The two old men, long since relegated to a somewhat self-imposed oblivion, on a certain night discussed, as usual, the affairs of the household in the privacy of their room on the third floor. Not, however, without first convincing themselves that the shadowy Ranjab was nowhere within range of their croaking undertones. From the proscribed regions downstairs came the faint sounds of a piano and the intermittent chatter of many voices. Someone was playing “La Paloma.”
These new days were not like the old ones. Once they had enjoyed, even commanded, the full freedom of the house. It had been their privilege, their prerogative, to enter into every social undertaking that was planned. They had come to regard themselves as hosts, or, at the very least, guests of honour on such occasions.
Not that the occasions were many where guests came to be entertained by James Brood of old, but it seemed to be an accepted and quite agreeable duty of theirs to convince the infrequent visitors that Brood's house was really quite a jolly place, and that it would pay them to drop in oftener. They had a joyous way of lifting the responsibility of conversation from everyone else; and, be it said to their credit, there was no subject on which they couldn't talk with decision and fluency, whether they knew anything about it or not.
And nowadays it was different. They were not permitted to appear when guests were in the house. The sumptuous dinners, of which they heard something from the servants, were no longer graced by their presence. They were amazed, and not a little irritated, to learn, by listening at the head of the stairs, that the unfortunate guests, whoever they were, always seemed to be enjoying themselves. They couldn't understand how such a condition was possible.
They dined, to dignify the function somewhat, at least an hour before the guests arrived, and then shuffled off to their little back room, where they affected cribbage but indulged in something a great deal more acrimonious. They said many harsh things about the new mistress of the house. They could not understand what had come over James Brood. There was a time, said they, when no one could have led him around by the nose, and now he was as spineless as an angleworm.
On nights when guests were expected they were not permitted to have a drop of anything to drink, Mrs Brood declaring that she could not afford to run the risk of having them appear in the drawing-room despite the edict. They also had a habit of singing rather boisterously when intoxicated, something about a girl in Bombay; or, when especially happy, about a couple of ladies in Hottentot land who didn't mind the heat.
It was a matter of discretion, therefore, to lock up the spirits, and, after a fashion, to lock up the old gentlemen as well.
As a concession they were at liberty to invade the “retreat,” and to make themselves at home among the relics. Guests were seldom, if ever, taken up to Brood's room. Only the most intimate of friends were admitted. Even the jade room, with all of its priceless treasures, was closed to “outsiders,” for Brood had the idea that people as a rule did not possess a great amount of intelligence. So it was usually quite safe to allow Mr Dawes and Mr Riggs to run loose in the study, with the understanding, of course, that they were not to venture beyond the top of the stairs, and were not to smoke pipes.
Brood had been working rather steadily at his journal during the past two or three weeks. He had reached a point in the history where his own memory was somewhat vague, and had been obliged to call upon his old comrades to supply the facts. For several nights they had sat with him, going over the scenes connected with their earliest acquaintance; those black days in Calcutta.
Lydia had brought over her father's notes and certain transcripts of letters he had written to her mother before their marriage. The four of them were putting these notes and narratives into chronological order. Brood, after three months of married life and frivolity, suddenly had decided to devote himself almost entirely to the completion of the journal.
He denied himself the theatre, the opera, and kindred features of the passing show, and, as he preferred to entertain rather than to be entertained, seldom found it necessary to go into the homes of other people. Yvonne made no protest. She merely pressed Frederic into service as an escort when she desired to go about, and thought nothing of it. Whatever James Brood's views of this arrangement were, he appeared to accept it good-naturedly.
But the lines had returned to the corners of his mouth and the old, hard look to his eyes. And there were times when he spoke harshly to his son; times when he purposely humbled him in the presence of others without apparent reason.
On this particular night Yvonne had asked a few people in for dinner. They were people whom Brood liked especially well, but who did not appeal to her at all. As a matter of fact, they bored her. Yet she was happy in pleasing him. When she told him that they were coming he favoured her with a dry, rather impersonal smile and asked, with whimsical good humour, why she chose to punish herself for the sins ofhisyouth.
She laid her cheek against his and purred. For a moment he held his breath. Then the fire in his blood leaped into flame. He clasped the slim, adorable body in his strong arms and crushed her against his breast. She kissed him, and he was again the fierce, eager, unsated lover. It was one of their wonderful, imperishable moments, moments that brought oblivion.
Then, as he frequently did of late, he held her off at arm's length and searched her velvety eyes with a gaze that seemed to drag the very secrets out of her soul. She went deathly white and shivered. He took his hands from her shoulders and smiled. She came back into his arms like a dumb thing seeking protection, and continued to tremble as if frightened.
When company was being entertained downstairs Mr Dawes and Mr Riggs, with a fidelity to convention that was almost pitiful, invariably donned their evening clothes. They considered themselves remotely connected with the festivities, and, that being the case, the least they could do was to “dress up.”
Moreover, they dressed with great care and deliberation. There was always the chance that they might be asked to come down; or, what was even more important, Mrs Brood might happen to encounter them in the upper hall, and in that event it was imperative that she should be made to realise how stupid she had been.
Usually at nine o'clock they strolled into the study and smoked one of Brood's cigars with the gusto of real guests. It was their habit to saunter about the room, inspecting the treasures with critical, appraising eyes, very much as if they had never seen them before. They even handled some of the familiar objects with an air of bewilderment that would have done credit to a Cook's tourist.
It was also a habit of theirs to try the doors of a large teakwood cabinet in one corner of the room. The doors were always locked, and they sighed with patient doggedness. Some time, they told themselves, Ranjab would forget to lock those doors, and then——
“Joe,” said Mr Dawes, after he had tried the doors on this particular occasion, “I made a terrible mistake in letting poor Jim get married again. I'll never forgive myself.” He had said this at least a hundred times during the past three months. Sometimes he cried over it.
“Danbury, old pal, you must not take all the blame for that. I am as much at fault as you, blast you!” Mr Riggs always ended his confession with an explosion that fairly withered his friend and gave the lie to his attempt at humility.
“That's right,” snapped Mr Dawes; “curse me for it!”
“Don't make so much noise.”
“If you were ten years younger I'd—I'd——” blustered Dawes.
“I wish Jack Desmond had lived,” mused the other, paying no attention to the belligerent. “He would have put a stop to this fool marriage.”
They sat down and pondered.
“If Jim had to marry someone, why didn't he marry right here at home?” demanded Dawes, turning fiercely on his friend.
“Because,” said Riggs, with significant solemnity, “he is in the habit of marrying away from home. Look at the first one. He married her, didn't he? And see what came of it. He ought to have had more sense the second time. But marrying men never do get any sense. They just marry, that's all.”
“Jim's getting mighty cranky of late,” ruminated Dawes, puffing away at his unlighted cigar. “It's a caution the way he snaps Freddy off these days. He—he hates that boy, Joe.”
“Sh—h!Not so loud!”
“Confound you, don't you know a whisper when you hear it?” demanded Dawes, who, in truth, had whispered.
Another potential silence.
“Freddy goes about with her a good deal more than he ought to,” said Riggs at last. “They're together two-thirds of the time. Why—why, he heels her like a trained dog. Playing the pianner morning, noon, and night, and out driving, and going to the theatre, and——”
“I've a notion to tell Jim he ought to put a stop to it,” said the other. “It makes me sick.”
“Jim'll do it without being told one o' these days, so you keep out of it. Say, have you noticed how piqued Lydia's looking these times? She's not the same girl, Dan; not the same girl. Something's wrong.” He shook his head gloomily.
“It's that dog-goned woman,” announced Dawes explosively, and then looked over his shoulder with apprehension. A sigh of relief escaped him.
“She's got no business coming in between Lydia and Freddy,” said Riggs. “Looks as though she's just set on busting it up. What can she possibly have against poor little Lydia? She's good enough for Freddy. Too good, by hokey! 'Specially when you stop to think.”
“Now don't begin gossiping,” warned Dawes, glaring at him. “You're as bad as an old woman.”
“Thinking ain't gossiping, confound you! If I wanted to gossip I'd up and say flatly that Jim Brood knows down in his soul that Freddy is no son of his. He——”
“You've never heard him say so, Joe.”
“No; but I can put two and two together. I'm no fool.”
“I'd advise you to shut up.”
“Oh, you would, would you?” with vast scorn. “I'd like to know who it was that talked to Mrs Desmond about it. Who put it into her head that Jim doubts——”
“Well, didn't she say I was a lying old busybody?” snapped Danbury triumphantly. “Didn't she call me down, eh? I'd like to know what more you could expect than that. Didn't she make me take back everything I said?”
“She did,” said Riggs with conviction. “And I believe she would have thrashed you if she'd been a man, just as she said she would. And didn't I advise her to do it, anyway, on the ground that you're an old woman and——”
“That's got nothing to do with the present case,” interrupted Dawes hastily. “What we ought to be thinking about now is how to get rid of this woman that's come in here to wreck our home. She's an interloper. She's a foreigner. She——”
“You must admit she treats us very politely,” said Riggs weakly.
“Certainly she does. She has to. If she tried to come any of her high-and-mighty—ahem! Yes, Joseph, I consider Mrs Brood the loveliest, most charming——”
“It was the wind blowing the curtain, Danbury,” said Riggs, reassuringly.
“As I was saying,” resumed his friend, “I'd tell her what I thought of her almighty quick if she got uppish with me. The trouble is, she's so darned careful what she says to my face. I've never seen anybody as sweet as she is when she's with a feller. That all goes to prove that she's sly and unnatural. No woman ever lived who could be sweet all the time and still be as God made her. Why, she even comes up here and tries to be sweet on that 'Great Gawd Budd' thing over there. I heard her ask Ranjab one day why he never prostrated himself before the image.”
“Well?” demanded Riggs, as the other paused.
“She didn't have sense enough to know that Ranjab is a Brahmin, a worshipper of Vishnu and Shiva. I also heard her say that you had been so drunk up here one night that a lady fainted when she saw you sprawled out on the couch. She thought you were dead.”
“I haven't been drunk in ten years! What's more, I don't remember ever having seen a strange woman in this room since I came here to visit Jim Brood, twelve years ago. She must be crazy.”
“She didn't say you saw the woman. She said the woman saw you,” said Dawes witheringly.
“No one ever thought of locking that cupboard until she came,” said Riggs, abruptly altering the trend of speech but not of thought. His gaze shifted to the cabinet. “Jim is like wax in her hands.”
“He has no right to forget those days in Calcutta, when we shared our grog with him. No, Joe, we're not good enough for him in these days. She has bewitched him, poor devil. I've stuck to him like a brother for twenty years—both of us have for that matter——”
“Like twin brothers,” amended Joseph.
“Exactly. We don't forget those old days in Tibet, Turkestan, the Congo, the Sahara——”
“I should say we don't! Who is really writing this book of his? Who supplies all the most important facts? Who—who—well, that's all. Who?”
“We do, old chap. But you'll find that we shan't have our names on the title-page. She'll see to that. She'll have us shunted off like a couple of deck-hands. Lydia can tell you how much of the material I have supplied. She knows, bless her heart. You furnished a lot, too, Joe, and John Desmond the rest.”
“Oh, Jim has done his share.”
“I'll admit he has done all of the writing. I don't pose as a literary man.”
“Seems to me he's sticking closer to the work than ever before,” mused Riggs. “We ought to finish it by spring, the way we're going now.”
“I still say, however, that he ought to put a stop to it.”
“Stop to what?”
“Her running around with Freddy. What else?”
“No harm in it, is there?”
“No; I suppose not,” the other reflected. “Still they're pretty young, you know. Besides, she's French.”
“So was Joan of Arc,” said his friend in rebuttal.
Mr Dawes leaned a little closer.
“I wonder how Mrs Desmond likes having her over there playing the piano every afternoon with Freddy, while Lydia's over here copying things for Jim and working her poor little head off. Ever stop to think about that?”
“I think about it all the time. And, by thunder, I'm not the only one who does, either. Jim thinks a good deal, and so does Lydia. It's a darned——”
Mr Riggs happened to look up at that instant. Ranjab was standing in front of him, his arms folded across his breast, in the habitual pose of the Hindu who waits. The man was dressed in the costume of a high-caste Brahmin; the commonplace garments of the Occident had been laid aside, and in their place were the vivid, dazzling colours of Ind, from the bejewelled sandals to the turban which crowned his swarthy brow and gleamed with rubies and sapphires uncounted.
Mr Riggs's mouth remained open as he stared blankly at this ghost of another day. Not since the old days in India had he seen Ranjab in native garb, and even then he was far from being the resplendent creature of to-night, for Ranjab in his home land was a poor man and without distinction.
“Am I awake?” exclaimed Mr Riggs in such an awful voice that Mr Dawes gave over staring at the cabinet and favoured him with an impatient kick on the ankle.
“I guess that'll wake you up if——” and then he saw the Hindu. “The Ranjab!”
Ranjab was smiling, and when he smiled his dark face was a joy to behold. His white teeth gleamed and his sometime unfeeling eyes sparkled with delight. He liked the two old men. They had stood, with Brood, between him and grave peril far back in the old days when even the faintest gleam of hope apparently had been blotted out.
“Behold!” he cried, magnificently spreading his arms. “I am made glorious! See before you the prince of magic! See!”
With a swift, deft movement he snatched the half-smoked cigar from the limp fingers of Mr Riggs and, first holding it before their blinking eyes, tossed it into the air. It disappeared!
“Well, of all the——” began Mr Riggs, sitting up very straight. His eyes were following the rapid actions of the Hindu. Unlocking a drawer in the big table, the latter peered into it and then beckoned the old men to his side. There lay the cigar and beside it a much-needed match.
“I don't want to smoke it,” said Mr Riggs, vigorously declining his property. “The darned thing's bewitched.” Whereupon Ranjab took it out of the drawer and again threw it into the air. Then he calmly reached above his head and plucked a fresh cigar out of space, obsequiously tendering it to the amazed old man, who accepted it with a sheepish grin.
“You haven't lost any of your old skill,” said Mr Dawes, involuntarily glancing at his own cigar to make sure that he had it firmly gripped in his stubby fingers. “You ought to be in a sideshow, Ranjab.”
Ranjab paused, before responding, to extract a couple of billiard balls and a small paper-knife from the lapel of Dawes's coat.
“I am to perform to-night,sahib, for the mistress's guests. It is to be—what you call him? A side-show? Ranjab is to do his tricks for her, as the dog performs for his master.”
The smile had disappeared. His face was an impenetrable mask once more. Had their eyes been young and keen, however, they might have caught the flash of anger in his.
“Going to do all the old tricks?” cried Mr Riggs eagerly. “By George, I'd like to see 'em again; wouldn't you, Dan? I'm glad we've got our good clothes on. Now you see what comes of always being prepared for——”
“Sorry,sahib, but the master has request me to entertain you before the guests come up. Coffee is to be served here.”
“That means we'll have to clear out?” said Riggs slowly.
“But see!” cried Ranjab, genuinely sorry for them. He became enthusiastic once more. “See! I shall do them all—and better, too, for you.”
For ten minutes he astonished the old men with the mysterious feats of the Indian fakir. They waxed enthusiastic. He grinned over the pleasure he was giving them. Suddenly he whipped out a short, thin sword from its scabbard in his sash. The amazing, incomprehensible sword-swallowing act followed.
“You see, Ranjab has not forgot,” he cried in triumph. “He have not lost the touch of the wizard,aih.”
“You'll lose your gizzard some day, doing that,” said Dawes grimly. “It gives me the shivers.”
Then, before their startled, horror-struck eyes, the Hindu coolly plunged the glittering blade into his breast, driving it in to the hilt!
“Good Lord!” shouted the two old men.
Ranjab serenely replaced the sword in its scabbard.
“It is not always the knife that finds the heart,” said he, so slowly, so full of meaning, that even the old men grasped the significance of the cryptic remark.
“A feller can be fooled, no matter how closely he watches,” said Mr Dawes, and he was not referring to the amazing sword trick.
“No, sir,” said Mr Riggs, with gloomy irrelevance, “I don't like that woman.”
The old spell of the Orient had fallen upon the ancients. They were hearing the vague whisperings of voices that came from nowhere, as they had heard them years ago in the mystic silences of the East.
“Sh—h!One comes,” said Ranjab softly. “It will be the master's son.”
An instant later his closet door closed noiselessly behind him and the old men were alone, blinking at each other. There was no sound from the hall. They waited, watching the curtained door. At last they heard footsteps on the stairs, quick footsteps of the young.
Frederic strode rapidly into the room.
His face was livid with rage. For a moment he glowered upon the two old men, his fingers working spasmodically, his chest heaving with the volcanic emotions he was trying so hard to subdue. Then he whirled about to glare into the hall.
“In God's name, Freddy, what's happened?” cried Mr Riggs, all a-tremble.
They had never seen him in a rage before. There had been occasions when they had secretly criticised James Brood's treatment of the unhappy boy, but from the youth himself there had come no complaint, only the hurt, puzzled look of one who endures because an alternative does not suggest itself. Intuitively the old men knew that his present condition was due to something his father had said or done, and that it must have been unusually severe to have provoked the wrath that he made no effort to conceal.
It was not in their honest old hearts to hold grievance against the lad, notwithstanding his frequent periods of impatience where they were concerned, periods when they were admittedly as much at fault as he, by the way. Usually he made up for these lapses by a protracted season of sweetness and consideration that won back not only their sympathy, but the affection they had felt for him since his lonely boyhood days.
Some minutes passed before he could trust himself to speak. Ugly veins stood out on his pale temples as he paced the floor in front of them. Eventually Mr Dawes ventured the vital question in a somewhat hushed voice:
“Have you—quarrelled with your father, Freddy?”
The young man threw up his arms in a gesture of despair. There was a wail of misery in his voice as he answered:
“In the name of God, why should he hate me as he does? What have I done? Am I not a good son to him?”
“Hush!” implored Mr Dawes nervously. “He'll hear you.”
“Hear me!” cried Frederic, and laughed aloud in his recklessness. “Why shouldn't he hear me? I'll not stand it a day longer. He wouldn't think of treating a dog as he treats me. I—I—why, he is actually forcing me to hate him. Idohate him! I swear to Heaven it was in my heart to kill him down there just now. I———” He could not go on. He choked up and the tears rushed to his eyes. Abruptly turning away, he threw himself upon the couch and buried his face on his arms, sobbing like a little child.
The old men, distressed beyond the power of speech, mumbled incoherent words of comfort as they slowly edged toward the door. They tiptoed into the hall, and neither spoke until their bedroom door was closed behind them. Mr Dawes even tried it to see that it was safely latched.
“It's got to come,” said Mr Riggs, wiping his eyes but neglecting to blow his nose—recollecting in good time the vociferous noise that always attended the performance. “Yes, sir; it's bound to come. There's going to be a smash, mark my words. It can't go on.” He sat down heavily and stared rather pathetically at his friend, who was the picture of lugubrious concern.
“Yes, sir,” said Mr Dawes bleakly, “as sure as you're alive, Joey. That boy's spunk is going to assert itself some day, and then—good Lord, what then? He'll curse Jim to his teeth and—and Jim'll up and tell him the truth. I—I don't know what will happen then.”
Riggs swallowed hard—a gulping sound.
“Freddy's the kind of a feller who'll kill himself, Danny. He's as high strung as a harp. Something will snap. I hate to think of it. Poor lad! It—it ain't his fault that things are not as they ought to be.”
“If Jim Brood ever tells him he's no son of his, he'll break the boy's heart.”
“I'm not so sure of that,” said Riggs sagely. “Sometimes I think Freddy would be darned glad to know it.”
The curtains parted and Yvonne looked in upon the wretched Frederic. There was a look of mingled pain and commiseration in her wide-open eyes. For a moment she stood there regarding him in silence. Then she swiftly crossed the room to the couch in the corner, where he sat huddled up, his shoulders still shaking with the misery that racked him.
Her eyes darkened into the hungry, yearning look of one who would gladly share or assume all of the suffering of another whose happiness was dear to her—the look of a gentle mother. The mocking, seductive gleam was gone, and in its place was the glow of infinite pity. Her hand went out to touch the tousled hair, but stopped before contact. Slowly she drew back, with a glance of apprehension toward the door of the Hindu's closet. An odd expression of alarm crept into her eyes.
“Frederic,” she said softly, almost timorously.
He lifted his head quickly and then sprang to his feet. His eyes were wet and his lips were drawn. Shame possessed him. He tried to smile, but it was a pitiful failure.
“Oh, I'm so ashamed of—of——” he began in a choked voice.
“Ashamed because you have cried?” she said quickly. “But no! It is good to cry; it is good for men to cry. But when a strong man breaks down and sheds tears, I am—oh, I am heartbroken. A woman's tears mean nothing, but a man's? Oh, they are terrible! But come! You must compose yourself. The others will be here in a few minutes. I ran away from them on the pretext that I—but it is of no consequence. It is enough that I am here. You must go to your room and bathe your face. Go at once. Your father must not know that you have cried. He———”
“Curse him!” came from between Frederic's clenched teeth.
“Hush!” she cried, with another glance at Ranjab's door. She would have given much to know whether the Hindu was there or still below-stairs. “You must not say such——”
“I will say it, Yvonne—I'll say it to his face! I don't care if the others do see that I have been crying. I want them to know how he hurts me, and I want them to hate him for it.”
“For my sake, Frederic, calm yourself. I implore you to go to your room. Come back later, but go now.”
He was struck by the seriousness in her voice and manner. An ugly, crooked smile writhed about the corners of his mouth.
“I suppose you're trying to smooth it over so that they won't consider him a brute. Is that it?”
“Hush! Please, please! You know that my heart aches for you,mon ami. It was cruel of him, it was cowardly—yes, cowardly! Now I have said it!” She drew herself up and turned deliberately toward the little door across the room.
His eyes brightened. The crooked sneer turned into an imploring smile.
“Forgive me, Yvonne! You must see that I'm beside myself. I—I———”
“But you must be sensible. Remember he is your father. He is a strange man. There has been a great deal of bitterness in his life. He———”
“Have I been the cause of a moment's bitterness to him?” cried Frederic. “Why should he hate me? Why———”
“You are losing control of yourself again, Frederic.”
“But I can't go on the way things are now. He's getting to be worse than ever. I never have a kind word from him, seldom a word of any description. Never a kind look. Can't you understand how it goads me to———”
“Yes, yes! You've said all this before, and I have listened to you when I should have reminded you that he is my husband,” she said impatiently.
“By Heaven, I don't see how you can love him!” he cried boldly. “Sometimes I wonder if you do love him. He is as selfish, as unfeeling as oh, there's no word for it. Why, in the name of God, did you ever marry such a man? You couldn't have loved him.” Something in her expression brought him up sharply. Her eyes had narrowed; they had the look of a wary, hunted thing that has been driven into a corner. He stared. “Forgive me, Yvonne. I—I———”
“You don't know what you are saying,” she panted. “Are you accusing me?”
“No, no! What a coward, what a dog I am!” he cried abjectly.
A queer little smile stole into her face. It was even more baffling than the expression it displaced.
“I am your friend,” she said slowly. “Is this the way to reward me?”
He dropped to his knees and covered her hands with kisses, mumbling his plea for forgiveness.
“I am so terribly unhappy,” he said over and over again. “I'd leave this house to-night if it were not that I can't bear the thought of leaving you, Yvonne. I adore you. You are everything in the world to me. I———”
“Get up!” she cried out sharply. He lifted his eyes in dumb wonder and adoration, but not in time to catch the look of triumph that swept across her face.
“You will forgive me?” he cried, coming to his feet. “I—I couldn't help saying it. It was wrong—wrong! But youwillforgive me, Yvonne?”
She turned away, walking slowly toward the door. He remained rooted to the spot, blushing with shame and dismay.
“Where are you going? To tellhim?” he gasped.
She did not reply at once, but drew theportièresapart and peered down the stairs beyond, her attitude one of tense anxiety. As she faced him a smile of security was on her lips. She leaned gracefully against the jamb of the door, her arms dropping to her sides.
“Yes, I will forgive you,” she said calmly, and he realised in a flash that the verdict would have been different if there had been the remotest chance that his declaration was overheard. She would have denied him.
“I adore you, Yvonne,” he cried in low tones, striding swiftly toward her, only to halt as he caught the smile of derision in her eyes. “I don't mean it in the way you think. You are so good to me. You have given me so much joy and happiness, and—and you understand me so well. I could die for you, Yvonne. Iwoulddie for you. It's not the kind of love you are in the habit of commanding, you who are so glorious and so beautiful. It's the love of a dog for his master.”
She waited an instant, and then came toward him. He never could have explained the unaccountable impulse that forced him to fall back a few steps as she approached. Her eyes were gazing steadily into his, and her red lips were parted.
“That is as it should be,” she was saying, but he was never sure that he heard the words. His knees grew weak. He was in the toils! “Now you must pull yourself together,” she went on, in such a matter-of-fact tone that he straightened up involuntarily. “Come! Wipe the tear-stains from your cheeks.”
He obeyed, but his lip still quivered with the rage that had been checked by the ascendancy of another and even more devastating emotion. She was standing quite close to him now, her slender figure swaying slightly as if moved by some strange, rhythmic melody to which the heart beat time.
Her eyes were soft and velvety again, her smile tender and appealing. The vivid white of her arms and shoulders seemed to shed a soft light about her, so radiant was the sheen of the satin skin. Her gown was of black velvet, cut very low, and with scarcely any ornamentation save the great cluster of rubies at the top of her corsage. They gleamed like coals of fire against the skin, which appeared to absorb and reflect their warmth.
There was a full red rose in her dark hair. She wore no ear-rings, no finger-rings except the narrow gold band on her left hand. A wide, exquisitely designed gold bracelet fitted tightly about her right forearm, as if it had been welded to the soft white flesh. Yvonne's ears were lovely; she knew better than to disfigure them. Her hands were incomparably beautiful; she knew their full value unadorned.
She moved closer to him and with deft fingers applied her tiny lace handkerchief to his flushed cheeks and eyes, laughing audibly as she did so; a low gurgle of infinite sweetness and concern.
He stood like a statue, scarcely breathing, the veins in his throat throbbing violently.
“There!” she said, and deliberately touched themouchoirto her own smiling lips before replacing it in her bodice next to the warm, soft skin. “Lydia must not see that her big baby sweetheart has been crying,” she went on, and if there was mockery in her voice it was lost on him. He could only stare as if bereft of all his senses.
“I have been thinking, Frederic,” she said, suddenly serious, “perhaps it would be better if we were not alone when the others come up. Go at once and fetch the two old men. Tell them I expect them here to witness the magic. It appears to be a family party, so why exclude them? Be quick!”
He dashed off to obey her command. She lighted a cigarette at the table, her unsmiling eyes fixed on the door to the Hindu's closet. Then, with a little sigh, she sank down on the broad couch and stretched her supple body in the ecstasy of complete relaxation.
The scene at the dinner-table had been most distressing. Up to the instant of the outburst her husband had been in singularly gay spirits, a circumstance so unusual that the whole party wondered not a little. If the others were vaguely puzzled by his high humour, not so Yvonne. She understood him better than anyone else in the world; she read his mind as she would have read an open book.
There was riot, not joy, in the heart of the brilliant talker at the head of the table. He was talking against the savagery that strained so hard at its leash.
At her right sat Frederic, at her left the renowned Dr Hodder, whose feats at the operating table were vastly more successful than his efforts at the dinner-table. He was a very wonderful surgeon, but equally famous as a bore of the first rank. Yvonne could not endure him. His jokes were antediluvian, and his laughter over them an abomination.
He had an impression, as many famous men have, that the sole duty of a dinner guest is to be funny in the loudest voice possible, drowning out all competition, and to talk glowingly about the soup, as if nothing else was required to convince the hostess that he considered her dinner irreproachable and her cook a jewel. Still, it was agreed Dr Hodder was a wonderful surgeon.
Mrs Desmond and Lydia were there. (This was an excellent opportunity to entertain them on an occasion of more or less magnitude.) There were also present Bertie Gunning and his pretty wife, Maisie, both of whom Yvonne liked; and the Followed sisters, with two middle-aged gentlemen from one of the clubs.
Miss Followed was forty, and proved it by cheerfully discussing events that happened at least that far back in her life. Her sister Janey was much younger, quite pretty, and acutely ingenuous. The middle-aged gentlemen ate very little. They were going to a supper at the Knickerbocker later on for someone whose name was Lilly. Occasionally it was Lil. It rather gratified them to be chided about the lady.
Frederic, deceived by his father's sprightly mood, entered rather recklessly into the lively discussion. He seldom took his eyes from the face of his beautiful stepmother, and many of his remarks were utteredsotto vocefor her ear alone.
Suddenly James Brood called out his name in a sharp, commanding tone. Frederic, at the moment engaged in a low exchange of words with Yvonne, did not hear him. Brood spoke again, loudly, harshly. There was dead silence at the table.
“We will excuse you, Frederic,” said he, a deadly calm in his voice. The puzzled expression in the young man's face slowly gave way to a steady glare of fury. He could not trust himself to speak. “I regret exceedingly that you cannot take wine in moderation. A breath of fresh air will be of benefit to you. You may join us upstairs later on.”
“I haven't drunk a full glass of champagne,” began the young man in amazed protest.
Brood smiled indulgently, but there was a sinister gleam in his gray eyes. “I think you had better take my advice,” he said.
“Very well, sir,” said Frederic in a low, suppressed voice, his face paling. Without another word he got up from the table and walked out of the room.
He spoke the truth later on when he told Yvonne that he could not understand. But she understood. She knew that James Brood had endured the situation as long as it was in his power to endure, and she knew that it was her fault entirely that poor Frederic had been exposed to this crowning bit of humiliation.
As she sat in the dim study awaiting her stepson's reappearance with the two old men, her active, far-seeing mind was striving to estimate the cost of that tragic clash. Not the cost to herself or to Frederic, but to James Brood!
The Messrs Dawes and Riggs, inordinately pleased over the rehabitation, were barely through delivering themselves of their protestations of undying fealty when the sound of voices came up from the lower hall. Frederic started to leave the room, not caring to face those who had witnessed his unwarranted degradation. Yvonne hurried to his side.
“Where are you going?” she cried sharply.
“You cannot expect me to stay here——”
“But certainly!” she exclaimed. “Listen! I will tell you what to do.”
Her voice sank to an imperative whisper. He listened in sheer amazement, his face growing dark with rebellion as she proceeded to unfold her plan for a present victory over his father.
“No, no! I can't do that! Never, Yvonne,” he protested.
“For my sake, Freddy. Don't forget that you owe something to me. I command you to do as I tell you. It is the only way. Make haste! Open the window, get the breath of air he prescribed, and when they are all here,apologise for your condition!”
When Dr Hodder and Mrs Gunning entered the room a few minutes later young Brood was standing in the open window, drinking in the cold night air, and she was blithely regaling the blinking old men with an account of her stepson's unhappy efforts to drink all the wine in sight! As she told it, it was a most amusing experiment.
James Brood was the last to enter, with Miss Followed. He took in the situation at a glance. Was it relief that sprang into his eyes as he saw the two old men?
Frederic came down from the window, somewhat too swiftly for one who is moved by shame and contrition, and faced the group with a well-assumed look of mortification in his pale, twitching face. He spoke in low, repressed tones, but not once did he permit his gaze to encounter that of his father.
“I'm awfully sorry to have made a nuisance of myself. It does go to my head, and I—I dare say the heat of the room helped to do the work. I'm all right now, however. The fresh air did me a lot of good. Hope you'll all overlook my foolish attempt to be a devil of a fellow.” He hesitated a moment and then went on, more clearly. “I'm all right now, father. It shall not happen again, I can promise you that.”
A close observer might have seen the muscles of his jaw harden as he uttered the final sentence. He intended that his father should take it as a threat, not as an apology.
Brood was watching him closely, a puzzled expression in his eyes; gradually it developed into something like admiration. In the clamour of voices that ensued the older man detected the presence of an underlying note of censure for his own behaviour. For the first time in many years he experienced a feeling of shame.
Someone was speaking at his elbow. Janey, in her young, enthusiastic voice, shrilled something into his ear that caused him to look at her in utter amazement. It was so astounding that he could not believe he heard aright. He mumbled in a questioning tone, “I beg your pardon,” and she repeated her remark.
“How wonderfully like you Frederic is, Mr Brood.” Then she added: “Do you know, I've never noticed it until to-night? It's really remarkable.”
“Indeed,” Brood responded somewhat icily.
“Don't you think so, Mr Brood?”
“No, I do not, Miss Janey,” said he distinctly.
“Maisie Gunning was speaking of it just a few minutes ago,” went on the girl, unimpressed. “She says you are very much alike when you are—are———” here she foundered in sudden confusion.
“Intoxicated?” he inquired, without a smile.
She blushed painfully. “No, no! When you are angry. There, I suppose I shouldn't have said it, but———”
“It is a most gratifying discovery,” said he, and turned to speak to Mrs Desmond. He did not take his gaze from Frederic's white, set face, however; and, despite the fact that he knew the girl had uttered an idle commonplace, he was annoyed to find himself studying the features of Matilde's boy with an interest that seemed almost laughable when he considered it later on.
His guests found much to talk about in the room. He was soon being dragged from one object to another and ordered to reveal the history, the use, and the nature of countless things that obviously were intended to be just what they seemed; such as rugs, shields, lamps, and so forth. He was ably assisted by Messrs Riggs and Dawes, who lied prodigiously in a frenzy of rivalry.
“What a perfectly delightful Buddha!” cried Miss Janey, stopping in front of the idol. “How perfectly lovely he is—or is it a she, Mr Brood?”
He did not reply at once. His eyes were on Frederic and Yvonne, who had come together at last and were conversing earnestly apart from the rest of the group. He observed that Lydia was standing quite alone near the table, idly handling a magazine. To the best of his recollection, Frederic had scarcely spoken to the girl during the evening.
“This is where I work and play and dream, Miss Janey, and practise the ogre's art. It is a forbidden chamber, my sanctuary,”—with a glance at the idol—“and here is where I sometimes chop off pretty young women's heads and hang them from the window-ledge as a warning to all other birds of prey.”
Miss Janey laughed gleefully, attracting Yvonne's attention. Then she sang out across the room:
“Your husband says he is an ogre. Is he?”
Yvonne came languidly toward them.
“My husband manages to keep me in his enchanted castle without chains and padlocks, and that is saying a great deal in this day and age, my dear. Would you call him an ogre after that?”
“Perhaps it is the old story of the fairy queen and the ogre.”
“You may be sure I'd be an ogre if there was no other way of keeping you, my dear,” said Brood. There was something in his voice that caused her to look up into his face quickly.
Dr Hodder, being a wonderful surgeon, managed to cut his finger with a razor-edged kris at that instant, drawing a little shriek from Miss Followed, to whom he was jocularly explaining that scientific Malays used the thing in removing one another's appendices, the surgeon being the one who survived the operation.
During the excitement incident to the bloodletting the middle-aged gentlemen glanced furtively at their watches and indulged in a mental calculation from which they emerged somewhat easier in their minds. It still wanted an hour before the theatres were out.
“Dreadful bore,” yawned one of them behind his hand.
“Stupidest woman I ever sat next to,” said the other,
Then both looked at their watches again.
Frederic joined Lydia at the table.
“A delicious scene, wasn't it?” he asked bitterly in lowered tones.
Her fingers touched his.
“What did he mean, Freddy? Oh, I felt so sorry for you. It was dreadful.”
“Don't take it so seriously, Lyddy,” he said, squeezing her hand gently. Both of them realised that it was the nearest thing to a caress that had passed between them in a fortnight or longer. A wave of shame swept through him. “Dear old girl—my dear old girl,” he whispered brokenly.
Her eyes radiated joy, her lips parted in a wan, tremulous smile of surprise, and a soft sigh escaped them.
“My dear, dear boy,” she murmured, and was happier than she had been in weeks.
“See here, old chap,” said one of the middle-aged gentlemen, again consulting his watch as he loudly addressed his host, “can't you hurry this performance of yours along a bit? It is after ten, you know.”
“A quarter after,” said the other middle-aged gentleman.
“I will summon the magician,” said Brood. “Be prepared, ladies and gentlemen, to meet the devil. Ranjab is the prince of darkness.”
He lifted his hand to strike the gong that stood near the edge of the table.
Involuntarily four pairs of eyes fastened their gaze upon the door to the Hindu's closet. Three mellow, softly reverberating “booms” filled the room. Almost instantly the voice of the Hindu was heard.
“Aih, sahib!”
He came swiftly into the room from the hall, and not from his closet. The look of relief in Yvonne's eyes was short-lived. She saw amazement in the faces of the two old men—and knew!
“After we have had the feats of magic,” Brood was saying, “Miss Desmond will read to you, ladies and gentlemen, that chapter of our journal——”
“My word!” groaned both of the middle-aged gentlemen, looking at their watches.
“Relating to——”
“You'll have to excuse me, Brood, really, you know. Important engagement up-town——”
“Sit down, Cruger,” exclaimed Hodder. “The lady won't miss you.”
“Relating to our first encounter with the great and only Ranjab,” pursued Brood oracularly. “We found him in a little village far up in the mountains. He was under the sentence of death for murder. By the way, Yvonne, the kris you have in your hand is the very weapon the good fellow used in the commission of his crime. He was in prison and was to die within a fortnight after our arrival in the town. I heard of his unhappy plight and all that had led up to it. His case interested me tremendously. One night, a week before the proposed execution, my friends and I stormed the little prison and rescued him. We were just getting over the cholera and needed excitement. That was fifteen years ago. He has been my trusted body-servant ever since. I am sure you will be interested in what I have written about that thrilling adventure.”
Yvonne had dropped the ugly knife upon the table as if it were a thing that scorched her fingers.
“Did he—really kill a man?” whispered Miss Janey with horror in her eyes.
“He killed a woman. His wife, Miss Janey. She had been faithless, you see. He cut her heart out. And now, Ranjab, are you ready?”
The Hindu salaamed.
“Ranjab is always ready,sahib,” said he.