“You are quite right. Since we have long ago dispensed with the usual formalities of polite conversation, it would be sheer nonsense to pretend that all the comments that I have heard on the score of Dr. Byrd have been entirely complimentary.”
“You’re telling me!” murmured the new Mrs. Byrd appreciatively. “At first it used to worry the life out of me. I couldn’t figure out to save my soul how they got that way. Jack hadn’t done a smitch of harm to any of them. It was all a pack of the most awful lies, and I just decided that everyone in the world was crazy and cruel, wicked, and out to ruin both of us. But after a while I worked some of it out, even though I’m not especially bright at psychology and all that kind of stuff, and now I can see that it doesn’t make a darned bit of difference anyhow.”
She was silent for a moment, her eyes fixed contentedly on the stars that she apparently found brighter at psychology than herself, and after a wait that seemed to Sheridan entirely too prolonged for comfort, he reminded her austerely:
“You were saying that you have already worked out the reason for this unfortunate antagonism that Dr. Byrd seems to inspire?”
“Antagonism?” She tilted her head judicially, trying the word over as though it, too, amused her. “Well, that’s one word for it! The plain truth is that I suppose that most of the men were jealous because he was so good-looking, and most of the women were cross as crabs because the only female that he even looked at twice was a plain little kid from the sticks. All about nine-tenths subconscious, of course,” she added, meticulously conscientious.
Sheridan managed to stifle what threatened to turn into a bark of annoyed derision.
“That, of course, is an extremely soothing conclusion from your point of view, but it hardly covers the more sinister aspects of some of the gossip, should you say?”
“You mean about the sanitarium?” she asked serenely. “No, it doesn’t, but I’ll get around to that in a minute—I’m almost around to it now, and it’s a whole lot funnier than the jealousy stuff, so you’d better get that sense of humor of yours well in hand. Another reason why most people here can’t bear him is that he simply doesn’t belong with this gang, and by now he’s learned it. But it’s hard to get it through your head with one shot that you just honestly aren’t a gentleman—not what these ginks mean by a gentleman anyway—and it took about three shots and the pleasure of finding out that I wasn’t a lady to bring him to. We’ve surely learned by now that we belong a long, long way from this charmed circle! … That’s probably why we’re going to Labrador.”
“Labrador?”
The despairing blankness of the dark face turned to hers moved her to momentary compassion.
“Yes. Next month. We’re going to open a clinic there—you know—Grenfell and hospital ships and Eskimos and all that sort of thing.” Sheridan continued to contemplate this airy enumeration of the charms of the Far North with unfeigned stupefaction. “Oh, I suppose that I must sound perfectly mad, but it’s really the only sane thing you ever heard of. Wait, I’ll start at the beginning.”
“Thank you. That, I think, would help.”
“Well, the real beginning is that of course he knew long before anyone else that I wasn’t an heiress. I told him almost right away after Mother—after Mother was killed, last fall. I had to tell him, because I wanted to marry him, and it wouldn’t have been fair to let him think any nonsense like that. We just had a few thousands that old Grandpa O’Brien left us in his will, and Mother wanted to blow it all in on one grand splurge for me. And I was fool enough to let her.… But Jack didn’t care a bit about that, of course.”
“Then you were engaged? No, but surely you said that you were not engaged?”
“No. Jack wanted to be, but we weren’t.… How good are you at keeping secrets, Mr. Sheridan?”
“I have been led to believe,” he said grimly, “that I am practically perfect. However, by this time, I hesitate to believe anything whatever.”
“Well, I think you’re good. I’ll give you three guesses as to why we weren’t engaged.”
“I am even less successful as a guesser than as a keeper of secrets, I fear.”
“Then I’ll tell you. He wouldn’t marry me because he found out that I was taking drugs, and he has a holy horror of them. You see, right after the accident I had a really bad nervous breakdown, and I went to Stillhaven to build myself up again. I started out with chloral, because I couldn’t sleep, and then laudanum, and then morphine, and all the rest of the ghastly stuff; I really was getting in awfully deep.”
“At the sanitarium, you mean?”
“Yes, of course; at the sanitarium.”
“But what possible right had Dr. Byrd to object to drugs that he was giving to you himself?”
“Jack? Jack never in his life gave me anything stronger than half an aspirin! … No; I got them from—”
A voice from the shadows near the dining-room door called tentatively:
“Miss Wilde? Baltimore’s calling Miss Wilde on the telephone.”
She was on her feet and halfway to the door before she even remembered that she had left the luckless Sheridan behind.
“Oh, I’m sorry, honestly. I’ll be back in just a minute; don’t go, will you? I promise it won’t be more than a minute or so. Do wait.”
“Very assuredly I will wait,” he answered, with a degree of conviction that implied that the rock of Gibraltar would become thoroughly resilient before he moved so much as the fraction of an inch. He drew a long breath and exhaled it slowly and bitterly at the sound of Lady Freddy’s voice issuing from the darkness at the foot of the terrace steps:
“And did he think that he could get off into a corner all by himself, poor child, with no wicked old woman to bother him?” He could hear the derisive gayety of the smile even though he could not see it. “Well, all that that goes to prove is that even if he is the smartest policeman in Vienna, he’s a poor, God-forsaken fool. Move over, darling: Freddy’s come to play with you.”
She sank down beside him, the smile still edging her lips, and adjusted the long, creamy sweep of her gown with both skill and audacity.
“Keep quiet now—he’s starting to sing. Oh, heavenly! It’s the one about the moon! I hope that he’s there to sing it when I die.”
And suddenly, all about them, as though a magic wand had passed, there was a curious stillness, and peace.… But the only magic was the flooding moonlight, the far-off music of that light, melancholy voice, singing so easily of love lost and done for:
“So we’ll go on more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving
And the moon be still as bright.”
“Who is it?” asked Sheridan under his breath.
“Dion Mallory. Hush.”
Dion Mallory. Of course.… Who else? … He had known before he asked.
“For the sword outlives its sheath,
And the soul outwears the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And Love itself have rest.”
Rest.… Rest was good, too. It had been a long time since he had rested.… To whom was Mallory singing of moonlight lost and peace captured? To Tess Stuart, lying still and white, lost deep in sleep? To Fay, lying yet more white, more still, lost in something deeper?
“Though the night was made for loving
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.”
No more.… Never, never any more.
He said, hearing the quick spatter of applause and the rush of voices that for a moment had been blessedly silenced:
“He has a voice that one would not soon forget.”
“No foolin’,” agreed Freddy Parrish soberly. “That lad gets me, anyway—I’d be cuckoo about him if he sang sea chanteys through his nose! It’s lucky for him that my favorite gal, Tess, seems to have staked out a previous claim—and it’s lucky for
me that you’ve just drifted three thousand odd miles into the center of my life. Either way, it’s probably a lucky break for good old Noll.… Are you still mad about me, Beautiful?”
“Mad,” said Sheridan thoughtfully, “is the very word. By the way, where is that highly distinguished person that you so disrespectfully refer to as good old Noll? He is one of the few persons in Washington that I am genuinely anxious to meet. Is he not here tonight?”
“Oh, he’s here all right! You can see him, if you screw around a little, sitting on that green wicker sofa under the blue lantern, between the two funny-looking guys in hornrimmed spectacles. See how alert and pop-eyed the two in the goggles look? That’s because one of them’s a New York press correspondent and the other one’s a Baltimore correspondent, and they both think that Noll knows more about what’s happening in America than if he’d been born in Iowa and brought up in Brooklyn. Maybe they’re right at that! But if you think that I’m going to have anything to do with your meeting him, you couldn’t possibly be more mistaken. My own idea is to keep you pretty firmly apart.”
“But, Freddy, why on earth?”
“Because I’ve read a book, darling; in fact, I’ve read two or three books, and in my prime, I used to step out pretty lively as a playgoer. My prime, you’ll be sorry to hear, was just about the time that a whole lot of noble laddies in white monkey jackets and red uniforms with plenty of gold where it would do the most good would rear right up on their hind legs in the twilight and the starlight and the moonlight and the gaslight, and heave their chests and twitch their muscles, and carry on like Sydney Carton having his last fling before the guillotine got him.… Do you know what every one of those blasted, blooming heroes was saying, my own true love?”
“Freddy, I cannot wait to hear!”
“Well, believe it or not, every last one of ’em was saying, ‘No, no, my heart’s beloved, it can never, never be. It’s tearing the heart straight out of my body, but how could I let down a ripping fellow who trusts me as Bertie does? Why, he’s been closer than a brother to me, and I’d cut off my right hand before I’d let him down! No, Primrose, the only thing to do is to make a clean cut of it, once and for all. Tomorrow, God willing, I’ll be on my way to Afghanistan. Don’t cry, little girl, it’s worse than death for me, too.’ Well, darling, I’m not going to run the risk of having you mutilate yourself beyond repair by tearing out your heart and chopping off your hands—and the good Lord knows you wouldn’t be any good to me as far away as Afghanistan! So you’ll have to step straight over my dead body if you’re still set on meeting good old Noll.”
Sheridan, suddenly and blissfully oblivious of death and horror and bewilderment and frustration, flung back his head with a shout of pure delight.
“Freddy, I am quite sure that in all this world there is no one even a little bit like you! Have no fear, when this world-shaking romance of ours flowers to its inevitable climax, you will find me as ruthless and remorseless as though I had never so much as opened the covers of Anthony Hope or Henry Seton Merriman. I swear to you as I trample over the prostrate form of Sir Oliver, I shall see before me only the bloodstained banners of Coward and Hemingway!”
“Child, you’re taking a ten-ton weight off my mind.… Looks tired, doesn’t he?”
She eyed the distant gentleman with affectionate severity, and Sheridan permitted himself a somewhat protracted inspection of the worn, distinguished countenance with its high cheekbones and brilliant, sunken eyes.
“A little, yes.… What is Sir Oliver’s profession, besides the enviable one of being Lady Freddy’s husband?”
“How many careers do you want for a nickel? Oh, well, never mind—as an absolute side issue from keeping an eye on me, he dashes off little volumes on minor characters in American history and literature that run from eight hundred to nine hundred pages. You know the sort of stuff—Anthony Wayne and Theodosia Burr and Ben Butler. Ever hear tell of Beauregard?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“Well, believe me, you will before Noll’s finished with him! Any time you hear long, loud yells in the night, it’s the Book of the Month Club and the Literary Guild fighting it out as to which gets him next.” She pulled the glass of frosted mint and amber that Vicki had not yet touched towards her abstractedly and lifted it to her lips, her eyes still on her lawful wedded spouse. “Want to know the reason he looks tired that way? It’s because I don’t listen to him. There he is, the best talker in Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, and North and South America, and I never hear a single darned word he says. It’s wearing him out; he’s getting lines around his eyes, and a hacking cough, and if you come up behind him and even suck in your breath, he jumps ten feet out of his skin, poor lamb.… Hey, whose glass is this, anyway? Didn’t you haul these cushions around here for me, by any chance?”
“Candor compels me, Freddy, to confide in you that the glass that you have already practically drained was the property of Vicki Wilde. Also that she is liable to return at any moment to reclaim it.”
Lady Freddy pushed it from her energetically,” her brow darkening. “The Wilde girl? Well, for crying out loud, what’s she doing out here with you? And what’s more, what are you doing out here with her?”
“She was waiting, I think, for Jack Byrd, and I was very inadequately helping her to wait. Only a few seconds before you arrived she received a call from Baltimore that I imagine came from him—and she relinquished the glass that you are so violently rebuffing in order to answer it. May I not get you one of your own?”
“No, sir. I’ll be on my way—that is, I’ll be on my way when I get good and ready! No raw schoolgirl can tie a new scalp on her belt and say that she wrested it away from Freddy Parrish. Are you listening to me, Sheridan?”
“Frankly, Freddy, I was not listening with the riveted attention that is undoubtedly your due.… I was wondering very selfishly, I admit, whether it is possible that you could help me out on a little problem that all this evening has been hammering away in the back of a practically paralyzed brain. You were one of those to whom Tess Stuart gave a set of backgammon markers for Christmas, were you not?”
“I was. What are you trying to do, start a club?” Freddy Parrish, clearly displeased by the highly impersonal turn that the conversation was taking, scowled at him with a ferocity that was only partially assumed. “Or if by any chance you want to get one like it, I haven’t the foggiest idea where it came from. Tess has them specially made up. Are you a backgammon hound, too?”
“I have never even played the game, unfortunately. But late this afternoon I came across one of the sets with a marker loose—not in the little leather box with the others, I mean. It stuck quite badly when I tried to put it back—so much so that I was really afraid to wedge it in. Do your markers do that?”
“Of course they don’t. Why should they, when they were made to fit the box?”
“Do you know, that is precisely what struck me. Have you ever counted those markers, Freddy? Would you know, by any chance, whether there were fifty or fifty-one?”
“Counted them? Why in Pete’s name should I count them? When I’m playing backgammon, my lad, I’m counting the spots on the dice, not the markers in the box.”
“In the set that I counted,” murmured the young man from Vienna abstractedly, “there were fifty-one. Twenty of one color, thirty-one of another. It struck me, perhaps unreasonably, as rather a curious number.”
“Hey, what’s all this hokey-pokey about?” demanded the red-headed lady at his side with a sudden and justified surge of interest. “Are you the house detective out here, or is this just the Vienna police force going in for a postman’s holiday? If you’re trying to pump me about anything, just step right up and—”
Behind them there was the sound of light footsteps coming swiftly towards them across the flagged terrace, and a voice, sounding lamentably young and shaken, said:
“Mr. Sheridan, I don’t know what to do. It was Jack, of course, and he says that Jerry Har
dy is dying—I mean actually. It may be an hour or so, or it may be only a matter of minutes. Do you think that I ought to—” She halted, almost tripping over the hurrying words, and said in a small, blank voice, “Oh, it’s Lady Parrish, isn’t it? I didn’t see you; it’s so dark in that corner. I was wondering whether someone ought to tell Joan—”
But Lady Parrish was already on her feet.
“Good Lord, the poor kid will be out of her head! She’s been like a kitten on hot coals all evening, anyway; the party’s supposed to be for Margot Hardy, and this isn’t going to precisely brighten it up. What time is it?”
Sheridan bent his face to the faintly illuminated dial on his wrist.
“Twenty—no, eighteen minutes to eleven.”
“The play ought to be over any minute, then. Wait, I’ll get Dion Mallory—I just saw him coming up towards the house a minute or so ago.” She paused uncertainly, halfway to the door. “No, I suppose Allan would be better. It’s his party, after all! He’s down by the swimming pool; don’t either of you say anything to Joan till I get hold of him, will you?”
The two on the terrace steps stood watching the white gleam of her dress vanishing farther and farther into the shadows in a silence that Sheridan, for one, was loath to break—so hard, so useless, so stupid did those little empty-sounds called words seem. Still, it was he who spoke first, in a voice so friendly and gentle that it surprised even himself:
“That, Vicki, is very bad luck indeed—and not only for poor Hardy. Tonight you will not be able to tell all these people how safe and happy you now are, will you?”
The Crooked Lane Page 23