The Second Latchkey Part 39

As she pa.s.sed the cactus fence the buds were big.

Across the river, where the water flowed high and wide just then, lay Mexico. Annesley had never been there, though she could easily have gone, had she wished, from the ranch to El Paso, and from El Paso to the queer old historic town of Juarez. But she could not have gone without Knight, and there was no pleasure in travelling with him.

Besides, there was trouble across the border, and fierce fighting now and then. There had been some thievish raids made by Mexicans upon ranches along the river not many miles away, and that reminded her how Knight had remarked some weeks ago that she had better not go alone as far as the river bank.

"It isn't likely that anything would happen by day," he said, "but you might be shot at from the other side." Annesley was not afraid, and there was a faint stirring of pleasure in the thought that she was doing something against his wish on this anniversary. Deliberately, she sat alone by the river, waiting for the pageant of sunset to pa.s.s; and when she reached home the moon was up, a great white moon that turned the waving waste of pale, spa.r.s.e gra.s.ses to a silver sea.

She had taken sandwiches and fruit with her, telling the cook that she would want no dinner when she came back. Away in the cow-punchers'

quarters there was music, and she flung herself into a hammock on the veranda, to rest and listen.

There was a soft yet cool wind from the south, bringing the fragrance of creosote blossoms, and it seemed to the girl that never had she seen such white floods of moonlight, not even that night a year ago at Valley House.

Even the sky was milk-white. There were no black shadows anywhere, only dove-gray ones, except under the veranda roof. Her hammock was screened from the light by one dark shadow, like a straight-hung curtain. Save for the music of a fiddle and men's voices, the silver-white world lay silent in enchanted sleep.

Then suddenly something moved. A tall, dark figure was coming to the veranda. It paused at the cactus fence.

Could it be Knight, home already and on foot? No, it was a woman.

She walked straight and fast and unhesitating to the veranda, where she sat down on the steps.

Annesley raised herself on her elbow, and peered out of the concealing shadow. Who could the woman be? It was on the tip of her tongue to call, "Who are you?" when a sudden lifting of the bent face under a drooping hat brought it beneath the searchlight of the moon.

The woman was the Countess de Santiago, and the moon's radiance so lit her dark eyes that she seemed to look straight at Annesley in her hammock. The girl's heart gave a leap of some emotion like fear, yet not fear. She did not stop to a.n.a.lyze it, but she knew that she wished to escape from the woman; and an instant's reflection told her that she could not be seen if she kept still.

She began to think quickly, and her thoughts, confused at first, straightened themselves out like threads disentangled from a knot.

The woman had marched up to the veranda with such unfaltering certainty that it seemed she must have been there before. Perhaps she had arrived while the mistress of the house was out, and had been walking about the place, to pa.s.s away the time.

"But she hasn't come to see me," the girl in the hammock thought. "She has come to see Knight. It's for him she is waiting."

Anger stirred in Annesley's heart, anger against Knight as well as against Madalena.

"Has _he_ written and told her to come?" she asked herself. "Does she think she can stay in this house? No, she shall not! I won't have her here!"

She was half-minded to rise abruptly and surprise the Countess, as the Countess had surprised her; to ask why she had come, and to show that she was not welcome. But if Madalena were here at Knight's invitation she would stay. There would be a scene perhaps. The thought was revolting.

Annesley lay still; and in the distance she heard the throbbing of a motor.

CHAPTER XXV

THE ALLEGORY

Annesley knew that Knight was in the habit of coming home that way, in order not to disturb her with the noise of the car if she had gone to bed. If he were bringing parcels from the little mining town, he drove to the house, left the packets, and ran the auto to a shanty he had rigged up for a garage.

A few seconds later the small open car came into sight, and Madalena sprang up, waving a dark veil she had s.n.a.t.c.hed off her hat. She feared, no doubt, that the man might take another direction and perhaps get into the house by some door she did not know before she could intercept him.

From a little distance the tall figure standing on the veranda steps must have been silhouetted black against the white wall of the house, clearly to be seen from the advancing motor.

Quick as a bird in flight the car sped along the road, wheeled on to the stiff gra.s.s, and drew up close to the veranda steps.

"Good heavens, Madalena!" Annesley heard her husband exclaim. "I thought it was my wife, and that something had gone wrong."

The surprise sharpening his tone did away with the doubt in the mind of the hidden listener. She had said to herself that the woman was here by appointment, and that this hour had been chosen because the meeting was to be secret.

"I wanted you to think so, and to come straight to this place," returned the once familiar voice. "Don, I've travelled from San Francisco to see you. Do say you are glad!"

"I can't," the man answered. "I'm not glad. You tried to ruin me. You tried in a coward's way. You struck me in the back. I hoped never to see you again. How did you find me?"

"I've known for a long time that you were in Texas," said Madalena. "Lady Annesley-Seton and I kept up a correspondence for months after you--sent me away so cruelly, in such a hurry, believing hateful things, though you had no proof. She wrote that 'Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Smith' would probably never come back to England to settle, as she'd heard from a Mrs. Waldo that they'd gone to live in Texas. She asked if I knew whether 'Nelson Smith' had lost his money. I forgot to answer that question when I answered the letter. But when she said 'Texas' I felt sure you must be somewhere in this part. I remembered your telling me about the ranch that consumptive gambler left to you on the Mexican frontier."

"What a fool I was to tell you!" Knight exclaimed, roughly.

The words and his way of flinging them at her were like a box on the ear; and Annesley, lying in her hammock, heard with a thrill of pleasure. She was ashamed of the thrill, and ashamed (because suddenly awakened to the realization) that she was eavesdropping.

But it seemed impossible that she should break in upon this talk and reveal her presence. She felt that she could not do it; though, searching her conscience, she was not sure whether she clung to silence because it was the lesser of two evils or because she longed with a terrible longing to know whether these two would patch up their old partnership.

"If you knew why I have come all these miles, maybe you would not be so hard," Madalena pleaded.

"That I can't tell until I do hear," said Knight, dryly.

"I am going to explain," she tried to soothe him. "A great thing has happened. I can be rich and live easily all the rest of my years if I choose. But--I wanted to see you before deciding.

"I arrived in El Paso yesterday, and went to the Paso del Norte Hotel, to inquire about you. I was almost certain you would have taken back your own name, because I knew you used to be known by it when you stayed in Texas. I soon found out that I'd guessed right. I heard you'd stopped at that hotel last year on the way to your ranch. I hired a motor-car and came here to-day; but I didn't let the man bring me to the house. I didn't want to dash up and advertise myself.

"I questioned some of your cowmen. They said you'd gone off, and would be getting back at night in your automobile, not earlier than ten and maybe a good deal later. So I waited. The car I hired is a covered one, and I sat in it, a long way from the house out of sight behind a little rising of the land. Perhaps you call it a hill."

"We do," said Knight.

"I brought some food and wine. The chauffeur's there with the car now. He has cigarettes, and doesn't mind if we stay all night."

"I mind," Knight cut her short. "You can't stay all night. The road's good enough with such a moon for you to get back to El Paso. You'd better start so as to reach there before she sets."

"Wait till you hear why I've come before you advise me to hurry!" the Countess protested. "There's no danger of our being disturbed, is there?

Where is your wife?"

"In bed and asleep, I trust."

"I'm glad. Then will you sit on the top of these steps in this heavenly moonlight and let me tell you things that are important to me? Perhaps you may think they are important to you as well. Who knows?"

"I know. Nothing you can have to say will be important to me. I won't sit down, thank you. I've been sitting in my car for hours. I prefer to stand."

"Very well. But--how hard you are! Even now, you won't believe I was innocent of that thing you accused me of doing?"

"I think now what I thought then. You were not innocent, but guilty. You were just a plain, ordinary sneak, Madalena, because you were jealous and spiteful."

"It is not true! Spiteful against _you_! It was never in my heart to lie.