Murder in Any Degree Part 3

He learned in a vague way that the Rantouls had settled in the East somewhere near New York, but he waited in vain for the news of the stir in the world of art that Rantoul's first exhibitions should produce.

His friends who visited in America returned without news of Rantoul; there was a rumor that he had gone with his father-in-law into the organization of some new railroad or trust. But even this report was vague, and as he could not understand what could have happened, it remained for a long time to him a mystery. Then he forgot it.

Ten years after Rantoul's marriage to little Tina Glover, Herkimer returned to America. The last years had placed him in the foreground of the sculptors of the world. He had that strangely excited consciousness that he was a figure in the public eye. Reporters rushed to meet him on his arrival, societies organized dinners to him, magazines sought the details of his life's struggle. Withal, however, he felt a strange loneliness, and an aloofness from the clamoring world about him. He remembered the old friendship in the starlit garret of the Rue de l'Ombre, and, learning Rantoul's address, wrote him. Three days later he received the following answer:

_Dear Old Boy:_

I'm delighted to find that you have remembered me in your fame. Run up this Sat.u.r.day for a week at least. I'll show you some fine scenery, and we'll recall the days of the Cafe des Lilacs together.

My wife sends her greetings also.

Clyde.

This letter made Herkimer wonder. There was nothing on which he could lay his finger, and yet there was something that was not there. With some misgivings he packed his bag and took the train, calling up again to his mind the picture of Rantoul, with his shabby trousers pulled up, decorating his ankles with lavender and black, roaring all the while with his rumbling laughter.

At the station only the chauffeur was down to meet him. A correct footman, moving on springs, took his bag, placed him in the back seat, and spread a duster for him. They turned through a pillared gateway, Renaissance style, pa.s.sed a gardener's lodge, with hothouses flashing in the reclining sun, and fled noiselessly along the macadam road that twined through a formal grove. All at once they were before the house, red brick and marble, with wide-flung porte-cochere and verandas, beyond which could be seen immaculate lawns, and in the middle distances the sluggish gray of a river that crawled down from the turbulent hills on the horizon. Another creature in livery tripped down the steps and held the door for him. He pa.s.sed perplexed into the hall, which was fresh with the breeze that swept through open French windows.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rantoul, ... decorating his ankles with lavender and black]

"Mr. Herkimer, isn't it?"

He turned to find a woman of mannered a.s.surance holding out her hand correctly to him, and under the panama that topped the pleasant effect of her white polo-coat he looked into the eyes of that Tina Glover, who once had caught his rough hand in her little ones and said timidly:

"You'll always be my friend, my best, just as you are Clyde's, won't you? And I may call you Britt or Old Boy or Old Top, just as Clyde does?"

He looked at her amazed. She was prettier, undeniably so. She had learned the art of being a woman, and she gave him her hand as though she had granted a favor.

"Yes," he said shortly, freezing all at once. "Where's Clyde?"

"He had to play in a polo-match. He's just home taking a tub," she said easily. "Will you go to your room first? I didn't ask any one in for dinner. I supposed you would rather chat together of old times. You have become a tremendous celebrity, haven't you? Clyde is so proud of you."

"I'll go to my room now," he said shortly.

The valet had preceded him, opening his valise and smoothing out his evening clothes on the lace bedspread.

"I'll attend to that," he said curtly. "You may go."

He stood at the window, in the long evening hour of the June day, frowning to himself. "By George! I've a mind to clear out," he said, thoroughly angry.

At this moment there came a vigorous rap, and Rantoul in slippers and lilac dressing-gown broke in, with hair still wet from his shower.

"The same as ever, bless the Old Top!" he cried, catching him up in one of the old-time bear-hugs. "I say, don't think me inhospitable. Had to play a confounded match. We beat 'em, too; lost six pounds doing it, though. Jove! but you look natural! I say, that was a stunning thing you did for Philadelphia--the audacity of it. How do you like my place? I've got four children, too. What do you think of that? Nothing finer. Well, tell me what you're doing."

Herkimer relented before the familiar rush of enthusiasm and questions, and the conversation began on a natural footing. He looked at Rantoul, aware of the social change that had taken place in him. The old aggressiveness, the look of the wolf, had gone; about him was an enthusiastic urbanity. He seemed clean cut, virile, overflowing with vitality, only it was a different vitality, the snap and decision of a man-of-affairs, not the untamed outrush of the artist.

They had spoken scarcely a short five minutes when a knock came on the door and a footman's voice said:

"Mrs. Rantoul wishes you not to be late for dinner, sir."

"Very well, very well," said Rantoul, with a little impatience. "I always forget the time. Jove! it's good to see you again; you'll give us a week at least. Meet you downstairs."

When Herkimer had dressed and descended, his host and hostess were still up-stairs. He moved through the rooms, curiously noting the contents of the walls. There were several paintings of value, a series of drawings by Boucher, a replica or two of his own work; but he sought without success for something from the brush of Clyde Rantoul. At dinner he was aware of a sudden uneasiness. Mrs. Rantoul, with the flattering smile that recalled Tina Glover, pressed him with innumerable questions, which he answered with constraint, always aware of the dull simulation of interest in her eyes.

Twice during the meal Rantoul was called to the telephone for a conversation at long distance.

"Clyde is becoming quite a power in Wall Street," said Mrs. Rantoul, with an approving smile. "Father says he's the strength of the younger men. He has really a genius for organization."

"It's a wonderful time, Britt," said Rantoul, resuming his place.

"There's nothing like it anywhere on the face of the globe--the possibilities of concentration and simplification here in business. It's a great game, too, matching your wits against another's. We're building empires of trade, order out of chaos. I'm making an awful lot of money."

Herkimer remained obstinately silent during the rest of the dinner.

Everything seemed to fetter him--the constraint of dining before the silent, flitting butler, servants who whisked his plate away before he knew it, the succession of unrecognizable dishes, the constant jargon of social eavesdroppings that Mrs. Rantoul pressed into action the moment her husband's recollections exiled her from the conversation; but above all, the indefinable enmity that seemed to well out from his hostess, and which he seemed to divine occasionally when the ready smile left her lips and she was forced to listen to things she did not understand.

When they rose from the table, Rantoul pa.s.sed his arm about his wife and said something in her ear, at which she smiled and patted his hand.

"I am very proud of my husband, Mr. Herkimer," she said with a little bob of her head in which was a sense of proprietorship. "You'll see."

"Suppose we stroll out for a little smoke in the garden," said Rantoul.

"What, you're going to leave me?" she said instantly, with a shade of vague uneasiness, that Herkimer perceived.

"We sha'n't be long, dear," said Rantoul, pinching her ear. "Our chatter won't interest you. Send the coffee out into the rose cupola."

They pa.s.sed out into the open porch, but Herkimer was aware of the little woman standing irresolutely tapping with her thin finger on the table, and he said to himself: "She's a little ogress of jealousy. What the deuce is she afraid I'll say to him?"

They rambled through sweet-scented paths, under the high-flung network of stars, hearing only the crunching of little pebbles under foot.

"You've given up painting?" said Herkimer all at once.

"Yes, though that doesn't count," said Rantoul, abruptly; but there was in his voice a different note, something of the restlessness of the old Don Furioso. "Talk to me of the Quarter. Who's at the Cafe des Lilacs now? They tell me that little Ragin we used to torment so has made some great decorations. What became of that pretty girl in the creamery of the Rue de l'Ombre who used to help us over the lean days?"

"Whom you christened Our Lady of the Sparrows?" "Yes, yes. You know I sent her the silk dress and the earrings I promised her."

Herkimer began to speak of one thing and another, of Bennett, who had gone dramatically to the Transvaal; of Le Gage, who was now in the forefront of the younger group of landscapists; of the old types that still came faithfully to the Cafe des Lilacs,--the old chess-players, the fat proprietor, with his fat wife and three fat children who dined there regularly every Sunday,--of the new revolutionary ideas among the younger men that were beginning to a.s.sert themselves.

"Let's sit down," said Rantoul, as though suffocating.

They placed themselves in wicker easy-chairs, under the heavy-scented rose cupola, disdaining the coffee that waited on a table. From where they were a red-tiled walk, with flower beds nodding in enchanted sleep, ran to the veranda. The porch windows were open, and in the golden lamplight Herkimer saw the figure of Tina Glover bent intently over an embroidery, drawing her needle with uneven st.i.tches, her head seeming inclined to catch the faintest sound. The waiting, nervous pose, the slender figure on guard, brought to him a strange, almost uncanny sensation of mystery, and feeling the sudden change in the mood of the man at his side, he gazed at the figure of the wife and said to himself:

[Ill.u.s.tration: Our Lady of the Sparrows]

"I'd give a good deal to know what's pa.s.sing through that little head.

What is she afraid of?"

"You're surprised to find me as I am," said Rantoul, abruptly breaking the silence.

"Yes."

"You can't understand it?"