A THIEF IN THE NIGHT
She sat beside the wide window of her bed-chamber, on that third
midnight at Gosnold House, in a state of lawless exaltation not less
physical than spiritual and mental, a temper that proscribed sleep
hopelessly.
The window was open, the night air still and suave and warm, her sole
protection a filmy negligee over a night-dress of sheerest silk and
lace. And in that hour Sarah Manvers was as nearly a beautiful woman
as ever she was to be--her face faintly flushed in the rich moonlight,
faintly shadowed from within by the rich darkness of her blood, her
dreaming eyes twin pools of limpid shadow, her dark lips shadowed by a
slight elusive smile.
She was relishing the sensation of life intensely, almost painfully;
she was intensely alive for the first time in all her life, it seemed;
in throat and wrists and temples pulses sang, now soft, now loud; and
all her body glowed, from crown of head to tips of toes nestling
in silken mules, with the warmth and the languor of life.
She was deeply and desperately in love.
The genius of her curious destiny, not content with making her free of
all the good material things of life, had granted her as well this
last and dearest boon. For though her years were twenty-seven she had
not loved before. She had dreamed of love, had been in love with love
and with being loved, had believed she loved; but nothing in her
experience compared with such rapture as to-night obsessed her being,
wholly and without respite.
Life, indeed, grants no compensation for the ignominious necessity of
love but this, that no other love was ever real but to-day's alone.
And so the beauty of that moonlight midnight seemed supernal.
Becalmed, the island lay steeped in floods of ethereal silver, its sky
an iridescent dome, its sea a shimmering shield of opalescence, its
lawns and terraces argentine shadowed with deepest violet. There was
never a definite sound, only the sibilance of a stillness made of many
interwoven sounds, soft lisp of wavelets on the sands a hundred feet
below, hum of nocturnal insect life in thickets and plantations,
sobbing of a tiny, vagrant breeze lost and homeless in that vast
serenity, wailing of a far violin, rumour of distant motor-cars. A
night of potent witchery, a woman willingly bewitched. . . .
In fancy she still could feel the pulsing of his heart against her
bosom, the caressing touch of his hands, the warm flutter of his
breath in her hair and upon her cheek, as in that last dance; and with
an inexpressible hunger at once of flesh and soul she yearned to feel
them all again, to be once more within the magic circle of his arms,
to live once more in the light of his countenance.
It mattered nothing that she loved hopelessly a graceless
runagate--and knew it well. She had not needed the indirect warnings
of Adele Standish and Mercedes Pride that the man was nothing better
than an engaging scamp. Who was she to demand worthier object for her
love? She was precisely Nobody, and might waste her passion as she
would, and none but herself the worse for it.
Nor did it matter that her love was desperate of return. She knew that
he recognised and was a little amused and a little flattered by her
unspoken admiration, but more deeply than that affected not at all.
But that was his imperial prerogative; she did not mind; temporarily
she believed herself quite content, and that she would continue so as
long as permitted to hug to her secret heart the unutterable sweetness
of being in love with him. Again, she was Nobody and didn't count,
while he was precisely all that she had longed for ever since she was
of an age to dream of love. He was not only of an admirable
person, he wore the habit of distinction like a garment made for him
alone. In short, the man was irresistible, and the woman didn't even
want to resist but only despaired of opportunity ever to capitulate.
She was as love-sick as a schoolgirl of sixteen; a hundred times, if
once, her barely parted lips breathed his name to the sympathetic
night that never would betray her: "_Donald--Donald--Donald
Lyttleton_. . . ."
Now all the while she wasted sighing for him by the window Mr.
Lyttleton spent idly speculating about her--lounging in a corner of
the smoking-room, on the edge of a circle of other masculine guests
making common excuse of alcohol to defer the tiresome formalities of
going to bed and getting up again in the morning.
If this gentleman was Sally's junior in the matter of a year or two,
he was overwhelmingly her senior in knowledge of his world--a world
into which he had been brought neither to toil nor yet to spin, but
simply to be the life and soul of the party. And at twenty-five he was
beyond permitting sentiment to run away with judgment; he could resist
temptation with as much fortitude as any man, always providing he
could see any sound reason for resisting it--any reason, that is,
promising a profit from the deed of abstinence.
Mr. Lyttleton had ten thousand a year of his own, income from a
principal fortunately beyond his power to hypothecate; he spent twenty
thousand with an easy conscience; he earnestly desired to be able to
spend fifty without fear of consequences. Talents such as his merited
maintenance--failing independent means, such maintenance as comes from
marrying money and a wife above suspicion of parsimony. If only he had
been able, or even had cared to behave himself, Mr. Lyttleton's
fortunes might long since have been established on some such
satisfactory basis. But he was sorely handicapped by the weakness of a
sentimental nature; women would persist in falling in love with
him--always, unhappily, women of moderate means. He couldn't help
being sorry for them and seeking to assuage their sufferings; he
couldn't forever be running away from some infatuate female; and so he
was forever being found out and forgiven--by women. Most men, meanly
envious, disliked him; all men held him in pardonable distrust.
Devilish hard luck.
Take this Manwaring girl--pretty, intelligent, artless little woman,
perhaps a bit mature, but fascinating all the same, affectingly naive
about her trouble, which was simply spontaneous combustion, one more
of those first-sight affairs. He had noticed the symptoms immediately,
that night of her introduction to Gosnold House. He hadn't paid much
attention to her during luncheon, and only sought her out--when
they got up, on the spur of the moment, that informal after-dinner
dance by moonlight on the veranda--partly because he happened to
notice her sitting to one side, so obviously longing for him to ask
her, partly because it was his business to dance, and partly
because--well, because it was less dangerous, everything considered,
than dancing with Mrs. Standish.
And then the eloquent treachery of Sally's eyes and that little
gesture of surrender with which she yielded herself to his guidance.
It was really too bad, he thought, especially since she had made
occasion to tell him frankly she hadn't a dollar to bless herself
with. Still, he must give himself credit for behaving admirably; he
hadn't encouraged the girl. Not much, at all events. Of course, it
wasn't in human nature to ignore her entirely after that; moreover, to
slight her would have been conspicuous, not to say uncivil. But one
must draw the line somewhere.
To-night, for example, he had danced with her perhaps too often for
her own good, to say nothing of his own. And they had sat out a dance
or two--awfully old-fashioned custom; went out years ago--still, one
did it, regardless, now and then.
Curious girl, the Manwaring; one moment almost melting into his arms,
the next practically warning him against herself. And curiously
reticent--said she was "Nobody"--let it go at that. Very probably told
the truth; she seemed to know nobody who was anybody; and though she
was apparently very much at her ease most of the time, and not readily
impressed, he noticed now and then a little tensity in her manner, a
covert watchfulness of other women, as though she were waiting for her
cue.
At this juncture in his reverie Mr. Lyttleton peremptorily dismissed
luckless Miss Manwaring from his mind, compounded his nightcap at the
buffet, and joined in the general conversation.
Coincidentally the reverie of Miss Manwaring at her bedchamber window
digressed to review fragmentarily the traffic and discoveries of three
wonderful days.
Days in whose glamorous radiance the romance of Cinderella paled to
the complexion of a sordidly realistic narrative of commonplaces;
contemplating them, Sally, for the sake of her self-conceit, felt
constrained to adopt an aloof, superior, sceptical pose. Conceding
freely the incredible reality of this phase of her history, she none
the less contended that in it no more true permanence inhered than in
a dream.
She recapitulated many indisputable signs of the instability of her
affairs. And of all those the foremost, the most glaring, was her
personal success, at once actual and impossible. She saw herself
(from that remote and weather-beaten coign of scepticism) moving
freely to and fro in the great world of the socially elect,
unhindered, unquestioned, tacitly accepted, meeting, chatting,
treating and parting with its denizens with a gesture of confidence
that was never the gesture of S. Manvers of the Hardware Notions; a
Nobody on terms of equality with indisputable Somebodies--vastly
important Somebodies indeed, for the most part; so much so that by
common consent mankind had created for them a special world within the
world and set it apart for their exclusive shelter and delectation,
for them to live in and have their being untroubled and uncontaminated
by contact with the commonalty.
For all that, Sally couldn't see why they must be so cared for and
catered to. The only thing that apparently distinguished them from
those who lacked their advantages, who looked up reverently to them
and read enviously of their doings in the papers, was their assurance,
a quality ostensibly inimitable; yet she imitated it with seemingly
flawless art. A contradiction that defied her wits to reconcile.
She wasted time in the endeavour; her own personality was
prepossessing; she had sufficient tact never to seek to ingratiate
herself; her solecisms were few and insignificant, and the
introduction of Abigail Gosnold was an unimpeachable credential.
As for her antecedents, the lie which credited her to the city of
Massillon passed unchallenged, while a conspiracy of silence kept
private to the few acquainted with it that hideous secret of her
department-store servitude. Mrs. Gosnold would have said nothing out
of sheer kindness of heart even if it had not been her settled habit
to practise the difficult arts of minding her own business and keeping
her own counsel. Savage was still in New York, but had he been at
Gosnold House would have imitated the example set by his amiable
sister and held his tongue even when most exasperated with Sally. Mr.
Trego, of course, knew no more than what he had been free to surmise
from the girl's impulsive confession that she had been out of both
work and money when befriended by Mrs. Standish; but, whatever his
inferences, he kept them to himself.
A simple, sincere, stubborn soul, this Mr. Trego; so, at least, he
made himself appear to Sally, persistently seeking her and dumbly
offering a friendship which she, in the preoccupation of her grand
passion, had neither time nor wish to cultivate, and which he himself
ingenuously apologised for on the plea of self-defence. He frankly
professed a mortal dread of "these women," one of whom, he averred
mysteriously, was bent on marrying him by main strength and
good-will first time she caught him with lowered guard.
His misgivings were measurably corroborated by the attitude toward
Sally adopted by Mrs. Standish in her capacity as close friend, foil,
and confidant of Mrs. Artemas. In the course of those three days the
girl had not been insensible to intimations of a strong, if as yet
restrained, animus in the mind of the older woman. In alarm and regret
she did her futile best to discourage this gentleman without being
overtly discourteous. She could hardly do more; impossible to explain
to her benefactress that he was not the man of her heart's choice.
Unfortunately, Trego was indifferent to tempered rebuffs.
"If you don't mind," he interrupted one of Sally's protracted snubs,
"I'll just stick around and keep on enjoying the society of a human
being. Of course, I know these others are all human in their way, but
it isn't your way or mine. Perhaps it only seems so to me because I
don't understand 'em. It's quite possible. One thing's sure, they
don't understand me. At least, the women don't; I can get along with
the men--most of 'em. They're not a bad lot, if immature. You can
stand a lot of foolishness from children once you realise their
grown-uppishness is only make-believe."
"They don't know how to enjoy themselves," he expatiated; "they've got
too much of everything, including spare time. What's a holiday to
anybody who has never done a stroke of work? You and I know the
difference; we can appreciate the fun of loafing between spells of
work; but these people have got no standards to measure their fun by,
so it's all the same to them--flat, vapid, monotonous, unless they
season it up with cocktails and carrying on; and even that gets to
have all the same flavour of tastelessness after a while. That's why
so many of these women are going in for the suffragette business; it
isn't that they care a whoop for the vote; it's because they want the
excitement of wanting something they haven't got and can't get by
signing a check for it."
"You're prejudiced," the girl objected. "You're at loose-ends
yourself, idle and restless, and it distorts your mental vision. For
my part, I've never met more charming people--"
"That's your astigmatism," he contended. "You've been wanting this
society thing all your life, and now you've got it you're as pleased
as a child with a new toy. Wait till the paint wears off and it won't
shut its eyes when you put it down on its back and sawdust begins to
leak out at the joints."
"Wouldn't it be more kind of you to leave me to discover the sawdust
for myself?"
"It unquestionably would, and I ought to be kicked," Trego agreed
heartily. "I only started this in fun, anyway, to make you see why it
is you look so good to me--different--so sound and sane and wholesome
that I just naturally can't help pestering you."
She did not know what to say to that. She suffered him. . . .
Her duties as secretary to Mrs. Gosnold proved, when inaugurated the
second morning after her arrival, to be at once light and interesting.
Her employer was conservative enough in an unmannerly age to insist on
answering all personal correspondence with her own hand; what passed
between her and her few intimates was known to herself alone. But she
carried on, in addition, an animated correspondence with numberless
frauds--antique dealers, charities, professional poor relations,
social workers, and others of that ilk--which proved tremendously
diverting to her amanuensis, especially when it transpired that Mrs.
Gosnold had a mind and temper of her own, together with a vocabulary
amply adequate to her powers of ironic observation. This last gift
came out strongly in her diary, a daily record of her various
interests and activities which she dictated, interspersing dry details
with many an acid annotation.
When all was finished Sally found she had been busied for little
more than two hours, and was given to understand that her duties would
be made more burdensome only by the addition of a little light
bookkeeping when she settled down to the routine of regular
employment.
Of the alleged high play, at cards or otherwise, she had yet, at this
third midnight, to see any real evidence. Mrs. Gosnold most
undoubtedly played a stiff game of bridge, but she played it with a
masterly facility, the outcome of long practice and profound study;
her losses, when she lost, were minimised. Nor was there ever a sign
of cheating that came under Sally's observation. Everybody played who
didn't dance, and vice versa, but nobody seemed to play for the mere
sake of winning money. And while the influx of week-end guests by the
Friday evening boat brought the number at Gosnold House up to
twenty-two, they were all apparently amiable, self-centred folk of
long and intimate acquaintance with one another as well as with their
hostess and all her neighbours on the Island. Of that dubious crew of
adventurers she had been led to expect there was never a hint.
Such provision as their hostess made for her guests' entertainment and
amusement they patronised or ignored with equal nonchalance, according
to individual whim; they commanded breakfasts for all hours of the
morning, and they lunched at home and dined abroad, or reversed
the order, or sought all their meals in the homes of neighbouring
friends, quite without notice or apology. Such was the modish manner
of that summer of 1915--a sedulous avoidance of anything resembling
acknowledgment of obligation to those who entertained. Indeed, if one
interpreted their attitude at its face value, the shoe was on the
other foot.
And they brimmed the alleged hollowness of their days with an
extraordinary amount of running about. There was incessant shifting of
interest from one focal point to another of the colony, a perpetually
restless swarming hither and yon to some new centre of distraction, a
continual kaleidoscopic parade of the most wonderful and extravagant
clothing the world has ever seen.
To the outsider, of course, all this was not merely entertaining and
novel, if much as she had imagined it would be, it was more--it was
fascination, it was enchantment, it was the joy of living made
manifest, it was life.
If only this bubble might not burst!
Of course, it must; even if not too good to be true, it was too
wonderful to be enduring; the clock strikes twelve for every
Cinderella, and few are blessed enough to be able to leave behind them
a matchless slipper.
But whatever happened, nothing now could prevent her carrying to
her grave the memory of this one glorious flight: "better to have
loved and lost--" The wraith of an old refrain troubled Sally's
reverie. How did it go? "Now die the dream--"
Saturate with exquisite melancholy, she leaned out over the
window-sill into the warm, still moonlight, drinking deep of the
wine-scent of roses, dwelling upon the image of him whom she loved so
madly.
What were the words again?
". . . The past is not in vain, For wholly as it was your life,
Can never be again, my dear, Can never be again."
She shook a mournful head, sadly envisaging the loveliness of the
world through a mist of facile tears; that was too exquisitely, too
poignantly true of her own plight; for, wholly as it was, her life
could never be again.
And not for worlds would she have had it otherwise.
Below, in the deserted drawing-room, a time-mellowed clock chimed
sonorously the hour of two.
Two o'clock of a Sunday morning, and all well; long since Gosnold
House had lapsed into decent silence; an hour ago she had heard the
last laggard footsteps, the last murmured good nights in the
corridor outside her door as the men-folk took themselves reluctantly
off to their beds.
She leaned still farther out over the sill, peering along the gleaming
white facade; no window showed a light that she could see. She
listened acutely; not a sound but the muttering of fretful little
waves and the drowsy complaint of some bird troubled in its sleep.
Of all that heedless human company, it seemed, she alone remained
awake.
Something in that circumstance proved almost resistlessly provocative
to her innate lust for adventure. For upward of two hours she had been
passive there in her chair, a prey to uneasy thoughts; now she was
weary with much thinking, but as far as ever from the wish to sleep;
never, indeed, more wide awake--possessed by a demon of restlessness,
consumed with desire to rise up and go out into the scented moonstruck
night and lose herself in its loneliness and--see what she should see.
Why not? No one need ever know. A staircase at her end of the
corridor--little used except by servants--led to a small door opening
directly upon the terrace. Providing it were not locked and the key
removed, there was no earthly reason why, if so minded, she should not
go quietly forth that way and drink her fill of the night's
loveliness.
To a humour supple to such temptation the tang of lawlessness in
a project innocent enough was irresistible. Besides, what was the
harm? What could be the objection, even were the escapade to be
discovered by misadventure?
Among other items in her collection of borrowed plumage she possessed
an evening wrap, somewhat out of fashion, but eminently adapted to her
purpose--long enough to cloak her figure to the ground, thus
eliminating all necessity for dressing against chance encounter with
some other uneasy soul. Worn with black stockings and slippers, it
would render her almost invisible in shadow.
In another minute, without turning on a light, she had found and
donned those several articles, and from her door was narrowly
inspecting the hallway before venturing a step across the threshold.
It was quite empty and silent, its darkness moderated only by the
single nightlight burning at the head of the main staircase.
Satisfied, she closed the door and crept noiselessly down the steps,
to find the side door not even locked.
Leaving it barely ajar, she stepped out beneath the stars, hesitated
for a moment of cautious reconnaissance, then darted across an open
space of moonlight as swiftly as the shadow of a cloud wind-sped
athwart the moon, and so gained the sheltering shadow of the high
hedge between the formal garden and tennis-court.
The dew-drenched turf that bordered the paths muffled her footsteps as
effectually as could be wished, and keeping circumspectly in shadow,
the better to escape observation from any of the windows, she gained
at length that corner of the terrace overlooking the water where she
and Trego had paused for their first talk.
Nothing now prevented her from appreciating the view to the full.
Enchanted, she withdrew a little way from the brow of the cliff to a
seat on the stone wall, overshadowed by the hedge, and for a long time
sat there motionless, content.
Below her the harbour lay steel-grey and still within its guardian
headlands, a hundred slim, white pleasure craft riding its silent
tide. Far out a Sound steamer crawled like some amphibious glowworm,
its triple tier of deck-lights almost blended into one. Farther still
the lights of the mainland glimmered low upon the horizon. .
At a little distance, from a point invisible, an incautious footstep
grated upon a gravel path of the terrace and was instantly hushed.
But the girl, stiffened to rigidity in her place, fancied she could
hear the whisper of grass beneath stealthy feet.
Abruptly a man came out into broad moonlight and, pausing on a stone
platform at the edge of the cliff by the head of the long, steep,
wooden zigzag of stairs to the sands, looked back toward the
house.
Sally held her breath. But her heart was like a mad thing--the man was
Donald Lyttleton. He still wore evening dress, but had exchanged the
formal coat for that hybrid garment which Sally had lately learned
should _not_ be termed a Tuxedo. The brim of a soft, dark hat masked
his eyes. He carried one shoulder stiffly, as if holding something in
the hollow of his arm. She could not make out or imagine what this
might be.
His hesitation was brief. Satisfied, he swung round to the stairway,
in another instant had vanished. Only light footfalls on the wooden
steps told of a steady descent, and at the same time furnished
assurance that Sally had not victimised herself with a waking vision
bred of her infatuation.
The footfalls, not loud at best, had become inaudible before she found
courage to approach the platform. With infinite pains to avoid a
sound, she peered over the edge of its stone parapet.
For a little the gulf swam giddily beneath her who was never quite
easy at any unusual height. But she set herself with determination to
master this weakness and presently was able to examine the beach with
a clear vision.
It was only partially shadowed by the cliffs, but that shadow was
dense, and outside it nothing stirred. None the less, after a
time she was able to discern Lyttleton's figure kneeling on the sands
at the immediate foot of the cliff, a hundred feet or so to one side
of the steps. And while she watched he rose, stood for a little
staring out to sea, wasted a number of matches lighting a cigarette
(which seemed curious, in view of the unbroken calm) and moved on out
of sight beyond a shoulder of stone.
She waited fully ten minutes; but he did not reappear.
Then, retreating to her seat on the stone wall, she waited as long
again--still no sign of Lyttleton.
But something else marked that second period of waiting that intrigued
her no less than the mysterious actions of her beloved--this although
she could imagine no link between the two.
Some freak of chance drew her attention to a small, dark shape, with
one staring red eye, that was stealing quietly across the Sound in the
middle distance--of indefinite contour against the darkening waters,
but undoubtedly a motor-boat, since there was no wind to drive any
sailing vessel at its pace, or indeed at any pace at all.
While she watched it incuriously it came to a dead pause, and so
remained for several minutes. Then, deliberately, with infinitely
sardonic effect, it winked its single eye of red at her--winked
portentously three times.
She made nothing of that, and in her profound ignorance of all things
nautical might have considered it some curious bit of sea etiquette
had she not, the next instant, caught out of the corner of her eye the
sudden glow of a window lighted in the second story of Gosnold House.
As she turned in surprise the light went out. A pause of perhaps
twenty seconds ensued. Then the window shone out again--one in the
left wing, the wing at the end of which her bedchamber was located.
But when she essayed to reckon the rooms between it and her own it
turned black again, and after another twenty seconds once more shone
out and once more was lightless.
After this it continued stubbornly dark, and by the time Sally gave up
trying to determine precisely which window it had been, and turned her
gaze seaward again, the boat had vanished. Its lights, at least, were
no longer visible, and it was many minutes before the girl succeeded
in locating the blur it made on the face of the waters. It seemed to
be moving, but the distance was so great that she could not be sure
which way.
A signal--yes, obviously; but between whom and for what purpose?
Who was on that boat? And who the tenant of that room of the flashing
window? She was satisfied that the latter was one of a row of six
windows to three rooms occupied by Mrs. Standish, Mrs. Artemas,
and a pretty young widow who had arrived late Saturday afternoon and
whose name Sally had yet to learn.
She pondered it all with ever-deepening perplexity until a change came
over the night--a wind stirred, leaves rattled, boughs soughed
plaintively, the waters wakened and filled the void of silence with
soft clashing. Then, shivering, Sally rose and crept back toward the
house.
But when she paused on the edge of the last shadow, preparatory to the
dash across the moonlit space to the door, a step sounded beside her,
a hand caught at her cloak.
She started back with a stifled cry.
"Steady!" Lyttleton's voice counselled her guardedly. "Don't make a
row! Blessed if it ain't Miss Manwaring!"