The Spenders Part 20

"Mornin', old chap! Feelin' a bit seedy? By Jove! I don't wonder. I'm not so fit myself. I fancy, you know, it must have been that beastly anchovy paste we had on the biscuits."

Milbrey's burning eyes beheld him reach out for another slice of the cold, terrible mutton.

"Life," said Milbrey, as he inflated his brandy from the siphon, "is an empty dream this morning."

"Wake up then, old chap!" Mauburn cordially urged, engaging the game pie in deadly conflict; "try a rasher; nothing like it; better'n peggin' it so early. Never drink till dinner-time, old chap, and you'll be able to eat in the morning like--like a blooming baby." And he proceeded to crown this notion of infancy's breakfast with a jam tart of majestic proportions.

"Where are the people?" inquired Milbrey, eking out his own moist breakfast with a cigarette.

"All down and out except some of the women. Miss Bines just drove off a four-in-hand with the two Angsteads--held the reins like an old whip, too, by Jove; but they'll be back for luncheon;--and directly after luncheon she's promised to ride with me. I fancy we'll have a little practice over the sticks."

"And I fancy I'm going straight back to bed,--that is, if it's all right to fancy a thing you're certain about."

Outside most of the others had scattered for life in the open, each to his taste. Some were on the links. Some had gone with the coach. A few had ridden early to the meet of the Ess.e.x hounds near Easthampton, where a stiff run was expected. Others had gone to follow the hunt in traps. A lively group came back now to read the morning papers by the log-fire in the big cheery hall. Among these were Percival and Miss Milbrey. When they had dawdled over the papers for an hour Miss Milbrey grew slightly restive.

"Why doesn't he have it over?" she asked herself, with some impatience.

And she delicately gave Percival, not an opportunity, but opportunities to make an opportunity, which is a vastly different form of procedure.

But the luncheon hour came and people straggled back, and the afternoon began, and the request for Miss Milbrey's heart and hand was still unaccountably deferred. Nor could she feel any of those subtle premonitions that usually warn a woman when the event is preparing in a lover's secret heart.

Reminding herself of his letters, she began to suspect that, while he could write unreservedly, he might be shy and reluctant of speech; and that shyness now deterred him. So much being clear, she determined to force the issue and end the strain for both.

Percival had shown not a little interest in pretty Mrs. Akemit, and was now talking with that fascinating creature as she lolled on a low seat before the fire in her lacy blue house-gown. At the moment she was adroitly posing one foot and then the other before the warmth of the grate. It may be disclosed without damage to this tale that the feet of Mrs. Akemit were not cold; but that they were trifles most daintily shod, and, as her slender silken ankles curved them toward the blaze from her froth of a petticoat, they were worth looking at.

Miss Milbrey disunited the chatting couple with swiftness and aplomb.

"Come, Mr. Bines, if I'm to take that tramp you made me promise you, it's time we were off."

Outside she laughed deliciously. "You know you did make me promise it mentally, because I knew you'd want to come and want me to come, but I was afraid Mrs. Akemit mightn't understand about telepathy, so I pretended we'd arranged it all in words."

"Of course! Great joke, wasn't it?" a.s.sented the young man, rather awkwardly.

Down the broad sweep of roadway, running between its granite coping, they strode at a smart pace.

"You know you complimented my walking powers on that other walk we took, away off there where the sun goes down."

"Yes, of course," he replied absently.

"Now, he's beginning," she said to herself, noting his absent and somewhat embarra.s.sed manner.

In reality he was thinking how few were the days ago he would have held this the dearest of all privileges, and how strange that he should now prize it so lightly, almost prefer, indeed, not to have it; that he should regard her, of all women, "the fairest of all flesh on earth"

with nervous distrust.

She was dressed in tan corduroy; elation was in her face; her waist, as she stepped, showed supple as a willow; her suede-gloved little hands were compact and tempting to his grasp. His senses breathed the air of her perfect and compelling femininity. But sharper than all these impressions rang the words of the worldly-wise Higbee: _"She's hunting night and day for a rich husband; she tries for them as fast as they come; she'd rather marry a sub-treasury--she'd marry me in a minute--she'd marry_ YOU; _but if you were broke she'd have about as much use for you...."_

Her glance was frank, friendly, and encouraging. Her deep eyes were clear as a trout-brook. He thought he saw in them once almost a tenderness for him.

She thought, "He _does_ love me!"

Outside the grounds they turned down a bridle-path that led off through the woods--off through the golden sun-wine of an October day. The air bore a clean autumn spice, and a faint salty scent blended with it from the distant Sound. The autumn silence, which is the only perfect silence in all the world, was restful, yet full of significance, suggestion, provocation. From the spongy lowland back of them came the pleading sweetness of a meadow-lark's cry. Nearer they could even hear an occasional leaf flutter and waver down. The quick thud of a falling nut was almost loud enough to earn its echo. Now and then they saw a lightning flash of vivid turquoise and heard a jay's harsh scream.

In this stillness their voices instinctively lowered, while their eyes did homage to the wondrous play of colour about them. Over a yielding brown carpet they went among maple and chestnut and oak, with their bewildering changes through crimson, russet, and amber to pale yellow; under the deep-stained leaves of the sweet-gum they went, and past the dogwood with scarlet berries gemming the cl.u.s.ters of its dim red leaves.

But through all this waiting, inciting silence Miss Milbrey listened in vain for the words she had felt so certain would come.

Sometimes her companion was voluble; again he was taciturn--and through it all he was doggedly aloof.

Miss Milbrey had put herself bravely in the path of Destiny. Destiny had turned aside. She had turned to meet it, and now it frankly fled.

Destiny, as she had construed it, was turned a fugitive. She was bruised, puzzled, and not a little piqued. During the walk back, when this much had been made clear, the silence was intolerably oppressive.

Without knowing why, they understood perfectly now that neither had been ingenuous.

"She would love the money and play me for a fool," he thought, under the surface talk. Youth is p.r.o.ne to endow its opinions with all the dignity of certain knowledge.

"Yet I am certain he loves me," thought she. On the other hand, youth is often gifted with a credulity divine and unerring.

At the door as they came up the roadway a trap was depositing a man whom Miss Milbrey greeted with evident surprise and some restraint. He was slight, dark, and quick of movement, with finely cut nostrils that expanded and quivered nervously like those of a high-bred horse in tight check.

Miss Milbrey introduced him to Percival as Mr. Ristine.

"I didn't know you were hereabouts," she said.

"I've run over from the Bloynes to dine and do Hallowe'en with you," he answered, flashing his dark eyes quickly over Percival and again lighting the girl with them.

"Surprises never come singly," she returned, and Percival noted a curious little air of defiance in her glance and manner.

Now it is possible that Solomon's implied distinction as to the man's way with a maid was not, after all, so ill advised.

For young Bines, after dinner, fell in love with Miss Milbrey all over again. The normal human mind going to one extreme will inevitably gravitate to its opposite if given time. Having put her away in the conviction that she was heartless and mercenary--having fasted in the desert of doubt--he now found himself detecting in her an unmistakable appeal for sympathy, for human kindness, perhaps for love. He forgot the words of Higbee and became again the confident, unquestioning lover. He noted her rather subdued and reserved demeanour, and the suggestions of weariness about her eyes. They drew him. He resolved at once to seek her and give his love freedom to tell itself. He would no longer meanly restrain it. He would even tell her all his distrust. Now that they had gone she should know every ign.o.ble suspicion; and, whether she cared for him or not, she would comfort him for the hurt they had been to him.

The Hallowe'en frolic was on. Through the long hall, lighted to pleasant dusk by real Jack-o'-lanterns, stray couples strolled, with subdued murmurs and soft laughter. In the big white and gold parlour, in the dining-room, billiard-room, and in the tropic jungle of the immense palm-garden the party had bestowed itself in congenial groups, ever intersecting and forming anew. Little flutters of high laughter now and then told of tests that were being made with roasting chestnuts, apple-parings, the white of an egg dropped into water, or the lighted candle before an open window.

Percival watched for the chance to find Miss Milbrey alone. His sister had just ventured alone with a candle into the library to study the face of her future husband in a mirror. The result had been, in a sense, unsatisfactory. She had beheld looking over her shoulder the faces of Mauburn, Fred Milbrey, and the Angstead twins, and had declared herself unnerved by the weird prophecy.

Before the fire in the hall Percival stood while Mrs. Akemit reclined picturesquely near by, and Doctor von Herzlich explained, with excessive care as to his enunciation, that protoplasm can be a.n.a.lysed but cannot be reconstructed; following this with his own view as to why the synthesis does not produce life.

"You wonderful man!" from Mrs. Akemit; "I fairly tremble when I think of all you know. Oh, what a delight science must be to her votaries!"

The Angstead twins joined the group, attracted by Mrs. Akemit's inquiry of the savant if he did not consider civilisation a failure. The twins did. They considered civilisation a failure because it was killing off all the big game. There was none to speak of left now except in Africa; and they were pessimistic about Africa.

Percival listened absently to the talk and watched Miss Milbrey, now one of the group in the dining-room. Presently he saw her take a lighted candle from one of the laughing girls and go toward the library.

His heart-beats quickened. Now she should know his love and it would be well. He walked down the hall leisurely, turned into the big parlour, momentarily deserted, walked quickly but softly over its polished floor to a door that gave into the library, pushed the heavy portiere aside and stepped noiselessly in.

The large room was lighted dimly by two immense yellow pumpkins, their sides cut into faces of grinning grotesqueness. At the far side of the room Miss Milbrey had that instant arrived before an antique oval mirror whose gilded carvings reflected the light of the candle. She held it above her head with one rounded arm. He stood in deep shadow and the girl had been too absorbed in the play to note his coming. He took one noiseless step toward her, but then through the curtained doorway by which she had come he saw a man enter swiftly and furtively.

Trembling on the verge of laughing speech, something held him back, some unexplainable instinct, making itself known in a thrill that went from his feet to his head; he could feel the roots of his hair tingle.

The newcomer went quickly, with catlike tread, toward the girl.

Fascinated he stood, wanting to speak, to laugh, yet powerless from the very swiftness of what followed.