The Scarecrow and Other Stories Part 43

Andreyvitch!"

And then Gregory Manners turned to Mrs. Broughton-Hollins.

"Good afternoon," he said, quietly.

A bit fl.u.s.tered, the hostess got hastily to her feet.

"So good of you to come--You know every one, don't you, Gregory? You'll have your tea here with us?" And below her breath, she added: "You mustn't be too hard on Andreyvitch, Gregory. These Russians--well, they're all a bit primitive."

He went from one to the other of the men. He kissed Kathleen's hand and told her how pretty she looked. He let Mrs. Broughton-Hollins pour his tea, and he ignored the Russian completely, the while he watched Kathleen with a strange foreboding, as her eyes flickered again and again over Andreyvitch's face.

Things did not go very smoothly during the next two days. Naturally they all did the usual. Golf and riding, bridge and dancing in the evenings, and shooting. Andreyvitch was pa.s.sionately fond of shooting. Manners had never so much as killed a sparrow in all his life.

There was an undercurrent of uneasiness which permeated the entire household. It was not particularly because of Andreyvitch and Manners.

It was something that not one of them could have explained if they had been put to it.

The first day Mrs. Galvin told her husband that she would be glad when it was all over. And although unexpressed that was the general sentiment.

Not that Andreyvitch or Manners made the others uncomfortable. After Gregory's first outburst, and now that they were under the same roof, it rather seemed that the Russian avoided Manners. And Manners--He watched carefully every movement, every little turn or twist of Andreyvitch's.

At that time it was as if he were trying to substantiate some memory of his; to substantiate it deliberately and positively.

And then because of Andreyvitch's unceasing attentions to Kathleen Bennet, word went round among the various members of the house-party that Gregory and Kathleen had quarreled.

It was Sunday afternoon when Manners came upon Kathleen walking alone in the rose-garden.

"I'll be jolly well glad," he told her, "when we get back to town again."

"Aren't you having a good time, Greg?"

"How can I?"

"But you really needed the rest--You haven't been looking any too fit, you know. I thought this would be quite nice for you, Greg."

He let loose at that.

"If you must have it, Kathleen. I can't stand you and that bounder in the same house. That's the truth of it, old girl!"

She avoided answering him directly.

"It's such a ripping place here, Gregory. All--that is, all but those forests over there. The gardener told me his grandfather used to call them the Wood of Living Trees. He couldn't tell me why--only--Isn't it a strange name, Greg?"

She wound up lamely. Evidently she had not said what she started out to say.

"Not so awfully," he answered absent-mindedly. "It's probably an old, old name. They stick to places, you know."

"But the woods," she went on slowly, "they're so dark and mysterious and all that sort of thing. I've wanted to explore them ever since I've been here--that is--that's not altogether true, Gregory. They frighten me a good bit--especially at night. I get into quite a funk about it--at night. I say, you wouldn't call me a coward, would you, Gregory?"

"Of course not, Kathleen. What utter nonsense!"

"But if I weren't afraid," she continued half to herself. "If I weren't really terrified, I'd go into the woods and show myself there's nothing to be frightened of, wouldn't I?"

"You most certainly would not!" He said. "If you did, you'd be sure to lose your way, old girl."

For a second they walked in silence.

"D'you ever feel"--she turned to face him--"d'you ever feel you'd been in a place before--and yet you knew you'd never been there at all?"

"No," he told her a bit too abruptly.

"You needn't be so stuffy, Gregory," she murmured.

"Oh, my dear!" He caught her and held her in his arms. "Can't you see that it's all like a horrible nightmare? Can't you see that I'm not able to know positively until it's actually happened--and then--oh, my G.o.d!--If it should be too late!"

Her hands clenched rigidly on his shoulders.

"Gregory," she whispered, "tell me, dear--you've been so strange of late--so terribly unlike yourself. Tell me, dear, what is it?"

"Nothing, dearest girl--nothing."

"Oh, but there is something!" She exclaimed pa.s.sionately. "I've known it right along. I haven't asked because I thought you'd tell me. Why--one must be blind not to see how you've changed! You're--you're just a skeleton of yourself, Gregory." She paused for breath. "Can't you bring yourself to tell me--can't you, dear?"

"If I only knew," he muttered, "if I only knew--for certain."

Her eyes were lifted to his. The brows met in a puckering frown above them.

"Gregory--that time you were away--for a whole fortnight--did anything happen, then--Gregory?"

"Did anything happen?" She had surprised him into it. "Good G.o.d, did anything happen? Why, you don't know what it was like--You couldn't know! If they'd told me such a thing were possible--I shouldn't have believed it! I wanted to think--I wanted to work the thing out for myself--so I went down there for a rest. Rest--"

He broke off then, but she stood very silently beside him and presently he went on again.

"Have you ever felt you were going mad, Kathleen? Raving, tearing--mad?

That's how I felt for two weeks. I thought it would never end. And all the time--why, I couldn't think! I couldn't do anything but feel that something was driving me to do something--something tremendous, as if the very force of my own life were making me do this thing that I had been sent into life to do. And, Kathleen," his voice sank to a hoa.r.s.e whisper, "I couldn't understand--what--it--was!"

She put her arm about his neck and drew his head down until her cheek rested on his.

"I couldn't think a thought," he muttered. "I'd laid myself open to the thing. It just swept over me and through me. It saturated me with the impulse to do the thing I had come into the world to do! The one thing that stood out--was--the feeling that it would have to be done--soon."

He paused for a moment. "And then one afternoon at the club--when I'd been back a day or two--something came to me-a sudden knowledge of--well, of rottenness--that--that might have to be done away with--as if that had something to do with it. Only I don't know, Kathleen--not--as yet."

He looked at her then and he saw her eyes were filled with tears. He thought he had frightened her. He waited until he had himself well in hand before he spoke again.

"Kathleen, always believe in the good of things, dearest girl. And, Kathleen," the words that came to him were almost as great a surprise to him as they were to her. "Never leave that crucifix off your neck.

Promise me, dear?"

"I promise."

A little later they went in to tea.

He got to bed that night with a great feeling of relief that in the morning they would all be back in town. He had thought something would happen. He had not known what, but the feeling had been there. He did not mind admitting it to himself now, and he did not mind acknowledging that he could not understand how the thing, whatever it was, had been avoided. Unformed, undefinable, it had been powerfully imminent. He fell asleep wondering what it was that he had expected.