"Perhaps—with time to think them out beforehand. Anyhow, it's rather jolly to hear things you can remember."
"I should be the last to deny her cleverness," said Isabel, dryly. But being by no means desirous that he should find her too acid, she dropped her eyes for a moment, then raised two dazzling wells of innocence. "I am tired of the subject of my cousin and Mrs. Kaye," she murmured. "Are you as ambitious as Jack?"
"No use." He stared helplessly down into the blue flood. "There is no escape from the 'Peers' for me, although my father, I am happy to say, is as healthy as I am. But after the brain cells become brittle—one never knows. I too am a Liberal, and am getting in all the good work of which I am capable while there is yet time. I don't go as far as Jack—don't want to see the 'Peers' chucked. I have a strong reverence for traditions, and no taste whatever for democracy—that would be too long a step. And I think a man should be content to be useful, do the best he can, in his own class; and be loyal to that class whatever happens. Of course I understand Jack's point of view, because I understand him so well, and know that he would be the most maimed and wretched man on earth in the Upper House; but personally, I think one should be prepared to accept inherited responsibilities."
And then, as they were both young, and mutually attracted, they found many subjects of common interest to keep them in the library until the gong summoned them to luncheon.
Flora Thangue, after luncheon, took Isabel out in a pony cart, and although too loyal to gossip intimately about her patrons, incidentally directed a search-light into certain of their recesses; a light that was to prove useful to Isabel in her future intercourse with them, although it did not in the least prepare her for an experience that awaited her later in the day. Miss Thangue's mind was occupied at first with the obvious engagement of Gwynne and Mrs. Kaye.
"That woman was born to upset calculations!" she exclaimed. "Yonder is the castle of the dukes of Arcot. We are going over to a party to-morrow night. It really looks like a castle with all those gray battlements and towers, doesn't it? We don't call every tuppeny-hapenny villa inhabited by a nobleman a 'castle' as they do in Germany and Austria. Well—that clever little panther! I'd like to pack her into one of her own epigrams and bury her alive. Iknowshe was as good as engaged to Brathland. Now, having decided that, all things considered, Jack is the best match going—for everybody believes Lord Zeal to be worse than he is—well! there is something appalling in a woman who can adjust herself as quickly as that; whose caprices, sentiments, passions, all natural impulses, are completely controlled by her reason. I wish Vicky saw through her; she has so much influence over Jack, and such deadly powers of ridicule. But Vicky, like all spoiled women of the world, is as much the victim of the subtle flatterer as any man, and Julia Kaye has managed her beautifully. She considered Jack for a bit before she was sure of Brathland. Vicky's real reason for indorsing Julia Kaye—between us—is because she believes her to be one of that small and select band that can hold a man on all his various sides, and she wants to avoid the probability of an absorbing and possibly tragic liaison—like Parnell's, for instance—which might interfere with, perhaps ruin, Jack's career. That is all very well, as far as it goes, but I believe Julia Kaye to be so entirely selfish that when Jack finds her out he will sicken of life. I have had the best of opportunities to study women, and I have brought Jack up—I had the honor to be the highly idealized heroine of his calf-love, and have been more or less in his confidence ever since. In certain ways I understand him better than his mother does, for she has seen too much of the worst side of men, and is at heart tooblaséeto have much respect for or knowledge of their spiritual side; and if I have ever had any maternal spasms in my virtuous spinsterhood they have been over Jack. Can't you help us out?" she asked, turning suddenly to the stranger, to whom she was powerfully attracted. "Are you as indifferent as you look?"
"I have no idea! But although I should not in the least object to be cast for a part in this domestic drama, I don't care for it at the price of too much 'Jack.' To attempt to cut out Mrs. Kaye I should need a little genuine enthusiasm; and frankly, your beloved prodigy does not inspire it. I like Lord Hexam far better."
"Oh, Jimmy! He's a fine fellow, but only a type."
"He hasn't a rampant ego, if that is what you mean. And for every-day purposes—" She shrugged her shoulders. "I could endure and even be deeply interested in Elton Gwynne if he happened to be my brother and I could hook my finger in his destiny; but in any other capacity—no, thank you!"
"Are you going to marry Jimmy?"
"I did not even know he was not already married. Do you see nothing in a man but a husband over here? If I ever do marry it will not be before I am forty."
"That is rather long—if you see much of the world meanwhile! And Jimmy, although there is not much money in the family—about twenty thousand a year—would be a very good match. He will be Earl of Hembolt—a fine old title."
"You assume that such a plum may be pulled by the first comer."
"Rather not! But you Americans have such a way with you! What is more to the point, I never saw him so bowled over."
"Well," said Isabel, imperturbably, "I will think of it. This English country and these wonderful old houses, with their inimitable atmosphere, appeal to me very strongly. I have more the feeling of being at home here than I had even in Spain, where I have roots. And socially and picturesquely, there is nothing to compare with the position of an English noblewoman."
Flora turned her eyes frankly to the classic profile beside her. Isabel had removed her hat, and, framed in the heavy coils of her hair, her features impressed the anxious observer as even more Roman than early American; although had she but reflected she would have remembered that the type of the Cæsars had its last stronghold in the United States of the eighteenth century. Isabel looked like a very young Roman matron, but her resemblance to the stately effigies in the galleries of Florence and Rome, strong in virtue or vice, was so striking that once more Flora longed for her support. A woman with such capabilities would be wasted in the rôle of a mere countess—but as the wife of an aspiring Liberal statesman! She devoutly wished that the American had arrived six months earlier, or that Brathland still lived.
But she was a very tactful person and was about to drop the subject, when Isabel slowly turned her eyes. They looked so much like steel that for the moment they seemed to have lost their blue.
"I have made up my mind to do something to prevent this marriage," she announced. "I do not know what, as yet. I shall be guided by events."
And Flora devoutly kissed her, then gossipped pleasantly about the other guests and the people in the neighborhood. Isabel was curious to know something of the duchess she was to meet on the morrow.
"Does she really look like a duchess?" she asked, so innocently that Flora laughed and forgot the Roman-American profile, and the fateful eyes that had given her an uncomfortable sensation a moment before.
"Well—yes—she does—rather. It is the fashion in these days not to—to be smart above all things, excessively democratic, animated, unaffected, clever. But our duchess here is rather old-fashioned, very lofty of head and expression. She has a look of floating from peak to peak, and although passée is still a beauty. To be honest, she is hideously dull, but as good a creature as ever lived, and all that the ideal duchess should be—so high-minded that she has never suspected the larkiest of her friends."
"Well, I am glad she looks the rôle. I have artistic cravings."
They drove for an hour through the beautiful quiet green country, past many old stone villages that might have been the direct sequence of the cave era. An automobile skimmed past and the pony sat down on its haunches. Isabel had a glimpse of a delicate high-bred face set like a panel in a parted curtain.
"That is the duchess," said Miss Thangue. "She wouldn't wear goggles for the world, and only gets into an automobile occasionally to please the duke. There is nothing old-fashioned about him."
"She looks as if her name ought to be Lucy," said Isabel, to whom the pure empty face had appeared like a vision from some former dull existence, and left behind it an echo of insupportable ennui.
Isabel had looked forward all day to the promised talk with the somewhat formidable relative for whom, however, she had conceived one of those enthusiasms peculiar to her age and sex. Her wardrobe was barren of the costly afternoon gowns smart women affect, but she put on an organdie, billowy with many ruffles, that consorted with the season, at least. Blue cornflowers were scattered over the white transparent surface, and she possessed no more becoming frock. Had she been on her way to a tryst with Lord Hexam she would have thrust a rose in her hair, accentuated the smallness of her waist with a blue ribbon, the whiteness of her throat with a line of black velvet; but she had the instinct of dress, which teaches, among many things, that self-consciousness in external adornment provokes amusement in other women.
She had not the least idea where to find Lady Victoria's boudoir, although a casual reference by Flora Thangue suggested that it was on the bedroom floor. She lost herself in the interminable corridors and finally ran into Elton Gwynne.
"Your mother expects me—where is her boudoir?" she asked.
He was at peace with the world, and answered, good-naturedly: "I'll pilot you. Her rooms are over on the other side."
"You look as if you should be congratulated about something," she said, demurely. "There are all sorts of rumors flying about."
She had half-expected to be snubbed, but he was not in the humor to snub anybody. "You can congratulate me!" he said, emphatically. "The most wonderful woman in the world has promised to marry me."
"I hope you will be happy," said Isabel, conventionally. She resented his sudden drop from his pedestal, for he looked sentimental and somewhat sheepish. Still, her youth warmed to his in spite of herself, and again he noticed with a passing surprise that her eyes were both lovely and intellectual. He was hardly aware that coincidentally his Julia's eyes met his mental vision with a glance somewhat too hard and brilliant, but he caught Isabel's hand and gave it a little shake.
"Thank you!" he exclaimed. "That was said as if you jolly well meant it. There are my mother's rooms."
He went off whistling, and Isabel raised her hand and looked at it meditatively; his own had been unexpectedly warm and magnetic. She had imagined that his grasp would be cold and loose.
He had indicated a private corridor, and she entered it and approached a door ajar. There was no response to her knock, but as she was expected, and Lady Victoria no doubt was still dressing, she pushed open the door and entered. The room was empty, but Isabel was instantly impressed with its reflection of an individuality, although of a side that had attracted her least. Here was none of the old-time stiffness of Capheaton, and there was a conspicuous absence of dead masters and their pupils. It was not a large room. The walls were covered with a Japanese gold paper to within four feet of the floor where it was met by a tapestry of Indian cashmeres, and from it was separated by a narrow shelf set thick with photographs in silver frames, and with odd and exquisite bibelots. On the walls were artists' sketches, and two or three canvases of the Impressionist and Secessionist schools, expressive of the ardent temperaments of their creators. In the place of honor was a painting of Salambô in the folds of her python.
There were several deep chairs and a mighty divan covered with gold-colored cushions and a tiger-skin, whose mate was on the floor. The gloom of the afternoon was excluded by heavy gold-colored curtains, and the only, but quite sufficient light, filtered through an opalescent globe upheld by a twisted bronze female of the modern Munich school, that looked like nothing so much as Alice elongating in Wonderland.
Isabel suddenly felt herself and her organdie absurdly out of place in this room with its enchantress atmosphere. She wished that Lady Victoria had made the appointment for the library, which was equally in tune with another side of her.
She was even meditating a retreat, inexplicably embarrassed, when an inner door opened and Lady Victoria entered. She wore a tea-gown of a sort, black and yellow, open over the soft lace of a chemisette, although a dog-collar of tiny golden sequins clasped her throat. In her hair a golden butterfly trembled, and in that light she would have looked little older than her guest had it not been for the expression of her face. It was this expression that arrested Isabel even more than the toilette, as she moved towards the divan without a word of greeting. It looked as if it had been put on with the costume, both intended to express a mood of the wearer: which might have been that of a tigress whose ferocity was slowly awakening with the approach of the victim. The black eyes were heavy with the lust of conquest, the points of the mouth turned up more sharply than usual; there was an insatiable vanity in the commanding poise of her head. She was as little like the woman of the morning as the sun is like the midnight, and Isabel experienced a positive terror of her.
Feeling sixteen and very foolish, she sank to the edge of a chair and muttered something about the charm of the room. Then, as Lady Victoria, who had arranged herself among the shining pillows, continued to stare at her with absolutely no change of expression, it dawned upon her that she had not been expected but that some one else was. With too little presence of mind left to retire gracefully and too much pride to appear to have ventured into the cave of Venus unasked, she managed to articulate her gratitude for the invitation of the morning.
"Oh!" Lady Victoria's eyebrows expressed a flicker of intelligence. "I hope you have managed not to bore yourself."
Isabel plunged into an account of her drive, to which Lady Victoria, who had lit a long Russian cigarette, paid no attention whatever. Her expression was still petrified, except that she might have had the scent of blood in her slightly dilating nostrils.
Suddenly the slow flame in her eyes burned upward, and Isabel, her head fairly jerking about, saw that a man had entered and was advancing rapidly across the room, his heavy eyes wide with admiration. It was the Frenchman whom Lady Victoria had honored with so much of her attention the evening before.
He raised to his lips the pointed fingers negligently extended, and murmured something to which Lady Victoria replied in French as pure and fluent as his own; and in a low rich voice, with not an echo in it of her habitual abruptness or haughty languor.
The Frenchman accepted a cigarette and a low chair opposite the divan, whose golden cushions seemed subtly to embrace the yielding flexible figure against them. Neither took the slightest notice of the third person beyond a muttered introduction and acknowledgment, and as the man embarked on a soft torrent of speech, bearing the burden of his beatitude in at last meeting the only Englishwoman whose fame in Paris was as great as among her native fogs, Isabel rose and retreated with what dignity she could summon. Then Lady Victoria, seeing that she was rid of her, and courteous under all her idiosyncrasies, rose with a long motion of repressed energy and accompanied her to the door, her hand resting lightly against the crisp organdie belt.
"Will you pour out the tea for me?" she asked, sweetly. "I doubt if I go down."
No small part of her dangerous fascination lay in her sincerity. She really liked Isabel, although it was characteristic of her that she did not in the least care at what conclusions that puzzled young woman might arrive in a more solitary meditation.
When Isabel found herself in the long cool corridor, set thick with gentle landscapes, and hunting squires, and dames haughty and humble, she drew a long breath of relief, as if she had escaped from a jungle. But she felt oddly wounded in her self-love, young and silly. She had thought herself old in the last three years, tremendously modern. What did she know? The easy morals of students in France and Germany had repelled her at first, but she had ended by accepting them as a matter of course, and had rather plumed herself upon her accumulating grains and blends of human nature. She felt a rush of contempt for their crudity. What children they were with their simple unmorality of artists, as ignorant of the real world as babes in a wood!
When she reached her own room she astonished herself by bursting into a passion of tears. It was some time before she understood what had induced it. It was not that the illusions of youth had received a hard blow, for many of them had disappeared long since in Paris, when she had supported an American girl of decent family but too much liberty through the most desperate experience that a young woman, alone and friendless in a foreign city, well could have. The girl had died cursing all men and the folly of women, and after Isabel had buried her and the leading cause of her repentance, she returned to her lonely flat in a state of disillusion and disgust which seemed to encase her by no means susceptible heart in a triple panoply. This state of mind had lasted for at least three months. And there was little of which she had not abstract knowledge, nor had she lived a quarter of a century to learn for the first time of the license which the world permits to women so highly placed that they have come to believe themselves above all laws.
But all her experience and abstract knowledge counted for nothing, and she had for the first time a sudden and complete appreciation of the evil of the world and of its odd association with even the higher virtues; of the fact that in the upper walks of life the balance was more nearly even than on planes where there existed scantier opportunities for development. There was no question that Victoria Gwynne was made on a magnificent plan, as capable of heroism, no doubt, as any of the salient women of history. She was an ornament in her world, useful, sympathetic, the author of much good, a devoted and inspiring mother. And yet there was no more question that this Frenchman was the last of a long line of favored adorers than that Victoria, for all her individualities, was but a type of her kind: a kind that was sufficiently distinct from the hundreds of wholly estimable women that were proud to know her, or accepted her as a matter of course.
And even these good women? Had they not the same passions, the same inclinations in the secrecies of their souls? What was the determining cause of their indisputable virtue? A happy marriage? Too many children? Timidity? Absence of temptation? Or were they merely orthodox through a more uneven balancing of their qualities, the animal in abeyance? For this very reason were they not frequently narrow, unsympathetic, unuseful—unless, indeed, they were of the few who, with the mighty temptations of the Victoria Gwynnes, were mightier still in their fidelity to some inner and cherished ideal. This lofty ideal of womanhood Isabel had unconsciously set up in her soul, and the sudden conviction of its imperfection was, after all, the reason of her sudden despair. For the soul with its immemorial and often incommunicable knowledge may have its moments of terror while the mind wonders.
And she was disheartened at the sense of insignificance and mortification inspired by this contact with a side of life, as real and consequent as motherhood or government, instead of feeling merely repelled, infinitely superior in her unstained maidenhood. She had no wish to emulate, but neither did she relish feeling provincial, a chit, an outsider. Her youthful vanity had its way in a mind too speculative, intelligent, observant, merely to be shocked. Her memory reverted to experiences that had made her feel as much older than the ordinary girl as she now felt at sea. What was she, Isabel Otis, after all? She felt a mere assortment of fluids, which might or might not crystallize into some such being as she had dimly apprehended, or into something quite commonplace; realized with a shock that her own deep personal experience had left her less definitely moulded than she had imagined.
She rose impatiently and bathed her eyes before ringing for the maid to lace her for dinner—it was long past tea-time. "Perhaps I had better marry Lord Hexam and have ten children," she thought. "That sort of existence has kept more women up to the correct standard than anything else except poverty."
"And is this really your first big party?" asked Hexam, wonderingly.
"The first! The first! And I am twenty-five! Just think of it! Of course I have been to students' balls, and little parties in Rosewater. But a function—never before."
"This is hardly a function—parties even in the big political country-houses are more or less informal."
"Informal! The jewels fairly blind my provincial eyes. And this is a real castle!"
"Oh yes, it is a castle," he said, laughing outright. "I suppose you have read up its record?" he added, teasingly. "You industrious and curious Americans know a lot more about us than we know about ourselves."
"Of course I know the history of this castle. I haven't the least doubt you know every word of it yourself. I have already learned that the English are not nearly so vacant-minded as, in their curious pride, they would have one believe."
She threw back her head, half-closing her eyes in the ecstasy of her new experience. The dancing was in the picture-gallery, an immense room, in which there were many dark paintings of the old Italian and Spanish schools, besides the presentments of innumerable Arcots by the usual popular masters of the Dutch and English. The ceiling was of stone and vaulted, but set thick with electric lights, blazing down from their great height like the crystal stars of the tropics. It had seemed to Isabel that after entering the castle she had walked for ten minutes before reaching this room, where as brilliant a company was disporting itself as she was likely to look upon in England. The Duke of Arcot was an energetic Conservative and a member of the present cabinet, but his social attentions were ever directed to the prominent and interesting of whatever party or creed. As he found a particular zest in being surrounded by smart, bright and pretty women, the parties at the castle, and at Arcot House in London, were seldom surpassed in either brilliancy or interest. And as his rent-roll was abnormal, there was no sign of dilapidation within the gray walls and towers of the ancient castle, but much comfort and luxury against a background of countless treasures accumulated throughout the centuries. He had taken an immediate fancy to Isabel and promised to show her the lower rooms as soon as she tired of dancing.
Hexam watched her with an amused indulgence that in no wise tempered his mounting admiration. She was radiant. Her blue eyes were shining and almost black, her cheeks flooded with a delicate pink. She wore a gown of white tulle upon whose floating surface were a few dark-blue lilies. The masses of her black hair were piled on her head in the fashion of her Californian grandmothers, and confined by a high Spanish comb of gold and tortoise-shell. Her only other jewel was a long string of Baja California pearls that had glistened on warm white necks in many an old California ballroom before ever an American had crossed the threshold of Arcot Castle. They had been given by Concha Argüello, when she assumed the gray habit of the Third Order of the Franciscan nuns, to the wife of her brother Santiago and so had come down to Isabel.
And to-night this descendant of that powerful clan, unimaginable in her modern complexities to their simple minds, was receiving homage in the ballroom of one of the greatest houses in Europe. For there was no question, even in the minds of the young married women, who carry all before them in English society, that the American girl had created a furore among the men. Isabel had confided to the duke, who had lunched that day at Capheaton, and to Hexam, her haunting fear of being a wall-flower, and both had vowed that she should have no lack of partners at her first English ball. But to Hexam's disgust, at least, their solicitude came to an untimely end, and he was able to secure but two waltzes and a square dance. The duke had spoken for the cotillon, which he had no intention of dancing. He was a most estimable person, but he never ignored an opportunity to talk with a new and interesting woman.
Isabel could hardly have failed to be a belle that night, for her spirit was pitched to a height of joy and triumph that charged her whole being with a powerful magnetism. Possibly with a presentiment that it was to be an isolated experience, she abandoned herself recklessly to the mere delight of living, her will imperious for the fulness of one of the dearest of girlhood's ideals. She was one of those women, cast, as she well knew, for tragic and dramatic contacts with life, but Nature in compensation had granted her a certain wildness of spirit that sprang spontaneously to meet the pleasure, trifling or great, of the mere present; no matter for how long a period, or how hard, its wings had been smitten.
So she danced, and talked far more than was her wont, surpassing herself in every way, and no more interested in poor Hexam than in twenty others. He took her in to supper, however, and after three hours of dancing she was glad to rest and be sheltered by his determined bulk, planted squarely before her corner. She knew that she had a coronet very close to her footstool, and that this brilliant night might be but the prologue to a lifetime of the only society in the world worth while, but she was not conscious of any desire beyond the brimming cup of the moment. Moreover, she had never so thoroughly enjoyed being a girl, and love-making would have bored her grievously.
The duke claimed her, and after a desultory tour of the great reception-rooms and an infinite number of little cabinets, containing some of the most valuable of the Japanese and Indian treasures, he led her to the library, a luxurious room conducive to rapid friendship.
With that amiable desire, peculiar to the kindly Englishman, to gratify the ingenuous curiosity of the American, he produced a huge leather volume containing the various patents of nobility that marked the upward evolution of his house from a barony in some remote period of the world's history to the present dukedom, and the royal letters that had accompanied them. It was something he never would have dreamed of doing for a stranger of his own country, or of any state in Europe, but the English humor Americans that please them much as they would engaging children; and Isabel's eyes sparkled with so lively an intelligence that the duke fancied she had literary intentions and might one day find such information useful. He even showed her his complicated coat-of-arms, which included a bend sinister, for he had royal blood in his veins; and this slanting rod interested Isabel as deeply as the moat under the window. She was even more interested in the duke's attitude; it was evident that he felt no more vanity in his royal descent than deprecation of its irregular cause and enduring emblem. It was, and that was the end of it; but he had quite enough imagination to appreciate the effect of so picturesque an incident in family history upon the mind of the young republican.
"The best we can do is to descend irrelevantly from Washington, Hamilton, or Jefferson," said Isabel. "Only we have not yet reached the stage where we dare to acknowledge it on our coat-of-arms. The illusions of the American youth must be preserved. Even the fact that one of our Presidents was a son of Aaron Burr is still to be read only in the great volume of unwritten history. My father was a sort of walking edition of that work."
"That is new to me!" The duke was quite famous as a student of history, and took a personal interest in America, having been over twice in search of big game. He asked her many questions; but his interest in the general subject was as nothing to the enthusiasm she aroused by a chance allusion to the chicken-ranch. The duke was agricultural above all things; he had a model estate bristling with scientific improvement. He was enchanted at Isabel's picture of her wire-enclosed "runs" and yards containing industrious chickens of all ages, engaged, however innocently, in the pursuit of wealth. Isabel, when she chose, could invest any subject with glamour, and her account, delivered in tones notably accelerated, of the snow-white, red-crowned flocks, their aristocratic little white mansions, the luxurious nurseries for the "chicks," and the astonishing and costly banquets with which they were daily regaled, was so lively that the duke vowed he would raise Leghorns forthwith. He asked her so many practical questions, taking copious notes, and inevitably embracing California ranch life in its entirety, in his thirst for knowledge, that Isabel had no more dancing that night; but she made an enduring impression upon the eminently practical mind of her host.
It was quite two hours after supper, and Isabel was beginning to reflect with some humor upon the brevity of all illusions, when Hexam and Miss Thangue appeared simultaneously and announced that the Capheaton guests were leaving. Hexam looked sulky and suspicious. Flora was smiling.
"For the first time—" she murmured.
Isabel and the duke laughed outright, and then shook hands warmly.
"When I go home we can correspond," she said to him, "and I will tell you all the new kinks. We are always improving."
"The duke looked positively rejuvenated," said Hexam, spitefully, as they walked down the corridor. "Have you discovered the elixir of life in California, and promised him the prescription."
"No," said Isabel, demurely. "I have merely been initiating him into the mysteries of raising Leghorns."
Hexam looked stupefied, but Miss Thangue burst into a merry peal of laughter.
"Isabel!" she exclaimed. "I begin to suspect you are a minx!"
And Isabel laughed, too, in sheer excess of animal spirits and gratified vanity. She had excellent cause to remember the ebullition, for it was some time before she laughed again.
The duchess, with her light sweet smile, her old-fashioned Book-of-Beauty style, a certain affectation of shabbiness in her black-and-silver gown, looked a more indispensable part of the picture than any of her guests, as she stood in the middle of the great drawing-room with a group of her more intimate friends. Among them was Lady Victoria, more normal of mood this evening, sufficiently gracious, superbly indifferent, although she had held her court as usual.
She tapped Isabel lightly on the cheek with her fan. "You were quite the rage," she said. "I never should have forgiven you if you had not been." And Isabel had not the slightest doubt of her sincerity.
The duchess, in the immensity of her castle, did not pretend to keep an eye on any one, and would have been the last to suspect that Miss Otis had inspired her husband with a sudden passion for chickens. She shook hands approvingly with the young American and asked her to come over informally to luncheon on the morrow.
"Is your head turning?" asked Miss Thangue, as they drove home. "You must reap the results of your success; it would be a pity not to. After a few weeks here with Vicky you must go on a round of visits and then have a season in London."
"It would be glorious!" exclaimed Isabel, in whom problems were moribund. "I certainly believe I shall."
She was in the second of the carriages to reach Capheaton, and Gwynne, who was still standing on the steps, helped her down, and asked her pleasantly if she had enjoyed herself.
"I had such a good time I know I sha'n't sleep a wink for twenty-four hours. I believe I'll go to the library and get a book of yours I began on Sunday—only—" She hesitated. A talk with this enigmatical cousin would be a proper climax to the triumphs of the night. She raised her eyes, full of flattering appeal. "There are one or two points I did not quite understand—I have hesitated to go on—"
He too was wakeful, and rose to the bait promptly. "Suppose you give me an hour by the empty hearth. Will you? Well, go on ahead and I'll follow in a moment—after I see that the men have all they want in the smoking-room."
In the depths of the most independent woman's soul is a lingering taint of servility to the lordly male, and in Isabel it warmed into subtle life under the flattering response of this illustrious specimen. She fairly sailed towards the library, wondering if any of the famous old-time California belles, Concha Argüello, Chonita Iturbe y Moncada, with their caballeros flinging gold and silver at their feet, Nina Randolph and Chonita Hathaway and Helena Belmont, with their pugnacious "courts," had ever felt as exultant as she. That last moment, as she stepped lightly over the threshold of the library, was a sort of climax to the intoxication of youth.
And then she stopped short, stifling a cry of terror. The library, except for the wandering moonshine, was unlit, but a ray fell directly across a shadowy figure in the depths of a chair, half-way down the room. It was a relaxed figure, the head fallen on the chest; the arms were hanging limply over the sides of the chair, the hands ghastly in the moonlight. At the rustle of skirts the figure slowly raised its head, and the eyes of a man, haunted rather than haunting, looked out of a drawn and livid face. But the movement was not followed by speech, and Isabel stood, stiff with horror, convinced that she was in the presence of the Capheaton ghost. Of course, like all old manor-houses, it had one, and she was too imaginative not to accept with her nerves if not with her intelligence this ugly proof of a restless domain beyond the grave. But her petrifaction was mercifully brief. There was a quick step behind her, and then an exclamation of horror as Gwynne shot past and caught the lugubrious visitant by the shoulder.
"Good God, Zeal!" he cried, and his voice shook. "What is it, old man? You look—you look—"
The man in the chair rose slowly and drew a long breath, which seemed to infuse him with life again.
"I probably look much as I feel," he said, grimly. "I'm about to go on a journey, and if you can give me a few minutes—"
He paused and looked with cold politeness at Isabel. She waited for no further formalities, but shaken with the sure foreboding of calamity, turned and fled the room.
That night had also been one of triumph for Elton Gwynne. He had dined at the castle, and—his Julia having flitted to another country-house—spent the greater part of the evening in the smoking-room with half a score of the most eminent men in political England; and others whose recognition was not to be despised.
As there were many guests at the castle the dinner took place in the banquet-hall, but at six or eight round tables, and Gwynne had found himself distinguished above all the other young men present by being seated at that of the duchess. The prime-minister, the chancellor of the exchequer, two other members of the cabinet, and an ambassador were his companions. All the women were of exalted station, but for this fact Gwynne cared nothing, being entirely free of that snobbery which so often agitates even the best-born of the world; indeed, would have been resentful of the ripe age of the ladies—accumulated with their political values—had it not been for the tremendous compliment paid to his personal achievement.
He could not sit beside her grace in that nest of titles, but at the suggestion of the duke he had been placed as nearly opposite her as the round table permitted, and he soon forgot the broken circle of immemorial bosoms in the manifest disapproval of the Conservative premier towards himself, and in the attitude of the other men, which, whether hostile or friendly, evinced a recognition of the rising star and a tolerance of his ideas.
There is always a glamour about a very young man who has given cumulative evidence of genius and compelled the attention of the world, always distrustful of youth. His enemies had long since—and he was but thirty—admitted his gift for letters, fiercely as they might scoff at his conclusions; and his rewards for bravery in the field had aroused no adverse comment. But while his most persistent critics had never discovered him truthless and corruptible, his political sincerity had been called into question even by his colleagues, and almost unanimously by the opposition. His principles were by no means so rigidly outlined as those of the great Whig families, nor of the men who belonged to the Liberal party as a natural result of their more modest station and protesting spirit. He was strong on the fundamental principles of the party, and far more energetic in his advocacy of the rights and needs of the working-man than any Liberal of his own class, but he rarely, if ever, alluded to the question of Home Rule; a question somnolent but by no means dead; and the omission savored of Unionism, in spite of his avowed scorn of all compromises.
These facts, taken in connection with the pride and arrogance of the young scion of the house of Strathland and Zeal, generated the suspicion that he had allied himself with the Liberal party for two reasons only: its weakness in first-class men, and his passion for self-advertising. No one disputed his pre-eminence in this branch of industrial art, for although he never descended to commonplace methods, and the interviewer, far from being sought, rather dreaded him than otherwise, there was no man in England who was such a mine for "copy," nor of a perennially greener growth in the select front lawn of "news." When he attacked the government he was eminently quotable, and this endeared him to both reporters and editors. When he was interviewed, fearsome in manner as he was, he sent the worm away packed with ideas and phrases. But although he was almost continuously on the tongue, and the object of more acrimonious discussion than any young man in England, distrust of him had grown to such proportions that he had been dropped after one brief sojourn in the House; and to regain his seat had taken two years of the hardest and most brilliant fighting Great Britain had seen since the Conservative majority of 1874 permitted Disraeli to rest on his prickly laurels. But this memorable battle of one young man against a mighty phalanx of enemies and doubting friends had battered down the prejudices of his own party, and won a meed of applause from even those of stout old Tory principles. The humbler class, upon whom the election largely depended, were captivated by his eloquence, his insidious manipulation of the best in their natures, filling them with a judicious mixture of ideals and self-approval; while the phenomenon he invariably presented on the platform of the gradual awakening into life of a warm-blooded generous magnetic and earnest inner man, so effectually concealed at other times within a repellent exterior, never failed to induce in them the belief that something responsive in their own personalities awakened that rare spirit from its stifled sleep. That the glamour of his birth and condescension to their plane had aught to do with the dazzling quality of his charm, they might have admitted had their minds been driven by the enemy into the regions of self-analysis, but in any case he was the theme of two-thirds of the "pubs" and reading-rooms in England. He had achieved a sweeping victory that loomed portentously as a forerunner of greater triumphs in the future; for the personal popularity he had achieved, the gift for leadership he had demonstrated, the self-control he showed at all times, and the fatally adhesive quality of his biting wit, had strengthened the Liberal party and caused the Conservative to wish that he had never been born.
And flushed with self-love and the conquest of the woman of his desire, he had never talked better than on that night at Arcot; nor less offensively, for his arrogance and assertiveness were tempered by the warm high tide of his emotions. It was a magnificent room, the banquet-hall at Arcot, as large as that of many royal palaces, hung with old Gobelins and frescoed by a pupil of Giotto. It was a fit setting for the triumphant hour of the "most remarkable young man since the younger Pitt," a phrase which, if not notably suave, at least possessed an astonishing vigor, and was almost as familiar in American and continental newspapers as in his own proud nation; a nation always so keen to possess the first in all departments of excellence—creating them out of second-class material when the first is lacking—that the wonder was she had been so long accepting Elton Gwynne. Nothing, perhaps, but a noble desire for a really great man restrained her.
Opposite Gwynne, the duchess, sweet and tactful, if little more than an ornamental husk in which the juices of her race possibly recuperated to invigorate the future generations, was as fair and stately as her castle demanded; and if her gown was shabby her jewels were not. On either side of her table, which occupied the central position in the great room, were some of the most beautiful women in England, the smartest, the most politically important; all, without exception, of an inherited status that brought them once a year as a matter of course within the sternly guarded portals of Arcot. Gwynne did not know that Mrs. Kaye had knocked at these sacred portals in vain; for such gossip, if by chance he heard it, made no impression upon him whatever. But he was by no means insensible to the salient fact that he was one among the chosen of Earth to-night, and that it was good to be the hero of such an assembly.
For that he was the hero there was no manner of doubt, and when the dinner was over he spent but half an hour in the drawing-room, preferring the conversation of the heads of state, who so seldom gratified the vanity of a man of his years, but whom he had the power to interest whether they approved of him or not. He had many friends among women, some conquered by the magic of notoriety, others, like Flora Thangue, sensible of his finer side, or tolerant of him through life-long intimacy; and there were times when he was as alive to the pleasures of their society as any young sprig about town; but to-night their admiration was too illogical to administer to the self-love which in the last few days had palpitated with so exquisite a sense of fruition. Moreover, it gave him the keenest satisfaction to read in the manner of these older and long-tried men the grudging belief in his own sincerity.
In reality his motives for joining a party at war with every tradition of his house had been, primarily, as mixed as are all motives that bring about great voluntary changes in a man's life. It was quite true that he was inordinately ambitious, that he had a distinct preference for the sensational method, as productive of speedier results; for he had no intention of waiting until middle-age for the activities and honors he craved in his insatiable youth; and it was also true that he was even more of an aristocrat than many of his class, with whom a simpler attitude had become the fashion, even if it were not marrow-deep. But the ruling motive had been his passionate love of battle, a trait inherited perhaps from his pioneer ancestors, whose roots were in the soil. This desire to prove his mettle and fill his life with the only excitement worthy of his gifts, would alone have made him turn from the broad ancestral paths, but, like a lawyer fascinated by his brief, he had long since been heart and soul with the party he had chosen, and, with the exercise of his faculties, become possessed of a mounting desire not only to be of genuine use to his country, but to lift the family name from the comparative obscurity where it had rested during the half of a century.
The present head of the family had been an invalid in his early life, and Italy had withered whatever ambitions may have pricked him in his youth. When he finally found himself able to live the year round in England he saw no fault in a nation so superior to any of his exile, and he had settled down to the life of a country squire, devoted to sport, and supremely satisfied with himself. His eldest son, an estimable young man, who had worked at Christ Church as if he had been qualifying for a statesman or a don, died of typhoid-fever before the birth of his boy. The present heir, brilliant, weak, cynical, absolutely selfish, had rioted to such an extent that he had fatally injured his health and incurred the detestation of his grandfather; Lord Strathland was not only a virtuous old gentleman but was also inclined to be miserly. The subjects upon which they did not quarrel bitterly every time they met were those relating to Elton Gwynne, whom both loved, in so far as they loved any one but themselves. Deeply as they disapproved of his politics, they respected his independence and were inordinately proud of him. Zeal's daughters, who bored him inexpressibly, were parcelled out among relatives, and he led a roving life in search of beneficent air for his weary lungs. All women had become hateful to him since he had been forced to sit in the ashes of repentance, but he had consented to enter upon a second marriage through the most disinterested sentiment of his life, his love of his cousin, whose haunting fear of being shelved in his youth had been poured into his ears many times. That he also enraged his grandfather, who wanted nothing so much as the assurance that his favorite should inherit the territorial honors of his house, may have given zest to his act of renunciation. Not that he had the least intention of giving his cousin a solid basis for despair for many years to come, for no mother ever nursed her babe more tenderly than he his weak but by no means exhausted chest. During his last interview with Elton in London he had assured his anxious relative that he was taking the best of care of himself, and that, in spite of blood-shot eyes and haggard cheeks, his disease was quiescent; although he had decided to start for Davos or some other popular climate before the advent of harsh weather. Davos is a word of hideous portent in English ears, but Gwynne had expelled it with all other cares from his mind, and on this night when he returned from Arcot feeling a far greater man than any of his house had ever dreamed of being, and with a song in his heart, the awful face of his cousin, whom in the shock of the moment he thought stricken with death, gave him the first stab of terror and doubt that he had experienced in his triumphant life.
"Come up-stairs," said Zeal. "We are liable to interruption here."
"Have they put you up decently?" asked Gwynne, with his mind's surface. "The house is rather full."
"I shall leave by the seven-o'clock train, and it must be three now. I have no intention of going to bed."
"Is that wise? You look pretty seedy, old man. You haven't had a hemorrhage?" He almost choked as he brought the word out, and yet he was not in the least surprised when Zeal replied, tonelessly, "I had forgotten I ever had a chest;" for his mind was vibrating with a telepathic message which his wits attacked fiercely and without avail.
As they entered his room he pushed his cousin into an easy-chair and turned up the lamp on the writing-table. Then he planted his feet on the hearth-rug with a blind instinct to die standing.
"Fire away, for God's sake," he said. "Something has happened. You know you can count on me, whatever it is."
Zeal, who was sitting stiffly forward, his hands gripping the arms of his chair, laughed dryly. "You will be the chief sufferer. The others don't count."
"Has my grandfather speculated once too often? Are we gone completely smash?" Gwynne was rapidly assuring himself that he was now prepared for the worst, that nothing should knock the props from under him again, that it was the sight of Zeal's face that had upset him; he was not one to collapse before the stiff blows of life.
"It is likely. Anyhow, if he lives long enough he'll make a mess of what is left." He raised his head slowly, and once more Gwynne, as he met those terrible haunted eyes, felt as Adam may have felt when he was being bundled towards the exit of Eden. He braced himself unconsciously, and after Zeal's next words did not relax his body, although his lips turned white and stiff.
"I am going to kill myself some time to-day," said Zeal, in a voice so emotionless that Gwynne wondered idly if all his capacity for expression had gone to his eyes. "I should have done it several hours earlier, but I felt that I owed you an explanation. You can pass it on to my grandfather when the time comes."
He paused a moment, and then he too seemed to brace himself.
"I killed Brathland," he said.
Gwynne moistened his lips. "Poor old Zeal," he muttered. "It must be a horrid sensation—"
"To be a murderer? I can assure you it is."
Gwynne's mind seemed to darken until only one luminous point confronted it, the visible tormented soul of his kinsman. He walked over to the table and mixed two tumblers of whiskey-and-soda, wondering why he had not thought of it before. They drank without haste, and then Gwynne took the chair opposite Zeal's.
"Tell me all about it," he said.
"Brathland and I had not been friends for some years. He was a bounder, and an ass in the bargain. I never, even when we were on speaking terms, made any particular effort to hide what I thought of him—it wasn't worth while. Of course, with every mother firing her girls at his head, and the flatterers and toadies from whom a prospective duke cannot escape if he would, he had an opinion of himself that would have made me the object of his particular rancor, even if I hadn't cut him out with three different women that couldn't marry either of us. When I got the verdict that I must pull up or go under, he chose that particular moment to take up with Stella Starr, the only woman I ever cared a pin for. Somehow, he got wind of my condition, and knowing that I would prefer to retire as gracefully as possible, it struck him as the refinement of vengeance to make a laughing-stock of me when I was no longer in a condition to play the game out; to advertise me as a worn-out rake for whom the world of Stella Starrs had no further use. We never spoke again until Friday night."
He paused, then mixed and drank another whiskey-and-soda, lit a cigarette, and resumed.
"I had objected to his being let into the mine, which Vanneck's agent and private letters had persuaded the rest of us would make our fortunes; but I was helpless, for he was not only Vanneck's cousin, but his brother is out in Africa and also interested in the mine. I therefore consented to attend the dinner at which the whole business was to be discussed, fully intending to treat him as I should any stranger to whom I had just been introduced.
"At first all went well enough. We had the private dining-room and smoking-room on the second floor at the Club, the dinner was excellent, and Brathland, although nearly opposite me, behaved as decently as he always did when sober. It was champagne that let loose the bounder in him, and that was one reason I always so thoroughly despised him: the man that is not a gentleman when he is drunk has no right to be alive at all.
"We were not long discussing the mine threadbare, for we did not know enough about it to enlarge into any picturesque details, and the agent, who had seen each of us separately, was not present. Raglin read a personal letter from Vanneck, and Brathland another from Dick. Then, the subject being exhausted long before we reached the end of dinner, we drifted off to other topics; and went into the smoking-room with the coffee.
"It was at least six years since I had tasted anything stronger than whiskey-and-water, and what devil entered into me that night to drink a quart of champagne, and liqueurs, and pour port and brandy on top, the devil himself only knows. Perhaps the old familiar sight of a lot of good fellows; most likely the vanity of forcing Brathland to believe that he beheld a rival as vigorous and dangerous as of old—I had gained ten pounds and was looking and feeling particularly fit. At all events the mess affected me as alcohol never had done in even my salet days, and although my thoughts seemed to be moving in a crystal procession, I became slowly obsessed with the desire to kill Brathland; whose face, chalky white, as it always was when he was drunk—and he always got drunk on less than any one else—filled me with a fury of disgust and hatred. My mind kept assuring this thing that straddled it that I had not the least intention of making an ass of myself; and that procession of thought, in order to support its confidence, entered into an argument with my conscience, which was in a corner and looked like a codfish standing on its tail and grinning impotently. A jig of words escaped from the mouth of the codfish: copy-book maxims, Bible admonitions, the commandments, legal statutes; all in one hideous mess that annoyed me so I slipped out, went up to my room, and pocketed a pistol. That logical procession of thought in my mind assured me that this unusual move at a friendly business dinner was merely in the way of self-protection, for Brathland had once been heard to say that he wished we were both cow-boys on an American ranch so that he could put a bullet into me without taking the consequences—he never had a brain above shilling shockers. My thoughts, as they visibly combined and recombined in the crystal vault of my skull, asserted confidently that he had been reading such stuff lately, and that, ten to one, he had a pistol in his pocket.
"When I returned Brathland was standing by the hearth, supporting himself by the chimney-piece. The rest were lying about in long chairs, smoking, and drinking whiskey-and-sodas. They were all sober enough, and Brathland looked the more of a beast by contrast.
"I took a chair opposite him and ordered my thoughts to arrange themselves in phrases that should pierce his mental hide and wither the very roots of his self-esteem—his vanity was the one big thing about him. But he took his doom into his own hands and built it up like a house of cards.
"'How does it feel to be drunk once more?' he asked, with his damnable sneer. 'It makes you look less of a hypochondriac, anyhow. "Granny Zeal"—that's what the girls call you.'
"'If they do I've no doubt you taught them,' I replied, in tones as low as his own. Several men were seated not far off, but neither of us hung out a storm signal.
"'I did,' he said. 'Not but that I had had revenge enough. I had made you ridiculous—you with your damned superior airs—like that infant phenomenon cousin of yours who is making the family ass of himself over Julia Kaye—'
"Those were his last words. I pulled the pistol and fired straight into his abdomen—knew I couldn't miss him there.
"God! what a commotion there was. He doubled up with a yell—just like him. The men fairly bounded out of their chairs. There were two waiters in the room—just come in with Apollinaris. Raglin slammed the doors to, and, while Ormond and Hethrington laid Brathland out on a sofa, asked the servants if they would hold their tongues until it was known whether he would die or not. They assented readily enough, knowing how damned well worth their while it was. Then he went off for a surgeon—didn't dare telephone—went straight for a young fellow named Ballast he happened to know, and asked him if he would probe for a bullet and call it appendicitis, for a thousand pounds. Apparently there was no time wasted in argument, for he returned in half an hour with his man. The surgeon probed for the bullet, but without success. Then he bandaged Brathland, had him carried up to Raglin's room, and sent for a nurse that he could trust.
"We all regathered in the smoking-room, shut the waiters in the dining-room, and talked the matter over. By this time I was more hideously sober than I ever had been in my life. What they thought of me I neither knew nor cared, and it is doubtful if they knew themselves; their one thought was to keep the matter from getting out and dragging the Club into a scandal; and of course Raglin was equally keen on sheltering the family, whether Brathland lived or died. Anyhow, I fancy they would have stood by me, for if we have no other virtue we do stand by each other.
"Practically the only question was the amount to be paid in blackmail, for every trace of the affair had been removed; even the smell of antiseptics and ether had gone. We finally called the waiters in and offered them four hundred each for their silence, or in the case of Brathland's death—the surgeon held out hopes—a thousand. They coolly replied they would take a thousand apiece before noon on the following day, and ten thousand each in case of death. We—or rather Raglin and one or two others—jawed for an hour; but the wretches never yielded an inch. They had us on the hip and were not likely to be put off by any amount of eloquence. Of course we caved in and God knows what amount of future blackmail the Club is in for. Then there was the thousand for the surgeon, and the nurse would expect a thousand more. Of course I made myself responsible for the entire amount. Raglin insisted for a time upon going halves—blood may be blood, but he had despised Bratty as much as I ever did—but of course I would not hear of it.
"The next afternoon the surgeon probed again, and Brathland died under the ether. The wound after probing looked sufficiently like an ordinary incision to deceive any one. Raglin and Harold Lorcutt—who, of course, was told the truth—naturally had the body sealed up in lead before taking it north. The old duke and the women of the family are in a fair way to know nothing."
He paused abruptly and lifted his eyes once more to Gwynne's, bursting into a laugh that sounded like the crackling of fire under dry leaves.
"Lovely story, ain't it?"
But Gwynne made no reply. His mind, released, was working abnormally, and his face was as livid as his cousin's had been.
Zeal rose. The narrative had excited him out of his apathy and physical exhaustion, the confession shaken the rigidity from his mind. He planted himself on the hearth-rug with an air that approached nonchalance. His thin clever face had a burning spot on either cheek, his sunken eyes were no longer haunted, but brilliant and staring; his thin high nose and fine hands twitched slightly, as if his nerves were enjoying a too sudden release.
"Heavenly sensation—to be a murderer. What beastly names things have and how we are obsessed by them! The word rings in my brain night and day—I haven't slept three hours since it happened, and I never had the remotest hope that he would live. It's the second time in my life I've been up against a cold ugly fact that stands by itself in a region where rhetoric doesn't enter. I believe I could tolerate the situation if I'd done it in cold blood, if I'd thought it out, determined to gratify my hatred of the man; if, in short, the deed had been the offspring of my intelligence, for which I have always had a considerable respect. But to have been under the control of a Thing, like any navvy, to be a criminal without the consent of my will—
"I don't know that that fact alone would make life insupportable. But there are other and sufficient reasons. I shall never get the hideous sight of Brathland as he doubled up, and his horrid gurgling shriek, out of my mind this side of the grave. And I am practically cleaned out. You know how much I have left of my mother's property! It barely covers what I paid out to-day. There isn't a penny for the girls. They will be dependent on Strathland—as I should be if I lived; a position for which I have as little relish as for that of a murderer on the loose. And should I ever be really safe? If this stinking quartet takes it into its head to levy annual blackmail, where is the money coming from? I won't have the others let in while I'm alive. If it did come to that—and of course it would—I'd get out anyhow, so I may as well go now and save myself further horrors. Besides, with all our precautions, we may have overlooked some significant detail, there may have been an eavesdropper, the undertakers may have had their suspicions—for all I know I may be arrested to-morrow—well, Jack, what would you do in my place?"
Gwynne shook himself and stood up. "I don't know. I have been feeling as if I had killed Bratty myself. But I cannot imagine myself committing suicide—talk about ugly words! In the first place I don't think that one crime is any reason for committing another, and in the second—"
"It is cowardly! You don't suppose that old standby slipped my mind, do you? Well, I am a coward. There you have my dispassionate opinion of myself. I don't see myself in the prisoner's dock, in the graceful act of dangling from the end of a rope; or, if the judge was inclined to have pity on the family, of dying in a prison hospital. Even if I trumped up the necessary fortitude I should be a blacker villain than I am to bring disgrace upon my five poor girls and the woman that has promised to marry me, to say nothing of Vicky and yourself. Nor, on the other hand, do I see myself skulking in some hole abroad with the hue and cry after me. I have just as little appetite for the rôle of the haunted man in comparative security. Well, what would you do yourself?"
Gwynne shuddered. His own eyes were hunted. "How, in God's name, can any man tell what he would do until he is in the same hole? I should like to think that I would speak out and take the consequences. There is little danger of your swinging, and as for imprisonment—one way or another you've got to answer for your crime, and it seems to me that the honest thing is to accept the penalty of the law you live under."
"Well, it doesn't to me," said Zeal, coolly, and lighting another cigarette. "I asked the question merely out of curiosity, as the workings of your mind always interest me. But I have quite made up my own mind. The only reason I hesitated a moment—to be exact, it was half a day—was on your account. Of course I know what my death will mean to you."
"It was for that reason I was almost coward enough not to remonstrate." Gwynne scratched a match several times before he succeeded in getting a light. "Nevertheless, I meant it."
"Don't doubt it. And I am sorry—it is about the only regret I shall take with me, that and some remorse on account of the girls. I suppose Strathland will throw them a bone each—"
"I will look out for them. But you are not bent on this horror!" he burst out. Wild plans of drugging his cousin, of locking him up, chased through his mind, and at the same time he was sick with the certainty of his own impotence. He knew his cousin, and he had the sensation that an illuminated scroll of fate dangled before his eyes.
Zeal nodded. His excitement, his fears, had left him. He felt something of the swagger in calm peculiar to the condemned in their final hour, that last great rally of the nerves to feed the fires of courage. He finished his cigarette and flung himself on the sofa.
"Wake me at twenty to seven, will you?" he asked. "I have ordered the trap."