The Danger Mark Part 55

"How's Sis?" he inquired.

"I think she has a headache," replied Kathleen, looking at Duane.

"Could I see her?" he asked.

Kathleen said gently that Geraldine did not feel like seeing anybody at that time. A moment later, in obedience to Scott's persistent clamouring for scarabs, she went across the lawn with the young master of Roya-Neh, resigned to the inevitable in the shape of two-horned scarabs or black-billed cuckoos.

It had always been so with her; it would always be so. Long ago the Seagrave twins had demanded all she had to give; now, if Geraldine asked less, Scott exacted double. And she gave--how happily, only her Maker and her conscience knew.

Duane was still reading--or he had all the appearance of reading--when Sylvia lifted her head from her hand and turned around with an effort that cost her what colour had remained under the transparent skin of her oval face.

"Duane," she said, "it occurred to me just now that you might have really mistaken what I said and did the other night." She hesitated, nerving herself to encounter his eyes, lifted and levelled across the top of his paper at her.

He waited; she retained enough self-command to continue with an effort at lightness:

"Of course it was all carnival fun--my pretending to mistake you for Mr.

Dysart. You understood it, didn't you?"

"Why, of course," he said, smiling.

She went on: "I--don't exactly remember what I said--I was trying to mystify you. But it occurred to me that perhaps it was rather imprudent to pretend to be on--on such impossible terms with Mr. Dysart----"

There was something too painful in her effort for him to endure. He said laughingly, not looking at her:

"Oh, I wasn't a.s.s enough to be deceived, Sylvia. Don't worry, little girl." And he resumed the study of his paper.

Minutes pa.s.sed--terrible minutes for one of them, who strove to find relief in his careless rea.s.surance, tried desperately to believe him, to deceive that intuition which seldom fails her s.e.x.

He, with the print blurred and meaningless before him, sat miserable, dumb with the sympathy he could not show, hot with the anger he dared not express. He thought of Dysart as he had revealed himself, now gone back to town to face that little crop of financial rumours concerning the Algonquin that persisted so wickedly and would not be quieted. For the first time in his life, probably, Dysart was compelled to endure the discomforts of a New York summer--more discomforts this summer than mere dust and heat and noise. For men who had always been on respectful financial terms with Dysart and his string of banks and his Algonquin enterprise were holding aloof from him; men who had figured for years in the same columns of print where his name was so often seen as director and trustee and secretary--fellow-members who served for the honour of serving on boards of all sorts, charity boards, hospital, museum, civic societies--these men, too, seemed to be politely, pleasantly, even smilingly edging away from him in some indefinable manner.

Which seemed to force him toward certain comparatively newcomers among the wealthy financiers of the metropolis--brilliant, masterful, restless men from the West, whose friendship in the beginning he had sought, deeming himself farsighted.

Now that his vision had become normally adjusted he cared less for this intimacy which it was too late to break--at least this was not the time to break it with money becoming unbelievably scarcer every day and a great railroad man talking angrily, and another great railroad man preaching caution at a time when the caution of the man in the Street might mean something so serious to Dysart that he didn't care to think about it.

Dysart had gone back to New York in company with several pessimistic gentlemen--who were very open about backing their fancy; and their fancy fell on that old, ramshackle jade, Hard Times, by Speculation out of Folly. According to them there was no hope of her being scratched or left at the post.

"She'll run like a scared hea.r.s.e-horse," said young Grandcourt gloomily.

There was reason for his gloom. Unknown to his father he had invested heavily in Dysart's schemes. It was his father's contempt that he feared more than ruin.

So Dysart had gone to town, leaving behind him the utter indifference of a wife, the deep contempt of a man; and a white-faced girl alone with her memories--whatever they might be--and her thoughts, which were painful if one might judge by her silent, rigid abstraction, and the lower lip which, at moments, escaped, quivering, from the close-set teeth.

When Duane rose, folding his paper with a carelessly pleasant word or two, she looked up in a kind of nave terror--like a child startled at prospect of being left alone. It was curious how those adrift seemed always to glide his way. It had always been so; even stray cats followed him in the streets; unhappy dogs trotted persistently at his heels; many a journey had he made to the Bide-a-wee for some lost creature's sake; many a softly purring cat had he caressed on his way through life--many a woman.

As he strolled toward the eastern end of the terrace, Sylvia looked after him; and, suddenly, unable to endure isolation, she rose and followed as instinctively as her lesser sisters-errant.

It was the trotting of little footsteps behind him on the gravel that arrested him. A glance at her face was enough; vexed, shocked, yet every sympathy instantly aroused, he resigned himself to whatever might be required of him; and within him a bitter mirth stirred--acrid, unpleasant; but his smile indicated only charmed surprise.

"I didn't suppose you'd care for a stroll with me," he said; "it is exceedingly nice of you to give me the chance."

"I didn't want to be left alone," she said.

"It is rather quiet here since our gay birds have migrated," he said in a matter-of-fact way. "Which direction shall we take?"

"I--don't care."

"The woods?"

"No," with a shudder so involuntary that he noticed it.

"Well, then, we'll go cross country----"

She looked at her thin, low shoes and then at him.

"Certainly," he said, "that won't do, will it?"

She shook her head.

They were pa.s.sing the Lodge now where his studio was and where he had intended to pack up his canvases that afternoon.

"I'll brew you a cup of tea if you like," he said; "that is, if it's not too unconventional to frighten you."

She smiled and nodded. Behind the smile her heavy thoughts throbbed on: How much did this man know? How much did he suspect? And if he suspected, how good he was in every word to her--how kind and gentle and high-minded! And the anguish in her smile caused him to turn hastily to the door and summon old Miller to bring the tea paraphernalia.

There was nothing to look at in the studio; all the canvases lay roped in piles ready for the crates; but Sylvia's gaze remained on them as though even the rough backs of the stretchers fascinated her.

"My father was an artist. After he married he did not paint. My mother was very wealthy, you know.... It seems a pity."

"What? Wealth?" he asked, smiling.

"N-no. I mean it seems a little tragic to me that father never continued to paint."

Miller's granddaughter came in with the tea. She was a very little girl with yellow hair and big violet eyes. After she had deposited everything, she went over to Duane and held up her mouth to be kissed.

He laughed and saluted her. It was a reward for service which she had suggested when he first came to Roya-Neh; and she trotted away in great content.

Sylvia's indifferent gaze followed her; then she sipped the tea Duane offered.

"Do you remember your father?" he asked pleasantly.

"Why, yes. I was fourteen when he died. I remember mother, too. I was seven."

Duane said, not looking at her: "It's about the toughest thing that can happen to a girl. It's tough enough on a boy."

"It was very hard," she said simply.

"Haven't you any relatives except your brother Stuyvesant--" he began, and checked himself, remembering that a youthful aunt of hers had eloped under scandalous circ.u.mstances, and at least one uncle was too notorious even for the stomachs of the society that whelped him.

She let it pa.s.s in silence, as though she had not heard. Later she declined more tea and sat deep in her chair, fingers linked under her chin, lids lowered.