THE MOONLIGHT PICNIC.
Levallion, contrary to his custom, rose early the next morning and
repaired to Mrs. Murray’s house, meaning to strike terror into her soul
by threats of withdrawing her allowance.
There was no smoke coming from her chimneys, and, as he was about to
dismount and knock her up, an untidy female emerged from the back
premises and announced that their late tenant had decamped without
the formality of giving notice. She had, to the station-master’s
knowledge, taken a ticket for London on the preceding morning, and
Levallion decided, with some relief, that it must, after all, have been
a kitchen-maid whom he and Tommy had seen looking in the conservatory.
He was not to be pleased on reaching home to find he might have spared
himself his journey, for the post brought a letter from Hester, posted
in London, in which she implored his forgiveness for her foolish
outspokenness, thanked him for his bounty, and hoped “that one so
unworthy as she might never set eyes on him again.”
“Too humble,” quoth his lordship, in the seclusion of his drawing-room;
“means something.”
But the precise meaning did not occur to him. And Sir Thomas’ bleak
face at breakfast put Hester out of his mind. Mr. Jacobs had nearly
died in the night, was even now in a parlous state. Sir Thomas was of
the opinion that he must have been poaching in the afternoon and eaten
poison laid down for marauding cats; an opinion with which the vet.
agreed, going so far as to mention prussic acid.
“It could not have been on my land, then,” Levallion informed the
gathering that surrounded unlucky Mr. Jacobs. “I don’t allow poisoning.”
“It’s prussic acid, my lord, wherever he got it,” the vet. returned
obstinately. “But he’s round the corner.
“It’s likely that soup last night saved him.”
“I dare say,” said Levallion indifferently, but he stroked Mr. Jacobs,
who licked his hand. All dogs worshiped Levallion, just as every dog
Mrs. Murray ever owned mysteriously pined away and died under her care.
It was a gorgeous morning, clear and cold. Levallion had no special
desire to shoot, but anything was better than staying at home as
special policeman, under the amused eyes of Gwendolen Brook. He was
utterly astounded as he joined the other men to find Adrian, on a fat
pony, was going with them.
“Queer thing, honor!” he meditated. “A badly bred man would have stayed
at home. I’ll look out he doesn’t overdo himself.”
Afterward Adrian Gordon remembered that never had Levallion been to him
as he was that day. No mother could have looked after a child better
than Lord Levallion, the man he had good reason to hate. And Jimmy
Scarsdale saw it--with a grin that was wasted. Lady Levallion must be
as deep as the sea.
Lady Levallion looked anything but deep at that precise moment. She had
thankfully sent her flock of women to a golf tournament ten miles away,
and was seated in the garden with Tommy and the recovering Mr. Jacobs.
Wrapped up in a big cloak she looked very young, dreadfully tired. Sir
Thomas saw it downheartedly, and connected it with her silly and marked
absence with Captain Gordon the night before, a piece of idiocy he was
too angry to mention. Though he would have been angrier still if he had
known every word she had said had been overheard by Lady Gwendolen--and
others.
“Jacobs was poisoned,” he said moodily. “Just wait till I find out
where he got it.”
“Miles off, I dare say. Levallion won’t allow it. What’s he growling
at?” for Mr. Jacobs stood bristling, weakly ferocious.
“That beastly cook,” with exasperation, “what on earth do you keep
him for? Jacobs, come here, Jacobs!” But the dog had been through the
garden, and Tommy raced after him in time to see Monsieur Carrousel
launch an enormous stone that barely missed Mr. Jacobs’ head.
Sir Thomas seized his dog by the collar.
“What, the----” he began; and saw Ravenel standing by him, out of
breath, but looking inches taller than her height.
“May I ask,” she said to the bearded, elegant person who was kind
enough to cook his dinners, “why you are pulling my rockery to pieces?”
with a glance at the fern-covered stone on the path.
“The dog is dangerous. He threatened my life,” with a majestic rage.
“You are quite wrong, the dog is harmless. If you are afraid of him,
remember that you will be quite safe in your kitchen. This--is my
garden!” She turned her back with a manner the duchess would have
envied. “Come, Tommy, and bring the dog.”
“Why were you so down on him?” Tommy inquired when they were out of
ear-shot. “I really believe Jacobs would have bitten him. Goodness
knows why, but he hates the man!”
“So do I,” hotly. “There is not a seat in the garden where I can go
without finding him in the neighborhood. I feel as if he had the evil
eye on something; he makes me shiver. Levallion’s going to send him
away.”
“When’s Gordon going?” said Tommy abruptly.
“To-morrow.” She grew scarlet. “Tommy,” she said miserably, “don’t be
horrid to me! I don’t deserve it. I don’t mean even to speak to him
before he goes.”
“All right,” gruffly, but he slipped his arm in hers as he had not
done since he came. “I say, Ravenel, I’ll be glad when the others go!
They’re no good, except the duchess.”
“I can’t bear them,” with sudden viciousness. “I feel all the time that
if I were down in the world not one of them would speak to me--even
Lady Chayter. The others are--well, her ladyship was a good imitation
of them!”
“That reminds me,” he picked up Mr. Jacobs and rolled him in Ravenel’s
cloak. “I’m sure I saw the old Umbrella yesterday, in the village.”
“Oh, nonsense!”
“I did, then; looking mighty out at elbows. What do you bet she’ll not
be up here, whining to you?”
“She can whine,” deliberately, for whatever Lady Annesley had done, it
was sure to be no secret to the Umbrella. “Hateful old wretch!”
“Beats me how Levallion ever was a friend of Sylvia’s,” observed Tommy
idly. “By George, I get hot all over when I think how I used to hate
him.”
“He’s kind,” in a stifled voice. “But oh, Tommy! Sometimes I feel as if
I should scream with the shut-up-ness of being grand! The fine clothes
and too much to eat, and--it’s rather awful being Lady Levallion!”
“It’s better than her ladyship,” the boy said dully. “Brace up,
Ravenel! Nobody in the world is downright happy, I believe.”
He lit one of Levallion’s cigarettes to avoid conversation, and refused
to see she was crying. When he threw away the stump she was sitting
quite motionless, but she was dry-eyed.
At dinner he looked at her covertly and wondered why on earth she wore
a black gown. It made her eyes look dark and gave the red and white of
her face an unearthly clearness.
“She looks awfully old, somehow,” the boy thought uneasily. “I hope
she doesn’t go and make another break to-night. She looks----” even to
himself he did not say “desperate.” After all, he knew no reason why
she should be.
But when he went into the drawing-room, after putting Mr. Jacobs to
bed, something caught at his heart. Neither Ravenel nor Captain Gordon
were there; and all the women but the duchess had a furtive look.
“Beasts, women!” Sir Thomas retreated as suddenly as he had entered,
determined to fetch his sister to her senses, or die. But at an open
window in the hall something moving outside in the moonlight caught
his eye, and checked his hasty walk. He hung out recklessly, and saw
two figures disappear into the shrubbery, a man and a woman in a black
dress!
“She’s mad,” said the boy, with something like a sob in his throat. And
turned round to see Ravenel and Levallion looking at him.
“I--I felt dizzy,” he stammered, scarcely believing his eyes; for if
this were Ravenel, who was that outside?
“I don’t wonder,” said Levallion cheerfully. “In another minute I’d
have hauled you in by the legs. Come and play blind man’s buff with the
rest of the idiots I have taken into my house.”
“I think I’ll take a stroll. It’s hot in there. Where,” in pure blank
desperation, “is Gordon?”
“Gone to bed. He starts at seven,” and just as if he were sorry for
the girl who stood by in silence, Lord Levallion did not look at
her as he followed her into the lights, the scent, the circle of
women--enlightened by Lady Gwendolen--that made his own drawing-room a
place of torment.
Sir Thomas, in his thin shoes and no cap, slipped unnoticed out into
the moonlight, pure curiosity his only motive. The woman had looked
like a lady, a lady’s long dress and voluminous evening cloak had
showed plainly where she stood in the clear moonlight. The night was
bright as day, the air warm, almost balmy, as if the moon had brought
back summer when the sunset chill was gone.
“I don’t believe it was any old kitchen-maid last night,” he thought,
as he followed the path by which that mysterious man and woman had
vanished. “I could see very well, but I believe it was well--whoever
it was now!” rather feebly. No one had told him of the lady who had
come to ask for Gordon, and he had never chanced to pass that new
bungalow that had given Levallion such an unpleasant surprise. Against
his will there cropped up in his mind those old stories of Levallion;
if one-half of them were true, there must be several women ready to
eat their hearts by staring in at his respectable married windows! Sir
Thomas hoped devoutly there was not going to be any fuss. The path led
him from the gardens into the park, across the grass among the deer,
and into a thick tangled wood. But the boughs were leafless, and the
moon showed him that the path went on still, a dark thread between the
dead bracken under the crowding trees. It wound on and on, and the
night silence of the wood somehow quieted Tommy Annesley. Through the
arching boughs overhead he could see the cloudless indigo sky; the moon
peeped at him in uncanny suddenness from different directions as the
path twisted. He stepped more and more cautiously, as if the noise of
a breaking twig under his feet would have been a crime in the stirless
quiet of the wood.
“This is rot,” he thought, stopping once. “No one can be here,” but
something drove him on again even while he called himself a fool. The
curious awe that was on him deepened till, without knowing it, he was
moving noiseless as a midnight thief walking a strange road. With a
queer thrill he pulled up standing; slipped before the moon caught the
telltale black and white of his clothes in the surrounding dimness,
behind the trunk of a great girtled oak. The path had stopped, as
suddenly as the trees and undergrowth it ran through. Before him was
a clear, circular space, covered with wan, short grass, and drifts
of brown, dead leaves the moon made fantastic. In the middle of it
stood one huge oak-tree, where clusters of dead leaves still hung like
banners against the moon on the branches that stretched over a solitary
flat rock; dark, high, like an altar.
“What on earth,” thought Sir Thomas, peering cautiously. His
bewilderment could not put itself into words.
The oak-tree was between him and the moon. If there was any one beside
it, they were blotted out against its thick bulk of darkness. But what
was that clear, steady glitter on the rock? A crystal, starry glitter
that in one spot turned to worn gold?
A quick rustling behind him made him turn with apprehensive annoyance.
No one likes to be caught inspecting the world from behind a tree. But
the rustling was Mr. Jacobs.
“Lie down!” whispered Sir Thomas savagely. “What silly fool let you
out?” He grabbed the humble Jacobs--who had been vastly proud of
escaping from bed and scenting him out--in his arms, that he might not
bark; and suddenly felt that he was glad the dog had come. For the
place was ghostly.
“It’s impossible, though, to lug him and edge round a bit nearer!” he
thought, deeply interested in that glitter which was no business of
his. “By George!”
A man had come from against the tree, hoisted himself rather clumsily
on the breast-high rock, and seized the golden shining point that
had taken Sir Thomas’ eye. A familiar pop, and a quick gurgling came
through the quiet air; Tommy nearly dropped Mr. Jacobs as he grabbed
his jaws together to stop a bark.
“Champagne! a--well, I’m blowed! I’ve come all the way out here to
gaze on a moonlight picnic. Lord knows who they are!” as a woman swung
herself lightly, boyishly, beside the man and stretched her hand out
for the glass he held.
The two were whispering--and oh! if Tommy Annesley could only have
heard those muffled voices!--presently the man laughed, and a woman’s
laugh answered him; shrill, hysterical, strained; full of that fierce
madness that would change the sound of the laugh of the sister you grew
up with, and make it unrecognizable. The incongruous horror that was in
that laugh caught Tommy’s nerves, slacked his grip of Jacobs. He had
never dreamed any woman’s laugh could sound like the howl of a wild
beast.
Mr. Jacobs felt he could not bear it. He gave a low, shivery growl,
and before Sir Thomas knew it, was on the ground, running like a wiry
white devil straight to that picnic-party that sat unawares. He ran
quick--that was what froze Tommy’s voice in his throat. If he had
barked it would not have mattered what he rushed at, but a silent
Jacobs was another thing, as dogs and cats knew.
Before Sir Thomas could get clear of his hiding-place, the need was
over. Jacobs had flown straight at the man’s legs, where they hung over
the rock, but with a wild leap his prey had sprung to the top of the
mighty slab, where he stood upright, never making the slightest motion
toward the woman beside him, whose long cloak had hung over his menaced
legs. Tommy heard Jacobs fall back heavily as he missed his spring; saw
him pick himself up, trot deliberately back to his master, slowly and
with puzzled growling, as of a dog who had been deceived.
The boy stooped and took something from the dog’s shut jaws. He had
seized the woman’s cloak.
“Not her, or she’d have yelled!” he thought with relief. And then as
the man moved, a living silhouette against the cold moonshine, Sir
Thomas Annesley knew him.
“I wonder,” he thought, sick and shaken, “if the moon’s made me crazy?”
He made a step toward the pair on the rock--and oh! if he had only gone
close to them--and then drew back. It was no business of his. But the
thing was so unpleasant that he held his tongue about it.