LAUGHTER IN THE DARK
Neither Lionel Fitz-Brown nor Kate Clendennin knew the precise degree
of cousinship that constituted the bond of relationship between them.
That such a bond existed had been the natural inference from their
common relationship to Mrs. Baxter, since, to paraphrase Euclid,
cousins that are related to the same cousin must be related to one
another.
But when Cousin Lionel attempted to solve the genealogical problem
with a proposition beginning "If your greatuncle, who was second
cousin to Mrs. Baxter's grandmother, was a first cousin once removed
to my aunt----" Kate put her hands to her ears and fled from the
room. And when a few days later he attempted it again she threw a
book at him.
On the third occasion (by this time they had dropped the "cousin" and
were just Lionel and Kate) she suppressed him by putting her hand
over his mouth, which only goes to show that relationship, if
sufficiently remote, is no bar to friendly intimacy.
Lionel's frame of mind after meeting the new secretary at luncheon
was a perplexing one. He retired to the billiard room to think it
over, under cover of the noisy osculation of compulsory billiard
balls. Lionel had never made claim to cleverness; indeed, he
regarded it as rather stupid to be clever and downright bad form to
be brilliant. "If a chap is a good shot and isn't afraid of a hedge
with a barb wire in it, and knows how to fasten his tie, what more
does he want?"
But this American girl--strange a girl like that should be a
secretary!--had discovered to him unsuspected possibilities in
himself. He had actually talked, he had even gone so far as to say
one or two rather good things--that about aeroplanes, for
instance--no, come to think of it, it was she who said that--what was
it he had said? Anyhow, it had made the American girl laugh, so it
must have been rather good. Extraordinary people, these Americans;
how they sharpen one's wits! On the whole, he was rather pleased
with himself. He wondered if Kate had noticed it.
As he thought of Kate, there rushed through his brain a succession of
pictures of the countess and Robert Baxter at the luncheon table,
mental snapshots forgotten at the moment, now vividly developed....
Kate with her head thrown back, laughing at something Baxter had said
and incidentally displaying a curve of throat that would humiliate
the most conceited lily petal.... Kate, leaning forward on her
elbow, her chin slightly elevated on the palm of her hand, with an
expression of rapt attention that is well worth while for a girl
whose eyelids have such a delicious downward sweep.... Kate, in
profile perdu, showing the pink lobe of an exquisite ear and her
"jolly well brushed tan-colored hair" curving smoothly up from the
nape of her neck.... Kate, with her upturned palm resting on the
hand of Robert Baxter--confound him!
The billiard balls were in tempting position and Lionel, sighting for
a follow shot, found his gaze irresistibly prolonged to the stretch
of sunlit lawn, backed by dark firs, to which the window opposite
formed a frame. At the same moment two figures crossed his line of
vision, walking slowly and apparently quite oblivious to their
surroundings. With cue drawn back for the stroke, Lionel watched
them pass slowly out of the picture. It was Kate Clendennin and
Robert Baxter!
The next instant an osculatory outbreak of earsplitting intensity
echoed through the billiard room, and the red and white affinities
went spinning round the table, as Lionel slammed his cue into the
rack and stormed out of the room. A few minutes later (when Kate
came in to look for him) there was no sign of Lionel, and the
demeanor of the billiard balls was as frigid and standoffish as if
they had never been introduced--or were lately married.
At the evening meal, called supper by Hiram, Lionel did not appear,
to the keen disappointment of Kate, who had descended into the
kitchen in the loneliness of the late afternoon and prepared a _crême
renversée_ for his especial benefit.
It was late dusk when Fitz-Brown returned, by the golf course, from a
ten-mile ramble over Ippingford downs. All his rancor, jealousy, if
you will, had disappeared. He had clarified his mind by a physical
process, a process at once primitively simple and profoundly
scientific. For, if it is true that a physical ailment may be healed
by a mental process, it is equally true that a mental ailment can be
cured by a physical process. All Lionel did was to walk and walk and
walk and allow the fresh summer wind, bounding over miles of gorse
and heather, to sweep the fog from his brain. So that, by the time
he emerged upon the Millbrook golf course he was able to see himself
quite clearly and his self-appraisement was not flattering. He stood
on the top of a high bunker and took a long breath as he delivered
this ultimatum: "I'm a beastly ass," he said to himself. "Kate would
be a fool to marry a duffer like me."
He broke off suddenly as he caught sight of the countess, bareheaded
and clad in a dinner gown, putting pensively in the twilight.
Kate had already caught a glimpse of him as his tall figure stood for
an instant silhouetted against the fading sky, and, divining his
intention to take her by surprise, she addressed herself to the
business of putting with convincing absorption.
As the ball for a breathless moment hesitated at the rim of the cup,
then, Curtius-like, plunged into the dark abyss, a cheery "Bravo!
Kate!" directly behind her caused a genuine start as perfect as any
imitation she could have given.
"Gad! How you startled me!" There was an alchemy in Kate's
personality that transmuted the sounding brass of profanity into the
gold of pure speech. She swung round as she spoke.
"Sorry, old girl," said Lionel, "it's not like you to be so jumpy. I
say, that was a ripping putt, almost in the dark, too."
Kate laughed. "That's just it. I couldn't see to miss it."
"Couldn't see to miss it?" mused Lionel; then brightening suddenly,
"I say, that's rather good!" he laughed for sheer delight at having
seen the point so quickly.
"Good boy!" said Kate, patting him on the back. "You're improving."
Lionel stopped laughing. "Am I? By Jove! then you've noticed it,
too. Most extraordinary how it sharpens one's wits, rubbing up
against Americans! Did you see me at lunch?" he inquired eagerly.
"Rubbing up against Americans?" Kate opened her eyes in feigned
astonishment.
"Really, Kate, I wish you'd heard me," he went on earnestly. "I said
one or two rather good things."
"To Mrs. Merle?"
"Oh, come, I say!" protested Lionel. "You know who I mean, the
American girl--Miss--Miss----"
"Oh, the secretary," Kate stifled a yawn. "Sorry I didn't notice
her. What's she like?"
A Machiavellian suggestion entered Lionel's artless mind. "Awfully
jolly sort!" he exclaimed with enthusiasm. "Devilish pretty
eyes--and fluffy hair--I wish I could remember it," he frowned.
"You've just said it was fluffy."
"I don't mean her hair; of course I couldn't forget that. I was
trying to remember something I said to her."
"How unfortunate," purred Kate. "You should have written it down."
"It really wasn't bad," he went on. "Anyway it made her laugh,
but--she wouldn't look at a duffer like me." He sighed athletically.
"She's much too clever; half the time you don't know what she's
driving at, but you can bally well believe what she says."
It was nearly dark and they had drifted toward a semi-circular rustic
bench at the foot of a towering horse-chestnut. Lionel lighted his
briar and sank, in sack-like ease, into the uncomfortable seat,
lulled by the incense man burns only to himself, the envy of the
watching gods who invented eating and drinking and fighting and
loving, and created the tobacco plant, but never thought of smoking.
Kate lighted a cigarette. But rustic seats with tree trunks for
backs are not made for women. After picking some pieces of bark from
her hair and attempting to fish others from the back of her neck,
only to push them hopelessly out of reach, she jumped up impatiently
and fell to pacing the soft turf behind the tree, the wavering light
of her cigarette swaying hither and thither in the deepening gloom
like a dissipated firefly.
"How very funny," she said at length, pausing in her walk to break
the smoke silence, "that she can make you believe everything she says
when you don't know what she's driving at. It sounds like mind
reading."
Lionel watched a ball of gray smoke unravel itself and trail swiftly
into the darkness above. "What's funny about mind reading?" he
asked. "It strikes me it isn't any funnier than palm reading." Then
after a contemplative pause, "That Baxter chap seemed to find your
palm very interesting. Did he tell you anything exciting?"
"Very exciting," her voice came from the other side of the tree.
"I say, mayn't I know?"
"Oh, it wouldn't interest you."
"I hope it was something good. I'll punch Baxter's head if it
wasn't."
"Then you do believe in palmistry?"
"What's that got to do with it? I say, Kate, what did he tell you?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"Because"--he hesitated--"because I----" He stopped abruptly to
listen. The blackness above them was stirring. A tremor ran through
the great tree. The darkness high overhead swayed with a sound like
the sigh of rain on a lake. Unseen branches moved heavily and then
were still. Mysteriously as it came, the wind died away. It was now
quite dark under the tree. For a time neither spoke.
A fear he could not explain had come upon Lionel and stopped his
speech. A few moments ago his only word for palmistry was tommyrot
and now the writing on Kate's hand was to him the most momentous
thing on earth.
Suddenly, out of the darkness came a strange sound----the sound of
laughter, viewless laughter, that died away, leaving an uncanny
silence.
"Kate! What is it? Where are you?"
There was no answer. He circled the tree swiftly with outstretched
hand, guiding himself by the edge of the seat.
"Kate! For God's sake. What's the matter? Where are you?"
The next instant his free hand touched something and his arms closed
around her. It was as if, in the space of a minute, he had lost this
woman forever and suddenly found her again. And now he, Lionel
Fitz-Brown, was holding Kate Clendennin in his arms. If the stone
Diana in the sunken garden had turned to flesh and blood and found
her way into his embrace it would not have been more astonishing,
incredible. Here she was resting limply against him, her lovely head
on his shoulder. He could feel her hair against his cheek.
"By Jove! She must have fainted," he muttered.
Carefully he placed Kate beside him on the rustic seat, supporting
her tenderly with his arm, her head on his shoulder, her cheek
touching his. How feverish it felt! He began to be alarmed.
"Kate!" he said in a low tone.
"Yes? What is it?" she whispered.
"How do you feel?"
"Pretty comfy." She nestled closer.
Lionel was astonished. "Didn't you faint?" he asked anxiously.
"Faint?" Kate sat up suddenly. "Is that what you thought?"
"What were you up to just now when I--when I found you?" stammered
Lionel.
"I was--giving you the slip," said Kate.
"Giving me the slip? What for?"
"I wanted to get away before I--before I made a bally fool of myself
and now--and now I've done it. Are you aware," she demanded
abruptly, "that it's horribly late?"
Lionel struck his repeater. The tiny chimes clinged the hours and
quarters against his right and Kate's left ear. They counted nine
and three-quarters.
Kate straightened up and began smoothing her hair. "We must be
getting back," she said.
Then an inspiration came to Lionel, born of romantic literature. "I
say, Kate, I--er--I wish we could count all our hours that way."
There was an agonizing pause.
"It would be economical," she mused, "to make one watch do for two
people."
"Oh, I say, you know what I mean, Kate," he went on desperately, "get
married and all that sort of thing. I know an awfully jolly little
farm down in Kent, only forty pounds a year."
"Yes? And what would we live on?"
"Why, we'd keep a cow--and a hen--and a bee--and all that sort of
thing."
"A bee?" Kate burst out laughing, then, suddenly, dropping her
bantering tone, she cuddled her firm white hands into Lionel's big
brown ones.
"Lionel," she reasoned, "I don't think I've ever really been in love
in my life and you're the only man I ever met that made me want
to--no, no! Please, Lionel, listen to me," she held him gently away
from her--"made me want to run away. Now I'm going to tell you what
the palm-reader said," she continued, purposely avoiding the name of
Robert Baxter.
"You don't really believe that tommyrot?"
"I do this time because what he told me is going to come true." She
placed her hands on his shoulders with an affectionate movement. "He
told me I'm going to have heaps and heaps of money! Lionel, aren't
you glad?"
There was something far from gladness in Kate's own voice and
Lionel's heart sank in utter desolation.
His thoughts flew back to the day of their first meeting three months
ago--to the first time she had called him "Cousin Lionel"--to the
time when somehow or other they had dropped the "cousin" and were
Lionel and Kate to one another--three milestones on the road that led
to--where might it not lead to? And now she was turning back.
Where? He reflected that he knew nothing of Kate's world before she
had come to Ipping House. From time to time there had been letters
for her with German or Swiss postage stamps. That was all.
"So you see," Kate was going on, "it's a case of Hobson's choice.
There's nothing else to be done. My money's all gone. Old Baxter
has behaved like a brick, but I can't bank on him forever, and now if
I--if I marry Bob----" she broke off with the sound of a laugh.
Lionel shivered. He seized her hand which showed dimly white at his
side. It was like ice. It slipped from him upward and his ear
caught the multitudinous whisper of chiffons.
"Come on," she said.
He rose stupidly and followed her in the darkness.
Half an hour later, as they approached Ipping House, Kate saw what
seemed like a shadowy figure that glided past the conservatory and
disappeared.
"What was that?" She clutched his arm.
"I didn't see anything," answered Lionel.