XX
Thebig house was brilliantly lighted for the expected dinner guests when Astry and Belhaven came in out of the driving storm, and the sybaritic atmosphere, the vista of spacious rooms, the mocking cries of the parrots in the conservatory, all gave Belhaven the same strange feeling of unreality that had once so strongly affected Rachel. As he followed Astry into the library, it crossed his mind that external things would look much like this to him if he ever came back after death, as a disembodied spirit. He seemed to have no immediate concern with this artificial life except a feeling of being outside of it.
But, however vague and unreal might seem themise-en-scène, he was vividly aware of the untenable position in which his fate had involved him. Astry had made that absolutely plain; only a few words had been said but those had keenly revealed the situation. The humiliation which had pursued him ever since he had permitted Rachel to intervene to save her sister, now became unbearable; there was no fate so miserable that he would not have preferred it to the shame and despair that he felt as he realized the futility of any effort of his to overcome Astry's contempt. In veiled and courteous phrase he had been allowed to perceive that he was esteemed a coward, and to his maddened senses one of the parrots in the conservatory seemed to echo the insulting cry.
He walked over to the table and stood there, mechanically turning the leaves of a magazine, while Astry found a newspaper with a marked paragraph and handed it to him.
"You see there's no doubt about the drift of it," was his dry comment.
Belhaven read it slowly, a deep flush mounting to his forehead. It was one of those slightly veiled bits of scandal that sometimes appear in scurrilous journals and it gave, with only too well defined details, the outline of his marriage and the preceding scandal which had involved "a beautiful young matron, the sister of the bride."
"No; there's no doubt about it," he admitted slowly; "but what do you expect me to do?"
Astry stood looking at him with a singular expression; if he had expected violent anger and determined resistance he was none the less aware that Belhaven was neatly trapped. A denial would only confirm the report and a divorce would blazon the story to the world. Rachel's reasoning was sound; quite aside from any ethical consideration divorce was impossible. He had become aware, too, in their brief talk, that Belhaven did not desire it, that he was deeply and hopelessly in love with his own wife.
"Something must be done to stop this," he said at last. "I shall do it if you don't."
Belhaven laid the paper on the table. "It's Sidney Billop; of course I can thrash him, but—you know the result."
"He's coming here to-night. My wife—" Astry hesitated over the word and then went on—"asked him. I suppose you're right about him, for there have been some anonymous letters from some French girl whom Eva dismissed."
"And the Billops engaged."
"Did you know that?"
"Macclesfield told me."
"As a warning?"
"I rather think so."
"Good heavens! How many people know all this?"
Belhaven again flushed deeply. "I assure you, Astry, that it's terrible for me to come here to-night."
Astry made a slight, enigmatical gesture. "More so than before?" he asked coolly.
"In a way—yes. I'd greatly prefer that we settled it in the primitive way."
"You forget that the scandal would involve the innocent as well as the guilty, otherwise I should be delighted."
"I forget nothing—but I know that this is worse than Dante's Inferno."
"Unfortunately I can't permit you to involve us all in greater difficulties. It's necessary for things to go on as they are, but Billop has got to be stopped."
"It would be quite easy to kill him, but I might point out that this would only increase the scandal."
"Nevertheless something must be done. I'd gladly undertake it, but the privilege plainly belongs to you."
"It would be a privilege if I could thrash him."
"Unfortunately he'd shriek if you did."
Belhaven took a short turn across the room, thinking, and Astry saw the haggard lines on his face.
"There's no end to it!" he exclaimed at last.
"There's an end to everything—when we look for it," said Astry slowly.
Belhaven stopped short and looked at him. His host smiled coolly, drawing the paper-knife through his fingers.
"Possibly you haven't looked for it diligently enough," he said courteously.
Belhaven threw back his head. "I'll settle with Billop to-night, given the opportunity."
"I'll see that you get it," Astry retorted. "Here they come now," he added, as the sound of arriving guests reached their ears.
As he spoke he turned and made his way into the drawing-room to greet them, and Belhaven, looking after him through the double arches of the long vista, saw the slender, small figure of Eva standing in the hall to welcome her guests. She was gowned in black, as she had been on that evening which seemed now so long ago, and he noticed the whiteness of her beautiful neck and arms and the soft gold of her lovely hair. He looked at her with strangely complex feelings, aware that she had never had sufficient power over the best that was in him to keep him long enslaved, yet recalling with keen misery the moments when her charm had seemed so irresistible that he had plunged on in the course that had led to his ruin, for however she might have saved herself and retained her hold upon her husband, she had wrecked his life. It seemed strange that a creature so small and so fragile and so apparently lovely had, after all, possessed so little genuine feeling that she had been willing, at any cost, to save herself. The life that he had led had hardened many of the finer instincts of his being and destroyed those delicate perceptions that lead to hair-splitting introspection, but he was still keenly aware that he was deeply to blame, that there had been something fundamentally wrong with him or he would never have played the cowardly rôle of accepting Rachel's sacrifice. The thought of her brought back the pang of disappointment with renewed anguish; to her he was apparently an abject being, and it seemed doubtful if any deed of his, however self-sacrificing, would rehabilitate him in her eyes.
Looking at Eva now, he realized how trivial had been the passion that had led to his downfall and it seemed as if even his soul must be darkly flushed with shame at the thought of Astry's scorn. He turned with an irresistible desire to escape and was making his way toward the long window that opened on the terrace when he heard his name spoken and found that Colonel Sedley and Massena were already in the room. There was no alternative, therefore, but to return to play his detestable rôle as a guest at the table of a man against whom he had once planned the deepest and most despicable of all injuries.
With an effort he recalled himself to the conventions of every-day life and in a moment was exchanging meaningless commonplaces with his fellow guests, while, a little later, he was able to respond with commendable grace to little Mrs. Prynne's fluttering greeting. She had a way that old Dr. Macclesfield described as "cheeping like a hen-sparrow," but which afforded the relief of nonentities to a man already overwhelmed with misery and aware that the men regarded him with an indifference that Charter, at least, was at no pains to conceal.
Charter had come in so late that dinner had to be put off for him, and he had scarcely apologized to his hostess before he took the opportunity to walk up to Belhaven and inform him that he had just been to his house. Belhaven received this information with a slight inclination of the head and a look that was fully as hostile as Charter's own, but neither of them had had the chance to say more, and now Charter found himself seated beside Eva at the dinner table. He regretted that he had yielded to Pamela's persuasions and made the engagement in the hope of meeting Rachel there; it was almost too much to have to break bread at the same table with her husband, but having got himself into what he would have called "a confounded muddle," he had nothing to do but to make the best of it, and he sat there quietly observing them all, while Eva talked in snatches to first one and then to another. He had never found her as appealing as other men did and he could scarcely look at her now without anger. He longed to tell her what he thought of her for permitting her sister to sacrifice herself, and, with this in his mind, he looked down the long table and encountered the eyes of his host. Something in the look, guarded, enigmatical, mocking, arrested Charter's thought; it seemed to him to interpret the man. Astry's personality was enigmatical to most people. It had passed through some strange transitions: five years ago he might have been a Christian, indeed he had been much nearer one than many of those who profess Christianity; now he might as well be a Shintoist or an Indian medicine-man. He was sardonic, cold, he even suggested cruelty. It is curious what a hardening effect some of these pretty, little, dimpled women have on a man. Astry had hardened; he was urbane but he was sarcastic, yet no one was more easily acceptable, for his polish was so fine that it took the edge off his ill humor; it fitted him into any social niche and left his companions chilled to the marrow.
Charter, angry at himself for being there at all, glanced from Astry to Belhaven with contempt and anger, but even he recognized the change there. Belhaven, too, had greatly altered, but, in his case, there was a fine air of restraint, the effect of a refining influence which Charter saw with a pang of jealousy and with a maddening thought of Rachel as he had left her beside Belhaven's hearth. Belhaven loved her; he bore the evidence of it on his brow and he was able to face his antagonist without blenching, to even ignore their meeting at the club and Charter's insult, with something akin to dignity and without betraying, at the moment, the almost overwhelming shame that he felt. He had traveled the long road, he had nearly found the end, and he had the brooding air of a man who was only half aware of his surroundings. He scarcely glanced at the others except when directly addressed and his preoccupation would have been observed by people less engrossed in their own affairs, but they, too, were looking on at the game, each with his own idea about the next throw. Paul, fair and stout and visibly enjoying his dinner, was talking to pretty little Mrs. Prynne, whose face showed no more change than that of a wax doll, while Pamela, bright and restless, bantered gayly with old Dr. Macclesfield, and Sidney Billop ate plover with the eagerness of a hungry man whose conversational powers are limited and who recognizes achef. Massena, dark, graceful, easily fluent; Colonel Sedley, florid and comfortable, talking to his hostess when he could get her undivided attention. Eva had never looked more lovely; her delicate face had the freshness of a girl and her soft eyes looked up with an innocent appeal that gave no hint of the suffering through which she, too, had passed. Eva's nature was too shallow to feel all that Belhaven felt; she had suffered after her own fashion, but Astry had been so much more merciful than she had expected that she had experienced a feeling of relief. If she could only readjust it all on the old scale of comfort and luxury, all might yet be well! Astry required so little of her,—he seemed to require less and less; and she was trying bravely to do her best, for she was eager to hide it, to get back all she had lost.
She leaned over and threw a careless remark to Sidney very much as some throw a bone to a dog.
"I'm sorry that the storm kept your mother at home to-night," she said. "I suppose it's her rheumatism. You ought to take her to the Hot Springs, Sidney."
"She's going to Biarritz this summer," said Sidney stolidly, reluctantly withdrawing himself from the plover.
"I wish I could, but Johnstone likes to sit on the edge of a stream back here in the woods and try and hypnotize minnows. We only took a flying trip abroad last fall; it's terrible to have a naturalist for a husband!"
"I thought Astry's taste ran to curio hunting," said Dr. Macclesfield. "I fancied him like the man who pickled a rattlesnake in peach-brandy and brought him home in his wife's hat-box."
"On the contrary," said Astry, "Eva's only interview with the Serpent had to do with the famous apple; I might add that she didn't give me the core."
"I don't think I should mind the pickled serpents," retorted Eva, "but he keeps dried toads in his library!"
"I know," said the doctor, "and also grasshoppers; he's studied Pharaoh's epoch."
"Oh, anything to be rid of grasshoppers," said Pamela. "We had a plague of them in Newport last summer; they obscured the sea when they rose from the grass. I believe poor, dear Sidney swallowed one."
"Beg pardon," said Sidney seriously, "it wasn't a grasshopper, Cousin Pamela; it was a fly."
"Eh?" said Dr. Macclesfield.
"I'm sure I never meant to enlarge it," Pamela retorted charmingly. "I knew some poor thing sought shelter and you swallowed it. John, why in the world didn't you bring me something beautiful from the Philippines? I detest such honesty. He came home without spoiling the Egyptians."
"But he made himself famous," interposed Mrs. Prynne.
John reddened under Dr. Macclesfield's amused eyes.
"The truth is that neither spoils nor fame were so easily come by," he objected. "I can only regret my lost opportunities. You should get Astry to go there; he'd be happy in the pawn-shops, Mrs. Astry."
"Oh, Johnstone doesn't care for beautiful things," said Eva scornfully. "He wants 'a lizard's leg and owlet's wing;' he's always brewing cauldrons like the witches. He's just imported some new horror from the West Indies, not a sorcerer's crystal but something more potent. Beware of his den, my friends."
"How do you escape these terrors?" asked Pamela. "It would be so easy for him to cast his spell over you."
"He did once." Eva colored suddenly. "Now I simply avoid the peril and he's likely to practise it on you. Come, girls, let us escape the danger," she added, laughing, as she rose from the table.
But in the drawing-room Eva was scarcely as gay; she let Pamela fill in the gaps while she sat listening to Mrs. Prynne, but her eyes wandered restlessly to the door. It grew later and later, yet the men still lingered over their wine and their cigars, or else they had gone to the den. Had her idle jesting led them there? She stirred uneasily; she had an inexplicable horror of Astry's den; it brought back to her the terrors of that night when she had told the falsehood against Rachel to save herself.
As Eva feared, it was to his den that Astry had taken the men. It was a long, low-ceiled room in the extreme end of the house, separated by a wing from the conservatory and entirely beyond sight and sound of the drawing-rooms and hall. The ceiling was of carved oak and the walls were covered with tapestries, curious pictures, old firearms, and bits of carvings and engravings. The polished floor was bare and in the center of the room was a large table of sculptured marble, a curious dragon forming the central body and legs. There was nothing on it now but a graceful wand of carved ivory forked at the end to support a red ball, a perfect sphere in shape and the size of an enormous orange.
Hideous things grinned in the dusky corners, polished death's heads, toads with jeweled eyes, coiled serpents, grinning Chinese gods, and the fortune-teller's crystal sparkled on a cushion beside the alembics and the crucibles of the alchemist. Astry had collected every odd and end that he had found in a life given much to travel and the luxury of dilettanteism. The rage of the collector had run riot here with the purse of the millionaire to back it.
His guests walked about looking at things with idle amusement, for he seldom took visitors here. To Charter it presented a side of Astry's character that seemed trivial. John was not given to imagination, and he found the room stuffy and redolent of chemicals. He would have preferred books or something wholesome and manly; he had no taste for dipping into strange creeds and confusing the gods of Shintoism. John found the atmosphere irritating and he stood looking at a picture of St. Jerome on a broken tablet while the others were grouped about Astry's dried toads. Dr. Macclesfield joined him. They were apart from the rest.
"John," said the doctor, "you and I have got to gag Sidney Billop."
John looked around at the old man inquiringly.
"He's telling tales," said the doctor, in a low voice; "he's picked up some servants' tattle, a nasty bit of gossip, but it involves our friends and we've got to stop him."
"I'd thrash him with pleasure," said John.
Macclesfield laughed. "And spread it? Sidney would run screaming to his mother; he's not altogether responsible. The yellow journals would blaze; we've got to be diplomatic."
"I'm not diplomatic," said John, and he meant it; there was deadly anger in his eyes.
"No, you're martial. I reckon I shouldn't have told you. I'll have to scare Sidney myself; I used to when he was a child by telling him about the bogie man. He's not very different now. Lord, John, you might as well thrash a jellyfish; he's all flabby."
"Thrashing would substantiate him," said John grimly.
The doctor laughed again. "He'd be all of a splutter. There's trouble brewing; I think Astry's seen the paper."
John shut his mouth with a snap; the thought of Rachel sent the blood back to his heart. To have her subjected to this scandal, to have Sidney and such as Sidney bandy her name about, passed endurance.
"I'll take Sidney aside and threaten him with the Star Chamber," said the doctor; "let me try that before you birch him, John."
"There are some things that a man can't endure!"
"A good many, but like the plagues of Egypt they don't always soften Pharaoh's heart. If Addie Billop had only used enough soothing-syrup we might have been spared; some of it kills as quick as rat poison."
"Macclesfield," called Sedley from the other end of the room, "how long does it take to starve a man to death?"
"It depends on the man," laughed Macclesfield. "It would take quite a while with you, Sedley; you could live on your paws."
The old man sauntered down to the other group as he spoke, and John remained, turning over the leaves of a thirteenth century missal. Here he could understand Astry's interest, but his thoughts were not on it; he was raging against the intolerable situation.
Meanwhile, Sidney Billop had wandered to the center-table and was looking at the wand and its red sphere with a curiosity that invited a visitation of fate.
"I say, Astry," he said, "what in the world's all this? Looks like a top."
"Don't touch it," advised Astry, looking up from the toad he was displaying. "It has divining powers, Billop; it will expose the inmost secrets of your soul."
"Oh, rotten!" said Sidney.
"Your soul?" Astry laughed mockingly. "My dear fellow, I haven't a doubt of it, but we shan't investigate it without invoking the gods. I got that wand with its mystic sphere from an old West Indian sorcerer, a coal-black negro of Jamaica, and he taught me its secret. Touch it with but the finger-tip and it reveals the innocent; it declares the guilty."
"What a delightful thing is an imagination," said Van Citters. "On my soul, Astry, I believe you love these idiotic stories."
"Astry ought to have been an Indian medicine-man," said Colonel Sedley. "I remember one who was tremendous. He and Chief Rain-in-the-Face led a charge once in a fight out by the Little Big Horn. I saw him as a very old man about to be gathered to his fathers,—the biggest Indian I ever saw and the most remarkable; he could make you believe in the black arts."
"So can Astry," retorted Dr. Macclesfield.
Astry was standing by the table, his cigar between his fingers, his head thrown back, and a singular expression on his pale face.
Something in the atmosphere disturbed Sedley, who was a good-natured man. "Suppose we go and join the ladies," he suggested.
There was an assenting movement, but Astry held up his hand. "Shall we test the Red Sphere?" he said lightly. "According to the sorcerer who gave it to me, he who touches it is revealed. I have a whim—I invite you all to test it."
"See here, Astry," said Colonel Sedley bluntly, "what are you driving at?"
"Oh, hang it all!" said Van Citters, "let's touch it. Johnstone's off the bat to-night."
Astry laughed. "That's it, Paul," he agreed. "I'm off the bat." He held up the red sphere. "You're to touch it with the left hand only."
They all moved forward and touched it, their faces strongly suggestive of their temperaments. John's was scornful, Sedley's red and slightly embarrassed, Macclesfield's curious and amused, Van Citters' stolid, Belhaven's and Billop's both white.
Five hands were held up.
Astry looked from one to the other and laughed mockingly. "Billop, you're the man; every other hand is stained with red. You were the only one afraid to touch it; what's your crime?"
They stood looking at Sidney, who turned from white to red.
"Look here, I don't know what you mean, anyhow," he stammered; "it's all rotten!"
Astry continued to laugh, his eyes very narrow. "This lies between you and Belhaven," he said courteously, "and I'll leave you to him. He's a kind of interpreter of the Red Sphere to-night. Come, gentlemen," he added to the others, with a sudden grave change of manner, "I think I hear Mrs. Astry calling us. We'd better leave them to settle it between them; the sphere closes the episode."