"Judith?" Mrs. Randall took her husband's news quietly, with something
that was almost relief in her face, the relief that comes when a
gathering storm breaks at last, and you learn what it is you have been
afraid of, though you must go on being afraid. "What is it? Is she ill,
Harry?"
"Come and talk to Norah."
"No, we'll go straight home."
"But she's not there, Minna. That's all Norah'll say to me, but she's
got some idea where she is, and says she'll tell you. Judith isn't
there."
"It must be nearly morning."
"It's two."
"It was after nine when we started."
"Minna, didn't you hear what I said?"
Mrs. Randall's face had not changed as she heard; it looked
unchangeable, like some fixed but charming mask that she wore. The lips
still smiled though they had stiffened slightly, and she watched the two
women's attempts to blindfold the Colonel--unaided now, but hilariously
applauded by the circle around her--with the same mild, interested eyes,
wide-set and Madonna calm.
"I tell you, Judith's not there. What does Norah know? Why don't you do
something? Where is she?... My God, look at them. What are they doing
now? Look at Everard."
Mrs. Burr had drawn the knot suddenly tight in the white scarf she was
manipulating, and slipped out of the Colonel's arms and out of reach. He
followed, and then swung round and stumbled awkwardly after Edith Kent,
who had brushed past him, leaving a light, challenging kiss on his
forehead, and was further guiding him with her pretty, empty laugh. The
game of blind-man's buff was under way.
Crowding the garden enclosure, swaying this way and that and threatening
to overflow it, a pushing, struggling mass of people kept rather
laboriously out of one another's way and the Colonel's, not so much
amused by the effort as they were pretending to be; people with heavy
and stupid faces who had never looked more irrevocably removed from
childhood than now that they were playing a children's game.
In the heart of the crowd, now plunging ahead of it, now lost in it, the
first gentleman of Green River disported himself. His white head was
easy to follow through the crowd, and the thing that made you follow it
was evident even now--much of his old dignity, and the charm that was
peculiarly his; you saw it in an occasional stubborn shake of his
beautifully shaped head, in the grace of the hand that caught at some
flying skirt and missed it. He was the first gentleman of Green River
still, but he was something else.
His white hair straggled across his forehead moist and dishevelled, and
his face showed flushed and perspiring against the white of the scarf.
The trailing ends of the scarf flapped grotesquely about his head, and
the high, splendidly modelled forehead was obscured and the keen eyes
were hidden. The beauty of the face was lost, and the mouth showed thin
lipped and sensual. The Colonel was really a stumbling, red-faced old
man.
"Look at him. That's what she's seen. This was Judith's party. That's
what we've hung on in this town for till it's too late to break loose.
We never can get away now. We can't----"
"Keep still, Harry. Do you want to be heard? Did any one hear you at the
telephone? Keep still and come home."
"You're right. You're wonderful. You don't lose your nerve."
"I can't afford to, and neither can you. Come---- Oh, Harry, look. I saw
him following you. What does he want? What's the matter? What is he
going to do?"
Mrs. Randall had adjusted her cloak deliberately, and turned to pilot
her husband out of the garden, slipping a firm little hand through his
arm. Now she clung to him and stood still, silent after her little fire
of excited questions. The entrance to the garden was blocked. An
uninvited and unexpected guest was standing there.
His entrance had been unheralded, and his welcome was slow to come. The
crowd had closed in round the Colonel, with Edith Kent caught suddenly
in his arms, and giving a creditable imitation of attempting to escape.
Interested silence and bursts of laughter indicated the progress of it
clearly, though the two were entirely out of sight. Nobody saw the
newcomer except the Randalls.
He stood in the entrance to the rose arbour, clutching at the trellis
with one unsteady hand, and managing to keep fairly erect, a slightly
built, swaying figure, black-haired and hatless. He kept one hand behind
him, awkwardly, as a shy boy guards a favourite plaything. He was
staring into the crowd in the garden as if he could see through into the
heart of it, but had not the intellect just then to understand what he
saw there.
It was the man Mrs. Randall had seen lurking in the shadow of the trees,
but he was no mysterious stranger, though here in the light of the
lanterns she hardly recognized him as she looked at his pale, excited
face; it showed an excitement quite unaccounted for by the perfectly
obvious fact that he was drunk, and entirely unconnected with that fact.
Here and there on the outskirts of the crowd some one turned and saw
him, too, and stared at him. They all knew him. He was Neil Donovan's
cousin, the discredited young lawyer, Charlie Brady.
He did not speak or move. He only stood still and looked at them with
vague, puzzled eyes, and lips that twitched as if he wanted to speak,
but standing so, he had the centre of the stage. He could not command
it, he had pushed his way into it doggedly, uncertain what to do first,
but he was there. One by one his audience had become conscious of it,
and were confronting him startled and uncertain, too. Young Chester
Gaynor elbowed his way to the front, but stopped there, grinning at the
invader, restrained perhaps by a lady's voice, which was to be heard
admonishing him excitedly.
"Don't you get hurt, dear."
"How did he get here? Why can't somebody get him out?" other excited
ladies inquired.
"Get Judge Saxon," directed Mr. J. Cleveland Kent's calm and
authoritative voice.
"Get Sebastian. Where is the fellow? Is he afraid?" demanded the
Honourable Joe from the extreme rear. Some one laughed hysterically. It
was Mrs. Burr. The laugh was quickly hushed, but the new guest had heard
it, though no other sound seemed to have impressed him. He laughed, too,
a dry, broken ghost of a laugh, as cracked and strange as his voice,
which he now found abruptly.
"Lillie," he called. "Hello, Lillie dear."
Mrs. Burr was not heard to reply to this affectionate greeting, but he
hardly paused for a reply. His light, high, curiously detached sounding
voice talked on with a kind of uncanny fluency.
"Lillie," he urged cordially, "I heard you. I know you're there. Come
out and let's have a look at you. I don't see anything of you lately.
You're too grand for me. I don't care. I'm in love with a prettier girl.
But you used to treat me all right, Lillie dear, and I treated you
right, too. I never told. A gentleman don't tell. And you were straight
with me. You never double-crossed me, like you and the dago Sebastian do
to Everard. Everard! That's who I want to talk to. Where is he?"
At the mention of the name his wavering gaze had steadied and
concentrated suddenly on the centre of the group in the garden, and now,
while he looked, the crowd parted. Pushing his way through, the Colonel
faced his uninvited guest.
The great man was not at his best. His most ardent admirer could hardly
have claimed it. He had pulled the muffling scarf down from his eyes,
but was still tearing at the knot impatiently. Mrs. Kent had come
fluttering ineffectively after him, catching at his arm. He struck her
hands away, and pushed her back, addressing her with a lack of ceremony
which outsiders were not often permitted to hear him employ toward a
member of his favoured circle.
"Keep out of this, Edith, and you keep quiet, Lil. You girls make me
sick," he snapped. "Half the trouble in this town comes because you
can't learn to hold your tongues. You'd better learn. You're going to
pay for it if you don't, and don't you lose sight of that. Well, Brady,
what does this mean? What can I do for you?"
The ring of authority was in his voice again, as if he had called it
back by sheer will power. He had stepped forward alone, and stood
looking up at his guest, still framed in the sheltering trellis, and his
blurred eyes cleared and grew keen as he looked, regarding him
indifferently, like some refractory but mildly amusing animal. His
guest's defiant eyes avoided his, and the ineffective, swaying figure
seemed to shrink and droop and grow smaller, but it was a dignified
figure still and a dangerous one. There was the snarling menace of
impotent but inevitable rebellion about it, of men who fight on with
their backs against the wall; a menace that was not new born to-night,
but the gradual growth of years, just the number of years that the
Colonel had spent in Green River.
"I'm sorry, sir," stammered his guest.
"Then apologize and get out."
"I can't."
"I think you'll find you can, Brady."
"I can't. I've got to ask you a few questions."
They seemed to be slow in framing themselves. There was a little pause,
the kind of pause that for no apparent reason deprives you for the
moment of any desire to move or speak. The unassuming figure of the
young man under the trellis stood still, swaying only slightly from side
to side. A deprecating smile appeared on his lips, as if his errand were
distasteful to him and he wished to apologize for it. Gradually the
smile faded and the eyes grew steady again and unnaturally bright. He
held himself stiffly erect where he stood for a moment, took a few
lurching steps forward, paused, and then plunged suddenly across the
garden toward Colonel Everard.
It would have been hard to tell which came first, the little, stumbling
run forward, the Colonel's instinctive move to check it, the stampede
of the devotees of the time-honoured game of blind-man's buff, acting
now with a promptness and spontaneity which they had not displayed in
that game, Lillian Burr's hysterical scream, the snarling words from the
Colonel that silenced it, or the quick flash of metal. It had all
happened at once. But now, in an amphitheatre of scared faces, as far
behind as the limits of the garden enclosure would allow, Mr. Brady and
his host stood facing each other alone, and the Colonel, now entirely
himself, with the high colour fading out of his cheeks, was looking with
cool and unwavering eyes straight into the barrel of Mr. Brady's
revolver.
It was a clumsy, old-fashioned little weapon. Brady's thin hand grasped
it firmly, as if some stronger hand than his own were steadying his. He
laughed an ineffective laugh, like a boastful boy's, but there was a
threat in it, too.
"What have you got to say for yourself? I'll give you a chance to say
it," he stated magnanimously, "but you shan't say a word against her.
She was always a good girl. She is a good girl. What have you done with
her? Where is she?"
"You don't make yourself altogether clear, Brady," said the Colonel
smoothly.
"Where's Maggie?"
"Maggie?" The Colonel's eyes swept the circle of his guests
deliberately, as if to assure himself that no lady of that name was
among them.
"Maggie. You know the name well enough." The sound of it seemed to give
the lady's champion new courage; it flamed in his eyes, hot, and quick
to burn itself out, but while it lasted, even a gentleman who had
learned to face drawn revolvers as indifferently as the Colonel might do
well to be afraid of him. "Maggie's missing. I'm going to find her.
That's all I want of you. I won't ask you who's worked on her and made a
fool of her. I won't ask you how far she's been going. But I want her
back before the whole town knows. I want to find her and find her quick.
She's a good girl and a decent girl. She's going to keep her good name.
She's coming home."
"Commendable," said the Colonel, not quite smoothly enough. His guest
was past listening to him.
"Maggie. That's all I want. You're getting off easy. Luck's with you.
I've stood a lot from you, the same as the town has. It will stand a lot
more, and I will. Get Maggie back. Get her back and give her to me and
leave her alone, and I'll eat out of your hand and starve when you don't
feed me, the same as the rest"--he came two wavering steps nearer, and
dropped his voice to a dry quaver meant to be confidential, a grotesque
and sinister parody of a confidence--"the rest, that don't know what I
know."
"What do you mean?"
"I won't tell. Don't be afraid. A gentleman don't tell, and there's
nobody that can but me. Young Neil don't know. The luck's with you, sir,
just the same as it always was."
"I've had enough of this. Get home, Brady," cried the Colonel, in a
voice that was suddenly wavering and high, like an old man's, but his
guest only smiled and nodded wisely, beginning to sway as he stood, but
still gripping the clumsy revolver tight.
"Just the same as it was when old Neil Donovan died."
"Get home," shrilled the Colonel again, but his guest pursued the tenor
of his thoughts untroubled, still with the look of an amiably disposed
fellow-conspirator on his weak face, a maddening look, even if his words
conveyed no sting of their own.
"Neil Donovan," he crooned, "my father's own half-brother, and a good
uncle to me, and a gentleman, too. He sold rum over a counter, but he
was a gentleman, for he didn't talk too much. A gentleman don't tell."
But the catalogue of his uncle's perfections, whether in place here or
not, was to proceed no further. The audience pressed closer, as eager
to look on at a fight as it was to keep out of one. There was a new and
surprising development in this one. The two men had closed with each
other, and it was not the half-crazed boy who had made the attack, but
the Colonel himself.
It was a sudden and awkward attack, and there was something stranger
about it still. The Colonel was angry. He had tried to knock the weapon
out of the boy's hand, failed, and tried instinctively, still, to get
possession of it, but he was not making an adequate and necessary
attempt to disarm him, he was no longer adequate or calm. He was angry,
suddenly angry with the poor specimen of humanity that was making its
futile attempt at protest and rebellion, as if it were an equal and an
enemy. His face was distorted and his eyes were dull and unseeing. His
breath came in panting gasps, and he made inarticulate little sounds in
his throat. He struck furious and badly directed blows.
It was a curious thing to see, in the heart of the great man's admiring
circle, at the climax of his most successful party of the year. It did
not last long. The two struggling figures broke away from each other,
and the boy staggered backward and stood with the revolver still in his
hand. He was a little sobered by the struggle, and a little weakened by
it, pale and dangerous, with a fanatic light in his eyes. Some one who
had an eye for danger signals, if the Colonel had not, had made his
unobtrusive way forward, and joined him now. He was not the most
formidable looking of allies, but he stood beside them as if he had a
right to be there, and the Colonel turned to him as if he recognized it.
"Hugh, you heard what he said?" he appealed; "you heard?"
"Judge, you keep out of this," Brady called, "keep out, sir."
Judge Saxon, keeping a casual hand on his most prominent client's arm,
stood regarding Mr. Brady with mild and friendly blue eyes. He had quite
his usual air of being detached from his surroundings, but benevolently
interested in them.
"Charlie," he said, as if he were recognizing Mr. Brady for the first
time at this critical moment, and deriving pleasure from it. "Why,
Charlie," his voice became gently reproachful, but remained friendly,
too. "Everard, this boy don't mean a word he says," he went on, with
conviction, "he's excited and you're excited, too. This is a pretty poor
time for you to get excited, Everard."
"You're right, Hugh," muttered the Judge's most prominent client
thickly; "you're right. Get him away. Get him home."
"He's a good boy," pronounced the Judge.
It was not the obvious description of Mr. Brady just at that moment.
There was only friendly amusement in the Judge's drawling voice and
shrewd eyes, but back of it, unmistakably there, was something that made
every careless word worth listening to. Mr. Brady was resisting it. His
face worked pitifully.
"Judge, I told you to keep out. I don't want to hurt you."
"Thanks, Charlie."
"Every word I say is God's truth, Judge."
The Judge did not contradict this sweeping statement. He was studying
Mr. Brady's weapon with some interest. "Your uncle's," he commented,
pleased. "Why, I didn't know you still owned that thing, Charlie."
"I want Maggie. I want----"
"I'll tell you what you want," offered the Judge, amicably, "you want to
hand that thing to me, and go home."
Mr. Brady received this suggestion in silence, a silence which left his
audience uncertain how deeply he resented it. Indeed, they were
painfully uncertain, and showed it. Bits of advice reached the Judge's
ears, contradictory, though much of it sound, but he took no notice of
it. He only smiled his patient and wistful smile and waited, like a man
who knew what would happen next.
"Hand it to me," he repeated gently.
"I won't, Judge." Mr. Brady's weapon wavered, and then steadied itself.
His thin body trembled. The fanatic light in his eyes blazed bright. The
excitement which had gripped him, too keen to last long, reached its
climax now in one last burst of hysterical speech.
"He's a liar and a thief," he asserted, uncontradicted. He was not to be
contradicted. There was a dignity of its own about the hysterical
indictment, grotesque as it was, an unforgettable suggestion of truth.
"He's a thief and a murderer, too. I don't have to tell what I know.
Everybody knows. You all know, all of you, and you don't dare to tell.
He's murdering the town."
The high, screaming voice broke off abruptly. Mr. Brady, still with the
echo of his big words in his ears and apparently dazed by it, stood
looking blankly into the Judge's steady and friendly eyes.
"I can't--I won't----" he stammered.
"Hand it to me," said the Judge, as if no interruption had occurred. For
a moment the boy before him looked too dull and dazed to obey or to
hear. Then, as suddenly as if some unseen hand had struck it out of his,
the revolver dropped to the ground, and he collapsed, sobbing
heartbrokenly, into the Judge's arms.
He was a heroic figure no longer. The alien forces that made him one
had deserted him abruptly, and he looked unworthy of their support
already, only an inconsiderable creature of jangled nerves and
hysterical speech, which would be discredited if you looked at him, even
if it still echoed in your ears. The Judge, holding him and quieting
him, looked allied with him, humble and discredited, too. The relieved
audience hung back for a moment, taking in the full force of the
picture, before it broke ranks to crowd round the Colonel and offer him
belated support. The Colonel said a few inaudible words to Judge Saxon,
and then turned from him and his protege with the air of washing his
hands of the whole affair. He looked surprisingly unruffled by it, even
stimulated by it. The interruption to his party was over.
* * * * *
It ended as it had begun, the most successful party of the year. Mr.
Brady's invasion was not the first unscheduled event which had enlivened
a party at the Birches. There was more open and general speculation
about the fact that the Randalls left immediately after, did not linger
over their good-nights, and were obviously not permitted by their host
to do so.
Mrs. Randall, leaning back in her corner with her hand tight in Harry's,
and her long-lashed eyes, that were like Judith's, tightly shut, showed
the full strain of the evening in her pale face. She was a woman who did
not look tired easily, but she was also a woman who could not afford to
look tired.
There was no appeal or charm about her pale face now, only a naked look
of hardness and strain. Her husband, staring straight ahead of him with
troubled eyes, and his weak, boyish mouth set in a hard, worried line,
spoke rapidly and disconnectedly not of Judith, or the Colonel's ominous
coldness to him, but of Mr. Brady.
"Maggie's a bad lot," he was explaining for approximately the fifth time
as they whirled into the drive and under their own dark windows. "She
always was. Everard isn't making away with the belle of Paddy Lane. Not
yet. He's not that far down. But that dope about old Neil Donovan----"
"Oh, Harry, hush," his wife said, "here we are. What do you care about
Brady?"
"Nothing," he whispered, his arm tightening round her as he lifted her
down. "I don't care about anything in the world but Judith."
"Neither do I. Not really," she said in a hurried, shaken voice that was
not like her own, "you believe that, don't you, Harry?"
He did not answer. Gathering up her skirts, she followed him silently to
the front of the house, single file along the narrow boardwalk, not yet
taken up for the summer, creaking loudly under their feet.
"Look," she whispered, catching at his arm. The front of the house was
dark except for two lights, a flickering lamp that was being carried
nearer to them through the hall, and a soft, shaded light that showed at
a bedroom window. The window was Judith's. He fumbled for his key, but
the door opened before them. Norah, her forbidding face more militant
than ever in the flickering light of the kerosene hand-lamp she held,
her white pompadour belligerently erect, and her brown eyes maliciously
alight, peered at them across the door chain, and then gingerly admitted
them.
"It's a sweet time of night to be coming home to the only child you've
got," she commented, "why do you take the trouble to come home at all?"
It was a characteristic greeting from her. If it had not been, Mrs.
Randall would not have resented it now. She clutched at the old woman's
unresponsive shoulder.
"Where is she?" she demanded breathlessly.
"Judith is it you mean?"
"Oh, yes."
"How should I know how she spends her evenings? At some of the girls'
to-night. Rena Drew's maybe. I don't know. It's a new thing for you to
care. She was late in, and it's no wonder I was worried. She's like my
own to me. But she needs her sleep now. You'd better go softly
upstairs."
"Do you mean she's here?"
"What is it to you?" Norah, one bony hand clutching the newel post as if
it were a negotiable weapon of defense, and her brown eyes flashing as
if she were capable of using any weapon for Judith, barred the way up
the stairs.
"I tell you, she needs her sleep, poor lamb--poor lamb," she said, "and
you're not to go near her to-night. You're to promise me that. But she's
here fast enough. My lamb is safe at home in her own bed."