The Flirt Part 5

"I got a right to know what she said, haven't I?"

There was no response, which appeared to satisfy Hedrick perfectly. Neither parent met his glance; the mother troubled and the father dogged, while the boy rejoiced sternly in some occult triumph. He inflated his scant chest in pomp and hurled at the defeated pair the well-known words:

"I wish she was _my_ daughter--about five minutes!"

New sounds from without--men's voices in greeting, and a ripple of response from Cora somewhat lacking in enthusiasm--afforded Mr.

Madison unmistakable relief, and an errand upon which to send his deadly offspring.

Hedrick, after a reconnaissance in the hall, obeyed at leisure.

Closing the library door nonchalantly behind him, he found himself at the foot of a flight of unillumined back stairs, where his manner underwent a swift alteration, for here was an adventure to be gone about with ceremony. "Ventre St. Gris!" he muttered hoa.r.s.ely, and loosened the long rapier in the shabby sheath at his side. For, with the closing of the door, he had become a Huguenot gentleman, over forty and a little grizzled perhaps, but modest and una.s.suming; wiry, alert, lightning-quick, with a wrist of steel and a heart of gold; and he was about to ascend the stairs of an unknown house at Blois in total darkness. He went up, crouching, ready for anything, without a footfall, not even causing a hideous creak; and gained the top in safety. Here he turned into an obscure pa.s.sage, and at the end of it beheld, through an open door, a little room in which a dark-eyed lady sat writing in a book by the light of an oil lamp.

The wary Huguenot remained in the shadow and observed her.

Laura was writing in an old ledger she had found in the attic, blank and unused. She had rebound it herself in heavy gray leather; and fitted it with a tiny padlock and key. She wore the key under her dress upon a very thin silver chain round her neck.

Upon the first page of the book was written a date, now more than a year past, the month was June--and beneath it:

"Love came to me to-day."

Nothing more was written upon that page.

CHAPTER FOUR

Laura, at this writing, looked piquantly unfamiliar to her brother: her eyes were moist and bright; her cheeks were flushed and as she bent low, intently close to the book, a loosened wavy strand of her dark hair almost touched the page. Hedrick had never before seen her wearing an expression so "becoming" as the eager and tremulous warmth of this; though sometimes, at the piano, she would play in a reverie which wrought such glamour about her that even a brother was obliged to consider her rather handsome. She looked more than handsome now, so strangely lovely, in fact, that his eyes watered painfully with the protracted struggle to read a little of the writing in her book before she discovered him.

He gave it up at last, and lounged forward blinking, with the air of finding it sweet to do nothing.

"Whatch' writin'?" he asked in simple carelessness.

At the first sound of his movement she closed the book in a flash; then, with a startled, protective gesture, extended her arms over it, covering it.

"What is it, Hedrick?" she asked, breathlessly.

"What's the padlock for?"

"Nothing," she panted. "What is it you want?"

"You writin' poetry?"

Laura's eyes dilated; she looked dangerous.

"Oh, I don't care about your old book," said Hedrick, with an amused nonchalance Talleyrand might have admired. "There's callers, and you have to come down."

"Who sent you?"

"A man I've often noticed around the house," he replied blightingly. "You may have seen him--I think his name's Madison.

His wife and he both sent for you."

One of Laura's hands instinctively began to arrange her hair, but the other remained upon the book. "Who is it calling?"

"Richard Lindley and that Wade Trumble."

Laura rose, standing between her brother and the table. "Tell mother I will come down."

Hedrick moved a little nearer, whereupon, observing his eye, she put her right hand behind her upon the book. She was not deceived, and boys are not only superb strategic actors sometimes, but calamitously quick. Appearing to be unaware of her careful defence, he leaned against the wall and crossed his feet in an original and interesting manner.

"Of course _you_ understand," he said cosily. "Cora wants to keep this Corliss in a corner of the porch where she can coo at him; so you and mother'll have to raise a ballyhoo for d.i.c.k Lindley and that Wade Trumble. It'd been funny if d.i.c.k hadn't noticed anybody was there and kissed her. What on earth does he want to stay engaged to her for, anyway?"

"You don't know that she is engaged to Mr. Lindley, Hedrick."

"Get out!" he hooted. "What's the use talking like that to me? A blind mackerel could see she's let poor old Lindley think he's High Man with her these last few months; but he'll have to hit the pike now, I reckon, 'cause this Corliss is altogether too pe-rin-sley for d.i.c.k's cla.s.s. Lee roy est mort. Vive lee roy!"

"Hedrick, won't you please run along? I want to change my dress."

"What for? There was company for dinner and you didn't change then."

Laura's flushed cheeks flushed deeper, and in her confusion she answered too quickly. "I only have one evening gown. I--of course I can't wear it every night."

"Well, then," he returned triumphantly, "what do you want to put it on now for?"

"_Please_ run along, Hedrick," she pleaded.

"You didn't for this Corliss," he persisted sharply. "You know d.i.c.k Lindley couldn't see anybody but Cora to save his life, and I don't suppose there's a girl on earth fool enough to dress up for that Wade Trum----"

"Hedrick!" Laura's voice rang with a warning which he remembered to have heard upon a few previous occasions when she had easily proved herself physically stronger than he. "Go and tell mother I'm coming," she said.

He began to whistle "Beulah Land" as he went, but, with the swift closing of the door behind him, abandoned that pathetically optimistic hymn prematurely, after the third bar.

Twenty minutes later, when Laura came out and went downstairs, a fine straight figure in her black evening gown, the Sieur de Marsac--that hard-bitten Huguenot, whose middle-aged shabbiness was but the outward and deceptive seeming of the longest head and the best sword in France--emerged cautiously from the pa.s.sageway and stood listening until her footsteps were heard descending the front stairs. Nevertheless, the most painstaking search of her room, a search as systematic as it was feverish, failed to reveal where she had hidden the book.

He returned wearily to the porch.

A prophet has always been supposed to take some pleasure, perhaps morbid, in seeing his predictions fulfilled; and it may have been a consolation to the gloomy heart of Hedrick, sorely injured by Laura's offensive care of her treasure, to find the grouping upon the porch as he had foretold: Cora and Mr. Corliss sitting a little aloof from the others, far enough to permit their holding an indistinct and murmurous conversation of their own. Their sequestration, even by so short a distance, gave them an appearance of intimacy which probably accounted for the rather absent greeting bestowed by Mr. Lindley upon the son of the house, who met him with some favour.

This Richard Lindley was a thin, friendly looking young man with a pleasing, old-fashioned face which suggested that if he were minded to be portrayed it should be by the daguerreotype, and that a high, black stock would have been more suitable to him than his businesslike, modern neck-gear. He had fine eyes, which seemed habitually concerned with faraway things, though when he looked at Cora they sparkled; however, it cannot be said that the sparkling continued at its brightest when his glance wandered (as it not infrequently did this evening) from her lovely head to the rose in Mr. Corliss's white coat.

Hedrick, resuming a position upon the top step between the two groups, found the conversation of the larger annoying because it prevented him from hearing that of the smaller. It was carried on for the greater part by his mother and Mr. Trumble; Laura sat silent between these two; and Lindley's mood was obviously contemplative. Mr. Wade Trumble, twenty-six, small, earnest, and already beginning to lose his hair, was talkative enough.

He was one of those people who are so continuously aggressive that they are negligible. "What's the matter here? n.o.body pays any attention to me. I'M important!" He might have had that legend engraved on his card, it spoke from everything else that was his: face, voice, gesture--even from his clothes, for they also clamoured for attention without receiving it. Worn by another man, their extravagance of shape and shade might have advertised a self-sacrificing effort for the picturesque; but upon Mr. Trumble they paradoxically confirmed an impression that he was well off and close. Certainly this was the impression confirmed in the mind of the shrewdest and most experienced observer on that veranda.

The accomplished Valentine Corliss was quite able to share Cora's detachment satisfactorily, and be very actively aware of other things at the same time. For instance: Richard Lindley's preoccupation had neither escaped him nor remained unconnected in his mind with that gentleman's somewhat attentive notice of the present position of a certain rose.

Mr. Trumble took up Mrs. Madison's placid weather talk as if it had been a flaunting challenge; he made it a matter of conscience and for argument; for he was a doughty champion, it appeared, when nothings were in question, one of those stern men who will have accuracy in the ba.n.a.l, insisting upon portent in talk meant to be slid over as mere courteous sound.

"I don't know about that, now," he said with severe emphasis. "I don't know about that at all. I can't say I agree with you. In fact, I do not agree with you: it was hotter in the early part of July, year before last, than it has been at any time this summer.

Several degrees hotter--several degrees."

"I fear I must beg to differ with you," he said, catching the poor lady again, a moment later. "I beg to differ decidedly. Other places get a great deal more heat. Look at Egypt."