As he stood there, it came to him slowly that, deep within him he had always known this; that he had never really counted on anything else though he had throttled his doubts by covering her throat with diamonds. Her strangeness, her pallor, her acquiescence, the delicate hint of depravity in her, the subtle response to all that was worst in him had attracted him, only to learn, little by little, that the taint of corruption was only a taint infecting others, not her; that the promise of evil was only a promise; that he had to deal with a young body but an old intelligence, and a mind so old that at moments her faded gaze almost appalled him with its indolent clairvoyance.
Long since he knew, too, that in all the world he could never again find such a mate for him. This had, unadmitted even to himself, always remained a hidden secret within this secret man—an unacknowledged, undrawn-on reserve in case of the failure which he, even in sanguine moods, knew in his inmost corrupted soul that his quest was doomed to.
And now he had no more need of secrets from himself; now, turning his gaze inward, he looked upon all with which he had chosen to deceive himself. And there was nothing left for self-deception.
“If I marry you!” he said calmly “at least I know what I am getting.”
“I will marry you, Howard. I’ve got to marry somebody pretty soon. You or Captain Voucher.”
For an instant a vicious light flashed in his narrowing eyes. She saw it and shook her head with weary cynicism:
“No, not that. It could not attract me even with you. It is really vulgar—that arrangement. Noblesse oblige, mon ami. There is a depravity in marrying you that makes all lesser vices stale as virtues.”
He said nothing; she looked at him, lazily amused; then, inattentive, turned and paced the floor again.
“Shall I see you to-morrow?” he demanded.
“If you wish. Captain Voucher came down on the same train with me. I’ll set him adrift if you like.”
“Is he preparing for a declaration?” sneered Quarrier.
“I think so,” she said simply.
“Well if he comes to-night after I’m gone, you wait a final word from me. Do you understand?” he repeated with repressed violence.
“No, Howard. Are you going to propose to me to-morrow?”
“You’ll know to-morrow,” he retorted angrily. “I tell you to wait. I’ve a right to that much consideration anyway.”
“Very well, Howard,” she said, recognising in him the cowardice which she had always suspected to be there.
She bade him good night; he touched her hand but made no offer to kiss her. She laughed a little to herself, watching him striding toward the elevator, then, closing the door, she stood still in the centre of the room, staring at her own reflection, full length, in the gilded pier-glass, her lips edged with a sneer so like Quarrier’s that, the next moment she laughed aloud, imitating Quarrier’s rare laugh from sheer perversity.
“I think,” she said to her reflected figure in the glass, “I think that you are either mentally ill or inherently a kind of devil. And I don’t much care which.”
And she turned leisurely, her slim hands balanced lightly on her narrow hips, and strolled into the second dressing-room, where Mrs. Vendenning sat sullenly indulging in that particular species of solitaire known as “The Idiot’s Delight.”
“Well?” inquired Mrs. Vendenning, looking up at the tall, pale girl she was chaperoning so carefully during their sojourn in town.
“Oh, you know the rhyme to that,” yawned Agatha; “let’s ring up somebody. I’m bored stiff.”
“What did Howard Quarrier want?”
“He knows, I think, but he hasn’t yet informed me.”
“I’ll tell you one thing, Agatha,” said Mrs. Vendenning, gathering up the packs for a new shuffle: “Grace Ferrall doesn’t fancy Howard’s attention to you and she’s beginning to say so. When you go back to Shotover you’d better let him alone.”
“I’m not going back to Shotover,” said Agatha.
“What?”
“No; I don’t think so. However, I’ll let you know to-morrow. It all depends—but I don’t expect to.” She turned as her maid tapped on the door. “Oh, Captain Voucher. Are you at home to him?” flipping the pasteboard onto the table among the scattered cards.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Vendenning aggressively, “unless you expect him to flop down on his knees to-night. Do you?”
“I don’t—to-night. Perhaps to-morrow. I don’t know; I can’t tell yet.” And to her maid she nodded that they were at home to Captain Voucher.
Quarrier had met him, too, just as he was leaving the hotel lobby. They exchanged the careful salutations of men who had no use for one another. On the Englishman’s clean-cut face a deeper hue settled as he passed; on Quarrier’s, not a trace of emotion; but when he entered his motor he sat bolt upright, stiff-backed and stiff-necked, his long gray-gloved fingers moving restlessly over his pointed heard.
The night was magnificent; myriads of summer stars spangled the heavens. Even in the reeking city itself a slight freshness grew in the air, although there was no wind to stir the parched leaves of the park trees, among which fire-flies floated—their intermittent phosphorescence breaking out with a silvery, star-like brilliancy.
Plank, driving his big motor northward through the night, Leila Mortimer beside him, twice mistook the low glimmer of a fire-fly for the distant lamp of a motor, which amused Leila, and her clear, young laughter floated back to the ears of Sylvia and Siward, curled up in their corners of the huge tonneau. But they were too profoundly occupied with each other to heed the sudden care-free laughter of the young matron, though in these days her laughter was infrequent enough to set the more merciless tongues wagging when it did sound.
Plank had never seen fit to speak to her of her husband’s scarcely veiled menace that day he had encountered him in the rotunda of the Algonquin Trust Company. His first thought was to do so—to talk it over with her, consider the threat and the possibility of its seriousness, and then come to some logical and definite decision as to what their future relations should be. Again and again he had been on the point of doing this when alone with Leila—uncomfortable, even apprehensive, because of their frank intimacy; but he had never had the opportunity to do so without deliberately dragging in the subject by the ears in all its ugliness and implied reproach for her imprudence, and seeing that dreadful, vacant change in Leila’s face, which the mere mention of her husband’s name was sure to bring, turn into horror unspeakable.
A man not prone to fear his fellows, he now feared Mortimer, but that fear struck him only through Leila—or had so reached him until the days of his closing struggle with Quarrier. Whether the long strain had unnerved him, whether minutely providing against every possible danger he had been over-scrupulous, over-anxious, morbidly exact—or whether a foresight almost abnormal had evoked a sinister possibility—he did not know; but that threat of Mortimer’s to involve Plank with Leila in one common ruin, that boast that he was able to do so could not be ignored as a possible weapon if Quarrier should by any chance learn of it.
In all his life he had taken Leila into his arms but once; had kissed her but once—but that once had been enough to arm Mortimer with danger from head to foot. Some prying servant had either listened or seen—perhaps a glimmer of a mirror had betrayed them. At all events, whoever had seen or heard had informed Mortimer, and now the man was equipped; the one and only man in all the world who could with truth accuse Plank; the only man of whom he stood in honest fear.
And it was characteristic of Plank that never for one moment had it occurred to him that the sheer fault of it all lay with Leila; that it was her imprudence alone that now threatened herself and the man she loved—that threatened his very success in life as long as Mortimer should live.
All this, Plank, in his thorough, painstaking review of the subject, had taken into account; and he could not see how it could possibly bear upon the matters now finally to be adjusted between Quarrier and himself, because Quarrier was in New York and Mortimer in Saratoga, and unless the latter had already sold his information the former could not strike at him through knowledge of it.
And yet a curious reluctancy, a hesitation inexplicable—unless overwork explained it—had come over him when Siward had proposed their dining together on the very eve of his completed victory over Quarrier.
It seemed absurd, and Plank was too stolid to entertain superstitions, but he could not, even with Leila laughing there beside him, shake off the dull instinct that all was not well—that Quarrier’s attitude was still the attitude of a dangerous man; that he, Plank, should have had this evening in his room alone to study out the matters he had so patiently plodded through in the long hours while Siward slept.
Yet not for one instant did he dream of shifting the responsibility—if responsibility entailed blame—on Siward, who, against Plank’s judgment and desire, had on the very eve of consummation drawn him away from that sleepless vigilance which must for ever be the price of a business man’s safety.
Leila, gay and excited as a schoolgirl, chattered on ceaselessly to Plank; all the silence, all the secrecy of the arid years turning to laughter on her red lips, pouring out, in broken phrases of delight, words strung together for the sheer pleasure of speech and the happiness of her lot to be with him unrestrained.
He remembered once listening to the song of a wild bird on the edge of a clearing at night, and how, standing entranced, the low, distant jar of thunder sounded at moments, scarcely audible—like his heart now, at intervals, dully persistent amid the gaiety of her voice.
“And would you believe it, Beverly,” she said, “I formed the habit at Shotover of walking across the boundary and strolling into your greenhouses and deliberately helping myself. And every time I did it I was certain one of your men would march me out!”
He laughed, but did not tell her that his men had reported the first episode and that he had instructed them that Mrs. Mortimer and her friends were to do exactly as they pleased at the Fells. However she knew it, because a garrulous gardener, proud of his service with Plank, had informed her.
“Beverly,” she said, “you are a dear. If people only knew what I know!”
He began to turn red; she could see it even in the flickering, lamp-shot darkness. And she teased him for a while, very gently, even tenderly; and their voices grew lower in a half-serious badinage that ended with a quiet, indrawn breath, a sigh, and silence.
And now the river swept into view, a darkly luminous sheet set with reflected stars. Mirrored lights gleamed in it; sudden bright, yellow flashes zigzagged into its sombre depths; the foliage edged it with a deeper gloom over which, on the heights, twinkled the multicoloured lights of Riverside Inn.
Up the broad, gentle grade they sped, curving in and out among the clumps of trees and shrubbery, then on a level, sweeping in a great circle up to the steps of the inn.
Now all about them from the brilliantly lighted verandas the gay tumult broke out like an uproarious welcome after the swift silence of their journey; the stir of jolly people keen for pleasure; the clatter of crockery; the coming and going of waiters, of guests, of hansoms, coupés, victorias, and scores of motor-cars wheeling and turning through the blinding glare of their own headlights.
Somewhere a gipsy orchestra, full of fitful crescendoes and throbbing suspensions of caprice, furnished resonant accompaniment to the joyous clamour; the scent of fountain spray and flowers was in the air.
“I didn’t know you had telephoned for a table,” said Siward, as a head-waiter came up smiling and bowing to Plank. “I confess, in the new excitement of things, I clean forgot it! What a man you are to think of other people!”
Plank reddened again, muttering something evasive, and went forward with Leila.
Sylvia, moving leisurely beside Siward who was walking slowly but confidently without crutches, whispered to him: “I never really liked Mr. Plank before I understood his attitude toward you.”
“He is a man, every inch,” said Siward simply.
“I think that generally includes what men of your sort demand, doesn’t it?” she asked.
“Men of my sort sometimes demand in others what they themselves are lacking in,” said Siward, laughing. “Sylvia, look at this jolly crowd! Look at all those tables! It seems an age since I have done anything of this sort. I feel like a boy of eighteen—the same funny, quickening fascination in me toward everything gay and bright and alive!” He looked around at her, laughingly. “As for you,” he said, “you look about sixteen. You certainly are the most beautiful thing this beautiful world ever saw!”
“Schoolboy courtship!” she mocked him, lingering as he made his slow way through the crowded place. The tint of excitement was in her eyes and cheeks; the echo of it in her low, happy voice. “Where on earth is Mr. Plank? Oh, I see them! They have a table by the balcony rail, in the corner; and it seems to be rather secluded, Stephen, so I shall, of course, expect you to say nothing further about beauty of any species. …Are you a trifle tired? No?… Well, you need not be indignant. I don’t care whether you tumble. Indeed, I don’t believe there is really anything the matter with you—you are walking with the same old careless saunter. Mr. Plank,” as they arrived and seated themselves, “Mr. Siward has just admitted that he uses crutches only because they are ornamental. Leila, isn’t this air delicious? All sorts of people, too, aren’t there, Mr. Plank? Such curious-looking women, some of them—quite pretty, too, in a certain way. Are you hungry, St—Mr. Siward?”
“Are you, St—Mr. Siward?” mimicked Leila promptly.
“I am,” said Siward, laughing at Sylvia’s significant colour and noting Plank’s direct gaze as the waiter filled Leila’s slender-stemmed glass. And “nothing but Apollinaris,” he said coolly, as the waiter approached him; but though his voice was easy enough, a dull patch of colour came out under the cheek-bones.
“That is all I care for, either,” said Sylvia with elaborate carelessness.
Plank and Leila immediately began to make conversation. Siward, his eyes bent on the glass of mineral water at his elbow, looked up in silence at Sylvia questioningly.
There was something in her face he did not quite comprehend. She made as though to speak, looked at him, hesitated, her lovely face eloquent under the impulse. Then, leaning toward him, she said:
“‘And thy ways shall be my ways.’”
“Sylvia, you must not deny yourself, just because I—”
“Let me. It is the happiest thing I have ever done for myself.”
“But I don’t wish it.”
“Ah, but I do,” she said, the low excited laughter scarcely fluttering her lips. “Listen: I never before, in all my life, gave up anything for your sake, only this one little pitiful thing.”
“I won’t let you!” he breathed; “it is nonsense to—”
“You must let me! Am I to be on friendly terms with—with your mortal enemy?” She was still smiling, but now her sensitive mouth quivered suddenly.
He sat silent, considering her, his restless fingers playing with his glass in which the harmless bubbles were breaking.
“I drink to your health, Stephen,” she said under her breath. “I drink to your happiness, too; and—and to your fortune, and to all that you desire from fortune.” And she raised her glass in the star-light, looking over it into his eyes.
“All I desire from fortune?” he repeated significantly.
“All—almost all—”
“No, all,” he demanded.
But she only raised the glass to her lips, still looking at him as she drank.
They became unreasonably gay almost immediately, though the beverage scarcely accounted for the delicate intoxication that seemed to creep into their veins. Yet it was sufficient for Siward to say an amusing thing wittily, for Sylvia to return his lead with all the delightful, unconscious brilliancy that he seemed to inspire in her—as though awaking into real life once more. All that had slumbered in her through the winter and spring, and the long, arid summer now crumbling to the edge of autumn, broke out into a delicate riot of exquisite florescence; the very sounds of her voice, every intonation, every accent, every pause, were charming surprises; her laughter was a miracle, her beauty a revelation.
Leila, aware of it, exchanged glance after glance with Plank. Siward, alternately the leader in it all, then the enchanted listener, bewitched, enthralled, felt care slipping from his shoulders like a mantle, and sadness exhaling from a heart that was beating strongly, steadily, fearlessly—as a heart should beat in the breast of him who has taken at last his fighting chance. He took it now, under her eyes, for honour, for manhood, and for the ideal which had made manhood no longer an empty term muttered in desperation by a sick body, and a mind too sick to control it.
Yes, at last the lifelong battle was on. He knew it. He knew, too, whatever his fate with her or without her, he must always go on with the battle for the safe-guarding of that manhood the consciousness of which she had aroused.
All he knew was that, through the medium of his love for her, whatever in him of the spiritual remained, or had been generated, was now awake, alive, strong, vital, indestructible—an impalpable current flowing from a sane intelligence, through medium of her, back to the eternal truth, returning always, always, to the deathless source from whence it came.
Lingering over the fruit, the champagne breaking in the glasses standing on the table between them, rim to rim, Leila and Plank had fallen into a low, desultory, yet guarded exchange of words and silences.
Sylvia sprang up and pushed her chair into the farther corner against the balcony rail, where no light fell except the radiance of the stars. Here Siward joined her, dragging his chair around so that it faced her as she leaned back, tilted against a shadowy column.
“Is this Bohemianism, Stephen? If it is, I rather like it. Don’t you? You are going to smoke now, aren’t you? Ah, that is delightful!” daintily sniffing the aroma from his cigarette. “It always reminds me of you—there on the cliffs, that first day. Do you remember?—the smoke from your cigarette whirling up in my face?… You say you remember. …Oh, of course there’s nothing else to say when a girl asks you… is there? Oh, I won’t argue with you, if you insist that you do remember. You will not be like any other man if you do, that’s all.... The little things that women remember!… And believe that men remember! It is pitiful in a way. There! I am not going to spill over, and I don’t care a copper penny whether you really do remember or not!… Yes, I do care! …Oh, all women care. It is their first disappointment to learn how much a man can forget and still remember to care for them—a little!… Stephen, I said a little; and that is all that you are permitted to care for me; isn’t it?… Please, don’t. You are deliberately beginning to say things!… Stephen, you silly! you are making love to me!”
In the darkness his hand encountered hers on the wooden rail, and the tremor of the contact silenced her. She freed one finger, then let it rest with its slender fellow-prisoners. There was no use in trying to speak just then—utterly useless her voice in the soft, rounded throat imprisoned by the swelling pulses that tightened and hammered and tightened.
Years seemed to fall away from her, slipping back, back into girlhood, into childhood, drawing not her alone on the gliding tide, but carrying him with her. An exquisite languor held her. Through it vague hints of those splendid visions of her lonely childhood rose, shaping themselves in the starry darkness—the old mystery of dreams, the old, innocent desires, the old simplicity of clairvoyance wherein right was right and wrong, wrong—in all the conventional significance of right and wrong, in all the old-fashioned, undisturbed faith of childhood.
Drifting deliciously, her eyes sometimes meeting his, sometimes lost in the magic of her reverie, she lay there in her chair, her unresisting fingers locked in his.
Odd little thoughts came hovering into her reverie—thoughts that seemed distantly familiar, the direct, unconscious impulses of a child. To feel was once more the only motive for expression; to think fearlessly was once more inherent; to desire was to demand—unlock her lips, naively, and ask for what she wished.
Under the spell, she turned her blue gaze on him, and her lips parted without a tremor:
“What do you offer for what you ask? And do you still ask it? Is it me you are asking me for? Because you love me? And what do you give—love?”
“Weigh it with the—other,” he said.
“I have—often—every moment since I have known you. And what a winter!” Her voice was almost inaudible. “What a winter—without you!”
“That hell is ended for me, too. Sylvia, I know what I ask. And I ask. I know what I offer. Will you take it?”
“Yes,” she said.
He rose, blindly. She stood up, pale, wide-eyed, confronting him, stammering out the bargain:
“I take all—all! every virtue, every vice of you. I give all—all! all I have been, all I am, all I shall be! Is that enough? Oh, if there were only more to give! Stephen, if there were only more!”
Her hands had fallen into his, and they looked each other in the eyes.
Suddenly, through the hush of the enchanted moment, a sullen sound broke—the sound of a voice they knew, threateningly raised, louder and louder, growling, profanely menacing.
Aghast, they turned in the darkness, peering toward the lighted space beyond. Leroy Mortimer, his face shockingly congested, stood unsteadily balancing there, confronting his wife, who sat staring at him in horror. At the same instant Plank rose and laid a hand on Mortimer’s shoulder, but Mortimer shook him off with a warning oath.
“You and I will settle with each other to-morrow!” he said thickly, pointing a puffy finger at Plank. “You’ll find me at the Algonquin Trust. Do you hear? That’s where you’ll settle this matter—in the president’s office!” He stood swaying and leering at Plank, repeating loudly: “In Quarrier’s office! Understand? That’s where you’ll settle up! See?”
Leila, white face quivering, shrank as though he had struck her, and he turned on her again, grinning: “As for you, you come home! And that’ll be about all for yours.”
“Are you insane, to make a scene like this?” whispered Plank.
But Mortimer swung on him insultingly: “That’s about all from you, too!” he said. “Leila, are you coming?”
He stepped heavily toward her; but Plank’s sudden crushing grip was on his fat arm above the elbow, and he emitted a roar of surprise and pain.
“Don’t touch him! Don’t, in Heaven’s name!” stammered Leila, as Plank, releasing him, stepped back beside her chair. “Can’t you see that I must go with him! I—I must go.” She cast one terrified glance around her, where scores of strange faces met hers; and at every table people were standing up to see better.
Plank, who had dropped Mortimer’s arm as the latter emitted his bellow of amazement, stepped toward him again, dropping his voice as he spoke:
“You go! Do you hear?” he said quietly. “I’ll do what you ask me, to-morrow! I will do what you ask, if you’ll go now!”
“You come—do you hear!” snarled Mortimer, turning on his wife, who had already risen. “If you don’t I’ll make a row here that you’ll never hear the end of as long as you live! And there’ll be nothing to talk over in Quarrier’s office, if I do.”
Leila looked at Plank, rose, and moved swiftly toward the veranda steps, her head resolutely lowered, the burning shame flaming in her face. Mortimer cast one triumphant glance at Plank, then waddled unsteadily after his wife.
“Hold on,” he growled; “I’ve a Mercedes here! I’ll drive you back—wait! Here it is! Here we are!” And to Quarrier’s machinist he said: “You get into the tonneau. I want to show Mrs. Mortimer what night-driving is. Do you hear? I tell you I’m going to drive this machine and show you how!”
Leila scarcely heard him. She obeyed the impulse of his hand on her arm, and mounted to the seat, staring straight ahead of her with dazed and straining eyes that saw nothing.
Then Mortimer clambered to his seat, and, without an instant’s warning, opened up and seized the wheel.
Unprepared, the machinist attempted to swing aboard, missed his footing in the uncertain light, and fell sprawling on the gravel. Plank saw him from the veranda and instantly vaulted the rail to the lawn below.
“You damn fool!” yelled Mortimer, looking around, “what in hell do you think you’ll do?” And he clapped on full speed as Plank made a leap for the car and missed.
Mortimer laughed, and turned his head to look back, and the next instant something seemed to wrench the steering-wheel from its roots. There was a blinding glare of light, a scream, and the great machine bounded into the air full length, turned completely over, and lay across a flower-bed, partly on one side.
Something was afire, too. Men were rushing from the verandas, women screamed, and stood up wringing their hands; a mounted policeman came galloping through the darkness; people shouted: “Throw sand on it! Get shovels, for God’s sake! Lift that tonneau! There’s a woman under it.”
But they were mistaken, for Leila lay at the foot of the slope, one little bloody hand clutching the dead grass; and Plank knelt beside her, giving his orders quietly to those who came running down the hill from the roadway above, which was now fiercely illuminated by burning gasoline. At last they got sand enough to quench the fire and men sufficient to lift the weight from the dead man’s neck, and drag what was left of him onto the grass.
“Don’t look,” whispered Siward, drawing Sylvia back.
He and she both had put their shoulders to the tonneau along with the others; and now they stood there together in the shifting lantern-light, sickened, shivering under the summer stars, staring at the gathering crowd around that shapeless lump on the grass.
Plank passed them, walking beside an improvised stretcher, calm, almost smiling, as Sylvia sprang forward with a little sob of inquiry.
“There’s the doctor, over there; that man is a doctor; he knows,” repeated Plank with studied deliberation, looking down at Leila’s deathly face. “He says it’s all right; he says he’ll get a candle, and that he can tell by the flame’s effect on the pupils of the eyes what exactly is the matter. No,” to Siward beside him, pressing forward through the crowd which eddied from the dead man to the stretcher; “no, there is not a bone broken. She is stunned, that’s all; she fell in the shrubbery. We’ll have an ambulance here pretty quick. Stephen,” using his first name unconsciously, “won’t you look out for Sylvia? I’m going back on the ambulance. If you’ll find somebody to drive my machine, I wish you would take Sylvia back. No, I don’t want you to drive, Stephen—if you don’t mind. Get that machinist, please. I’m rattled, and I don’t want you to drive.”
Leila lay on the stretcher, her bloodless face upturned to the stars. Beyond, under a blanket, something else lay very still on the lawn.
Plank beckoned a policeman, and whispered to him.
Then, far away in the darkness, a distant clamour grew on the night air, nearer, nearer.
Plank, standing beside the stretcher, raised his head, listening to the ambulance arriving at full speed.