For the fraction of a moment he rolled back his great, shaggy brows, and
lifted his face up wide-eyed and staring to the soft, sweet,
dove-colored, early evening sky. Then his eyelids came scrunching down
again perfectly tight, and I saw one side of his ugly mouth begin to
smile a little as a man might smile--as he closes the door--when the
woman whom he loves comes home again. Then very slowly, very
methodically, he turned off all the gas-burners and picked up all the
notebooks, and cleansed all the knives, and just as I thought he was
almost ready to go with me he started back again and released a fair,
froth-green lunar moth from a stifling glass jar. Then, with his arm
across my cringing shoulders, we fumbled our way down the long, creaky
stairs. And all the time his heart was pounding like an oil-soused
engine. But I had to bend my head to hear the questions that crumbled
from his lips.
As we crunched our way across the Lennarts' garden with all the
horrible, rackety noise that the living inevitably make in the presence
of the dead, we ran into Lennart's old gardener crouching there in the
dusk, stuffing cold, white roses into a huge market basket. Almost
brutally Sagner clutched the old fellow by the arm. "Dunstan," he
demanded, "how--did--this--thing--happen?"
The old gardener shook with fear and palsy. "There's some," he
whispered, "as says the lady-dear was out of her mind. A-h, no," he
protested, "a-h, no. She may ha' been out of her heart, but she weren't
never out of her mind. There's some," he choked, "as calls it suicide,
there's some," he gulped, "as calls it accident. I'm a rough-spoke man
and I don' know the tongue o' ladies, but it weren't suicide, and it
weren't accident. If it had be'n a man that had done it, you'd 'a'
called it just a 'didn't-give-a-damn.'"
As we neared the house Sagner spoke only once. "Barney," he asked quite
cheerfully, "were you ever rude to a woman?"
My hands went instinctively up to my head. "Oh, yes," I hurried, "once
in the Arizona desert I struck an Indian squaw."
"Does it hurt?" persisted Sagner.
"You mean 'Did it hurt?'" I answered a bit impatiently. "Yes, I think it
hurt her a little, but not nearly as much as she deserved."
Sagner reached forward and yanked me back by the shoulder. "I mean," he
growled, "do you remember it now in the middle of the night, and are you
sorry you did it?"
My heart cramped. "Yes," I acknowledged, "I remember it now in the
middle of the night. But I am distinctly not sorry that I did it."
"Oh," muttered Sagner.
With the first creaking sound of our steps in the front hall "Little
Sister" came gliding down the stairway with the stark-faced laddie
clutching close at her sash. All the sparkle and spangle were gone from
the girl. Her eyes were like two bruises on the flesh of a calla lily.
Slipping one ice-cold tremulous hand into mine she closed down her other
frightened hand over the two. "I'm so very glad you've come," she
whispered huskily. "Mr. Lennart isn't any comfort to me at all
to-night--and Mary was the only sister I had." Her voice caught suddenly
with a rasping sob. "You and Mr. Sagner have always been so kind to me,"
she plunged on blindly, with soft-drooping eyelids, "and I shall
probably never see either of you again. We are all going home to-morrow.
And I expect to be married in July to a boy at home." Her icy fingers
quickened in mine like the bloom-burst of a sun-scorched Jacqueminot.
"You--expect--to--be--married--in--July to--a--boy--at--home?" cried
Sagner.
The awful slicing quality in his voice brought Lennart's dreadful face
peering out through a slit in the library curtains.
"Hush!" I signaled warningly to Sagner. But again his venomous question
ripped through the quiet of the house.
"You--expected--all--the--time--to--be--married--in--July?"
"Why, yes," said the girl, with the faintest dimpling flicker of a
smile. "Won't you congratulate me?" Very softly she drew her right hand
away from me and held it out whitely to Sagner.
"Excuse me," said Sagner, "but I have just--washed--my--hands."
"What?" stammered the girl. "W-h-a-t?"
"Excuse--me," said Sagner, "but I have just--washed my hands."
Then, bowing very, very low, like a small boy at his first
dancing-school, Sagner passed from the house.
When I finally succeeded in steering my shaking knees and flopping feet
down the long front steps and the pleasant, rose-bordered path, I found
Sagner waiting for me at the gateway. Under the basking warmth of that
mild May night his teeth were chattering as with an ague, and his
ravenous face was like the face of a man whose soul is utterly glutted,
but whose body has never even so much as tasted food and drink.
I put both my hands on his shoulders. "Sagner," I begged, "if there is
anything under God's heaven that you want to-night--go and get it!"
He gave a short, gaspy laugh and wrenched himself free from me. "There
is nothing _under_ God's heaven--to-night--that I want--except Madge
Hubert," he said.
In another instant he was gone. With a wh-i-r and a wh-i-s-h and a
snow-white fragrance, his trail cut abruptly through the apple-bush
hedge. Then like a huge, black, sweet-scented sponge the darkening night
seemed to swoop down and wipe him right off the face of the earth.
Very softly I knelt and pressed my ear to the ground. Across the young,
tremulous, vibrant greensward I heard the throb-throb-throb of a man's
feet--_running_.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Repeated story titles were removed.
Obvious punctuation errors were corrected.
Page 189, "Patridge" changed to "Partridge" (Partridge Hunter began
instantly)
Page 257, two lines of text were transposed. The original read:
one of our big music people picked him up
jabberingly to America. But the invitation didn't
over there a few months ago and brought him
seem to include the wife and baby--genius and
The middle two lines were traded.