The ensuing fortnight brought the expected changes in the household. James Brood, to the surprise of not only himself, but others, lapsed into a curious state of adolescence. His infatuation was complete. The once dominant influence of the man seemed to slink away from him as the passing days brought up the new problems of life. Where he had lived to command he now was content to serve.
His friends, his son, his servants viewed the transformation with wonder, not to say apprehension. It was not difficult to understand his infatuation for the—shall we say enchantress? He was not the only one there to fall under the spell. But it was almost unbelievable that he should submit to thraldom with the complacency of a weakling.
Love, which had been lying bruised and unconscious within him for twenty years and more, arose from its stupor and became a thing to play with, as one would play with a child. The old, ugly vistas melted into dreamy, adolescent contemplations of a paradise in which he could walk hand-in-hand with the future and find that the ghosts of the past no longer attended him along the once weary way.
It would not be true to say that the remarkable personality of the man had suffered. He was still the man of steel, but re-tempered. The rigid broadsword was made over into the fine, flexible blade of Toledo. He could be bent but not broken.
It pleased him to submit to Yvonne's commands,
Not that they were arduous or peremptory; on the contrary, they were suggestions in which his own comfort and pleasure appeared to be the inspiration. He found something like delight in being rather amiably convinced of his own shortcomings; in learning from her that his life up to this hour had been a sadly mismanaged affair; that there were soft, fertile spots in his heart where things would grow in spite of him. He enjoyed the unique spectacle of himself in the process of being made over to fit ideals that he would have scorned a few months before.
She was too wise to demand, too clever to resort to cajolery. She was a Latin. Diplomacy was hers as a birthright. Complaints, appeals, sulks would have gained nothing from James Brood. It would not have occurred to her to employ these methods. From the day she entered the house she was its mistress. She was sure of her ground, sure of herself, fettered by no sense of doubt as to her position there, bound by no feminine notion of gratitude to man, as many women are who find themselves married. It might almost be said of her that she ruled without making a business of it.
To begin with, she miraculously transferred the sleeping quarters of Messrs Dawes and Riggs from the second floor front to the third floor back without arousing the slightest sign of antagonism on the part of the crusty old gentlemen who had occupied one of the choice rooms in the house with uninterrupted security for a matter of nine or ten years. This was a feat that James Brood himself would never have tried to accomplish. They had selected this room at the first instant of occupation, because it provided something of a view up and down the street from the big bow window, and they wouldn't evacuate.
Mrs Brood explained the situation to them so graciously, so convincingly, that they even assisted the servants in moving their heterogeneous belongings to the small, remote room on the third floor, and applauded her plan to make a large sitting-room of the chamber they were deserting. It did not occur to them for at least three days that they had been imposed upon, cheated, maltreated, insulted, and then it was too late. The decorators were in the big room on the second floor.
Perhaps they would not have arrived at a sense of realisation even then if it had not come out in the course of conversation that it was not to be ageneralsitting-room, but one with reservations. The discovery of what they secretly were pleased to call duplicity brought an abrupt end to the period of abstemiousness that had lasted since the day of her arrival, when, out of courtesy to the bride, they had turned their backs upon the tipple.
Now, however, the situation was desperate. She had tricked them with her wily politeness. They had been betrayed by the wife of their bosom friend. Is it small cause for wonder, then, that the poor gentlemen as manfully turned back to the tipple and got gloriously, garrulously drunk in the middle of the afternoon and also in the middle of the library, where tea was to have been served to a few friends asked in to meet the bride?
The next morning a fresh edict was issued. It came from James Brood, and it was so staggering that the poor gentlemen were loath to believe their ears. As a result of this new command they began to speak of Mrs Brood in the privacy of their own room as “that woman.” Of course, it was entirely due to her mischievous, malevolent influence that a spineless husband put forth the order that they were to have nothing more to drink while they remained in his house.
This command was modified to a slight extent later on. Brood felt sorry for the victims. He loved them, and he knew that their pride was injured a great deal more than their appetite. In its modified form the edict allowed them a small drink in the morning and another at bedtime, but the doses (as they sarcastically called them) were to be administered by Jones the butler, who held the key to the situation and—the sideboard.
“Is this a dispensary?” wailed Mr Dawes in weak horror. “Are we to stand in line and solicit the common necessities of life? Answer me, Riggs! Confound you, don't stand there like a wax figure! Say something!”
Mr Riggs shook his head bleakly.
“Poor Jim,” was all that he said, and rolled his eyes heavenward.
Mr Dawes reflected. After many minutes the tears started down his rubicund cheeks. “Poor old Jim,” he sighed. And after that they looked upon Mrs Brood as the common enemy of all three.
The case of Mrs John Desmond was disposed of in a summary but tactful manner.
“If Mrs Desmond is willing to remain, James, as housekeeper instead of friend, all well and good,” said Mrs Brood, discussing the matter in the seclusion of her boudoir. “I doubt, however, whether she can descend to that. You have spoiled her, my dear.”
Brood was manifestly pained and uncomfortable.
“She was the wife of my best friend, Yvonne. I have never permitted her to feel——”
“Ah,” she interrupted, “the wives of best friends! Nearly every man has the wife of a best friend somewhere in his life's history.” She shook her head at him with mock mournfulness.
He flushed. “I trust you do not mean to imply that——”
“I know what you would say. No, I do not mean anything of the sort. Still, you now have a wife of your own. Is it advisable to have also the wife of a best friend?”
“Really, Yvonne, all this sounds very suspicious and—unpleasant. Mrs Desmond is the soul of——”
“My dear man, why should you defend her? I am not accusing her. I am merely going into the ethics of the situation. If you can forget that Mrs Desmond is the wife of your friend and come to regard her as a servant in your establishment, no one will be more happy than I to have her about the place. She is fine, she is competent, she is a lady. But she is not my equal here. Can't you understand?”
He was thoughtful for a moment.
“I dare say you are right. The conditions are peculiar. I can't go to her and say that she must consider herself as—oh, no, that would be impossible.”
“I should like to have Mrs Desmond as my friend, not as my housekeeper,” said his wife simply.
“By Jove, and that's just what I should like,” he cried.
“There is but one way, you know.”
“She must be one or the other, eh?”
“Precisely,” she said with firmness. “In my country, James, the wives of best friends haven't the same moral standing that they appear to have in yours. Oh, don't scowl so! Shall I tell you again that I do not mean to reflect on Mrs Desmond's virtue—or discretion? Far from it. If she is to be my friend, she cannot be your housekeeper. That's the point. Has she any means of her own? Can she——”
“She has a small income, and an annuity which I took out for her soon after her poor husband's death. We were the closest of friends——”
“I understand, James. You are very generous and very loyal. I quite understand. Losing her position here, then, will not be a hardship?”
“No,” said he soberly.
“I am quite competent, James,” she said brightly. “You will not miss her, I am sure.”
“It isn't that, Yvonne,” he sighed. “Mrs Desmond and Lydia have been factors in my life for so long that—— But, of course, that is neither here nor there. I will explain the situation to her to-morrow. She will understand.”
“Thank you, James. You are really quite reasonable.”
“Are you laughing at me, darling?”
She gave him one of her searching, unfathomable glances, and she smiled with roguish mirth.
“Isn't it your mission in life to amuse and entertain me?”
“I love you, Yvonne. Good God, how I love you!” he cried abruptly.
His eyes burned with a sudden flame of passion as he bent over her. His face quivered; his whole being tingled with the fierce spasm of an uncontrollable desire to crush the warm, adorable body to his breast in the supreme ecstasy of possession.
She surrendered herself to his passionate embrace. A little later she withdrew herself from his arms, her lips still quivering with the fierceness of his kisses. Her eyes, dark with wonder and perplexity, regarded his transfigured face for a long, tense moment.
“Is this love, James?” she whispered. “Is this the real, true love?”
“What else, in Heaven's name, can it be?” he cried. He was sitting upon the arm of her chair, looking down at the strangely pallid face.
“But should love have the power to frighten me?”
“Frighten, my darling?”
“Oh, it is not you who are frightened,” she cried. “You are the man. But I—ah, I am only the woman.”
He stared. “What an odd way to put it, dear.”
Then he drew back, struck by the curious gleam of mockery in her eyes.
“Was it like this twenty-five years ago?” she asked.
“Yvonne!”
“Did you love her—like this?”
He managed to smile. “Are you jealous?”
“Tell me about her.”
His face hardened. “Some other time, not now.”
“But you loved her, didn't you?”
“Don't be silly, dear.”
“And she loved you. If you loved her as you love me, she could not have helped——”
“Please, please, Yvonne!” he exclaimed, a dull red setting in his cheek.
“You have never told me her name——”
He faced her, his eyes as cold as steel. “I may as well tell you now, Yvonne, that her name is never mentioned in this house.”
She seemed to shrink down farther in the chair.
“Why?” she asked, an insistent note in her voice.
“It isn't necessary to explain.” He walked away from her to the window and stood looking out over the bleak little courtyard. Neither spoke for many minutes, and yet he knew that her questioning gaze was upon him and that when he turned to her again she would ask still another question. He tried to think of something to say that would turn her away from this hated subject.
“Isn't it time for you to dress, dearest? The Gunnings live pretty far up north and the going will be bad with Fifth Avenue piled up with snow——”
“Doesn't Frederic ever mention his mother's name?” came the question that he feared before it was uttered.
“I am not certain that he knows her name,” said he levelly. The knuckles of his hands, clenched tightly behind his back, were white. “He has never heard me utter it.”
She looked at him darkly. There was something in her eyes that caused him to shift his own steady gaze uncomfortably. He could not have explained what it was, but it gave him a curiously uneasy feeling, as of impending peril. It was not unlike the queer, inexplicable, though definite, sensing of danger that more than once he had experienced in the silent, tranquil depths of great forests.
“But you loved her just the same, James, up to the time you met me. Is not that true?”
“No!” he exclaimed loudly. “It is not true.”
“I wonder what could have happened to make you so bitter toward her,” she went on, still watching him through half-closed eyes. “Was she unfaithful to you? Was——”
“Good God, Yvonne!” he cried, an angry light jumping into his eyes—the eyes that so recently had been ablaze with love.
“Don't be angry, dearest,” she cried plaintively. “We Europeans speak of such things as if they were mere incidents. I forget that you Americans take them seriously, as tragedies.”
He controlled himself with an effort. The pallor in his face would have alarmed anyone but her.
“We must never speak of—of that again, Yvonne,” he said, a queer note of hoarseness in his voice. “Never, do you understand?” He was very much shaken.
“Forgive me,” she pleaded, stretching out her hand to him. “I am foolish, but I did not dream that I was being cruel or unkind. Perhaps, dear, it is because I am—jealous.”
“There is no one—nothing to be jealous of,” he said, passing a hand over his moist brow. Then he drew nearer and took her hand in his. It was as cold as ice.
“Your hand is cold, darling,” he cried.
“And yours, too,” she said, looking down at their clasped hands, a faint smile on her lips. Suddenly she withdrew her fingers from his strong grip. A slight shiver ran over her frame. “Ugh! I don't like cold hands!”
He laughed rather desolately. “Suppose that I were to say the same to you?”
“I am temperamental; you are not,” she replied coolly. “Sit down, dear. Let us be warm again.”
“Shall I have the fire replenished——”
“No,” she said with her slow smile, “you don't understand.”
He lounged again on the arm of her chair. She leaned back and sighed contentedly, the smile on her red lips growing sweeter with each breath that she took. He felt his blood warming once more.
For a long time they sat thus, looking into each other's eyes without speaking. He was trying to fathom the mystery that lurked at the bottom of those smiling wells; she, on the other hand, deluded herself with the idea that she was reading his innermost thought.
“I have been considering the advisability of sending Frederic abroad for a year or two,” said he at last.
She started. She had been far from right in her reading.
“Now? This winter?”
“Yes. He has never been abroad.”
“Indeed? And he is half European, too. It seems—forgive me, James. Really, you know, I cannot always keep my thoughts from slipping out. You shouldn't expect it, dear.”
“How did you know that his—his mother was a European?” he inquired abruptly.
“Dear me! What manner of woman do you think I am? Without curiosity? I should be a freak. I have inquired of Mrs Desmond. There was no harm in that.”
“What did she tell you? But no! It doesn't matter. We shan't discuss it. We——”
“She told me little or nothing,” she broke in quickly. “You may rest quite easy, James.”
“Upon my word, Yvonne, I don't understand——”
“Let us speak of Frederic.”
“I suppose it is only natural that you should inquire,” he said resignedly.
“Of my servants,” she added pointedly.
He flushed slightly. “I dare say I deserve the rebuke. It will not be necessary to pursue that line of inquiry, however. I shall tell you the story myself some day, Yvonne. Will you not bear with me?”
She met the earnest appeal in his eyes with a slight frown of annoyance.
“Who is to tell me the wife's side of the story?”
The question was like a blow to him. He stared at her as if he had not heard aright. Before he could speak she went on coolly.
“I dare say there are two sides to it, James. It's usually the case.”
He winced. “There is but one side to this one,” he said, a harsh note in his voice.
“That is why I began my inquiries with Mrs Desmond,” she said enigmatically. “But I shan't pursue them any farther. You loveme; that is all I care to know—or that I require.”
“Idolove you,” he said, almost imploringly. She stroked his gaunt cheek. “Then we may let the other woman—go hang, eh?”
He felt the cold sweat start on his brow. Her callous remark slashed his finer sensibilities like the thrust of a dagger. He tried to laugh, but only succeeded in producing a painful grimace.
“And now,” she went on, as if the matter were fully disposed of, “we will discuss something tangible, eh? Frederic.”
“Yes,” said he, rather dazedly. “Frederic.”
“I am very, very fond of your son, James,” she said. “How proud you must be to have such a son.”
He eyed her narrowly. How much of the horrid story did she know? How much of it had John Desmond told to his wife?
“I am surprised at your liking him, Yvonne. He is what I'd call a difficult young man.”
“I haven't found him difficult.”
“Morbid and unresponsive.”
“Not by nature, however. There is a joyousness, a light-heartedness in his character that has never got beyond the surface until now, James.”
“Until now?”
“Yes. And you talk of sending him away. Why?”
“He has wanted to go abroad for years. This is a convenient time for him to go.”
“But I am quite sure he will not care to go at present—not for a while, at least.”
“And why not, may I ask?”
“Because he is in love.”
“In love!” he exclaimed, his jaw setting hard.
“He is in love with Lydia.”
“I'll put a stop to that!”
“And why, may I ask?” she mimicked.
“Because—why——” he burst out, but instantly collected himself. “He is not in a position to marry, that's all.”
“Financially?”
He swallowed hard. “Yes.”
“Poof!” she exclaimed, dismissing the obstacle with a wave of her slim hand. “A cigarette, please. There is another reason why he shouldn't go—an excellent one.”
“The reason you've already given is sufficient to convince me that he ought to go at once. What is the other one, pray?”
She lighted a cigarette from the match he held. “What would you say if I were to tell you that I object to his going away—at present?”
“I should ask the very obvious question.”
“Because I like him, I want him to like me, and I shall be very lonely without him,” she answered calmly.
“You are frank, to say the least,” said he, laughing.
“And serious. I don't want him to go away at present. Later on, yes; but not now. I shall need him, James.”
“You will be lonely, you say.”
“Certainly. You forget that I am young.”
“I see,” said he, a sudden pain in his heart. “Perhaps it would be more to the point if you were to say that I forget that I am old.”
She laughed. It was a soft, musical laugh that strangely stilled the tumult in his breast.
“You are younger than Frederic,” she said. “Unless we do something to prevent it, your son will be an old man before he is thirty. Don't send him away now, James. Let me have him for a while. I mean it, dear. He is a lonely boy, and I know what it is to be lonely.”
“You?” he cried. “Why, you've never known anything but——”
“One can be lonely even in the heart of a throng,” she said cryptically. “No, James, I will not have him sent away.”
He resented the imputation. “Why do you say that I am sending him away?”
“Because you are,” she replied boldly.
He was silent for a moment. “We will leave it to Frederic,” he said.
Her face brightened. “That is all I ask. He will stay.”
There was another pause. “You two have become very good friends, Yvonne.”
“He is devoted to me.”
“Don't spoil him in making him over,” he said dryly.
She blew cigarette—smoke in his face and laughed. There was a knock at the door.
“Come in!” she called.
Frederic entered.
Acertain element of gaiety invaded the staid old house in these days. The new mistress was full of life and the joy of living. She was accustomed to adulation, she was used to the tumult of society. Her life, since she left the convent school, evidently had been one in which rest, except physical, was unknown.
Yvonne Lestrange, in a way, had been born to purple and fine linen. She had never known deprivation of any description. Neither money, position, nor love had been denied her during the few years in which her charm and beauty had flashed across the great European capitals, penetrating even to the recesses of royal courts.
It is doubtful if James Brood knew very much concerning her family when he proposed marriage to her, but it is certain that he did not care. He first saw her at the home of a British nobleman, but did not meet her. Something in the vivid, brilliant face of the woman made a deep and lasting impression on him. There was an instant when their eyes met through an opening in the throng which separated them. He was not only conscious of the fact that he was staring at her, but that she was looking at him in a curiously penetrating way.
There was a mocking smile on her lips at the time. He saw it fade away, even as the crowd came between. He knew that the smile had not been intended for him, but for someone of the eager cavaliers who surrounded her, and yet there was something singularly direct in the look she gave him.
Later on he made inquiries of his host, with whom he had hunted big game in Africa, and learned that she was a guest in the home of the Russian ambassador. He did not see her again until they met in the south of France a few months later. On this occasion they were guests at the same house, and he took her into dinner. He had not forgotten her, and it gratified him immensely to discover that she remembered him.
That single glance in the duke's house proved to be a fatal one for both. They were married inside of a month. The virile, confident American had conquered where countless suppliants of a more or less noble character had gone down to defeat.
He asked but one question of her; she asked none of him. The fact that she was the intimate friend and associate of the woman in whose home he met her was sufficient proof of her standing in society, although that would have counted for little so far as Brood was concerned.
She was the daughter of a baron; she had spent much of her life in Paris, coming from St Petersburg when a young girl; and she was an orphan with an independent fortune of her own.
Her home in Paris, where she had lived with some degree of permanence for the past four or five years, was shared with an estimable, though impoverished, lady of rank, the Countess de Rochambert, of middle age and undeniable qualifications as a chaperon, even among those who are prone to laugh at locksmiths. Such common details as these came to Brood in the natural way and were not derived from any effort on his part to secure information concerning Mlle Lestrange. Like the burned child, he asked a question which harked back to an unforgotten pain.
“Have you ever loved a man deeply, devotedly, Yvonne—so deeply that there is pain in the thought of him?”
She replied without hesitation.
“There is no such man, James. You may be sure of that.”
“I am confident that I can hold your love against the future, but no man is vital enough to compete with the past. Love doesn't really die, you know. If a man cannot hold a woman's love against all new-comers, he deserves to lose it. It doesn't follow, however, that he can protect himself against the man who appears out of the past and claims his own.”
“You speak as though the past had played you an evil trick,” she said.
He did not mince words.
“Years ago a man came out of the past and took from me the woman I loved and cherished.”
“Your—your wife?” she asked in a voice suddenly lowered.
“Yes,” he said quietly.
She was silent for a long time.
“I wonder at your courage in taking the risk again,” she said.
“I think I wonder at it myself,” said he. “No, I am not afraid,” he went on, as if convincing himself that there was no risk. “I shall make you love me to the end, Yvonne. I am not afraid. But why do you not ask me for all the wretched story?”
“It is not unlike all stories of its kind, my dear,” she said with an indifference that amazed him. “They are all alike. Why should I ask? The wife takes up with an old lover; she deceives her husband; the world either does or does not find out about it; the home is wrecked; the husband takes to drink; the wife pretends she is happy; the lover takes to women; and the world goes on just the same in spite of them. Sometimes the husband kills. It is of no moment. Sometimes the wife destroys herself. It is a trifle. The whole business is like the magazine story that is for ever being continued in our next. No, I do not ask you for your story, James. Some time you may tell me, but not to-day. I shouldn't mind hearing it if it were an original tale, but God knows it isn't. It's as old as the Nile. But you may tell me more about your son. Is he like you, or like his mother?”
Brood's lips were compressed.
“I can't say that he is like either of us,” he said shortly.
She raised her eyebrows slightly.
“Ah,” she said. “That makes quite a difference. Perhaps, after all, I shall be interested in the story.” Her manner was so casual, so serenely, matter-of-fact, that he could hardly restrain the sharp exclamation of annoyance that rose to his lips.
He bit his lip and allowed the frank insinuation to go unanswered. He consoled himself with the thought that she must have spoken in jest without intention. He had the uncomfortable feeling that she would make light of his story, too, when the time came for revelations. A curious doubt took root in his mind: Would he ever be able to understand the nature of this woman whom he loved and who appeared to love him so unreservedly? As time went on the doubt became a conviction. She proved to be utterly beyond Brood's comprehension.
The charm and beauty of the new mistress of James Brood's heart and home was to become the talk of the town. Already, in the first month of her reign, she had drawn to the old house the attention not only of the parasites who feed on novelty, but of families that had long since given up Brood as a representative figure in the circle into which he had been born.
He had dropped out of their lives so completely in the passing years that no one took the trouble to interest himself in the man's affairs. His self-effacement had been complete. The story of his ill-fated marriage was an almost forgotten page in the history of the town.
Old friends now cudgelled their brains to recall the details of the break between him and the first Mrs Brood, who, they were bound to remember, was also beautiful, fascinating, and an adornment to the rather exclusive circle in which they moved. No one could point to the real cause of the separation, however, for the excellent reason that the true conditions were never revealed to anyone outside the four walls of the house from which she was banished.
Memory merely brought to mind the fact that the young husband became a wanderer on the face of the earth, and that his once joyous face was an almost forgotten object.
Brood, in the full pride of possession, awoke to the astounding realisation that he wanted people to envy him this wonderful creature. He wanted men to covet her! He longed to have the world see her at his side, and to feel that the world was saying: “She belongs to James Brood.”
It was not the cheap, ordinary New York society, the insufferably rich and vulgar of the metropolis that he sought to conquer, but the fine old families with whom rests the real verdict. He knew that those families were not many in these days of haste and waste, but he also knew that the rush of frivolity had not weakened their position. Their word was still the law. Serenely confident, he revealed his wife to the few, and waited.
It cannot be said that she conquered, for that would be to imply design on her part. Possibly she considered the game unworthy of the effort. For, in truth, Yvonne Brood despised Americans. She made small pretence of liking them. The rather closely knit circle of Parisian aristocracy which she affected is known to tolerate, but not to invite, the society of even the best of Americans.
She was no larger than her environment. Her views upon and her attitude toward the Americans were not created by her but for her. The fact that James Brood had reached the inner shrine of French self-worship no doubt put him in a class apart from all other Americans, so far as she was concerned. At least it may account for an apparent inconsistency, in that she married him without much hesitation.
She welcomed the admiration and attention of the friends he brought to the house by one means or another during the first few weeks. If she was surprised to find them cultured, clever, agreeable specimens, she failed to mention the discovery to him. They amused her and therefore served a purpose. She charmed them in exchange for the tribute they paid to her.
Those whom she liked the least she took no pains to please; in fact, she endured them so politely that while they may have secretly resented her indifference, they could do no less than openly profess admiration for her. She offended no one, yet she managed with amazing adroitness to rid herself of the bores. It happened, however, that the so-called bores were the very people that Brood particularly wanted her to cultivate. She found them stupid, but respectable.
They were for ever telling her that she would like New York when she got used to it.
Her warmest friend and admirer—one might almost say slave—was Frederic Brood. She had transformed him. He was no longer the silent, moody youth of other days, but an eager, impetuous playmate, whose principal object in life was to amuse her. If anyone had tried to convince him that he could have regarded Mrs Desmond's dethronement and departure with equanimity he would have protested with all the force at his command. But that would have been a month ago!
When the time came for his old friend to leave the house over which she had presided for ten of the gentlest years of his life, his heart was sore and his throat was tight with pain, but he accepted the inevitable with a resignation that once would have been impossible.
From the outset he realised that Mrs Desmond would have to go. At first he rebelled within himself against the unspoken edict. Afterward he was surprised to find that he regarded himself as selfish in even wishing that she might stay, when it was so palpably evident that the situation could not long remain pleasant for either Mrs Desmond or Mrs Brood. He saw Lydia and her mother leave without the slightest doubt in his mind that it was all for the best.
The Desmonds took a small apartment just around the corner from Brood's home, in a side street, and in the same block. Their windows looked down into the courtyard in the rear of Brood's home. Frederic assisted them in putting their new home in order. It was great fun for Lydia and him, this building of what they were pleased to call “a nest.”
Lydia may have seen the cloud in their sky, but he did not. To him the world was bright and gladsome, without a shadow to mar its new beauty. He was enthusiastic, eager, excited. She fell in with his spirit, but her pleasure was shorn of some of its keenness by the odd notion that it was not to endure.
He even dragged Yvonne around to the little flat to expatiate upon its cosiness with visual proof to support his somewhat exaggerated claims. Her lazy eyes took in the apartment at a glance and she was done with it.
“It is very charming,” she said with her soft drawl. “Have you no cigarettes, Lydia?”
The girl flushed and looked to Frederic for relief. He promptly produced his own cigarettes. Yvonne lighted one and then stretched herself in the Morris chair.
“You should learn to smoke,” she went on.
“Mother wouldn't like me to smoke,” said Lydia rather bluntly.
A faint frown appeared on Frederic's brow, only to disappear with Yvonne's low, infectious laugh.
“And Freddy doesn't like you to smoke either,aïe?” she said.
“He may have changed his mind recently, Mrs Brood,” said the girl, smiling so frankly that the edge was taken off of a rather direct implication.
“I don't mind women smoking,” put in Frederic hastily. “In fact, I rather like it, the way Yvonne does it. It's a very graceful accomplishment.”
“But I am too clumsy to——” began Lydia.
“My dear,” interrupted the Parisienne, carelessly flicking the ash into ajardinièreat her elbow, “it is very naughty to smoke, and clumsy women never should be naughty. If you really feel clumsy, don't, for my sake, ever try to do anything wicked. There is nothing so distressing as an awkward woman trying to be devilish.”
“Oh, Lydia couldn't be devilish if she tried!” cried Frederic, with a quick glance at the girl's half-averted face.
“Don't say that, Frederic,” she cried. “That's as much as to say that Iamclumsy and awkward.”
“And you are not,” said Yvonne decisively. “You are very pretty and graceful and adorable, and I am sure you could be very wicked if you set about to do it.”
“Thank you,” said Lydia dryly.
“By the way, this window looks almost directly down into our courtyard,” said Yvonne abruptly. She was leaning on her elbow, looking out upon the housetops below. “There is my balcony, Freddy. And one can almost look into your father's lair from where I sit.”
She drew back from the window suddenly, a passing look of fear in her eyes. It was gone in a second, and would have passed unnoticed but for the fact that Frederic was, as usual, watching her face with rapt interest. He caught the curious transition and involuntarily glanced below.
The heavy curtains in the window of his father's retreat were drawn apart, and the dark face of Ranjab, the Hindu, was plainly distinguishable.
He was looking up at the window in which Mrs Brood was sitting. Although Frederic was far above, he could see the gleaming white of the man's eyes. The curtains fell quickly together and the gaunt, brown face was gone.
An odd feeling of uneasiness came over the young man. It was the feeling of one who suddenly realises that he is being spied upon. He could not account for the faint chill that ran through his body, leaving him strangely cold and drear.
What was the meaning of that intense scrutiny from his father's window? Was Ranjab alone in the room? How did he happen to expose himself at the very instant Yvonne appeared in the window above? These and other questions raced through Frederic's puzzled brain. Out of them grew a queer, almost uncanny feeling that the Hindu had called to her in the still, mysterious voice of the East, and, although no sound had been uttered, she had heard as plainly as if he actually had shouted to her across the intervening space.
He recalled the tales of the old men, in which they spoke of the unaccountable swiftness with which news leaped across the unpopulated deserts, far in advance of any material means of transmission. Along the reaches of the Nile and in the jungles of India, weird instances of the astonishing projection of thought across vast spaces were constantly being reported. There was magic in the air. News travelled faster than the swiftest steed, even faster than the engines of man, into the most remote places, and yet there was no visible, tangible force behind the remarkable achievement.
His father had said more than once that the Hindu and the Egyptian possessed the power to be in two distinct places at the same time. He was wont to establish his theory by reciting the single instance of a sick dragoman who had been left behind in a village on the edge of the desert, with no means of crossing the vast stretch. And yet, when the caravan reached its destination after a long but record-breaking march, the man himself met them on the outskirts of the town with the astonishing report that he was quite well and strong after a two weeks' rest in his own house just inside of the city gates.
How he had passed them on the desert, and how he had reached his home a fortnight ahead of them, was one of the greatest mysteries James Brood had ever sought to unravel. The man's presence there created no surprise among the native members of the caravan. To them it was a most ordinary thing.
Again, in the depths of an Indian jungle Brood expressed the wish that he had brought with him a certain rifle he had left at home. Not a man left the camp, and yet at the end of the week a strange Hindu appeared with the rifle, having traversed several hundred miles of practically unexplored country in the time that would have been required to get the message to Lahore by horse alone.
James Brood, a sensible man, was a firm believer in magic.
This much Frederic knew of Ranjab: if James Brood needed him, no matter what the hour or the conditions, the man appeared before him as if out of nowhere and in response to no audible summons.
Was there, then, between these two, the beautiful Yvonne and the silent Hindu, a voiceless pact that defied the will or understanding of either?
He had not failed to note a tendency on her part to avoid the Hindu as much as possible. She even confessed to an uncanny dread of the man, but could not explain the feeling. Once she requested her husband to dismiss the faithful fellow. When he demanded the reason, however, she could only reply that she did not like the man and would feel happier if he were sent away. Brood refused, and from that hour her fear of the Hindu increased.
Now she was speaking in a nervous hurried manner to Lydia, her back toward the window. In the middle of a sentence she suddenly got up from the chair and moved swiftly to the opposite side of the room, where she sat down again as far as possible from the window.
Frederic found himself watching her face with curious interest. All the time she was speaking her eyes were fixed on the window. It was as if she expected something to appear there. There was no mistaking the expression. After studying her face in silence for a few minutes, Frederic himself experienced an irresistible impulse to turn toward the window. He half expected to see the Hindu's face there, looking in upon them, a perfectly absurd notion when he remembered that they were at least one hundred feet above the ground.
Presently she arose to go. No, she could not wait for Mrs Desmond's return.
“It is charming here, Lydia,” she said, surveying the little sitting-room with eyes that sought the window again and again in furtive darts. “Frederic must bring me here often. We shall have cosy times here, we three. It is so convenient, too, for you, my dear. You have only to walk around the corner, and there you are—at your place of business, as the men would say.”
Lydia was to continue as Brood's amanuensis. He would not listen to any other arrangement.
“Oh, I do hope you will come, Mrs Brood!” cried the girl earnestly. “My piano will be here to-morrow, and you shall hear Frederic play. He is really wonderful.”
“I'm the rankest duffer going, Yvonne,” broke in Frederic, but his eyes were alight with pleasure.
“You play?” asked Mrs Brood, regarding him rather fixedly.
“He disappears for hours at a time,” said Lydia, speaking for him, “and comes home humming fragments from—oh, but I am not supposed to tell! Forgive me, Frederic. Dear me! What have I done?” She was plainly distressed.
“No harm in telling Yvonne,” said he, but uneasily. “You see, it's this way: father doesn't like the idea of my going in for music. He is really very much opposed to it. So I've been sort of stealing a march on him—going up to a chum's apartment and banging away to my heart's content. It's rather fun, too, doing it on the sly. Of course, if father heard of it he'd—he'd—well, he'd be nasty about it, that's all.”
“Nasty?”
“He got rid of our own piano a long time ago, just because he doesn't like music.”
“But he does like music,” said Yvonne, her voice a little huskier than usual. “In Paris we attended the opera, the concerts. I am sure he likes music.”
“I fancy it must have been my fault, then,” said Frederic wryly. “I was pretty bad at it in those days.”
“He will not let you have a piano in the house?”
“I should say not!”
She gave them a queer little smile. “We shall see,” she said, and that was all.
“I say, it would be great if you could get him to——”
“I am sure he would like Frederic's music now, Mrs Brood,” Lydia broke in eagerly.
“What do you play—what do you like best, Frederic?” inquired Yvonne.
“Oh, those wonderful little Hungarian things most of all; the plaintive little melodies——”
He stopped as she began to hum lightly the strains of one of Ziehrer's jaunty waltzes.
“By Jove, how did you guess? Why, it's my favourite. I love it, Yvonne!”
“You shall play it for me—to-morrow, Lydia?”
“Yes. The piano will be here in the morning.”
“But how did you guess——”
“Never mind! I am a witch,aïe?Come! I must be off now, Frederic. There are people coming to have tea with me.”
As they descended in the elevator Frederic, unable to contain himself, burst out rapturously:
“By Jove, Yvonne, it will be fun, coming over here every day or so for a little music, won't it? I can't tell you how happy I shall be.”
“It is time you were happy,” said she, looking straight ahead, and many days passed before he had an inkling of all that lay behind her remark.
As they entered the house Jones met them in the hall.
“Mr Brood telephoned that he would be late, madam. He is at the customs office about the boxes.”
She paused at the foot of the stairs.
“How long has he been out, Jones?”
“Since two o'clock, madam. It is now half-past four.”
“There will be five or six in for tea, Jones. You may serve it in Mr Brood's study.”
“Yes, madam.”
A look of surprise flitted across the butler's impassive face. For a moment he had doubted his hearing.
“And ask Ranjab to put away Mr Brood's writing materials and reference-books.”
“I shall attend to it myself, madam. Ranjab went out with Mr Brood.”
“Went out!” exclaimed Yvonne.
Frederic turned upon the butler.
“You must be mistaken, Jones,” he said sharply.
“I think not, sir. They went away together in the automobile. He has not returned.”
A long look of wonder and perplexity passed between young Brood and his stepmother.
She laughed suddenly and unnaturally. Without a word she started up the stairs. He followed more slowly, his puzzled eyes fixed on the graceful figure ahead. At the upper landing she stopped. Her hand grasped the railing with rigid intensity.
Ranjab emerged from the shadows at the end of the hall. He bowed very deeply.
“The master's books and papers 'ave been removed, madam. The study is in order.”