The Wishing Moon Part 27

The Judge regarded the change with faraway eyes, as he talked on in the wistful voice that goes with talking your own private language openly to people who cannot answer you in it.

"Don't need the moon, do we, with those lanterns? But it was here first, and will be a long time after, and it's a good moon, too; quite decorative for a moon."

"I hate it," said Mrs. Randall, with a personal vindictiveness not usually directed against natural phenomena. The Judge took no immediate notice of it. More guests had gone. In a cleared circle in the heart of the lanternlight Mrs. Kent was performing one of the more expurgated and perfunctory of her dances for the benefit of the select audience that remained, to scattered, perfunctory applause. The motif of it was faintly Spanish.

"Paper doll," commented the Judge, "that's all that girl is. You and Harry are the best of them, Minna. They're a faky lot, all of them--about as real as a house of cards. It looks big, but it will all tumble down if you pull one card out--only one card. The devil of it is to know which card to take hold of, and who's to pull it out if you haven't got the nerve? I haven't. I'm too old. But it's a comfort to think of it. Don't you agree with me?"

"I didn't really hear you."

"Minna, I've known you since you were two. Can't you tell me what's the matter? You're frightened."

She looked at him for a minute as if she could, turning a paling face to him, with the mask off and the eyes miserable, then she tried to laugh.

"Nothing's the matter. Nothing new."

"Well, there's enough wrong here without anything new," said the Judge, rebuffed but still gentle. "I won't trouble you any longer, my dear.

There comes Harry."

Mrs. Randall's husband, an unmistakable figure even with the garden and the broad, unlighted lawn between, stood in the rectangle of light that one of the veranda windows made, slender and boyish still in spite of the slight stoop of his shoulders, and then started across the lawn toward the garden.

His wife got rather stiffly to her feet and waited, looking away from the lighted enclosure, over the low hedge, at the lawn. Her eyes were dizzy from the flickering lights. She could not see him clearly, and the figure that followed him across the lawn was harder to see.

It was a man's figure, slightly taller than her husband's. The man had not come from the veranda windows, or from the house at all, he had slipped round one corner of the house, stood still in the shelter of it, seeming to hesitate there, and then plunged suddenly across the lawn at a queer little staggering run. Twice she saw him stand still, so still that she lost sight of him under the trees, as if he had slipped away through the dark.

In the garden Mrs. Kent's performance was over, and the game of blind-man's buff was beginning. It was a novelty, and acclaimed even at this stage of the evening. Lillian Burr's shrill laugh and Edith Kent's pretty, childish one could be heard through the other sounds. They were trying to blindfold the Colonel, who struggled but laughed, too, looking somehow vacuous and old, with his longish, white hair straggling across his forehead. No one in the garden but Minna Randall had attention to spare for an arriving guest, expected or unexpected.

Which was he? He was out of sight again, but this time she had seen him reach the edge of the lighted enclosure. Was he gone, or waiting outside, or had he stepped under the trellis of the rose arbour, to appear suddenly at the end of it and among them? Instinctively she kept her eyes upon it, though her husband had already pa.s.sed through. She was watching for the figure that it might frame next.

"Harry," she said to her husband, who had seen her and elbowed his way to her, and stood beside her, looking pale and tired like herself in the lanternlight and not boyish at all, "who was that man? Who was it following you?"

He paid no attention to her question. He did not seem to hear it. He put a hand on her arm, and she could feel that it trembled.

"Oh, Harry, what is it?" she said. "I've had such a horrible evening.

I'm so afraid."

"Don't be afraid, Minna," he said very gently, "but you must come to the telephone. Norah's calling you. She's just come home. She wants to tell you something about Judith."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"Judith?" Mrs. Randall took her husband's news quietly, with something that was almost relief in her face, the relief that comes when a gathering storm breaks at last, and you learn what it is you have been afraid of, though you must go on being afraid. "What is it? Is she ill, Harry?"

"Come and talk to Norah."

"No, we'll go straight home."

"But she's not there, Minna. That's all Norah'll say to me, but she's got some idea where she is, and says she'll tell you. Judith isn't there."

"It must be nearly morning."

"It's two."

"It was after nine when we started."

"Minna, didn't you hear what I said?"

Mrs. Randall's face had not changed as she heard; it looked unchangeable, like some fixed but charming mask that she wore. The lips still smiled though they had stiffened slightly, and she watched the two women's attempts to blindfold the Colonel--unaided now, but hilariously applauded by the circle around her--with the same mild, interested eyes, wide-set and Madonna calm.

"I tell you, Judith's not there. What does Norah know? Why don't you do something? Where is she?... My G.o.d, look at them. What are they doing now? Look at Everard."

Mrs. Burr had drawn the knot suddenly tight in the white scarf she was manipulating, and slipped out of the Colonel's arms and out of reach. He followed, and then swung round and stumbled awkwardly after Edith Kent, who had brushed past him, leaving a light, challenging kiss on his forehead, and was further guiding him with her pretty, empty laugh. The game of blind-man's buff was under way.

Crowding the garden enclosure, swaying this way and that and threatening to overflow it, a pushing, struggling ma.s.s of people kept rather laboriously out of one another's way and the Colonel's, not so much amused by the effort as they were pretending to be; people with heavy and stupid faces who had never looked more irrevocably removed from childhood than now that they were playing a children's game.

In the heart of the crowd, now plunging ahead of it, now lost in it, the first gentleman of Green River disported himself. His white head was easy to follow through the crowd, and the thing that made you follow it was evident even now--much of his old dignity, and the charm that was peculiarly his; you saw it in an occasional stubborn shake of his beautifully shaped head, in the grace of the hand that caught at some flying skirt and missed it. He was the first gentleman of Green River still, but he was something else.

His white hair straggled across his forehead moist and dishevelled, and his face showed flushed and perspiring against the white of the scarf.

The trailing ends of the scarf flapped grotesquely about his head, and the high, splendidly modelled forehead was obscured and the keen eyes were hidden. The beauty of the face was lost, and the mouth showed thin lipped and sensual. The Colonel was really a stumbling, red-faced old man.

"Look at him. That's what she's seen. This was Judith's party. That's what we've hung on in this town for till it's too late to break loose.

We never can get away now. We can't----"

"Keep still, Harry. Do you want to be heard? Did any one hear you at the telephone? Keep still and come home."

"You're right. You're wonderful. You don't lose your nerve."

"I can't afford to, and neither can you. Come---- Oh, Harry, look. I saw him following you. What does he want? What's the matter? What is he going to do?"

Mrs. Randall had adjusted her cloak deliberately, and turned to pilot her husband out of the garden, slipping a firm little hand through his arm. Now she clung to him and stood still, silent after her little fire of excited questions. The entrance to the garden was blocked. An uninvited and unexpected guest was standing there.

His entrance had been unheralded, and his welcome was slow to come. The crowd had closed in round the Colonel, with Edith Kent caught suddenly in his arms, and giving a creditable imitation of attempting to escape.

Interested silence and bursts of laughter indicated the progress of it clearly, though the two were entirely out of sight. n.o.body saw the newcomer except the Randalls.

He stood in the entrance to the rose arbour, clutching at the trellis with one unsteady hand, and managing to keep fairly erect, a slightly built, swaying figure, black-haired and hatless. He kept one hand behind him, awkwardly, as a shy boy guards a favourite plaything. He was staring into the crowd in the garden as if he could see through into the heart of it, but had not the intellect just then to understand what he saw there.

It was the man Mrs. Randall had seen lurking in the shadow of the trees, but he was no mysterious stranger, though here in the light of the lanterns she hardly recognized him as she looked at his pale, excited face; it showed an excitement quite unaccounted for by the perfectly obvious fact that he was drunk, and entirely unconnected with that fact.

Here and there on the outskirts of the crowd some one turned and saw him, too, and stared at him. They all knew him. He was Neil Donovan's cousin, the discredited young lawyer, Charlie Brady.

He did not speak or move. He only stood still and looked at them with vague, puzzled eyes, and lips that twitched as if he wanted to speak, but standing so, he had the centre of the stage. He could not command it, he had pushed his way into it doggedly, uncertain what to do first, but he was there. One by one his audience had become conscious of it, and were confronting him startled and uncertain, too. Young Chester Gaynor elbowed his way to the front, but stopped there, grinning at the invader, restrained perhaps by a lady's voice, which was to be heard admonishing him excitedly.

"Don't you get hurt, dear."

"How did he get here? Why can't somebody get him out?" other excited ladies inquired.

"Get Judge Saxon," directed Mr. J. Cleveland Kent's calm and authoritative voice.