busily knitting a tie. “It’s suited to your intellects.”
“Let Miss Nevers suggest a new way of playing the oldest game ever invented,” added Betty Barkley. “There is no possibility of inventing anything new; everything was first done in the year one. Even protoplasmic cells played hide-and-seek together.”
“What rot!” said Reggie. “You can’t play that in a new way.”
“You could play it in a sporting way,” said Cairns.
“How’s that, old top?”
“Well, for example, you conceal yourself, and whatever girl finds you has got to marry you. How’s that for a reckless suggestion?”
But it had given Reggie something resembling an idea.
“Let us be hot sports,” he said, with animation; “draw lots to see which girl will hide somewhere in the house; make a time-limit of one hour; and if any man finds her she’ll marry him. There isn’t a girl here,” he added, jeeringly, “who has the sporting nerve to try it!”
A chorus of protests greeted the challenge. Athalie Vannis declared that she was crazy to marry somebody; but she insisted that the men would only pretend to search, and were really too cowardly to hunt in earnest. Cairns retorted that the girl in concealment would never permit a real live man to miss her hiding place while she possessed lungs to reveal it.
“There isn’t,” repeated Reggie, “a girl who has the nerve! Not one!” He inspected them scornfully through the wrong end of the megaphone. “Phony sports,” he added. “No nerves and all fidgets. Look at me; I don’t want to get married; but I’m game for an hour. There isn’t a girl here to call my bluff!” And he ventured to glance at Jacqueline.
“They’ve had a chance to look at you by daylight, Reggie, and that is fatal,” said Cairns. “Now, if they were only sure that I’d discover ‘em, or the god-like captain yonder, or the beautiful Mr. Desboro — —”
“I’ve half a mind to do it,” said Helsa Steyr. “Marie, will you draw lots to see who hides?”
“Why doesn’t a man hide?” drawled Miss Ledyard. “I’m very sure I could drag him to the altar in ten minutes.”
Cairns had found a sheet of paper, torn it into slips, and written down every woman’s name, including Aunt Hannah’s.
“She’s retired to her room in disgust,” said Jacqueline, laughing.
“Is she included?” faltered Reggie.
“You’ve brought it on yourself,” said Cairns. “Are you going to renig just because Aunt Hannah is a possible prize? Are you really a tin sport?”
“No, by heck! Come on, Katharine!” to Miss Frere. “But Betty Barkley can’t figure in this, or there may be bigamy done.”
“That makes it a better sporting proposition,” said Betty coolly. “I insist on figuring; Bertie can take his chances.”
“Then I’m jingled if I don’t play, too,” said Barkley. “And I’m not sure I’ll hunt very hard if it’s Betty who hides.”
The pretty little woman turned up her nose at her husband and sent a dazzling smile at Desboro.
“I’ll whistle three times, like the daughter in the poem,” she said. “Please beat my husband to it.”
Cairns waved the pool basket aloft: “Come ladies!” he cried. “Somebody reach up and draw; and may heaven smile upon your wedding day!”
Betty Barkley, standing on tip-toe, reached up, stirred the folded ballots with tentative fingers, grasped one, drew it forth, and flourished it.
“Goodness! How my heart really beats!” she said. “I don’t know whether I want to open it or not. I hadn’t contemplated bigamy.”
“If it’s my name, I’m done for,” said Katharine Frere calmly. “I’m nearly six feet, and I can’t conceal them all.”
“Open it,” said Athalie Vannis, with a shiver. “After all there’s the divorce court!” And she looked defiantly at Cairns.
Betty turned over the ballot between forefinger and thumb and regarded it with dainty aversion.
“Well,” she said, “if I’m in for a scandal, I might as well know it. Will you be kind to me, Jim, and not flirt with my maid?”
She opened the ballot, examined the name written there, turned and passed it to Jacqueline, who flushed brightly as a delighted shout greeted her.
“The question is,” said Reggie Ledyard excitedly, “are you a sport, Miss Nevers, or are you not? Kindly answer with appropriate gestures.”
The girl stood with her golden head drooping, staring at the bit of paper in her hand; then, as Desboro watched her, she glanced up with that sudden, reckless smile which he had seen once before — the first day he met her — and made a gay little gesture of acceptance.
“You’re not really going to do it, are you?” said Betty, incredulously. “You don’t have to; they’re every one of them short sports themselves!”
“I am not,” said Jacqueline, smiling.
“But,” argued Katharine Frere, “suppose Reggie should find you. You’d never marry him, would you?”
“Great Heavens!” shouted Ledyard. “She might have a worse fate. There’s Desboro!”
“You don’t really mean it, do you, Miss Nevers?” asked Captain Herrendene.
“Yes, I do,” said Jacqueline. “I always was a gambler by nature.”
The tint of excitement was bright on her cheeks; she shot a daring glance at Ledyard, looked at Van Alstyne and laughed, but her back remained turned toward Desboro.
He said: “If the papers ever get wind of this they’ll print it as a serious item.”
“I am perfectly serious,” she said, looking coolly at him over her shoulder. “If there is a man here clever enough to find me, I’ll marry him in a minute. But” — and she laughed in Desboro’s face— “there isn’t. So nobody need really lose one moment in anxiety. And if a girl finds me it’s all off, of course. May I have twenty minutes? And will you time me, Mr. Ledyard? And will you all remain in this room with
the door closed?”
“If nobody finds you,” cried Cairns, as she crossed the threshold, “we each forfeit whatever you ask of us?”
She paused at the door, looking back: “Is that understood?”
Everybody cried: “Yes! Certainly!”
She nodded and disappeared.
For twenty minutes they waited; then, as Reggie closed his watch, a general stampede ensued. Amazed servants shrank aside as Cairns, blowing fearful blasts on the megaphone, cheered on the excited human pack; everywhere Desboro’s cats and dogs fled before the invasion; room after room was ransacked, maids routed, butler and valet defied. Even Aunt Hannah’s sanctuary was menaced until that lady sat up on her bed and swore steadily at Ledyard, who had scaled the transom.
Desboro, hunting by himself, entered the armoury, looked suspiciously at the armoured figures, shook a few, opened the vizors of others, and peered at the painted faces inside the helmets.
Others joined him, prying curiously, gathering in groups amid the motionless army of mailed men. Then, as more than half of the allotted hour had already expired, Ledyard suggested an attic party, where trunks full of early XIXth century clothing might be rifled with pleasing results.
“We may find her up there in a chest, like the celebrated bride,” remarked Aunt Hannah, who had reappeared from her retreat. “It’s the lesser of several tragedies that might happen,” she added insolently, to Desboro.
“To the attic!” thundered Cairns through his megaphone; and they started.
But Desboro still lingered at the armoury door, looking back. The noise of the chase died away in the interior of the main house; the armoury became very still under the flood of pale winter sunshine.
He glanced along the steel ranks of men-at-arms; he looked up at the stately mounted figures; dazzling sunlight glittered over helmet and cuirass and across the armoured flanks of horses.
Could it be possible that she was seated up there, hidden inside some suit of blazing mail, astride a battle-horse?
Cautiously he came back, skirting the magnificent and motionless ranks, hesitated and halted.
Of course the whole thing had been proposed and accepted in jest; he told himself that. And yet — if some other man did discover her — the foundation of the jest might serve for a more permanent understanding. He didn’t want her to have any intimate understanding with anybody until he and she understood each other, and he understood himself.
He didn’t want another man to find and claim the forfeit, even in jest, because he didn’t know what might happen. No man was ever qualified to foretell what another man might do; and men already were behaving toward her with a persistency and seriousness unmistakable — men like Herrendene, who meant what he looked and said; and young Hammerton, Daisy’s brother, eager, inexperienced and susceptible; and Bertie Barkley, a little, hard-faced snob, with an unerring instinct for anybody who promised to be popular among desirable people, was beginning to test her metal with the acid of his experience.
Desboro stood quite still, looking almost warily about him and thinking faster and faster, trying to recollect who it was who had dragged in the silly subject of marriage. That blond and hulking ass Ledyard, wasn’t it?
He began to walk, slowly passing the horsemen in review.
Suppose a blond animal like Reggie Ledyard offered himself in earnest. Was she the kind of girl who would nail the worldly opportunity? And Herrendene — that quiet, self-contained, keen-eyed man of forty-five. You could never tell what Herrendene was thinking about anything, or what he was capable of doing. And his admiration for Jacqueline was undisguised, and his attentions frankly persistent. Last night, too, when they were coasting under the new moon, there was half an hour’s disappearance for which neither Herrendene nor Jacqueline had even pretended to account, though bantered and challenged — to Desboro’s vague discomfort. And the incident had left Desboro a trifle cool toward her that morning; and she had pretended not to be aware of the slight constraint between them, which made him sulky.
He had reached the end of the double lane of horsemen. Now he pivoted and retraced his steps, hands clasped behind his back, absently scanning the men-at-arms, preoccupied with his own reflections.
How seriously had she taken the rôle she was playing somewhere at that moment? Only fools accepted actual hazards when dared. He himself was apt to be that kind of a fool. Was she? Would she really have abided by the terms if discovered by Herrendene, for example, or Dicky Hammerton — if they were mad enough to take it seriously?
He thought of that sudden and delicious flash of recklessness in her eyes. He had seen it twice now.
“By God!” he thought. “I believe she would! She is the sort that sees a thing through to the bitter end.”
He glanced up, startled, as though something, somewhere in the vast, silent place, had moved. But he heard nothing, and there was no movement anywhere among the armoured effigies.
Suppose she were here hidden somewhere within a hollow suit of steel. She must be! Else why was he lingering? Why was he not hunting her with the pack? And still, if she actually were here, why was he not searching for her under every suit of sunlit mail? Could it be because he did not really want to find her — with this silly jest of marriage dragged in — a thing not to be mentioned between her and him even in jest?
Was it that he had become convinced in his heart that she must be here, and was he merely standing guard like a jealous, sullen dog, watching lest some other fool come blundering back from a false trail to discover the right one — and perhaps her?
Suddenly, without reason, he became certain that she and he were there in the armoury alone together. He knew it somehow, felt it, divined it in every quickening pulse beat.
He heard the preliminary click of the armoury clock, indicating five minutes’ grace before the hour struck. He looked up at the old dial, where it was set against the wall — an ancient piece in azure and gold under a foliated crest borne by some long dead dignitary.
Four more minutes now. And suppose she should stir in her place, setting her harness clashing? Had the thought of marrying him ever entered her head? Was it in such a girl to challenge the possibility, make it as near a serious question as it ever could be? It had never existed for them, even as a question. It was not a dead issue, because it had never lived. If she made one movement now, if she so much as lifted her finger, this occult thing would be alive. He knew it — knew that it lay with her; and stood silent, unstirring, listening for the slightest sound. There was no sound.
It lacked now only a minute to the hour. He looked at the face of the lofty clock; and, looking, all in a moment it flashed upon him where she was concealed.
Wheeling in his tracks, on the impulse of the moment he walked straight back to the great painted wooden charger, sheathed in steel and cloth of gold, bearing on high a slender, mounted figure in full armour — the dainty Milanese mail Of the Countess of Oroposa.
The superb young figure sat its saddle, hollow backed, graceful, both delicate gauntlets resting easily over the war-bridle on the gem-set pommel. Sunbeams turned the long spurs to two golden flames, and splintered into fire across the helmet’s splendid crest. He could not pierce the dusk behind the closed vizor; but in every heart-beat, every nerve, he felt her living presence within that hollow shell of inlaid steel and gold.
For a moment he stood staring up at her, then glanced mechanically toward the high clock. Thirty seconds! Time to speak if he would; time for her to move, if in her heart there ever had been the thought which he had never uttered, never meant to voice. Twenty seconds! Through that slitted vizor, also, the clock was in full view. She could read the flight of time as well as he. Now she must move — if ever she meant to challenge in him that to which he never would respond.
He waited now, looking at the clock, now at the still figure above him. Ten seconds! Five!
“Jacqueline!” he cried impulsively.
There was no movement, no answer from the slitte
d helmet.
“Jacqueline! Are you there?”
No sound.
Then the lofty gold and azure clock struck. And when the last of the twelve resounding strokes rang echoing through the sunlit armoury, the mailed figure stirred in its saddle, stretched both stirrups, raised its arms and flexed them.
“You nearly caught me,” she said calmly. “I was afraid you’d see my eyes through the helmet slits. Was it your lack of enterprise that saved me — or your prudence?”
“I spoke to you before the hour was up. It seems to me that I have won.”
“Not at all. You might just as well have stood in the cellar and howled my name. That isn’t discovering me, you know.”
“I felt in my heart that you were there,” he said, in a low voice.
She laughed. “What a man feels in his heart doesn’t count. Do you realise that I’m nearly dead sitting for an hour here? This helmet is abominably hot! How in the world could that poor countess have stood it?”
“Shall I climb up beside you and unlace your helmet?” he asked.
“No, thank you. Mrs. Quant will get me out of it.” She rose in the stirrups, swung one steel-shod leg over, and leaped to the floor beside him, clashing from crest to spur.
“What a silly game it was, anyway!” she commented, lifting her vizor and lowering the beaver. Her face was deliciously flushed, and the gold hair straggled across her cheeks.
“It’s quite wonderful how the armour of the countess fits me,” she said. “I wonder what she looked like. I’ll wager, anyway, that she never played as risky a game in her armour as I have played this morning.”
“You didn’t really mean to abide by the decision, did you?” he asked.
“Do you think I did?”
“No, of course not.”
She smiled. “Perhaps you are correct. But I’ve always been afraid I’d do something radical and irrevocable, and live out life in misery to pay for it. Probably I wouldn’t. I must take off these gauntlets, anyway. Thank you” — as he relieved her of them and tossed them under the feet of the wooden horse.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 650