Chapter IX: Part 9

"I don't believe he knows. As you say, he's always nervous when he has an attack coming on."

"But he seemed so hurt at my refusing. He wanted me to promise to go back today. And when I told him I couldn't he said that if I didn't he'd come out here."

Nona gave an impatient shrug. "How absurd! But of course he won't. I don't exactly see dear old Exhibit walking up to the front door of Cedarledge."

Pauline's colour rose again; she too had pictured the same possibility, only to reject it. Wyant had always refused to cross her threshold in New York, though she lived in a house bought after her second marriage; surely he would be still more reluctant to enter Cedarledge, where he and she had spent their early life together, and their son had been born. There were certain things, as he was always saying, that a man didn't do: that was all.

Nona was still pondering. "I wouldn't go to town to see him, mother; why should you? He was excited, and rather cross, yesterday, but he really hadn't anything to say. He just wanted to hear himself talk. As long as we're here he'll never come, and when this mood passes off he won't even remember what it was about. If you like I'll write and tell him that you'll see him as soon as we get back."

"Thank you, dear. I wish you would."

How sensible the child could be when she chose! Her answer chimed exactly with her mother's secret inclination, and the latter, rising from the breakfast-table, decided to slip away to a final revision of the Cardinal's list. It was pleasant, for once, to have time to give so important a matter all the attention it deserved.

XXVIII

WHEN Nona came down the next morning it was raining--a cold blustery rain, lashing the branches about and driving the startled spring back into its secret recesses.

It was the first rain since their arrival at Cedarledge, and it seemed to thrust them back also--back into the wintry world of town, of dripping streets, early lamplight and crowded places of amusement.

Mrs. Manford had already breakfasted and left the dining-room, but her husband's plate was still untouched. He came in as Nona was finishing, and after an absent-minded nod and smile dropped silently into his place. He sat opposite the tall rain-striped windows, and as he stared out into the grayness it seemed as if some of it, penetrating into the room in spite of the red sparkle of the fire, had tinged his face and hair. Lately Nona had been struck by his ruddiness, and the vigour of the dark waves crisping about his yellow-brown temples; but now he had turned sallow and autumnal. "What people call looking one's age, I suppose--as if we didn't have a dozen or a hundred ages, all of us!"

Her father had withdrawn his stare from the outer world and turned it toward the morning paper on the book-stand beside his plate. With lids lowered and fixed lips he looked strangely different again--rather like his own memorial bust in bronze. She shivered a little...

"Father! Your coffee's getting cold."

He pushed aside the paper, glanced at the letters piled by his plate, and lifted his eyes to Nona's. The twinkle she always woke seemed to struggle up to her from a long way off.

"I missed my early tramp and don't feel particularly enthusiastic about breakfast."

"It's not enthusiastic weather."

"No." He had grown absent-minded again. "Pity; when we've so few days left."

"It may clear, though."

What stupid things they were saying! Much either he or she cared about the weather, when they were in the country and had the prospect of a good tramp or a hard gallop together. Not that they had had many such lately; but then she had been busy with her mother, trying to make up for Maisie's absence; and there had been the interruption caused by the week-end party; and he had been helping to keep Lita amused--with success, apparently.

"Yes... I shouldn't wonder if it cleared." He frowned out toward the sky again. "Round about midday." He paused, and added: "I thought of running Lita over to Greystock."

She nodded. They would no doubt stay and dine, and Lita would get her dance. Probably Mrs. Manford wouldn't mind, though she was beginning to show signs of wearying of tête-à-tête dinners with her daughter. But they could go over the reception list again; and Pauline could talk about her new Messiah.

Nona glanced down at her own letters. She often forgot to look at them till the day was nearly over, now that she knew the one writing her eyes thirsted for would not be on any of the envelopes. Stanley Heuston had made no sign since they had parted that night on the doorstep...

The door opened, and Lita came in. It was the first time since their arrival that she had appeared at breakfast. She faced Manford as she entered, and Nona saw her father's expression change. It was like those funny old portraits in the picture-restorers' windows, with a veil of age and dust removed from one half to show the real surface underneath. Lita's entrance did not make him look either younger or happier; it simply removed from his face the soul-disguising veil which life interposes between a man's daily world and himself. He looked stripped--exposed ... exposed ... that was it. Nona glanced at Lita, not to surprise her off her guard, but simply to look away from her father.

Lita's face was what it always was: something so complete and accomplished that one could not imagine its being altered by any interior disturbance. It was like a delicate porcelain vase, or a smooth heavy flower, that a shifting of light might affect, but nothing from within would alter. She smiled in her round-eyed unseeing way, as a little gold-and-ivory goddess might smile down on her worshippers, and said: "I got up early because there wasn't any need to."

The reason was one completely satisfying to herself, but its effect on her hearers was perhaps disappointing. Nona made no comment, and Manford merely laughed--a vague laugh addressed, one could see, less to her words, which he appeared not to have noticed, than to the mere luminous fact of her presence; the kind of laugh evoked by the sight of a dazzling fringed fish or flower suddenly offered to one's admiration.

"I think the rain will hold off before lunch," he said, communicating the fact impartially to the room.

"Oh, what a pity--I wanted to get my hair thoroughly drenched. It's beginning to uncurl with the long drought," Lita said, her hand wavering uncertainly between the dishes Powder had placed in front of her. "Grape-fruit, I think--though it's so awfully ocean-voyagy. Promise me, Nona--!" She turned to her sister-in-law.

"Promise you what?"

"Not to send me a basket of grape-fruit when I sail."

Manford looked up at her impenetrable porcelain face. His lips half parted on an unspoken word; then he pushed back his chair and got up.

"I'll order the car at eleven," he said, in a tone of aimless severity.

Lita was scooping a spoonful of juice out of the golden bowl of the grape-fruit. She seemed neither to heed nor to hear. Manford laid down his napkin and walked out of the room.

Lita threw back her head to let the liquid slip slowly down between her lips. Her gold-fringed lids fluttered a little, as if the fruit-juice were a kiss.

"When are you sailing?" Nona asked, reaching for the cigarette-lighter.

"Don't know. Next week, I shouldn't wonder."

"For any particular part of the globe?"

Lita's head descended, and she turned her chestnut-coloured eyes softly on her sister-in-law. "Yes; but I can't remember what it's called."

Nona was looking at her in silence. It was simply that she was so beautiful. A vase? No--a lamp now: there was a glow from the interior. As if her red corpuscles had turned into millions of fairy lamps...

Her glance left Nona's and returned to her plate. "Letters. What a bore! Why on earth don't people telephone?"

She did not often receive letters, her congenital inability to answer them having gradually cooled the zeal of her correspondents; of all, that is, excepting her husband. Almost every day Nona saw one of Jim's gray-blue envelopes on the hall table. That particular colour had come to symbolize to her a state of patient expectancy.

Lita was turning over some impersonal looking bills and advertisements. From beneath them the faithful gray-blue envelope emerged. Nona thought: "If only he wouldn't--!" and her eyes filled.

Lita looked pensively at the post-mark and then laid the envelope down unopened.

"Aren't you going to read your letter?"

She raised her brows. "Jim's? I did--yesterday. One just like it."

"Lita! You're--you're perfectly beastly!"

Lita's languid mouth rounded into a smile. "Not to you, darling. Do you want me to read it?" She slipped a polished finger-tip under the flap.

"Oh, no; no! Don't--not like that!" It made Nona wince. "I wish she _hated_ Jim--I wish she wanted to kill him! I could bear it better than this," the girl stormed inwardly. She got up and turned toward the door.

"Nona--wait! What's the matter? Don't you really want to hear what he says?" Lita stood up also, her eyes still on the open letter. "He--oh..." She turned toward her sister-in-law a face from which the inner glow had vanished.

"What is it? Is he ill? What's wrong?"

"He's coming home. He wants me to go back the day after tomorrow." She stood staring in front of her, her eyes fixed on something invisible to Nona, and beyond her.

"Does he say why?"

"He doesn't say anything but that."

"When did you expect him?"

"I don't know. Not for ages. I never can remember about dates. But I thought he liked it down there. And your father said he'd arranged--"

"Arranged what?" Nona interrupted.

Lita seemed to become aware of her again, and turned on her a smooth inaccessible face. "I don't know: arranged with the bank, I suppose."

"To keep him there?"

"To let him have a good long holiday. You all thought he needed it so awfully, didn't you?"

Nona stood motionless, staring out of the window. She saw her father drive up in the Buick. The rain had diminished to a silver drizzle shot with bursts of sun, and through the open window she heard him call: "It's going to clear after all. We'd better start."

Lita went out of the door, humming a tune.

"Lita!" Nona called out, moved by some impulse to arrest, to warn--she didn't know what. But the door had closed, and Lita was already out of hearing.

All through the day it kept on raining at uncomfortable intervals. Uncomfortable, that is, for Pauline and Nona. Whenever they tried to get out for a walk a deluge descended; then, as soon as they had splashed back to the house with the dripping dogs, the clouds broke and mocked them with a blaze of sunshine. But by that time they were either revising the list again, or had settled down to Mah-jongg in the library.

"Really, I can't go up and change into my walking shoes _again_!" Pauline remonstrated to the weather; and a few minutes later the streaming window-panes had justified her.

"April showers," she remarked with a slightly rigid smile. She looked deprecatingly at her daughter. "It was selfish of me to keep you here, dear. You ought to have gone with your father and Lita."

"But there were all those notes to do, mother. And really I'm rather fed-up with Greystock."

Pauline executed a repetition of her smile. "Well, I fancy we shall have them back for tea. No golf this afternoon, I'm afraid," she said, glancing with a certain furtive satisfaction at the increasing downpour.

"No; but Lita may want to stay and dance."

Pauline made no comment, but once more addressed her disciplined attention to the game.

The fire, punctually replenished, continued to crackle and drowse. The warmth drew out the strong scent of the carnations and rose-geraniums, and made the room as languid as a summer garden. Dusk fell from the cloud-laden skies, and in due course the hand which tended the fire drew the curtains on their noiseless rings and lit the lamps. Lastly Powder appeared, heading the processional entrance of the tea-table.

Pauline roused herself from a languishing Mah-jongg to take her expected part in the performance. She and Nona grouped themselves about the hearth, and Pauline lifted the lids of the little covered dishes with a critical air.

"I ordered those muffins your father likes so much," she said, in a tone of unwonted wistfulness. "Perhaps we'd better send them out to be kept hot."

Nona agreed that it would be better; but as she had her hand on the bell the sound of an approaching motor checked her. The dogs woke with a happy growling and bustled out. "There they are after all!" Pauline said.

There was a minute or two of silence, unmarked by the usual yaps of welcome; then a sound like the depositing of wraps and an umbrella; then Powder on the threshold, for once embarrassed and at a loss.

"Mr. Wyant, madam."

"Mr. Wyant?"

"Mr. Arthur Wyant. He seemed to think you were probably expecting him," Powder continued, as if lengthening the communication in order to give her time.

Mrs. Manford, seizing it, rose to the occasion with one of her heroic wing-beats. "Yes--I was. Please show him in," she said, without risking a glance at her daughter.

Arthur Wyant came in, tall and stooping in his shabby well-cut clothes, a nervous flush on his cheekbones. He paused, and sent a half-bewildered stare about the room--a look which seemed to say that when he had made up his mind that he must see Pauline he had failed to allow for the familiarity of the setting in which he was to find her.

"You've hardly changed anything here," he said abruptly, in the far-off tone of a man slowly coming back to consciousness.

"How are you, Arthur? I'm sorry you've had such a rainy day for your trip," Mrs. Manford responded, with an easy intonation intended to reach the retreating Powder.

Her former husband took no notice. His eyes continued to travel about the room in the same uncertain searching way.

"Hardly anything," he repeated, still seemingly unaware of any presence in the room but his own. "That Raeburn, though--yes. That used to be in the dining-room, didn't it?" He passed his hand over his forehead, as if to brush away some haze of oblivion, and walked up to the picture.

"Wait a bit. It's in the place where the Sargent of Jim as a youngster used to hang--Jim on his pony. Just over my writing-table, so that I saw it whenever I looked up..." He turned to Pauline. "Jolly picture. What have you done with it? Why did you take it away?"

Pauline coloured, but a smile of conciliation rode gallantly over her blush. "I didn't. That is--Dexter wanted it. It's in his room; it's been there for years." She paused, and then added: "You know how devoted Dexter is to Jim."

Wyant had turned abruptly from the contemplation of the Raeburn. The colour in Pauline's cheek was faintly reflected in his own. "Stupid of me ... of course... Fact is, I was rather rattled when I came in, seeing everything so much the same... You must excuse my turning up in this way; I had to see you about something important... Hullo, Nona--"

"Of course I excuse you, Arthur. Do sit down--here by the fire. You must be cold after your wet journey ... so unseasonable, after the weather we've been having. Nona will ring for tea," Pauline said, with her accent of indomitable hospitality.

XXIX

NONA, that night, in her mother's doorway, wavered a moment and then turned back.

"Well, then--goodnight, mother."

"Goodnight, child."

But Mrs. Manford seemed to waver too. She stood there in her rich dusky draperies, and absently lifted a hand to detach one after the other of her long earrings. It was one of Mrs. Manford's rules never to keep up her maid to undress her.

"Can I unfasten you, mother?"

"Thanks, dear, no; this teagown slips off so easily. You must be tired..."

"No; I'm not tired. But you..."

"I'm not either." They stood irresolute on the threshold of the warm shadowy room lit only by a waning sparkle from the hearth. Pauline switched on the lamps.

"Come in then, dear." Her strained smile relaxed, and she laid a hand on her daughter's shoulder. "Well, it's over," she said, in the weary yet satisfied tone in which Nona had sometimes heard her pronounce the epitaph of a difficult but successful dinner.

Nona followed her, and Pauline sank down in an armchair near the fire. In the shaded lamplight, with the glint of the fire playing across her face, and her small head erect on still comely shoulders, she had a sweet dignity of aspect which moved her daughter incongruously.

"I'm so thankful you've never bobbed your hair, mother."

Mrs. Manford stared at this irrelevancy; her stare seemed to say that she was resigned to her daughter's verbal leaps, but had long since renounced the attempt to keep up with them.

"You're so handsome just as you are," Nona continued. "I can understand dear old Exhibit's being upset when he saw you here, in the same surroundings, and looking, after all, so much as you must have in his day... And when he himself is so changed..."

Pauline lowered her lids over the vision. "Yes. Poor Arthur!" Had she ever, for the last fifteen years, pronounced her former husband's name without adding that depreciatory epithet? Somehow pity--an indulgent pity--was always the final feeling he evoked. She leaned back against the cushions, and added: "It was certainly unfortunate, his taking it into his head to come out here. I didn't suppose he would have remembered so clearly how everything looked... The Sargent of Jim on the pony... Do you think he minded?"

"Its having been moved to father's room? Yes; I think he did."

"But, Nona, he's always been so grateful to your father for what he's done for Jim--and for Lita. He _admires_ your father. He's often told me so."

"Yes."

"At any rate, once he was here, I couldn't do less than ask him to stay to dine."

"No; you couldn't. Especially as there was no train back till after dinner."

"And, after all, I don't, to this minute, know what he came for!"

Nona lifted her eyes from an absorbed contemplation of the fire. "You don't?"

"Oh, of course, in a vague way, to talk about Jim and Lita. The same old things we've heard so many times. But I quieted him very soon about that. I told him Lita had been perfectly happy here--that the experiment had been a complete success. He seemed surprised that she had given up all her notions about Hollywood and Klawhammer ... apparently Amalasuntha has been talking a lot of nonsense to him ... but when I said that Lita had never once spoken of Hollywood, and that she was going home the day after tomorrow to join her husband, it seemed to tranquillize him completely. Didn't he seem to you much quieter when he drove off?"

"Yes; he was certainly quieter. But he seemed to want particularly to see Lita."

Pauline drew a quick breath. "Yes. On the whole I was glad she wasn't here. Lita has never known how to manage Arthur, and her manner is sometimes so irritating. She might have said something that would have upset him again. It was really a relief when your father telephoned that they had decided to dine at Greystock--though I could see that Arthur thought that funny too. His ideas have never progressed an inch; he's always remained as old-fashioned as his mother." She paused a moment, and then went on: "I saw you were a little startled when I asked him if he wouldn't like to spend the night. But I didn't want to appear inhospitable."

"No; not in this house," Nona agreed with her quick smile. "And of course one knew he wouldn't--"

Pauline sighed. "Poor Arthur! He's always so punctilious."

"It wasn't only that. He was suffering horribly."

"About Lita? So foolish! As if he couldn't trust her to us--"

"Not only about Lita. But just from the fact of being here--of having all his old life thrust back on him. He seemed utterly unprepared for it--as if he'd really succeeded in not thinking about it at all for years. And suddenly there it was: like the drowning man's vision. A drowning man--that's what he was like."

Pauline straightened herself slightly, and Nona saw her brows gather in a faint frown. "What dreadful ideas you have! I thought I'd never seen him looking better; and certainly he didn't take too much wine at dinner."

"No; he was careful about that."

"And I was careful too. I managed to give a hint to Powder." Her frown relaxed, and she leaned back with another sigh, this time of appeasement. After all, her look seemed to say, she was not going to let herself be unsettled by Nona's mortuary images, now that the whole business was over, and she had every reason to congratulate herself on her own share in it.

Nona (but it was her habit!) appeared less sure. She hung back a moment, and then said: "I haven't told you yet. On the way down to dinner..."

"What, dear?"

"I met him on the upper landing. He asked to see the baby ... that was natural..."

Pauline drew her lips in nervously. She had thought she had all the wires in her hands; and here was one--She agreed with an effort: "Perfectly natural."

"The baby was asleep, looking red and jolly. He stood over the crib a long time. Luckily it wasn't the old nursery."

"Really, Nona! He could hardly expect--"

"No; of course not. Then, just as we were going downstairs, he said: 'Funny, how like Jim the child is growing. Reminds me of that old portrait.' And he jerked out at me: 'Could I see it?'"

"What--the Sargent?"

Nona nodded. "Could I refuse him?"

"I suppose that was natural too."

"So I took him into father's study. He seemed to remember every step of the way. He stood and looked and looked at the picture. He didn't say anything ... didn't answer when I spoke... I saw that it went through and through him."

"Well, Nona, byegones are byegones. But people do bring things upon themselves, sometimes--"

"Oh, I know, mother."

"Some people might think it peculiar, his rambling about the house like that--his coming here at all, with his ideas of delicacy! But I don't blame him; and I don't want you to," Pauline continued firmly. "After all, it's just as well he came. He may have been a little upset at the moment; but I managed to calm him down; and I certainly proved to him that everything's all right, and that Dexter and I can be trusted to know what's best for Lita." She paused, and then added: "Do you know, I'm rather inclined not to mention his visit to your father--or to Lita. Now it's over, why should they be bothered?"

"No reason at all." Nona rose from her crouching attitude by the fire, and stretched her arms above her head. "I'll see that Powder doesn't say anything. And besides, he wouldn't. He always seems to know what needs explaining and what doesn't. He ought to be kept to avert cataclysms, like those fire-extinguishers in the passages... Goodnight, mother--I'm beginning to be sleepy."

Yes; it was all over and done with; and Pauline felt that she had a right to congratulate herself. She had not told Nona how "difficult" Wyant had been for the first few minutes, when the girl had slipped out of the library after tea and left them alone. What was the use of going into all that? Pauline had been a little nervous at first--worried, for instance, as to what might happen if Dexter and Lita should walk in while Arthur was in that queer excited state, stamping up and down the library floor, and muttering, half to himself and half to her: "Damn it, am I in my own house or another man's? Can anybody answer me that?"

But they had not walked in, and the phase of excitability had soon been over. Pauline had only had to answer: "You're in my house, Arthur, where, as Jim's father, you're always welcome..." That had put a stop to his ravings, shamed him a little, and so brought him back to his sense of what was due to the occasion, and to his own dignity.

"My dear--you must excuse me. I'm only an intruder here, I know--"

And when she had added: "Never in my house, Arthur. Sit down, please, and tell me what you want to see me about--" why, at that question, quietly and reasonably put, all his bluster had dropped, and he had sat down as she bade him, and begun, in his ordinary tone, to rehearse the old rigmarole about Jim and Lita, and Jim's supineness, and Lita's philanderings, and what would the end of it be, and did she realize that the woman was making a laughing-stock of their son--yes, that they were talking about it at the clubs?

After that she had had no trouble. It had been easy to throw a little gentle ridicule over his apprehensions, and then to reassure him by her report of her own talk with Lita (though she winced even now at its conclusion), and the affirmation that the Cedarledge experiment had been entirely successful. Then, luckily, just as his questions began to be pressing again--as he began to hint at some particular man, she didn't know who--Powder had come in to show him up to one of the spare-rooms to prepare for dinner; and soon after dinner the motor was at the door, and Powder (again acting for Providence) had ventured to suggest, sir, that in view of the slippery state of the roads it would be well to get off as promptly as possible. And Nona had taken over the seeing-off, and with a long sigh of relief Pauline had turned back into the library, where Wyant's empty whisky-and-soda glass and ash-tray stood, so uncannily, on the table by her husband's armchair. Yes; she had been thankful when it was over...

And now she was thankful that it had happened. The encounter had fortified her confidence in her own methods and given her a new proof of her power to surmount obstacles by smiling them away. She had literally smiled Arthur out of the house, when some women, in a similar emergency, would have made a scene, or stood on their dignity. Dignity! Hers consisted, more than ever, in believing the best of every one, in persuading herself and others that to impute evil was to create it, and to disbelieve it was to prevent its coming into being. Those were the Scientific Initiate's very words: "We manufacture sorrow as we do all the other toxins." How grateful she was to him for that formula! And how light and happy it made her feel to know that she had borne it in mind, and proved its truth, at so crucial a moment! She looked back with pity at her own past moods of distrust, her wretched impulses of jealousy and suspicion, the moments when even those nearest her had not been proof against her morbid apprehensions...

How absurd and far away it all seemed now! Jim was coming back the day after tomorrow. Lita and the baby were going home to him. And the day after that they would all be going back to town; and then the last touches would be put to the ceremonial of the Cardinal's reception. Oh, she and Powder would have their hands full! All of the big silver-gilt service would have to be got out of the safety vaults and gone over... Luckily the last reports of Mrs. Bruss's state were favourable, and no doubt Maisie would be back as usual... Yes, life was really falling into its usual busy and pleasurable routine. Rest in the country was all very well; but rest, if overdone, became fatiguing...

She found herself in bed, the lights turned off, and sleep descending on her softly.

Before it held her, she caught, through misty distances, the sound of her husband's footfall, the opening and shutting of his door, and the muffled noises of his undressing. Well ... so he was back ... and Lita ... silly Lita ... no harm, really... Just as well they hadn't met poor Arthur... Everything was all right ... the Cardinal...

XXX

PAULINE sat up suddenly in bed. It was as if an invisible hand had touched a spring in her spinal column, and set her upright in the darkness before she was aware of any reason for it.

No doubt she had heard something through her sleep; but what? She listened for a repetition of the sound.

All was silence. She stretched out her hand to an onyx knob on the table by her bed, and instantly the face of a miniature clock was illuminated, and the hour chimed softly; two strokes followed by one. Half-past two--the silentest hour of the night; and in the vernal hush of Cedarledge! Yet certainly there had been a sound--a sharp explosive sound... Again! There it was: a revolver shot ... somewhere in the house...

Burglars?

Her feet were in her slippers, her hand on the electric light switch. All the while she continued to listen intently. Dead silence everywhere...

But how had burglars got in without starting the alarm? Ah--she remembered! Powder had orders never to set it while any one was out of the house; it was Dexter who should have seen that it was connected when he got back from Greystock with Lita. And naturally he had forgotten to.

Pauline was on her feet, her hair smoothed back under her fillet-shaped cap of silver lace, her "rest-gown" of silvery silk slipped over her night-dress. This emergency garb always lay at her bedside in case of nocturnal alarms, and she was equipped in an instant, and had already reconnected the burglar-alarm, and sounded the general summons for Powder, the footmen, the gardeners and chauffeurs. Her hand played irresolutely over the complicated knobs of the glittering switchboard which filled a panel of her dressing-room; then she pressed the button marked "Engine-house." Why not? There had been a series of bad suburban burglaries lately, and one never knew... It was just as well to rouse the neighbourhood... Dexter was so careless. Very likely he had left the front door open.

Silence still--profounder than ever. Not a sound since that second shot, if shot it was. Very softly she opened her door and paused in the anteroom between her room and her husband's. "Dexter!" she called.

No answer; no responding flash of light. Men slept so heavily. She opened, lighted--"Dexter!"

The room was empty, her husband's bed unslept in. But then--what? Those sounds of his return? Had she been dreaming when she thought she heard them? Or was it the burglars she had heard, looting his room, a few feet off from where she lay? In spite of her physical courage a shiver ran over her...

But if Dexter and Lita were not yet back, whence had the sound of the shot come, and who had fired it? She trembled at the thought of Nona--Nona and the baby! They were alone with the baby's nurse on the farther side of the house. And the house seemed suddenly so immense, so resonant, so empty...

In the shadowy corridor outside her room she paused again for a second, straining her ears for a guiding sound; then she sped on, pushing back the swinging door which divided the farther wing from hers, turning on the lights with a flying hand as she ran... On the deeply carpeted floors her foot-fall made no sound, and she had the sense of skimming over the ground inaudibly, like something ghostly, disembodied, which had no power to break the hush and make itself heard...

Half way down the passage she was startled to see the door of Lita's bedroom open. Sounds at last--sounds low, confused and terrified--issued from it. What kind of sounds? Pauline could not tell; they were rushing together in a vortex in her brain. She heard herself scream "Help!" with the strangled voice of a nightmare, and was comforted to feel the rush of other feet behind her: Powder, the men-servants, the maids. Thank God the system worked! Whatever she was coming to, at least they would be there to help...

She reached the door, pushed it--and it unexpectedly resisted. Some one was clinging to it on the inner side, struggling to hold it shut, to prevent her entering. She threw herself against it with all her strength, and saw her husband's arm and hand in the gap. "Dexter!"

"Oh, God." He fell back, and the door with him. Pauline went in.

All the lights were on--the room was a glare. Another man stood shivering and staring in a corner, but Pauline hardly noticed him, for before her on the floor lay Lita's long body, in a loose spangled robe, flung sobbing over another body.

"Nona--Nona!" the mother screamed, rushing forward to where they lay.

She swept past her husband, dragged Lita back, was on her knees on the floor, her child pressed to her, Nona's fallen head against her breast, Nona's blood spattering the silvery folds of the rest-gown, destroying it forever as a symbol of safety and repose.

"Nona--child! What's happened? Are you hurt? Dexter--for pity's sake! Nona, look at me! It's mother, darling, mother--"

Nona's eyes opened with a flutter. Her face was ashen-white, and empty as a baby's. Slowly she met her mother's agonized stare. "All right ... only winged me." Her gaze wavered about the disordered room, lifting and dropping in a butterfly's bewildered flight. Lita lay huddled on the couch in her spangles, twisted and emptied, like a festal garment flung off by its wearer. Manford stood between, his face a ruin. In the corner stood that other man, shrinking, motionless. Pauline's eyes, following her child's, travelled on to him.

"Arthur!" she gasped out, and felt Nona's feeble pressure on her arm.

"Don't ... don't... It was an accident. Father--an accident! _Father_!"

The door of the room was wide now, and Powder stood there, unnaturally thin and gaunt in his improvised collarless garb, marshalling the gaping footmen, with gardeners, chauffeurs and maids crowding the corridor behind them. It was really marvellous, how Pauline's system had worked.

Manford turned to Arthur Wyant, his stony face white with revenge. Wyant still stood motionless, his arms hanging down, his body emptied of all its strength, a broken word that sounded like "honour" stumbling from his bedraggled lips.

"_Father_!" At Nona's faint cry Manford's arm fell to his side also, and he stood there as powerless and motionless as the other.

"All an accident ..." breathed from the white lips against Pauline.

Powder had stepped forward. His staccato orders rang back over his shoulder. "Ring up the doctor. Have a car ready. Scour the gardens... One of the women here! Madam's maid!"

Manford suddenly roused himself and swung about with dazed eyes on the disheveled group in the doorway. "Damn you, what are you doing here, all of you? Get out--get out, the lot of you! Get out, I say! Can't you hear me?"

Powder bent a respectful but controlling eye on his employer. "Yes, sir; certainly, sir. I only wish to state that the burglar's mode of entrance has already been discovered." Manford met this with an unseeing stare, but the butler continued imperturbably: "Thanks to the rain, sir. He got in through the pantry window; the latch was forced, and there's muddy footprints on my linoleum, sir. A tramp was noticed hanging about this afternoon. I can give evidence--"

He darted swiftly between the two men, bent to the floor, and picked up something which he slipped quickly and secretly into his pocket. A moment later he had cleared his underlings from the threshold, and the door was shut on them and him.

"Dexter," Pauline cried, "help me to lift her to the bed."

Outside, through the watchful hush of the night, a rattle and roar came up the drive. It filled the silence with an unnatural clamour, immense, mysterious and menacing. It was the Cedarledge fire-brigade, arriving double quick in answer to their benefactress's summons.

Pauline, bending over her daughter's face, fancied she caught a wan smile on it...

XXXI

NONA MANFORD'S room was full of spring flowers. They had poured in, sent by sympathizing friends, ever since she had been brought back to town from Cedarledge.

That was two weeks ago. It was full spring now, and her windows stood wide to the May sunset slanting across the room, and giving back to the tall branches of blossoming plum and cherry something of their native scent and freshness.

The reminder of Cedarledge would once have doubled their beauty; now it made her shut her eyes sharply, in the inner recoil from all the name brought back.

She was still confined to her room, for the shot which had fractured her arm near the shoulder had also grazed her lung, and her temperature remained obstinately high. Shock, the doctors said, chiefly ... the appalling sight of a masked burglar in her sister-in-law's bedroom; and being twice fired at--twice!

Lita corroborated the story. She had been asleep when her door was softly opened, and she had started up to see a man in a mask, with a dark lantern... Yes; she was almost sure he had a mask; at any rate she couldn't see his face; the police had found the track of muddy feet on the pantry linoleum, and up the back stairs.

Lita had screamed, and Nona had dashed to the rescue; yes, and Mr. Manford--Lita thought Mr. Manford had perhaps got there before Nona. But then again, she wasn't sure... The fact was that Lita had been shattered by the night's experience, and her evidence, if not self-contradictory, was at least incoherent.

The only really lucid witnesses were Powder, the butler, and Nona Manford herself. Their statements agreed exactly, or at least dovetailed into each other with perfect precision, the one completing the other. Nona had been first on the scene: she had seen the man in the room--she too thought that he was masked--and he had turned on her and fired. At that moment her father, hearing the shots, had rushed in, half-dressed; and as he did so the burglar fled. Some one professed to have seen him running away through the rain and darkness; but no one had seen his face, and there was no way of identifying him. The only positive proof of his presence--except for the shot--was the discovery by Powder, of those carefully guarded footprints on the pantry floor; and these, of course, might eventually help to trace the criminal. As for the revolver, that also had disappeared; and the bullets, one of which had been found lodged in the door, the other in the panelling of the room, were of ordinary army calibre, and offered no clue. Altogether it was an interesting problem for the police, who were reported to be actively at work on it, though so far without visible results.

Then, after three days of flaming headlines and journalistic conjectures, another sensation crowded out the Cedarledge burglary. The newspaper public, bored with the inability of the police to provide fresh fuel for their curiosity, ceased to speculate on the affair, and interest in it faded out as quickly as it had flared up.

During the last few days Nona's temperature had gradually dropped, and she had been allowed to see visitors; first one in the day, then two or three, then four or five--so that by this time her jaws were beginning to feel a little stiff with the continual rehearsal of her story, embellished (at the visitors' request) with an analysis of her own emotions. She always repeated her narrative in exactly the same terms, and presented the incidents in exactly the same order; by now she had even learned to pause at the precise point where she knew her sympathizing auditors would say: "But, my dear, how perfectly awful--what did it feel like?"

"Like being shot in the arm."

"Oh, Nona, you're so cynical! But before that--when you _saw the man_--weren't you absolutely sick with terror?"

"He didn't give me time to be sick with anything but the pain in my shoulder."

"You'll never get her to confess that she was frightened!"

And so the dialogue went on. Did her listeners notice that she recited her tale with the unvarying precision of a lesson learned by heart? Probably not; if they did, they made no sign. The papers had all been full of the burglary at Cedarledge: a masked burglar--and of the shooting of Miss Manford, and the would-be murderer's escape. The account, blood-curdling and definite, had imposed itself on the public credulity with all the authority of heavy headlines and continual repetition. Within twenty-four hours the Cedarledge burglary was an established fact, and suburban millionaires were doubling the number of their night watchmen, and looking into the newest thing in burglar-alarms. Nona, leaning back wearily on her couch, wondered how soon she would be allowed to travel and get away from it all.

The others were all going to travel. Her mother and father were off that very evening to the Rocky Mountains and Vancouver. From there they were going to Japan and, in the early autumn, to Ceylon and India. Pauline already had letters to all the foremost Native Princes, and was regretting that there was not likely to be a Durbar during their visit. The Manfords did not expect to be back till January or February; Manford's professional labours had become so exhausting that the doctors, fearing his accumulated fatigue might lead to a nervous break-down, had ordered a complete change and prolonged absence from affairs. Pauline hoped that Nona would meet them in Egypt on their way home. A sunny Christmas together in Cairo would be so lovely...

Arthur Wyant had gone also--to Canada, it was said, with cousin Eleanor in attendance. Some insinuated that a private inebriate asylum in Maine was the goal of his journey; but no one really knew, and few cared. His remaining cronies, when they heard that he had been ill, and was to travel for a change, shrugged or smiled, and said: "Poor old Arthur--been going it too strong again," and then forgot about him. He had long since lost his place in the scheme of things.

Even Lita and Jim Wyant were on a journey. They had sailed the previous week for Paris, where they would arrive in time for the late spring season, and Lita would see the Grand Prix, the new fashions and the new plays. Jim's holiday had been extended to the end of August: Manford, ever solicitous for his stepson, had arranged the matter with the bank. It was natural, every one agreed, that Jim should have been dreadfully upset by the ghastly episode at Cedarledge, in which his wife might have been a victim as well as Nona; and his intimates knew how much he had worried about his father's growing intemperance. Altogether, both Wyants and Manfords had been subjected to an unusual strain; and when rich people's nerves are out of gear the pleasant remedy of travel is the first prescribed.

Nona turned her head uneasily on the cushions. She felt incurably weary, and unable to rebound to the spring radiance which usually set her blood in motion. Her immobility had begun to wear on her. At first it had been a relief to be quiescent, to be out of things, to be offered up as the passive victim and the accepted evidence of the Cedarledge burglary. But now she was sick to nausea of the part, and envious of the others who could escape by flight--by perpetual evasion.

Not that she really wanted to be one of them; she was not sure that she wanted to go away at all--at least in the body. Spiritual escape was what she craved; but by what means, and whither? Perhaps it could best be attained by staying just where she was, by sticking fast to her few square feet of obligations and responsibilities. But even this idea made no special appeal. Her obligations, her responsibilities--what were they? Negative, at best, like everything else in her life. She had thought that renunciation would mean freedom--would mean at least escape. But today it seemed to mean only a closer self-imprisonment. She was tired, no doubt...

There was a tap on the door, and her mother entered. Nona raised her listless eyes curiously. She always looked at her mother with curiosity now: curiosity not so much as to what had changed in her, but as to what had remained the same. And it was extraordinary how Pauline, the old Pauline, was coming to the surface again through the new one, the haggard and stricken apparition of the Cedarledge midnight...

"My broken arm saved her," Nona thought, remembering, with a sort of ironical admiration, how that dishevelled spectre had become Pauline Manford again, in command of herself and the situation, as soon as she could seize on its immediate, its practical, sides; could grasp those handles of reality to which she always clung.

Now even that stern and disciplined figure had vanished, giving way, as the days passed and reassurance grew, to the usual, the everyday Pauline, smilingly confident in herself and in the general security of things. Had that dreadful night at Cedarledge ever been a reality to her? If it had, Nona was sure, it had already faded into the realms of fable, since its one visible result had been her daughter's injury, and that was on the way to healing. Everything else connected with it had happened out of sight and under ground, and for that reason was now as if it had never existed for Pauline, who was more than ever resolutely two-dimensional.

Physically, at least, the only difference Nona could detect was that a skilful make-up had filled in the lines which, in spite of all the arts of the face-restorers, were weaving their permanent web about her mother's lips and eyes. Under this delicate mask Pauline's face looked younger and fresher than ever, and as smooth and empty as if she had just been born again--"And she _has_, after all," Nona concluded.

She sat down by the couch, and laid a light hand caressingly on her daughter's.

"Darling! Had your tea? You feel really better, don't you? The doctor says the massage is to begin tomorrow. By the way--" she tossed a handful of newspaper cuttings onto the coverlet--"perhaps some of these things about the reception may amuse you. Maisie's been saving them to show you. Of course most of the foreign names are wrong; but the description of the room is rather good. I believe Tommy Ardwin wrote the article for the 'Looker-on.' Amalasuntha says the Cardinal will like it. It seems he was delighted with the idea of the flash-light photographs. Altogether he was very much pleased."

"Then you ought to be, mother." Nona forced her pale lips into a smile.

"I _am_, dear. If I do a thing at all I like to do it well. That's always been my theory, you know: the best or nothing. And I do believe it was a success. But perhaps I'm tiring you--." Pauline stood up irresolutely. She had never been good at bedsides unless she could play some active and masterful part there. Nona was aware that her mother's moments alone with her had become increasingly difficult as her strength had returned, and there was nothing more to be done for her. It was as well that the Manfords were starting on their journey that evening.

"Don't stay, mother; I'm all right, really. It's only that things still tire me a little--"

Pauline lingered, looking down on the girl with an expression of anxiety struggling through her smooth rejuvenation.

"I wish I felt happier about leaving you, darling. I know you're all right, of course; but the idea of your staying in this house all by yourself--"

"It's just what I shall like. And on father's account you ought to get away."

"It's what I feel," Pauline assented, brightening.

"You must be awfully busy with all the last things to be done. I'm as comfortable as possible; I wish you'd just go off and forget about me."

"Well, Maisie is clamouring for me," Pauline confessed from the threshold.

The door shut, and Nona closed her eyes with a sigh. Tomorrow--tomorrow she would be alone! And in a week, perhaps, she would get back to Cedarledge, and lie on the terrace with the dogs about her, and no one to ask questions, to hint and sympathize, or be discreet and evasive... Yes, in spite of everything, the idea of returning to Cedarledge now seemed more bearable than any other...

In a restless attempt to ease her position she stretched her hand out, and it came in contact with the bundle of newspaper cuttings. She shrank back with a little grimace; then she smiled. After the night at Cedarledge every one had supposed--even Maisie and Powder had--that the Cardinal's reception would have to be given up, since, owing to his Eminence's impending departure, it could not be deferred. But it had come off on the appointed day--only the fourth after the burglary--and Pauline had made it a success. The girl really admired her mother for that. Something in her own composition responded to the energy with which the older woman could meet an emergency when there was no way of turning it. The party had been not only brilliant but entertaining. Every one had been there, all the official and ecclesiastical dignitaries, including the Bishop of New York and the Chief Rabbi--yes, even the Scientific Initiate, looking colossal and Siberian in some half-priestly dress that added its note to the general picturesqueness; and yet there had been no crush, no confusion, nothing to detract from the dignity and amenity of the evening. Nona suspected her mother of longing to invite the Mahatma, whose Oriental garb would have been so effective, and who would have been so flattered, poor man! But she had not risked it, and her chief lion, after the great ecclesiastics, had turned out to be Michelangelo, the newly arrived, with the film-glamour enhancing his noble Roman beauty, and his mother at his side, explaining and parading him.

"The pity is that dear Jim and Lita have sailed," the Marchesa declared to all who would give ear. "That's really a great disappointment. I did hope Lita would have been here tonight. She and my Michelangelo would have made such a glorious couple: the Old World and the New. Or as Antony and Cleopatra--only fancy! My boy tells me that Klawhammer is looking for a Cleopatra. But dear Lita will be back before long--." And she mingled her hopes and regrets with Mrs. Percy Landish's.

XXXII

NONA shut her eyes again. Ever since that intolerable night she had ached with the incessant weariness of not being able to sleep, and of trying to hide from those about her how brief her intervals of oblivion had been. During the hours of darkness she seemed to be forever toiling down perspectives of noise and glare, like a wanderer in the labyrinth of an unknown city. Even her snatches of sleep were so crowded with light and noise, so dazzled with the sense of exposure, that she was not conscious of the respite till it was over. It was only by day, alone in her room, that her lids, in closing, sometimes shut things out...

Such a respite came to her now; and she started up out of nothingness to find her father at her side. She had not expected to see him alone before they parted. She had fancied that her parents would contrive to postpone their joint farewells till after dinner, just before driving off to their train. For a moment she lay and looked up at Manford without being clearly conscious that he was there, and without knowing what to say if he were.

It appeared that he did not know either. Perhaps he had been led to her side, almost in spite of himself, by a vague craving to be alone with her just once before they parted; or perhaps he had come because he suspected she might think he was afraid to. He sat down without speaking in the chair which Pauline had left.

Dusk had fallen, and Nona was aware of the presence at her side only as a shadowy bulk. After a while her father put out his hand and laid it on hers.

"Why, it's nearly dark," she said. "You'll be off in an hour or so now."

"Yes. Your mother and I are dining early."