A CONFERENCE
When Malcourt arrived at Luckless Lake Sunday evening he found Portlaw
hunched up in an arm-chair, all alone in the living-room, although the
hour was still early.
"Where's your very agreeable house-party?" he inquired, looking about
the empty room and hall with an air of troubled surprise.
"Gone to bed," replied Portlaw irritably,--"what's left of 'em." And he
continued reading "The Pink 'Un."
"Really!" said Malcourt in polite concern.
"Yes, really!" snapped Portlaw. "Mrs. Ascott went to Pride's and took
Wayward and Constance Palliser; that was Friday. And Gray and Cecile
joined them yesterday. It's been a horrible house-party; nobody had any
use for anybody else and it has rained every day and--and--to be plain
with you, Louis, nobody is enchanted with your relatives and that's the
unpleasant truth!"
"I don't blame anybody," returned Malcourt sincerely, removing his
driving-gloves and shaking off his wet box-coat. "Why, I can scarcely
stand them myself, William. Where are they?"
"In the west wing of your house--preparing to remain indefinitely."
"Dear, dear!" exclaimed Malcourt. "What on earth shall we do?" And he
peered sideways at Portlaw with his tongue in his cheek.
"Do? _I_ don't know. Why the devil did you suggest that they stop at
your house?"
"Because, William, curious as it may seem, I had a sort of weak-minded
curiosity to see my sister once more." He walked over to the table, took
a cigarette and lighted it, then stood regarding the burning match in
his fingers. "She's the last of the family; I'll probably never see her
again--"
"She appears to be in excellent health," remarked Portlaw viciously.
"So am I; but--" He shrugged and tossed the embers of the match onto the
hearth.
"But what?"
"Well, I'm going to take a vacation pretty soon--a sort of voyage, and a
devilish long one, William. That's why I wanted to see her again."
"You mean to tell me you are going away?" demanded the other
indignantly.
Malcourt laughed. "Oh, yes. I planned it long ago--one morning toward
daybreak years ago.... A--a relative of mine started on the same voyage
rather unexpectedly.... I've heard very often from him since; I'm
curious to try it, too--when he makes up his mind to invite me--"
"When are you starting?" interrupted Portlaw, disgusted.
"Oh, not for a while, I think. I won't embarrass you; I'll leave
everything in ship-shape--"
"_Where_ are you going?--dammit!"
Malcourt looked at him humorously, head on one side. "I am not perfectly
sure, dear friend. I hate to know all about a thing before I do it.
Otherwise there's no sporting interest in it."
"You mean to tell me that you're going off a-gipsying without any
definite plans?"
"Gipsying?" he laughed. "Well, that may perhaps describe it. I don't
know; I have no plans. That's the charm of it. When one grows tired,
that is the restful part of it--to simply start, having no plans; just
to leave, and drift away haphazard. One is always bound to arrive
somewhere, William."
He had been pacing backward and forward, the burning cigarette balanced
between his fingers, turning his handsome head from time to time to
answer Portlaw's ill-tempered questions. Now he halted, dark eyes roving
about the room. They fell and lingered on a card-table where some empty
glasses decorated the green baize top.
"Bridge?" he queried.
"Unfortunately," growled Portlaw.
"Who?"
"Mrs. Malcourt and I versus your--ah--talented family."
"Mrs. Malcourt doesn't gamble."
"Tressilvain and I did."
"Were you badly stung, dear friend?"
Portlaw muttered.
Malcourt lifted his expressive eyebrows.
"Why didn't you try my talented relative again to-night?"
"Mrs. Malcourt had enough," said Portlaw briefly; then mumbled something
injuriously unintelligible.
"I think I'll go over to the house and see if my gifted brother-in-law
has retired," said Malcourt, adding carelessly, "I suppose Mrs. Malcourt
is asleep."
"It wouldn't surprise me," replied Portlaw. And Malcourt was free to
interpret the remark as he chose.
He went away thoughtfully, crossing the lawn in the rainy darkness, and
came to the garden where his own dogs barked at him--a small thing to
depress a man, but it did; and it was safer for the dogs, perhaps, that
they sniffed recognition before they came too near with their growls and
barking. But he opened the gate, disdaining to speak to them, and when
they knew him, it was a pack of very humble, wet, and penitent hounds
that came wagging up alongside. He let them wag unnoticed.
Lights burned in his house, one in Shiela's apartments, several in the
west wing where the Tressilvains were housed. A servant, locking up for
the night, came across the dripping veranda to admit him; and he went
upstairs and knocked at his wife's door.
Shiela's maid opened, hesitated; and a moment later Shiela appeared,
fully dressed, a book in her hand. It was one of Hamil's architectural
volumes.
"Well, Shiela," he said lightly; "I got in to-night and rather expected
to see somebody; but nobody waited up to see me! I'm rather wet--it's
raining--so I won't trouble you. I only wanted to say good night."
The quick displeasure in her face died out. She dismissed the maid, and
came slowly forward. Beneath the light her face looked much thinner; he
noticed dark shadows under the eyes; the eyes themselves seemed tired
and expressionless.
"Aren't you well?" he asked bluntly.
"Perfectly.... Was it you the dogs were so noisy about just now?"
"Yes; it seems that even my own dogs resent my return. Well--good night.
I'm glad you're all right."
Something in his voice, more than in the words, arrested her listless
attention.
"Will you come in, Louis?"
"I'm afraid I'm keeping you awake. Besides I'm wet--"
"Come in and tell me where you've been--if you care to. Would you like
some tea--or something?"
He shook his head, but followed her into the small receiving-room. There
he declined an offered chair.
"I've been in New York.... No, I did not see your family.... As for what
I've been doing--"
Her lifted eyes betrayed no curiosity; a growing sense of depression
crept over him.
"Oh, well," he said, "it doesn't matter." And turned toward the door.
She looked into the empty fireplace with a sigh; then, gently, "I don't
mean to make it any drearier for you than I can help."
He considered her a moment.
"Are you really well, Shiela?"
"Why, yes; only a little tired. I do not sleep well."
He nodded toward the west wing of the house.
"Do _they_ bother you?"
She did not answer.
He said: "Thank you for putting them up. We'll get rid of them if they
annoy you."
"They are quite welcome."
"That's very decent of you, Shiela. I dare say you have not found them
congenial."
"We have nothing in common. I think they consider me a fool."
"Why?" He looked up, keenly humourous.
"Because I don't understand their inquiries. Besides, I don't gamble--"
"What kind of inquiries do they make?"
"Personal ones," she said quietly.
He laughed. "They're probably more offensively impertinent than the
Chinese--that sort of Briton. I think I'll step into the west wing and
greet my relations. I won't impose them on you for very long. Do you
know when they are going?"
"I think they have made plans to remain here for a while."
"Really?" he sneered. "Well, leave that to me, Shiela."
So he crossed into the western wing and found the Tressilvains
tête-à-tête over a card-table, deeply interested in something that
resembled legerdemain; and he stood at the door and watched them with a
smile that was not agreeable.
"Well, Helen!" he said at last; and Lady Tressilvain started, and her
husband rose to the full height of his five feet nothing, dropping the
pack which he had been so nimbly manipulating for his wife's amusement.
"Where the devil did you come from?" blurted his lordship; but his wife
made a creditable appearance in her rôle of surprised sisterly
affection; and when the two men had gone through the form of family
greeting they all sat down for the conventional family confab.
Tressilvain said little but drank a great deal of whisky--his long,
white, bony fingers were always spread around his glass--unusually long
fingers for such a short man, and out of all proportion to the scant
five-foot frame, topped with a little pointed head, in which the eyes
were set exactly as glass eyes are screwed into the mask of a fox.
"Bertie and I have been practising leads from trick hands," observed
Lady Tressilvain, removing the ice from her glass and filling it from a
soda bottle which Malcourt uncorked for her.
"Well, Herby," said Malcourt genially, "I suppose you and Helen play a
game well worth--ah--watching."
Tressilvain looked dully annoyed, although there was nothing in his
brother-in-law's remark to ruffle anybody, except that his lordship did
not like to be called Herby. He sat silent, caressing his glass; and
presently his little black eyes stole around in Malcourt's direction,
and remained there, waveringly, while brother and sister discussed the
former's marriage, the situation at Luckless Lake, and future prospects.
That is to say, Lady Tressilvain did the discussing; Malcourt, bland,
amiable, remained uncommunicatively polite, parrying everything so
innocently that his sister, deceived, became plainer in her questions
concerning the fortune he was supposed to have married, and more
persistent in her suggestions of a winter in New York--a delightful and
prolonged family reunion, in which the Tressilvains were to figure as
distinguished guests and virtual pensioners of everybody connected with
his wife's family.
"Do you think," drawled Malcourt, intercepting a furtive glance between
his sister and brother-in-law, to that gentleman's slight confusion, "do
you think it might prove interesting to you and Herby? Americans are so
happy to have your countrymen to entertain--particularly when their
credentials are as unquestionable as Herby's and yours."
For a full minute, in strained silence, the concentrated gaze of the
Tressilvains was focused upon the guileless countenance of Malcourt;
and discovered nothing except a fatuous cordiality.
Lady Tressilvain drew a deep, noiseless breath and glanced at her
husband.
"I don't understand, Louis, exactly what settlement--what sort of
arrangement you made when you married this--very interesting young
girl--"
"Oh, I didn't have anything to endow her with," said Malcourt, so
amiably stupid that his sister bit her lip.
Tressilvain essayed a jest.
"Rather good, that!" he said with his short, barking laugh; "but I
da'say the glove was on the other hand, eh, Louis?"
"What?"
"Why the--ah--the lady did the endowing and all that, don't you see?"
"See what?" asked Malcourt so pleasantly that his sister shot a look at
her husband which checked him.
Malcourt was now on maliciously humourous terms with himself; he began
to speak impulsively, affectionately, with all the appearance of a
garrulous younger brother impatient to unbosom himself to his family;
and he talked and talked, confidingly, guilelessly, voluminously, yet
managed to say absolutely nothing. And, strain their ears as they might,
the Tressilvains in their perplexity and increasing impatience could
make out nothing of all this voluntary information--understand
nothing--pick out not one single fact to satisfy their desperately
hungry curiosity.
There was no use interrupting him with questions; he answered them with
others; he whispered ambiguities in a manner most portentous; hinted at
bewildering paradoxes with an air; nodded mysterious nothings, and
finally left them gaping at him, exasperated, unable to make any sense
out of what most astonishingly resembled a candid revelation of the
hopes, fears, ambitions, and worldly circumstances of Louis Malcourt.
"Good-night," he said, lingering at the door to look upon and enjoy the
fruit of his perversity and malice. "When I start on that journey I
mentioned to you I'll leave something for you and Herby--merely to show
you how much I think of my own people--a little gift--a trifle!
No--no!"--lifting his hand with smiling depreciation as Tressilvain
began to thank him. "One must look out for one's own family. It's
natural--only natural to make some provision. Good-night, Helen!
Good-night, Herby. Portlaw and I will take you on at Bridge if it rains
to-morrow. It will be a privilege for us to--ah--watch your
game--closely. Good-night!"
And closed the door.
"What the devil does he mean?" demanded Tressilvain, peering sideways at
his wife.
"I don't exactly know," she said thoughtfully, sorting the cards. She
added: "If we play to-morrow you stick to signals; do you understand?
And keep your ring and your fingers off the cards until I can make up my
mind about my brother. You're a fool to drink American whisky the way
you did yesterday. Mr. Portlaw noticed the roughness on the aces; you
pricked them too deep. You'd better keep your wits about you, I can tell
you. I'm a Yankee myself."
"Right--O! But I say, Helen, I'm damned if I make out that brother of
yours. Doesn't he live in the same house as his wife?"
Lady Tressilvain sat listening to the uproar from the dogs as Malcourt
left the garden. But this time the outbreak was only a noisy welcome;
and Malcourt, on excellent terms with himself, patted every sleek, wet
head thrust up for caresses and walked gaily on through the driving
rain.
The rain continued the following day. Piloted by Malcourt, the
Tressilvains, thickly shod and water-proofed, tramped about with rod and
creel and returned for luncheon where their blunt criticisms on the
fishing aroused Portlaw's implacable resentment. For they sneered at the
trout, calling them "char," patronised the rather scanty pheasantry,
commented on the kennels, stables, and gardens in a manner that brought
the red into Portlaw's face and left him silent while luncheon lasted.
After luncheon Tressilvain tried the billiards, but found the game
inferior to the English game. So he burrowed into a box of cigars,
established himself before the fire with all the newspapers, deploring
the fact that the papers were not worth reading.
Lady Tressilvain cornered Shiela and badgered her and stared at her
until she dared not lift her hot face or open her lips lest the pent
resentment escape; Portlaw smoked a pipe--a sure indication of
smouldering wrath; Malcourt, at a desk, blew clouds of smoke from his
cigarette and smilingly continued writing to his attorney:
"This is the general idea for the document, and it's up to you to
fix it up and make it legal, and have it ready for me when I come
to town.
"1st. I want to leave all my property to a Miss Dorothy or Dolly
Wilming; and I want you to sell off everything after my death and
invest the proceeds for her because it's all she'll have to live
on except what she gets by her own endeavours. This, in case I
suddenly snuff out.
"2d. I want to leave my English riding-crop, spurs, bridle, and
saddle to a Miss Virginia Suydam. Fix it legally.
"3d. Here is a list of eighteen ladies. Each is to have one of my
eighteen Chinese gods.
"4th. To my wife I leave the nineteenth god. Mr. Hamil has it in
his possession. I have no right to dispose of it, but he will
have some day.
"5th. To John Garret Hamil, 3d, I leave my volume of Jean DuMont,
the same being an essay on Friendship.
"6th. To my friend, William Van Bueren Portlaw, I leave my dogs,
rods, and guns with a recommendation that he use them and his
legs.
"7th. To my sister, Lady Tressilvain, I leave my book of comic
Bridge rules, and to her husband a volume of Methodist hymns.
"I'll be in town again, shortly, and expect you to have my will
ready to be signed and witnessed. One ought always to be
prepared, particularly when in excellent health.
"Yours sincerely,
"LOUIS MALCOURT."
"P.S. I enclose a check for the Greenlawn Cemetery people. I wish
you'd see that they keep the hedge properly trimmed around my
father's plot and renew the dead sod where needed. I noticed that
one of the trees was also dead. Have them put in another and keep
the flowers in good shape. I don't want anything dead around that
lot.
"L.M."
When he had sealed and directed his letter he looked around the silent
room. Shiela was sewing by the window. Portlaw, back to the fire, stood
staring out at the rain; Lady Tressilvain, a cigarette between her thin
lips, wandered through the work-shop and loading-room where, from hooks
in the ceiling, a thicket of split-cane rod-joints hung, each suspended
by a single strong thread.
The loading-room was lined with glass-faced cases containing
fowling-pieces, rifles, reels, and the inevitable cutlery and
ironmongery associated with utensils for the murder of wild creatures.
Tressilvain sat at the loading-table to which he was screwing a delicate
vise to hold hooks; for Malcourt had given him a lesson in fly-tying,
and he meant to dress a dozen to try on Painted Creek.
So he sorted snell and hook and explored the tin trunk for hackles,
silks, and feathers, up to his bony wrists in the fluffy heap of
brilliant plumage, burrowing, busy as a burying beetle under a dead
bird.
Malcourt dropped his letter into the post-box, glanced uncertainly in
the direction of his wife, but as she did not lift her head from her
sewing, turned with a shrug and crossed the floor to where Portlaw stood
scowling and sucking at his empty pipe.
"Look at that horrid little brother-in-law of mine with his ferret eyes
and fox face, fussing around those feathers--as though he had just
caught and eaten the bird that wore them!"
Portlaw continued to scowl.
"Suppose we take them on at cards," suggested Malcourt.
"No, thanks."
"Why not?"
"They've taken a thousand out of me already."
Malcourt said quietly: "You've never before given such a reason for
discontinuing card-playing. What's your real reason?"
Portlaw was silent.
"Did you quit a thousand to the bad, Billy?"
"Yes, I did."
"Then why not get it back?"
"I don't care to play," said Portlaw shortly.
The eyes of the two men met.
"Are you, by any chance, afraid of our fox-faced guest?" asked Malcourt
suavely.
"I don't care to give any reason, I tell you."
"That's serious; as there could be only one reason. Did you think you
noticed--anything?"
"I don't know what I think.... I've half a mind to stop payment on that
check--if that enlightens you any."
"There's an easier way," said Malcourt coolly. "You know how it is in
sparring? You forecast what your opponent is going to do and you stop
him before he does it."
"I'm not _certain_ that he--did it," muttered Portlaw. "I can't afford
to make a mistake by kicking out your brother-in-law."
"Oh, don't mind me--"
"I wouldn't if I were sure.... I wish I had that thousand back; it
drives me crazy to think of losing it--in that way--"
"Oh; then you feel reasonably sure--"
"No, confound it.... The backs of the aces were slightly rough--but I
can scarcely believe--"
"Have you a magnifying glass?"
The pack has disappeared.... I meant to try that."
"My dear fellow," said Malcourt calmly, "it wouldn't surprise me in the
slightest to learn that Tressilvain is a blackguard. It's easy enough to
get your thousand back. Shall we?"
"How?"
Malcourt sauntered over to a card table, seated himself, motioned
Portlaw to the chair opposite, and removed the cover from a new pack.
Then, to Portlaw's astonishment, he began to take aces and court cards
from any part of the pack at his pleasure; any card that Portlaw called
for was produced unerringly. Then Malcourt dealt him unbelievable
hands--all of a colour, all of a suit, all the cards below the tens, all
above; and Portlaw, fascinated, watched the dark, deft fingers nimbly
dealing, shuffling, until his senses spun round; and when Malcourt
finally tore up all the aces, and then, ripping the green baize cover
from the table, disclosed the four aces underneath, intact, Portlaw,
petrified, only stared at him out of distended eyes.
"Those are nice tricks, aren't they?" asked Malcourt, smiling.
"Y-yes. Lord! Louis, I never dreamed you could do such devilish things
as--"
"I can. If I were not always behind you in my score I'd scarcely dare
let you know what I might do if I chose.... How far ahead is that little
mink, yonder?"
"Tressilvain?"
"Yes."
"He has taken about a thousand--wait!" Portlaw consulted his note-book,
made a wry face, and gave Malcourt the exact total.
Malcourt turned carelessly in his chair.
"O Herbert!" he called across to his brother-in-law; "don't you and
Helen want to take us on?"
"Rather!" replied Tressilvain briskly; and came trotting across the
room, his close-set black eyes moving restlessly from Malcourt to
Portlaw.
"Come on, Helen," said Malcourt, drawing up a chair for her; and his
sister seated herself gracefully. A moment later the game began, Portlaw
passing it over to Malcourt, who made it no trumps, and laid out all the
materials for international trouble, including a hundred aces.
The games were brutally short, savage, decisive; Tressilvain lost
countenance after the fastest four rubbers he had ever played, and shot
an exasperated glance at his wife, who was staring thoughtfully at her
brother.
But that young man appeared to be in an innocently merry mood; he gaily
taunted Herby, as he chose to call him, with loss of nerve; he tormented
his sister because she didn't seem to know what Portlaw's discards
meant; and no wonder, because he discarded from an obscure system taught
him by Malcourt. Also, with a malice which Tressilvain ignored, he
forced formalities, holding everybody ruthlessly to iron-clad rule,
taking penalties, enforcing the most rigid etiquette. For he was one of
those rare players who knew the game so thoroughly that while he, and
the man he had taught, often ignored the classics of adversary play, the
slightest relaxing of etiquette, rule, precept, or precedent, in his
opponents, brought him out with a protest exacting the last item of toll
for indiscretion.
Portlaw was perhaps the sounder player, Malcourt certainly the more
brilliant; and now, for the first time since the advent of the
Tressilvains, the cards Portlaw held were good ones.
"What a nasty thing to do!" said Lady Tressilvain sharply, as her
brother's finesse went through, and with it another rubber.
"It was horrid, wasn't it, Helen? I don't know what's got into you and
Herby"; and to the latter's protest he added pleasantly: "You talk like
a bucket of ashes. Go on and deal!"
"A--what!" demanded Tressilvain angrily.
"It's an Americanism," observed his wife, surveying her cards with
masked displeasure and making it spades. "Louis, I never held such hands
in all my life," she said, displaying the meagre dummy.
"Do you good, Helen. Mustn't be too proud and haughty. No, no! Good for
you and Herby--"
"I wish you wouldn't call him Herby," snapped his sister.
"Not respectful?" inquired Malcourt, lifting his eyebrows. "Well, I'll
call him anything you like, Helen; I don't care. But make it something I
can say when ladies are present--"
Tressilvain's mink-like muzzle turned white with rage. He didn't like to
be flouted, he didn't like his cards, he didn't like to lose money. And
he had already lost a lot between luncheon and the impending dinner.
"Why the devil I continue to hold all these three-card suits I don't
know," he said savagely. "Isn't there another pack in the house?"
"There _was_" said Malcourt; and ironically condoled with him as Portlaw
accomplished a little slam in hearts.
Then Tressilvain dealt; and Malcourt's eyes never left his
brother-in-law's hands as they distributed the cards with nervous
rapidity.
"Misdeal," he said quietly.
"What?" demanded his sister in sharp protest.
"It's a misdeal," repeated Malcourt, smiling at her; and, as
Tressilvain, half the pack suspended, gazed blankly at him, Malcourt
turned and looked him squarely in the eye. The other reddened.
"Too bad," said Malcourt, with careless good-humour, "but one has to be
so careful in dealing the top card, Herby. You stumble over your own
fingers; they're too long; or perhaps it's that ring of yours."
A curious, almost ghastly glance passed involuntarily between the
Tressilvains; Portlaw, who was busy lighting a cigar, did not notice it,
but Malcourt laughed lightly and ran over the score, adding it up with a
nimble accuracy that seemed to stun his relatives.
"Why, look what's here!" he exclaimed, genially displaying a total that,
added, balanced all Portlaw's gains and losses to date. "Why, isn't that
curious, Helen! Right off the bat like that!--cricket-bat," he explained
affably to Tressilvain, who, as dinner was imminent, had begun fumbling
for his check-book.
At Malcourt's suave suggestion, however, instead of drawing a new check
he returned Portlaw's check. Malcourt took it, tore it carefully in two
equal parts.
"Half for you, William, half for me," he said gaily. "My--my! What
strange things do happen in cards--and in the British Isles!"
The dull flush deepened on Tressilvain's averted face, but Lady
Tressilvain, unusually pale, watched her brother persistently during the
general conversation that preceded dressing for dinner.