The House of Mystery Part 6

As Blake drove the runabout north through the fine autumn morning, he perceived suddenly that his subconscious mind was playing him a trick.

He had started out to get light, air, eas.e.m.e.nt of his soul among woods and fields. And now, instead of turning into Central Park at Columbus Circle, he was following Upper Broadway, where, in order to reach the great out-of-doors, he must dodge trucks and cabs between miles of hotels and apartment houses. In fact, he had been manoeuvering, half-unconsciously, so that he might turn into the park at the Eighty-Sixth Street entrance and so pa.s.s that most important of all dwellings in Manhattan, the house where Annette Markham lived. Any irritation which he had felt against her, after the unpleasant evening before, was lost in his greater irritation with her aunt. Annette appeared to him, now, as the prize, the reward, of a battle in which Mrs. Paula Markham was his antagonist.

As he turned the corner into her street, ten years rolled away from him; he dreamed the childish, impossible dreams of a very youth. She might be coming down the steps as he pa.s.sed. Fate might even send a drunkard or an obstreperous cabman for him to thrash in her service.

But when he reached the house, nothing happened. The front door remained firmly shut; no open window gave a delicious glimpse of Annette. After his machine had gone ahead to such position that he could no longer scan the house without impolite craning of his neck, he found that his breath was coming fast. Awakened from his dream, a little ashamed of it, he opened the control and shot his machine ahead to the violation of all speed laws. He was crossing Central Park West, and the smooth opening of the park driveway was before him, when he looked up and saw--Annette.

Her honey-colored hair, glistening dull in the autumn sunshine, identified her even before he caught her characteristic walk--graceful and fast enough, but a little languid, too. She was dressed in a plain tailor suit, a turban, low, heavy shoes.

He slowed down the automobile to a crawl, that he might enter the park after her. A boyish embarra.s.sment smote him; if he drove up and spoke to her, it would look premeditated. So he hesitated between two courses, knowing well which he would pursue in the end. As he entered the park, still a dozen yards behind her, he saw that the footpath which she was following branched out from the automobile drive. Within a few paces, she would disappear behind a hydrangea bush. On that perception, he gave all speed to his machine, shot alongside and stopped.

Even before he reached her, she had turned and faced him. He fancied that the smile of recognition on her face had started even before she began to turn; she did not appear surprised, only pleased. Beating around in his mind for a graceful word of introduction, he accomplished an abrupt and ungraceful one.

"Will you ride?" he asked.

"With pleasure," she responded simply, and in one light motion she was in the seat beside him. He turned at low speed north, and as his hands moved over wheels and levers, she was asking:

"How did you happen to be here?"

He put a bold front on it.

"I drove past your home, by instinct, because I was coming north. And I saw you. Which of your spirits"--he was bold enough for the moment to make light of her sacred places--"sent you out-of-doors just before I pa.s.sed?"

"The spirit of the night before," she answered, pa.s.sing from smiles to gravity. "That long sleep without rest has been troubling me again. I remembered how exercise set me up in the country, and I started out for a little air. Aunt Paula is out this morning--something about the plumbing. Dear Auntie, how I'd love to take those cares off her shoulders. She'll never let me, though. And next week our housekeeper, whom we've held for two years, is leaving; she must advertise and receive applicants--and likely get the wrong one. So that's another worry for her. I was alone in the house when I awoke, and I could not waste such autumn weather as this!"

He looked at her with anxiety--the physician again.

"I saw trouble in your face last night. It isn't normal that you should be tired out so soon after the perfect condition you achieved at Berkeley Center."

"No, it isn't. I know that perfectly, and I'm resigned to it."

"I won't ask you to let _me_ treat you--but why don't you go to some physician about it? You know how much this case means to me."

For a time she did not reply. She only kept her eyes on the autumn tints of the park, streaking past them like a gaudy Roman scarf.

"No," she said at length, "no physician like you can heal me. Greater physicians, higher ones, for me. And they will not--will not--" She was silent again.

"Are you coming back again to that queer business of which you told me--that day on the tennis court?"

"To just that."

"What can such a thing have to do with your physical condition?"

"You will not laugh?"

"At you and yours and anything which touches you--no. You know I could not laugh now. Little as I respect that obstacle, it is the most serious fact I know."

His eyes were on the steering of the automobile. He could not see that her lips pursed up as though to form certain low and tender words, and that her sapphirine eyes swept him before she controlled herself to go on.

"Aunt Paula says it is part of the struggle. Some people, when the power is coming into them, are violent. Men, she says, have smashed furniture and torn their bodies. I am not strong to do such things, but only weak to endure. And so it takes me as it does.

"Don't you see?" she added, "that if I'm to give up so many powers of my mind, so many needs of my soul, to this thing, I can afford to give up a few powers of my body? Am I to become a Light without sacrificing all? So I keep away from physicians. It is Aunt Paula's wish, and she has always known what is best for me."

The automobile was running at an even fifteen miles an hour down a broad, un.o.bstructed parkway. He could turn his eyes from his business and let his hands guide. So he looked full at her, as he said:

"She may have a hard time keeping you away from this physician!"

That, it seemed, amused her. The strain in her face gave way to a smile.

"For yourself, she likes you, I think," said Annette.

"She has a most apt and happy way of showing it," he responded, his slights rising up in him.

"You mustn't judge her by last night," replied Annette. "Aunt Paula has many manners. I think she a.s.sumes that one when she is studying people.

Then think of the double reason she has for receiving you coldly--my whole future, as she plans it, hangs on it--and she spoke nicely of you. She likes your eyes and your wit and your manners. But--"

"But I am an undesirable acquaintance for her niece just the same!"

"Have I not said that you are--the obstacle? Haven't her controls told her that? If not, why did she telegraph to me when she did?" Then, as they turned from the park corner and made towards Riverside Drive, something in her changed.

"Must we talk this out whenever we meet? You said once that you would teach me to play. Ah, teach me now! I need it!"

And though he turned and twisted back toward the subject, she was pure girl for the next hour. The river breezes blew sparkle into her eyes; the morning intoxicated her tongue. She chattered of the trees, the water, the children on the benches, the gossiping old women. She made him stop to buy chestnuts of an Italian vendor, she led him toward his tales of the Philippines. He plunged into the Islands like a white Oth.e.l.lo, charming a super-white Desdemona. It was his story of the burning of Manila which brought him back to the vexation in his mind.

"That yarn seemed to make a very small hit last night," he said, turning suddenly upon her.

"I didn't like it so much last night," she answered frankly.

"What was the matter?" he asked. "Why were you so far away? Were you afraid of Mrs. Markham? I felt like the young man of a summer flirtation calling in the winter. What was it?"

"I don't know," she answered.

"No--tell me."

"There wasn't any reason. I liked you last night as I always like you.

But we were far away. Shall I tell you how it seemed to me? I was like an actress on the stage, and you like a man in the audience. I was speaking to you--a part. In no way could you answer me. In no way could I answer you directly. We moved near to each other, but in different worlds. It was something like that."

"I suppose"--bitterly--"your Aunt Paula had nothing to do with that?"

"You must like Aunt Paula if you are to like me," she warned. "Yet that may have something to do with it. I am wonderfully influenced by what she thinks--as is right."

"Then it's coming to a fight between me and your Aunt Paula? For I'll do even that."

"Must we go all over it again? Oh like me, like me, and give me a rest from it! I think of nothing but this all day--why do you make it harder? I do not know if I can renounce and still have you in my life.

Won't you wait until I know? It will be time enough then!"

"'Renounce,'" he quoted. "Then you know that there is something to renounce--and that means you love me!" So giddy had he become with the surge of his pa.s.sion that his hands trembled on the steering-wheel.

Afraid of losing all muscular control, he brought the automobile to a full stop at the roadside. Her sapphirine eyes were shining, her hands lay inert in her lap, her lips quivered softly.