Christmas night on Billy-goat Hill, and twinkling lights, beginning with candles set in bottles in the humblest cottages in Bean Alley, dotted the hillside here and there, until they all seemed to converge at one brilliant spot on the summit, where a veritable halo of light hung above the hilltop.
For Angora Heights was having a house-warming, and never since old Bob Carsey brought home his young bride from Alabama, had such preparations been known for a social function. All the carriages in the neighborhood had been pressed into service, and a half dozen motors had been sent out from town to convey the guests from the station to the house.
Within the mansion everything was magnificently new. Period rooms, carried out with conscientious accuracy, opened into each other through arcaded doorways. Massive gilt mirrors accentuated the wide spaces of the hall, and repeated the lights of innumerable chandeliers. If a stray memory or an old association had by any chance crept into the Christmas ball, it would have found no familiar object on which to dwell. The atmosphere was as formal and impersonal as that of a museum.
In the middle of the drawing-room, like a general issuing last orders before a battle, stood Mrs. Sequin, her ample figure encased in an armor of glistening black spangles, and her elaborately puffed coiffure surmounted by an incipient helmet of blazing gems.
“Pull those portieres back a trifle,” she commanded, “and lower that window from the top. Has Jimpson gone to the station for the Queeringtons?”
“Yes, madam, half an hour ago,” answered the maid.
“The moment he returns tell him that he is to take the small wagon and go back to the station at ten o'clock. The caterer has just 'phoned that he is sending the extra ices out on the last train, but that he cannot send another waiter. Jenkins, leaving the way he did, has upset everything. I suppose it is too late to get anybody now; the special car gets here at nine. What is that noise? It sounds like some one singing in the dining-room.”
“It's the new furnace man, madam, that Mrs. Queerington sent. It looks like he can't keep himself quiet.”
“I'll quiet him!” said Mrs. Sequin, who was as near irritation as full dress would permit.
Phineas Flathers, having replenished the fire, was pausing a moment to admire himself in the Dutch mirror above the mantel when Mrs. Sequin startled him by inquiring peremptorily if he was the new man.
“I am,” said Phineas with pronounced deference, “thenew man andanew man. Regenerated, born again, mam, the spirit of evil having departed from me.”
Mrs. Sequin gasped. “What is your name?”
“Flathers, mam.”
“Dreadful! I will call you Benson.”
“Benson it is. Better men than me have changed their names. There was Saul now, Saul of Tarsus—”
“Turn the drafts off in the furnace and don't come up-stairs again on any account. But no,—wait a moment.” Mrs. Sequin's keen eye swept him from head to foot. “Have you ever had any experience in serving?”
Phineas, whose only claim to serving was that “they also serve who only stand and wait,” dropped his eyes.
“Only the communion, mam, and the collection. But I ain't above lending a hand, mam. You'd do as much for me. I was just saying to the lady in the kitchen, that anybody was fortunate to work for a person with as generous a face as yours.”
“Clean yourself up, and put on Jenkins' coat, and if another waiter is absolutely necessary, they can call on you,” directed Mrs. Sequin hurriedly, then calling to the maid, “Has Miss Margery come down yet?”
“She's in the library, mam.”
Margery, pale and listless, turned from the window as her mother entered.
“I was just watching for Miss Lady,” she said; “it will be rather amusing to see her and Connie at their first big party.”
“I hope she won't wear that childish dress she was married in. It is all right for Connie to affect white muslin and blue ribbons, but Cousin John's wife ought to wear something that makes her look older. Why, with that short gown, and the way she wears her hair, she looks like a schoolgirl!”
“She looks very beautiful.”
“Of course she does, but what good does it do her? Here at the end of four months she has made practically no headway. Not that she didn't have every opportunity! People were quite ready to take her up, but she simply wouldn't let them. What can you expect of a person who says that bridge and boned gowns make her back ache? She hasn't an idea in her head beyond the Doctor, the children and a lot of paupers. I must say I am terribly disappointed in her. But then I ought to be used to disappointments by this time. What will she be when she's middle-aged?”
“She'll never be middle-aged,” Margery smiled; “she'll go on being young and making people around her feel young. Father says she is the only person he knows who makes him forget his age. By the way, where is Father?”
“Delayed in town as usual. He'll probably motor out when the evening is half over and be too tired to be polite. I've never seen him so upset. Of course it's your broken engagement. He says we may have to close the house, now that we've gotten into it, and go abroad to reduce expenses, but of course that's ridiculous! That reminds me, did the Hortons send regrets?”
“She did,” said Margery absently.
“Oh, dear, that means he'll be here! He's so horribly fastidious, he's sure to make remarks about my putting an Italian loggia on a Louis XVI drawing-room. It does seem that with all the time and money we've spent on this place—Isn't that the carriage?”
“Yes, I hear Miss Lady laughing.”
As the front door swung open two bundled-up figures hurried into the hall, bringing a gust of youth and merriment along with the keen night air.
“I hope we are the first guests,” cried Miss Lady, shaking a scarf from her head, “because we have had an accident. We both fell down. Connie slipped on the step and I sat down on top of her. There was an awful rip and we don't know whose it is! I'm afraid to take my coat off!”
“But where is the Doctor?” cried Mrs. Sequin in dismay.
“Father would love to have come,” began Connie glibly, but Miss Lady broke in: “I don't think he really wanted to come, Mrs. Sequin. He said he would be ever so much happier up in his study, playing pinocle, than sitting out here in a straight-back gilt chair eating ice cream. Perhaps you think I oughtn't to have come without him?”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Mrs. Sequin. “I get perfectly exasperated when Cousin John does this way. There were at least a half dozen people I'd promised to introduce to him. If he had no consideration for me he ought to have for you. He has been keeping you at home entirely too much. He forgets that you are twenty years his junior; he expects you to act as if you were forty.”
“No, he doesn't,” protested Miss Lady loyally; “the Doctor never expects anything of anybody that isn't right. He urged me to come, didn't he, Connie?”
But Connie was absorbed in a trailing flounce that hung limply about her feet.
“Look!” she cried tragically; “it's torn clear across the front. What shall I do?”
“Margery's gowns would all be too long for you,” said Mrs. Sequin, viewing the rent through her lorgnette, “perhaps Marie can do something with this.”
“I won't wear it all tacked up!” cried Connie on the verge of tears; “I'll go home first—”
“No, you won't,” said Miss Lady; “this is your first grown-up party and you've been counting on it for weeks. You are going to change dresses with me. I don't mind a bit being hiked up a little, and, besides, nobody's going to notice me.”
“That's perfectly absurd!” exclaimed Mrs. Sequin indignantly; “youmustremember who you are, and that everybody is noticing you. Why can'tyouwear one of Margery's dresses, and let Connie have yours?”
“All right, I'll wear anything you say. Don't you dare cry, Connie! I'll never forgive you if you make your nose red. Listen! The musicians are tuning up! May I have the first waltz, madam?” and seizing Mrs. Sequin by her plump gloved hands, she danced that august person down the long hall.
“Let me go, you ridiculous child,” laughed Mrs. Sequin, hurrying her up the steps; “the motors are coming up the hill now. Make her look as pretty as you can, Marie, and hurry!”
At a distance the brilliant, moving lights of automobiles and the dimmer ones of carriages could be seen approaching, and very soon under the blaze of the porch lights, hurrying figures in furs, rustling satin, and soft velvets were being ushered formally into the big reception hall.
Mrs. Sequin, mounted on her highest social stilts, stood with Margery in the alcove, so carefully planned for another occasion. A ball to be sure was a poor substitute for a wedding, but Mrs. Sequin was not one to waste her energies on vain regret. The ball was going to be a success; already the rooms were filling rapidly with the people Mrs. Sequin most desired to see. Old Mrs. Marchmont had risen from a sick bed to drive out from town and bare her ancient bones in honor of the occasion. Mrs. Bartrum had taken possession of the most becoming corner in the library and was holding gay court there; the young people were thronging from one room to another; everybody was laughing and chatting and exclaiming over the charms of the new house. In fact the complacency of the hostess over her achievement was only surpassed by the curiosity of the guests who were confirming with their own eyes the wild rumors which had been current of the Sequins' extravagance.
Mr. Horton, the local architect who had not been considered of sufficient renown to make the plans for the house, wandered from room to room on a quiet tour of inspection. Mrs. Sequin's fears of his judgment were not without cause, for Mr. Horton was one of those critics whose advice one always ignores but whose approval one ardently desires. He was a trim, immaculate person with short, pointed beard, and narrow, critical eyes that always seemed to be taking measurements. Passing from the Dutch dining-room, with its blue tile, and old pewter, he paused in the doorway of the drawing-room where the dancing had already begun. His glance, taking in everything from the gilded fluting of the panels to the bronze heads on the upright lines of the marble mantels, rested at last upon an object which evidently gave his critical taste complete satisfaction.
A young girl had paused near him and was eagerly watching the dancers. She presented a harmony in green and gold, from her shining hair caught in a loose coil low on her neck, to her small gold slippers that tapped time to the music. The clinging gown of pale green that fell in loose lines from her shoulders was veiled in deep-toned lace, revealing her round white throat and long shapely arms, bare from shoulder to finger tips. Horton smiled unconsciously as he watched her eager, responsive face, and felt the suppressed vitality in every movement of her slender body.
“Who is she?” he asked of Cropsie Decker, who stood near.
“Who's who?”
“That radiant young thing in green. She doesn't belong in a ballroom, she belongs in a forest with ivy leaves in her hair. By Jove, look at the lines of her, and the freedom of her movements. I haven't seen such arms in years!”
Cropsie followed his glance: “Oh, that's the new Mrs. Queerington,—the wife of John Jay, you know.”
“But I mean the young girl going through the door there, with the wonderful hair, and the profile?”
“That's Mrs. Queerington. Isn't she a stunner? Everybody's talking about her to-night. I'll introduce you if you like.”
Horton followed him around the outer edge of the dancers, still confident that Cropsie had made a mistake. But when he was duly presented there was no longer room for doubt.
“I hope I'm not too late to claim a dance,” he said. “I always make it a point to dance but once during an evening, and that with the most beautiful woman on the floor. I hope you aren't going to let these young sharks cut me out of my dance?”
Miss Lady lifted a pair of sparkling, excited eyes to his. From the moment when she had appeared, half timidly in her borrowed feathers and taken refuge under Mrs. Sequin's experienced wing, she had been the sensation of the evening. Adroitly conveyed from one group to another she had left enthusiasm in her wake. She was evidently enjoying to the utmost the novelty of receiving homage from one black-coated courtier after another, and of hearing delightful things about herself. The only apparent drawback to her pleasure was when she was compelled to say as she did now:
“Thank you ever so much, but I'm not dancing.”
“Not dancing?” repeated Mr. Horton, not unmindful of the whiteness of her shoulders against the dark marble of a neighboring pedestal,—'"Why not?”
“The Doctor and I have given up dancing.”
“Oh, so he doesn't allow you to dance?”
“Allow me?” she lifted her level brows, smiling. “He simply doesn't care for it.”
“And you don't care for it either?”
“Oh, yes, I do, I care for it too much. That's why I'm not dancing.”
“But youaredancing. You've been dancing ever since you came in. I've watched you. Mightn't you just as well be dancing with me, as dancing by yourself?”
She laughed and shook her head, but her foot continued to pat the time, and her eyes followed the swaying couples that swung past.
“What's the Doctor's objection?” Mr. Horton urged.
“He thinks it's undignified for married women to dance, and I guess I do, too, only—” Miss Lady sighed,—“you see, I keep forgetting that Iama married woman!”
“You certainly make other people want to forget it,” then his eyesdropped before the childlike candor of her gaze. “Come now, Mrs.Queerington, aren't you taking matrimony a little seriously?”“Perhaps I am, but I'm new, you know, and I've an awful lot tolearn.”
“Hasn't it ever occurred to you that the Doctor might have something to learn?”
“No,” she said brightly, “he knows everything. I sometimes wish he didn't. I'd be proud if I could teach him eventhatmuch!” and she measured off the amount on the tip of her little finger.
“Perhaps he isn't as good a pupil as you are. You should take him to see 'Harnessing a Husband,' at the Ardmore this week.”
“A play? I'd love to go to the theater just once.”
“You've never been? How extraordinary! Come with Mrs. Horton and me on Friday night and let us share your first thrill.”
“May I?” Miss Lady began eagerly, then checking herself, “I'm afraid the Doctor doesn't care much about the modern stage. He used to enjoy seeing the great actors, but he says the plays they put on now bore him fearfully. Mayn't we come to call sometime instead?”
“As you like,” said Mr. Horton, shrugging, “but I hope you realize that you are spoiling that learned husband of yours. Instead of adapting yourself to him, make him adapt himself to you. Come now, isn't it about time for you to reform? Why not begin by finishing this dance with me?”
Still she laughed and shook her head. “It isn't that I don't want to! I'd rather dance than do anything in the world—except ride horseback.”
“I might have known you were a horsewoman. Do you ride much?”
“Not now.”
“The Doctor doesn't care for it, I suppose?”
She flashed a questioning glance at him, then she looked away:
“No,” she said, “he doesn't care for it.”
Cropsie Decker, who had been hovering in her vicinity, now came up and claimed the next number.
“There's a bully little corner in the conservatory where we can sit out this waltz. You won't mind if I carry her off, Mr. Horton?”
“Not if she takes to heart some of the wise things I've been telling her,” said Horton, looking at her through his narrow eyes and pulling at his small, fair mustache. “Au revoir, Madame Beaux Yeux!”
Miss Lady did not move from the spot where he left her. Out under the palms in the hall, the orchestra was beginning one of Strauss' most distracting waltzes; her fingers tapped the time. Suddenly she held out her hand to Cropsie.
“I can't stand it another minute! I've got to dance once if I never dance again!”
Every eye in the ballroom followed the slender figure, as it circled in and out among the throng. Miss Lady danced with the grace and abandonment of a child. She had given herself utterly to the joy of the moment. She was letting herself go for the first time since her marriage, following the glad impulse of her heart, and dancing as a Bacchante might have danced alone on a moonlight night in some forest glade.
When at last the music stopped Cropsie drew her into the conservatory.
“Here, come around this palm, quick! They'll all be after you for the next dance. Gerald Ivy is charging around now looking for you, and so is Mr. Horton. Sit there in the window and cool off!”
She sank laughing and breathless on the window sill. All the exhilaration of the dance was in her eyes, her lips were parted, her cheeks flushed, and a strand of loosened hair fell across her shoulder.
It was at this moment that wheels sounded on the driveway below, caused her to lean idly out to see who was coming. A wagon stopped at the side entrance, and a man alighted. Uncle Jimpson's voice was heard asking a question, then came the other man's voice, in quick, incisive answer.
Miss Lady, sitting motionless, looking down, turned suddenly from the window. The color had left her face and her hand trembled visibly against the curtain.
“What's the matter?” cried Cropsie; “are you ill? Did you dance too long?”
“It's nothing, I'm all right. That is I will be—”
“Can't I get you some water, or an ice, or call Mrs. Sequin?”
“No, no, please! It's nothing. I'll slip off to the dressing-room until I feel better. I can go through here up the side stairs.”
“Wait, I'll go with you. You are as white as if you'd seen a ghost!”
But before he could join her she had disappeared into mysterious regions where he dared not follow.
During the course of that Christmas night, there was one member of the Sequin household who failed to thrill with the holiday spirit, and whose depression steadily increased as the evening wore on. The great occasion of which Uncle Jimpson had dreamed all his life, had at last arisen, and instead of being allowed to rise with it, and prove his indisputable right to butlerhood, he had been detailed to drive back and forth to the station over that same humdrum Cane Run Road that he and Old John had helped to wear away for the past quarter of a century!
To be sure, a neat depot wagon and a spirited young sorrel had replaced the ancient buggy and the apostolic nag, but these fell far short of Uncle Jimpson's dreams. A coach and four at that moment would not have compensated him for the fact that a complaisant, red-headed furnaceman, a “po' white trash” arrived but yesterday, was being allowed to pass the tray that by all rights of precedence belonged to him.
Waiting impatiently at the station for the train that was to bring the elusive ices which he had been pursuing all evening, he at last had the satisfaction of seeing the small engine crawl out of the darkness, and come to a wheezing halt.
So engrossed were the conductor and brakeman and Uncle Jimpson in safely depositing the freezers on the platform, that no one noticed a passenger who had alighted. In fact, it was not until Uncle Jimpson heard Mrs. Sequin's name that he paused from his labor and looked up.
The stranger was a young, well-built man, wearing a long, shaggy overcoat, and a cap of a foreign cut that excited the immediate envy of the brake-man. The bag and the suit case which he carried were covered with foreign labels, and he had the air of a person who is suddenly dropped down in a strange place and doesn't quite know what to do with himself.
“You say you want to git up to Mrs. Sequin's to-night?” Uncle Jimpson eyed the bags suspiciously. “'Scuse me, sir, but you ain't sellin' nothin', is you?”
The laugh that greeted this was so spontaneous, that Uncle Jimpson hastened to apologize: “I nebber thought you wuz, only we wasn't lookin' fer no railroad company, an' I 'lowed you didn't look lak you wuz comin' to de party.”
“What party?” asked the man, his look of amusement giving place to one of dismay.
“Our-alls party. We's havin' a ball an' a house-warmin'. You must be comin' fum a long ways off not to be hearin' 'bout hit!”
“You mean the Sequins are having a party, tonight?”
“Yas, sir.”
“But aren't they expecting me? Didn't they get my telegram?”
“I dunno, sir. Dey nebber said nothin' to me.”
The stranger stood with feet apart, watch in hand, and a grim expression on the only part of his face visible between his cap and his upturned collar.
“What time is the next train back to town?”
“Dey ain't none, 'ceptin' de special, what's hired to take de party back to town. Dat goes 'bout two o'clock.”
“I'll wait for it,” said the stranger, flinging his bag against the waiting-room door and beginning to pace restlessly up and down the snow-covered platform.
But this did not meet with Uncle Jimpson's ideas of hospitality.
“Dey nebber knowed you wuz comin',” he argued. “I jes know dey didn't. But dat won't hinder 'em fum bein' powerful glad to see you. Better git in, Boss, an' lemme dribe you up dere.”
“No, there is evidently more room for me in town!”
“Room! Why, Mister, we could take keer of all de Presidents of de Nunited States at one time! 'Sides, hit don't look right to leave you a stompin' round here in de cold fer three or four hours by yourself. You'd git powerful lonesome.”
“I'm used to being lonesome. Haven't been anything else for a year.”
“But dis heah is different,” urged the old darkey, scratching his head; “dis heah is Christmas night. Tain't natchul fer folks not to git together an' laugh an' be happy an' fergit dere quarrels an' dere troubles an' jollify deyselves. You know you ain't gwine be happy stompin' round here in de dark by your loneself; you know dat ain't no way to spend Christmas, Boss!”
The stranger continued to stare into the darkness for a moment, then he laughed, that same sudden, infectious, boyish laugh that had greeted Uncle Jimpson's suggestion that he was an agent.
“You're right!” he exclaimed; “this is no time to nurse a grouch. Perhaps they didn't get the telegram. I'll risk it. Is there a side door you could slip me in?”
“Yas, sir! We got four side doors, 'sides de back one. Ain't nuffin we ain't got. You git right in de wagon, an' I'll hist de bags in. 'Tain't de way I'd like to kerry you up to de mansion, straddlin' a ice-cream freezer wid de snow in yer face, but I'll git you dere!”
Uncle Jimpson, sure of an audience for at least twenty minutes, forgot his wrongs and laid himself out to make the most of his opportunity.
It was very cold and the horse's hoofs beat hard on the frozen ground. Beyond the wavering circle of light from the swaying lantern all was dark and mysterious.
“I certainly is glad dem freezers come,” said Uncle Jimpson, tucking in the lap robe; “I shore would hate to go back widout 'em. De Cunnel used to say dat was what niggers was born fer, to git what you sent 'em after.”
“Who is the Colonel?” asked the stranger with a quick glance of recognition at the old negro.
“Cunnel Bob Carsey. My old marster. He's dead now, an' Mrs. Sequin she's done borrowed me fer a while.”
“When did he die?”
“A year ago las' May.”
The man in the foreign cap pulled it further over his eyes and resumed his scrutiny of the road.
“Al dis heah hill used to b'long to us,” Uncle Jimpson continued; “long before de Sequinses ever wuz born. I spec' you've heard tell of Thornwood?”
“Yes. Who lives there now?”
“Nobody. When de Cunnel died, my young Miss didn't hab nobody to take keer ob her, nor no money to run de place, no nothin' 'ceptin' jus' me an' Carline. Dey wasn't nothin' left fer her to do but git married.”
A long pause followed during which the traveler watched the distorted shadow of the trotting horse as it shambled along the road.
“'Course,” the old darkey broke out presently, “Doctor Queerington is a powerful smart gemman, an' he teks keer ob her jes' lak she wuz one ob his own chillun. An' she's gittin' broke into de shafts, but hit's gwine hard wid her. 'Tain't natchul to hitch a young filly up to a old kerriage horse an' spec' her to keep step. She sorter holdin' back all de time, kinder 'fraid to let loose an' carry on same as she use to.”
They were going through the covered bridge now and the rattle of the wheels on the loose boards made conversation difficult.
“Wuz you eber homesick, Boss?” asked Uncle Jimpson inconsequently.
“Rather,” said the stranger emphatically. “I was born homesick.”
“Well, dat's what ails my young Miss an' dat's whut's de matter wid me an' Carline an' Mike. Ain't none ob us used to libin' in other folks' houses an' mixin' up wid other folkses families. 'Course hit's mighty fine to be rich an' put on airs, but hit's lonesome. 'Fore hit got so cold, me an' Carline'd go down home most ebery night an' set round de quarters, listenin' to de frogs an' de crickets, an' I'd say,' Carline, don't you mind de time dat Miss Lady fell head fust into de barrel ob sorghum? An' de time she made de chickens drunk often egg-nog?' Nebber wus nobody in de world lak dat chile, up to ever mischievousness dat ever wuz concocted, but jus' so sweet an' coaxin' dat de Cunnel nebber knowed how to punish her.”
The stranger took out a meerschaum pipe, started to light a match, evidently forgot his intention, and looked absently ahead into the darkness.
“Dis is Thornwood!” said Uncle Jimpson eagerly, pointing with his whip up a long avenue of trees; “you can't see de house 'cause dey ain't no lights in de winders. De Cunnel's paw set dem trees out de same year he bought Carline. Lord, I certainly wuz gone on dat yaller gal! But I didn't know nothin' 'bout courtin'. Carline she wuz better qualified though, an' she made me ast Old Miss ef I couldn't hab her fer my wife. We didn't need no Bible nor preacher, nor sech foolishness in dem days. But when Old Miss wuz willin' we jus' dress up an' walk ober de place an' tell all de niggers we wuz married. Umph, umph! But I wuz proud dat day! I had on a bran' new pair ob pants dat cost two-hundred an' sixty-fo' dollars in Confederate money! When Mr. Abe Lincum set us niggers free, dey made us git married all ober agin wid a preacher an' a Bible, but I never seed no diffunce.”
“Does Mrs.—Mrs. Queerington ever come back to Thornwood?” asked the stranger, stumbling over the name as if it were very hard for him to say.
“Yas, sir, she comes jes' lak me an' Carline, an' wanders roun' de house an' de garden, an' sets in de ole barrel hammock, studyin' to herself.”
“And Mike,—what became of him?”
Uncle Jimpson looked at him in surprise, “How'd you know about Mike, Mister?”
“Didn't you speak of him a while ago; wasn't he the dog?”
“Yas, sir. He's our dog. He's stayin' wif Miss Ferney Foster what libes down beyond de blacksmith's on de other side de pike. He don't lak it no better'n we do; he's homesick, too.”
They had reached a pretentious white gateway, and Uncle Jimpson, recalled to a sense of his duties, drew himself up from his slouching posture, crooked his elbow and rounded the curve as if he had been driving a tally-ho. Through the bare trees above them blazed the magnificent proportions of Angora Heights, with its pretentious assembly of stables, garage and servants' quarters in the rear.
“Ye gods!” exclaimed the stranger under his breath; “is this all of it?”
“Naw,sir!” Uncle Jimpson denied emphatically; “if hit wuz daytime you could see de Ramparts an' de Estanade. Over dere is de Lygoon. 'Tain't nothin' shore 'nuff but our ole pond where we uster ketch bullfrogs, but Mrs. Sequin she tole me to call hit de Lygoon. You see dem carvins ober de door? Dat figger goin' up dat Egyptions stairway is John Dark. Didn't you nebber heah 'bout John Dark? He wuz a woman what fit a battle onct.”
“Cut around to the side there, out of the way of the motors,” directed the stranger, who seemed much more concerned in making a quiet entrance into the mansion than in studying its architectural features. “Here's something to put in the toe of your Christmas stocking, and another for Caroline. Hurry up!”
He vaulted lightly over the wheel and turned to take his bag. As he did so the light from the conservatory window above fell full upon his upturned face.
“Fore de Lawd!” cried Uncle Jimpson, a broad grin splitting his face almost in two. “I might 'a' knowed dat de only gemman in de world what tipped lak dat wuz Mr. Don Morley!”
It is really a very difficult thing to snub Christmas. You may relegate it to the class of nuisances, and turn your back on Santa Claus, and vote the whole institution a gigantic bore, but before the day is over it usually gets the better of you, as it did of Donald Morley, arriving unannounced and unwelcomed at the side door of the Sequin mansion.
It had gotten the better of him the year before when he had risen in the gray dawn of an Indian day and stoically made his way to the banks of the Ganges. It had proclaimed itself above the Vedic hymns of the twice-born Brahmins, standing knee-deep in the sacred river; it had dogged his footsteps among the ash-smeared fakirs, and jewel-hung cows; it had even haunted the burning-ghat where he had stood and watched human bodies burning on their pyres.
Eighteen months of wandering had made him sick of the casual; of the steamer acquaintances formed at one port and dropped at the next; of the unfamiliar sights and incomprehensible languages and the horde of alien yellow faces. He was weary unto death of the freedom of the high seas, and longed fervently for a strong anchor, and a quiet harbor.
When Cropsie Decker's explosive epistle had arrived telling him of his indictment, of Margery's broken engagement, of Lee Dillingham's treachery, his first thought was not of his wrongs, but of the fact that they would necessitate his going home.
He did not stop to realize that going home meant but one thing to him. He even tried to persuade himself that seeing Miss Lady in the role of a happy, complaisant wife would cure him of his insatiable longing for her. From the time he heard of her marriage he had striven desperately to put her out of his mind, using every means but one to accomplish his purpose. Through all his resentment and bitterness of heart, he had never returned to his old life. Those promises made to her in the full ardor of his boyish passion, he had kept with the hopeless loyalty that one keeps the garments of the dead.
Now that he had been indicted for a crime of which he was wholly innocent, his first desire was to know if she still believed in him. To be sure, there were strong reasons why she should not: his own confession of his shortcomings; the unfortunate complication in the Dillingham affair; his subsequent disappearance. It was but natural that she should have been brought to see the folly of pinning her faith to such an unstable proposition as himself. His first agonized protest against her marriage had given place to a stoical acceptance of the fact. He was paying the price many a man has paid for the follies of his youth, and he was ready to pay without a protest, if only she could be made to understand the truth.
All that was best in him demanded justice from her, the justice he had pleaded for in that long letter sent from San Francisco. Going home for him meant not only a trial by jury and a verdict of guilty or innocent. It meant far more. He would know from her own lips whether she had ever received his letter, and whether or not she believed in him. On her decision rested his faith in human nature and in God.
The sudden decision to return to America had been reached one night in Port Said, where he had just joined an exploring expedition bound for the Valley of the Kings. He cancelled his engagement, took passage on a little Russian steamer that was bound for Alexandria, and too impatient to wait for a liner from that port shipped on a freight boat for Naples. The passage across the Atlantic had been a tempestuous one, and he had landed in New York two days overdue, with no time to notify the family of his arrival.
And now after eighteen months of exile in foreign lands he was actually home again! That is if this resplendent, unfamiliar abode, full of music and lights and strange servants, could be called home. However, it was the nearest approach to one he could claim, and the fact that the fatted calf had not been killed for him, and that the law waited for him around the corner, did not prevent his pulse quickening and his lips smiling as he took the side steps two at a time, and entered the rear hall.
An officious, red-headed man stood in the pantry door with a napkin over his arm, issuing peremptory orders and regulating the outcoming and ingoing waiters. “Are you the butler?” asked Donald.
“Not yet,” said the man, dropping one eyelid and assuming a confidential air; “I can see she's after me, though. She got on to my style the minute she seen me handle a tray of glasses. 'Flathers,' she sez, 'you keep things movin' back there in the pantry, and do keep a eye on John.' John's the butler. He's a drinkin' man, God be praised, and I'm layin' fer his job. Are you a chauffeur?”
“No,” said Donald good humoredly. “I'm a prodigal brother. Where have I seen you before?”
“Can't say. If a person sees me once they never fergit me. It's me golden glow. Come, boys! Hurry up! Hurry up with them cakes there. Git them extry freezers unpacked. Git a move on yer.”
“Take this card in to Mrs. Sequin,” said Donald, “and ask her if she can spare a moment to see a caller in the rear entry.”
Phineas glanced suspiciously from the card to the stranger, then he decided that he would not question the matter.
A moment later, Mrs. Sequin with her glittering draperies gathered about her, and an expression of great perturbation on her features, made her high-heeled way through the pantry.
“Donald! My dear boy!” she exclaimed effusively, presenting her cheek with the caution of one who hopes the kiss will be light. “What on earth are you doing here? We had no idea you were in America. How thin you are! I've been in a perfect agony about you. Not those champagne glasses, John; the larger ones. That tiresome butler! He has been tipsy all day. Now, what about yourself, Donald? It is dreadfully unwise for you to be here; you know of course of—of the indictment?”
“That's why I'm here. But how is everybody? How are Brother Basil and little old Margery? Where's my saddle mare?”
“I'll tell you everything to-morrow, Don. You must want to go to your room now. Flathers take this gentleman's bags up to the East guest-room,—no, that's occupied. You won't mind going up another flight, just for to-night, dear?”
“Oh, tuck me in anywhere, just so there's a bath handy.”
“All the bedrooms have baths,” said Mrs. Sequin absently, with her eye on the befuddled butler who was trying to uncork a bottle with a screwdriver, “Let Flathers—I mean Benson—do that, John, and you take these bags. So sorry I can't go up with you myself, Don, but the cotillion is just beginning, and I have to see to the favors.”
“That's right, don't bother about me, I'll get into some decent togs and be down again in a little while.”
Mrs. Sequin paused with her hand on the banister, then she leaned forward solicitously:
“I wouldn't take the trouble to dress and come down again, Don. It's late and you must be dead tired. You go to bed. I'll understand.”
Donald, standing a few steps above her, shot a questioning glance at her, then he, too, understood.
“Oh, all right,” he said, biting his lip; “I believe I won't come down. You might send Marge up, after the people leave, just to say 'Hello.'”
“Of course, we'll both be up. Nothing could hold her if she knew you were here. But it is better that nobody should know. I was careful not to mention your name before the servants. You can have a nice little visit with us, and get away again without any one being the wiser. It is so lovely you got here in time for Christmas!Goodnight.” She came up two steps and presented her other cheek for a kiss.
{Illustration: Mrs. Sequin paused with her hand on the bannister.}
The delinquent John, meanwhile, was performing acrobatic feats with the bags, getting them so mixed up with his own legs and the stair steps that Donald snatched them from him, and, eliciting a vague direction concerning the room he was to occupy, went up to find it alone.
He felt something of the hot rebellion and resentment that he had experienced on another Christmas night in the long ago, when the cross-eyed French nurse had put him to bed at five o'clock and left him alone in the big hotel in Paris. Then he had cried himself to sleep because there wasn't any Santa Claus and because he didn't have a sweetheart. But the consolations of six are denied to twenty-five.
On the second floor he followed directions and turned to the right. The dressing-rooms were deserted, the maids having taken their seats on the steps to peep at the dancers below. He, too, paused, and looked down at the gaily whirling throng. There was his old familiar world, the fellows he had been through college with, the girls he had flirted with, the very music he had danced to, times without numbers. And he was as much out of it all as if he had died of the fever in that gray old hospital in Singapore? Ah, if he only had!
He turned abruptly and started up the second flight of stairs, and as he did so something rose precipitately from the steps, and fluttered ahead of him.
He looked up and as he did so chaos broke loose within him. There at the top, in the subdued light from the upper hall, startled, uncertain, off her guard stood Miss Lady, not the pretty, harum-scarum girl of his dreams, but a beautiful, wistful woman with trembling lips and startled eyes, who held out her hands to him in involuntary welcome.
He lost his head completely. All the blood in his body rushed to his throat. Something sang through every fiber of him.
“Miss Lady!” he cried, catching the hands she extended in both of his, then as she drew back from his too ardent look, he remembered. “I beg your pardon of course it's Mrs. Queerington, now.”
“Not to you, Don. When did you come? Are you well again? Didn't any one know you were coming? Have the others seen you?”
She poured forth her questions eagerly, as if she feared another pause. She was making a desperate effort to appear easy, but her eagerness betrayed her. She repeated that she had no idea he was in America, and took refuge in a general assurance that everybody would be so glad to have him home again.
Donald, lean and tanned, stood silent, watching her searchingly. His deep-set eyes were clearer and steadier than of old, but they were no longer the eyes of a boy. He was like a mariner whose ship has been wrecked. He had nothing worse to dread and nothing to hope for. He simply desired to see the rock on which his life craft had smashed.
Miss Lady continued to ask questions, but she evidently did not always heed the answers as she asked some of them twice over. It was not until Donald's trouble was touched upon that her mood steadied and she lost her self-consciousness.
“Of course you must stand the trial,” she said, and her voice rang with the old assurance; “you must fight the whole matter out once for all, and prove your innocence.”
“Oh, the Court will prove that all right, but what does it matter? If people were willing to damn me without hearing, to believe that I had shot a man's eye out, then run away to escape the punishment—Bah! it's sickening.”
“But everybody doesn't believe it. The Doctor doesn't, nor Margery, nor Cropsie Decker, nor I. Hundreds of your friends are ready to stand by you. Don't listen to what anybody else says, but stay and fight it out.”
He looked up suddenly. “Did you ever get that letter I wrote you before I sailed from 'Frisco?”
He hadn't meant to blurt it out like that, the question that had tortured him so long, but her sympathy and friendliness had unnerved him.
Leaning forward with all his soul in his eyes, he watched the color mount steadily from her throat to her cheeks, then to her brow. He heard her draw a sharp, quivering breath as one who walks on a precipice, then she faced him steadily.
“Yes, Donald,” she said, meeting his gaze unflinchingly, “I got it.”
He dropped his head on his hand where it rested on the banister, and they stood for a moment in silence save for the strains of music that came up from below. Then he straightened his shoulders.
“That's all. I had to make sure, you know. And you didn't believe in me?”
Across her face quivered the desire for speech, and the necessity for silence.
“I do believe in you, Don,” she said earnestly. “I believe in you with all my heart and soul. And we are going to be your friends; you'll let us, the Doctor and me?”
He took the hand she offered, but he said nothing, and after she was gone he went into his room, and flinging himself across the bed, buried his face in the pillows.