An Afternoon Stroll and an Evening Catastrophe
Miss Milbrey, the next morning, faced with becoming resignation what
she felt would be her last day of entire freedom. She was down and out
philosophically to play nine holes with her host before breakfast.
Her brother, awakening less happily, made a series of discoveries
regarding his bodily sensations that caused him to view life with
disaffection. Noting that the hour was early, however, he took cheer,
and after a long, strong, cold drink, which he rang for, and a pricking
icy shower, which he nerved himself to, he was ready to ignore his
aching head and get the start of Mauburn.
The Englishman, he seemed to recall, had drunk even more than he, and,
as it was barely eight o'clock, would probably not come to life for a
couple of hours yet. He made his way to the breakfast-room. The thought
of food was not pleasant, but another brandy and soda, beading
vivaciously in its tall glass, would enable him to watch with fortitude
the spectacle of others who might chance to be eating. And he would
have at least two hours of Miss Bines before Mauburn's head should ache
him back to consciousness.
He opened the door of the spacious breakfast-room. Through the broad
windows from the south-east came the glorious shine of the morning sun
to make him blink; and seated where it flooded him as a calcium was
Mauburn, resplendent in his myriad freckles, trim, alive, and obviously
hungry. Around his plate were cold mutton, a game pie, eggs, bacon,
tarts, toast, and sodden-looking marmalade. Mauburn was eating of these
with a voracity that published his singleness of mind to all who might
observe.
Milbrey steadied himself with one hand upon the door-post, and with the
other he sought to brush this monstrous illusion from his fickle eyes.
But Mauburn and the details of his deadly British breakfast became only
more distinct. The appalled observer groaned and rushed for the
sideboard, whence a decanter, a bowl of cracked ice, and a siphon
beckoned.
Between two gulps of coffee Mauburn grinned affably.
"Mornin', old chap! Feelin' a bit seedy? By Jove! I don't wonder. I'm
not so fit myself. I fancy, you know, it must have been that beastly
anchovy paste we had on the biscuits."
Milbrey's burning eyes beheld him reach out for another slice of the
cold, terrible mutton.
"Life," said Milbrey, as he inflated his brandy from the siphon, "is an
empty dream this morning."
"Wake up then, old chap!" Mauburn cordially urged, engaging the game
pie in deadly conflict; "try a rasher; nothing like it; better'n
peggin' it so early. Never drink till dinner-time, old chap, and you'll
be able to eat in the morning like--like a blooming baby." And he
proceeded to crown this notion of infancy's breakfast with a jam tart
of majestic proportions.
"Where are the people?" inquired Milbrey, eking out his own moist
breakfast with a cigarette.
"All down and out except some of the women. Miss Bines just drove off a
four-in-hand with the two Angsteads--held the reins like an old whip,
too, by Jove; but they'll be back for luncheon;--and directly after
luncheon she's promised to ride with me. I fancy we'll have a little
practice over the sticks."
"And I fancy I'm going straight back to bed,--that is, if it's all
right to fancy a thing you're certain about."
Outside most of the others had scattered for life in the open, each to
his taste. Some were on the links. Some had gone with the coach. A few
had ridden early to the meet of the Essex hounds near Easthampton,
where a stiff run was expected. Others had gone to follow the hunt in
traps. A lively group came back now to read the morning papers by the
log-fire in the big cheery hall. Among these were Percival and Miss
Milbrey. When they had dawdled over the papers for an hour Miss Milbrey
grew slightly restive.
"Why doesn't he have it over?" she asked herself, with some impatience.
And she delicately gave Percival, not an opportunity, but opportunities
to make an opportunity, which is a vastly different form of procedure.
But the luncheon hour came and people straggled back, and the afternoon
began, and the request for Miss Milbrey's heart and hand was still
unaccountably deferred. Nor could she feel any of those subtle
premonitions that usually warn a woman when the event is preparing in a
lover's secret heart.
Reminding herself of his letters, she began to suspect that, while he
could write unreservedly, he might be shy and reluctant of speech; and
that shyness now deterred him. So much being clear, she determined to
force the issue and end the strain for both.
Percival had shown not a little interest in pretty Mrs. Akemit, and was
now talking with that fascinating creature as she lolled on a low seat
before the fire in her lacy blue house-gown. At the moment she was
adroitly posing one foot and then the other before the warmth of the
grate. It may be disclosed without damage to this tale that the feet of
Mrs. Akemit were not cold; but that they were trifles most daintily
shod, and, as her slender silken ankles curved them toward the blaze
from her froth of a petticoat, they were worth looking at.
Miss Milbrey disunited the chatting couple with swiftness and aplomb.
"Come, Mr. Bines, if I'm to take that tramp you made me promise you,
it's time we were off."
Outside she laughed deliciously. "You know you did make me promise it
mentally, because I knew you'd want to come and want me to come, but I
was afraid Mrs. Akemit mightn't understand about telepathy, so I
pretended we'd arranged it all in words."
"Of course! Great joke, wasn't it?" assented the young man, rather
awkwardly.
Down the broad sweep of roadway, running between its granite coping,
they strode at a smart pace.
"You know you complimented my walking powers on that other walk we
took, away off there where the sun goes down."
"Yes, of course," he replied absently.
"Now, he's beginning," she said to herself, noting his absent and
somewhat embarrassed manner.
In reality he was thinking how few were the days ago he would have held
this the dearest of all privileges, and how strange that he should now
prize it so lightly, almost prefer, indeed, not to have it; that he
should regard her, of all women, "the fairest of all flesh on earth"
with nervous distrust.
She was dressed in tan corduroy; elation was in her face; her waist, as
she stepped, showed supple as a willow; her suede-gloved little hands
were compact and tempting to his grasp. His senses breathed the air of
her perfect and compelling femininity. But sharper than all these
impressions rang the words of the worldly-wise Higbee: _"She's hunting
night and day for a rich husband; she tries for them as fast as they
come; she'd rather marry a sub-treasury--she'd marry me in a
minute--she'd marry_ YOU; _but if you were broke she'd have about as
much use for you...."_
Her glance was frank, friendly, and encouraging. Her deep eyes were
clear as a trout-brook. He thought he saw in them once almost a
tenderness for him.
She thought, "He _does_ love me!"
Outside the grounds they turned down a bridle-path that led off through
the woods--off through the golden sun-wine of an October day. The air
bore a clean autumn spice, and a faint salty scent blended with it from
the distant Sound. The autumn silence, which is the only perfect
silence in all the world, was restful, yet full of significance,
suggestion, provocation. From the spongy lowland back of them came the
pleading sweetness of a meadow-lark's cry. Nearer they could even hear
an occasional leaf flutter and waver down. The quick thud of a falling
nut was almost loud enough to earn its echo. Now and then they saw a
lightning flash of vivid turquoise and heard a jay's harsh scream.
In this stillness their voices instinctively lowered, while their eyes
did homage to the wondrous play of colour about them. Over a yielding
brown carpet they went among maple and chestnut and oak, with their
bewildering changes through crimson, russet, and amber to pale yellow;
under the deep-stained leaves of the sweet-gum they went, and past the
dogwood with scarlet berries gemming the clusters of its dim red
leaves.
But through all this waiting, inciting silence Miss Milbrey listened in
vain for the words she had felt so certain would come.
Sometimes her companion was voluble; again he was taciturn--and through
it all he was doggedly aloof.
Miss Milbrey had put herself bravely in the path of Destiny. Destiny
had turned aside. She had turned to meet it, and now it frankly fled.
Destiny, as she had construed it, was turned a fugitive. She was
bruised, puzzled, and not a little piqued. During the walk back, when
this much had been made clear, the silence was intolerably oppressive.
Without knowing why, they understood perfectly now that neither had
been ingenuous.
"She would love the money and play me for a fool," he thought, under
the surface talk. Youth is prone to endow its opinions with all the
dignity of certain knowledge.
"Yet I am certain he loves me," thought she. On the other hand, youth
is often gifted with a credulity divine and unerring.
At the door as they came up the roadway a trap was depositing a man
whom Miss Milbrey greeted with evident surprise and some restraint. He
was slight, dark, and quick of movement, with finely cut nostrils that
expanded and quivered nervously like those of a high-bred horse in
tight check.
Miss Milbrey introduced him to Percival as Mr. Ristine.
"I didn't know you were hereabouts," she said.
"I've run over from the Bloynes to dine and do Hallowe'en with you," he
answered, flashing his dark eyes quickly over Percival and again
lighting the girl with them.
"Surprises never come singly," she returned, and Percival noted a
curious little air of defiance in her glance and manner.
Now it is possible that Solomon's implied distinction as to the man's
way with a maid was not, after all, so ill advised.
For young Bines, after dinner, fell in love with Miss Milbrey all over
again. The normal human mind going to one extreme will inevitably
gravitate to its opposite if given time. Having put her away in the
conviction that she was heartless and mercenary--having fasted in the
desert of doubt--he now found himself detecting in her an unmistakable
appeal for sympathy, for human kindness, perhaps for love. He forgot
the words of Higbee and became again the confident, unquestioning
lover. He noted her rather subdued and reserved demeanour, and the
suggestions of weariness about her eyes. They drew him. He resolved at
once to seek her and give his love freedom to tell itself. He would no
longer meanly restrain it. He would even tell her all his distrust. Now
that they had gone she should know every ignoble suspicion; and,
whether she cared for him or not, she would comfort him for the hurt
they had been to him.
The Hallowe'en frolic was on. Through the long hall, lighted to
pleasant dusk by real Jack-o'-lanterns, stray couples strolled, with
subdued murmurs and soft laughter. In the big white and gold parlour,
in the dining-room, billiard-room, and in the tropic jungle of the
immense palm-garden the party had bestowed itself in congenial groups,
ever intersecting and forming anew. Little flutters of high laughter
now and then told of tests that were being made with roasting
chestnuts, apple-parings, the white of an egg dropped into water, or
the lighted candle before an open window.
Percival watched for the chance to find Miss Milbrey alone. His sister
had just ventured alone with a candle into the library to study the
face of her future husband in a mirror. The result had been, in a
sense, unsatisfactory. She had beheld looking over her shoulder the
faces of Mauburn, Fred Milbrey, and the Angstead twins, and had
declared herself unnerved by the weird prophecy.
Before the fire in the hall Percival stood while Mrs. Akemit reclined
picturesquely near by, and Doctor von Herzlich explained, with
excessive care as to his enunciation, that protoplasm can be analysed
but cannot be reconstructed; following this with his own view as to why
the synthesis does not produce life.
"You wonderful man!" from Mrs. Akemit; "I fairly tremble when I think
of all you know. Oh, what a delight science must be to her votaries!"
The Angstead twins joined the group, attracted by Mrs. Akemit's inquiry
of the savant if he did not consider civilisation a failure. The twins
did. They considered civilisation a failure because it was killing off
all the big game. There was none to speak of left now except in Africa;
and they were pessimistic about Africa.
Percival listened absently to the talk and watched Miss Milbrey, now
one of the group in the dining-room. Presently he saw her take a
lighted candle from one of the laughing girls and go toward the
library.
His heart-beats quickened. Now she should know his love and it would be
well. He walked down the hall leisurely, turned into the big parlour,
momentarily deserted, walked quickly but softly over its polished floor
to a door that gave into the library, pushed the heavy portiere aside
and stepped noiselessly in.
The large room was lighted dimly by two immense yellow pumpkins, their
sides cut into faces of grinning grotesqueness. At the far side of the
room Miss Milbrey had that instant arrived before an antique oval
mirror whose gilded carvings reflected the light of the candle. She
held it above her head with one rounded arm. He stood in deep shadow
and the girl had been too absorbed in the play to note his coming. He
took one noiseless step toward her, but then through the curtained
doorway by which she had come he saw a man enter swiftly and furtively.
Trembling on the verge of laughing speech, something held him back,
some unexplainable instinct, making itself known in a thrill that went
from his feet to his head; he could feel the roots of his hair tingle.
The newcomer went quickly, with catlike tread, toward the girl.
Fascinated he stood, wanting to speak, to laugh, yet powerless from the
very swiftness of what followed.
In the mirror under the candle-light he saw the man's dark face come
beside the other, heard a little cry from the girl as she half-turned;
then he saw the man take her in his arms, saw her head fall on to his
shoulder, and her face turn to his kiss.
He tried to stop breathing, fearful of discovery, grasping with one
hand the heavy fold of the curtain back of him to steady himself.
There was the space of two long, trembling breaths; then he heard her
say, in a low, tense voice, as she drew away:
"Oh, you are my bad angel--why?--why?"
She fled toward the door to the hall.
"Don't come this way," she called back, in quick, low tones of caution.
The man turned toward the door where Percival stood, and in the
darkness stumbled over a hassock. Instantly Percival was on the other
side of the portiere, and, before the other had groped his way to the
dark corner where the door was, had recrossed the empty parlour and was
safely in the hall.
He made his way to the dining-room, where supper was under way.
"Mr. Bines has seen a ghost," said the sharp-eyed Mrs. Drelmer.
"Poor chap's only starved to death," said Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan. "Eat
something, Mr. Bines; this supper is go-as-you-please. Nobody's to wait
for anybody."
Strung loosely about the big table a dozen people were eating hot
scones and bannocks with clotted cream and marmalade, and drinking
mulled cider.
"And there's cold fowl and baked beans and doughnuts and all, for those
who can't eat with a Scotch accent," said the host, cheerfully.
Percival dropped into one of the chairs.
"I'm Scotch enough to want a Scotch high-ball."
"And you're getting it so high it's top-heavy," cautioned Mrs. Drelmer.
Above the chatter of the table could be heard the voices of men and the
musical laughter of women from the other rooms.
"I simply can't get 'em together," said the hostess.
"It's nice to have 'em all over the place," said her husband, "fair
women and brave men, you know."
"The men _have_ to be brave," she answered, shortly, with a glance at
little Mrs. Akemit, who had permitted Percival to seat her at his side,
and was now pleading with him to agree that simple ways of life are
requisite to the needed measure of spirituality.
Then came strains of music from the rich-toned organ.
"Oh, that dear Ned Ristine is playing," cried one; and several of the
group sauntered toward the music-room.
The music flooded the hall and the room, so that the talk died low.
"He's improvising," exclaimed Mrs. Akemit. "How splendid! He seems to
be breathing a paean of triumph, some high, exalted spiritual triumph,
as if his soul had risen above us--how precious!"
When the deep swell had subsided to silvery ripples and the last
cadence had fainted, she looked at Percival with moistened parted lips
and eyes half-shielded, as if her full gaze would betray too much of
her quivering soul.
Then Percival heard the turquoised brunette say: "What a pity his wife
is such an unsympathetic creature!"
"But Mr. Ristine is unmarried, is he not?" he asked, quickly.
There was a little laugh from Mrs. Drelmer.
"Not yet--not that I've heard of."
"I beg pardon!"
"There have been rumours lots of times that he was going to be
_unmarried_, but they always seem to adjust their little difficulties.
He and his wife are now staying over at the Bloynes."
"Oh! I see," answered Percival; "you're a jester, Mrs. Drelmer."
"Ristine," observed the theosophic Wilberforce, in the manner of a
hired oracle, "is, in his present incarnation, imperfectly monogamous."
Some people came from the music-room.
"Miss Milbrey has stayed by the organist," said one; "and she's
promised to make him play one more. Isn't he divine?"
The music came again.
"Oh!" from Mrs. Akemit, again in an ecstasy, '"' he's playing that
heavenly stuff from the second act of 'Tristan and Isolde'--the one
triumphant, perfect love-poem of all music."
"That Scotch whiskey is good in some of the lesser emergencies,"
remarked Percival, turning to her; "but it has its limitations. Let's
you and me trifle with a nice cold quart of champagne!"