Chapter 11. The Third Degree

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_ CHAPTER XI. THE THIRD DEGREE

In the sequel to that night of mischief and misadventure Sarah Manvers had sound reason to be thankful for the resilient youth which still animated her body. But of course she wasn't; youth will ever misprize till it must mourn its blessings.

Yet by virtue of that inestimable attribute alone was she able to do with only four hours' sleep (when Adele Standish, for example, needed eight, and then was seedy) and be the first of the household to appear for breakfast--clear of eye and fresh of colour, with a countenance as serene as her temper and a temper as normal as her appetite.

As for this last, she made an excellent breakfast, alone in the sun-bright dining-room. And if at times, as she sat and munched, her look was pensive and remote, this was due less to misgivings than to mystification.

The quarrel and reconciliation with Mrs. Standish had cleared the atmosphere of their relations; henceforward there could be no more misunderstanding; they hated each other heartily; neither entertained any illusion as to that; but their interests were too far interdependent to license any play of private feeling. Sally wanted to stay on at Gosnold House, and Mrs. Standish was resigned; Mrs. Standish wanted her insurance money, and Sally would help her get it--by keeping quiet. Sally might be dealt with severely by the law if Mrs. Standish said the word, and Mrs. Standish, if Sally spoke, would suffer not only in her pocketbook, but in the graces of her aunt.

But Sally was not without compunction in respect to the deception practised on her still prospective employer. It wasn't possible to know Mrs. Gosnold and not like her; if that personality enforced respect, it was a lodestone for affection, and Sally meant with all her heart to serve faithfully and well; if she was to have her way, neither would know a single regret because of their association until time and chance conspired to sunder it.

Then, too, sleep had appreciably changed the complexion of her mind toward the Lyttleton episode. She was not yet able to recall that chapter of infatuation without a cringe of shame; but that would pass with time, and the experience had not been without a value already apparent. For even as she had said to him, she was cured--and more than cured, she was instructed; she was not only better acquainted with herself, but had learned to read the Lyttleton temperament too well ever to require repetition of the lesson. If she had played the fatuous moth, she had come through cheaply, with wings not even singed; for what she had taken for flame had proved to be no more than cheapest incandescence. She felt so sure of all this that she could even contemplate the affair with some inklings of the amusement that it would yet afford her. And she was fixed to make this the key of her attitude toward the man in all such future intercourse as was unavoidable.

But Trego . . .

Trego was a horse of another colour altogether. The very name of Trego was hateful in her hearing. There was little she would not willingly have done, however unjust and unfair, to avoid further communications with this animal of a Trego.

And yet, as she had learned, the term of his stay at Gosnold House had still another week to run, and he was in some way a favourite and intimate of Mrs. Gosnold, apt frequently to figure as her guest; and since this was so, and Sally herself bade fair (barring accidents) to prove a fixture in the household, it seemed inevitable that they must be often thrown together. So she must at all costs school herself to treat him civilly--at least without overt animosity.

She could imagine no task more difficult or distasteful; short of forfeiting her place in this new sphere, she would have paid almost any price for remission of that duty.

The irony of life seemed a bitter draft. Granting it had been requisite to some strange design of fate, in its inscrutable vagary, that several persons should suffer a night of broken rest at Gosnold House, why must they have been those four and none other--Sally, Adele Standish, Lyttleton, Trego? Especially Trego! Why that one? Palpable bonds of mutual interest linked the three first named; their common affliction might conceivably have been ascribable to subtle psychological affinity. But Trego was well outside the triangle, even as perceptibly out of sympathy with a majority of Mrs. Gosnold's guests.

Mrs. Standish was studious in her avoidance of him without appearance of open slight. His nature and Lyttleton's were essentially antagonistic. Sally's animus had been well defined from the very beginning, when she had resented his being both physically and temperamentally so completely out of the picture of that existence to which she aspired.

But reconnaissance up that dark alley demonstrated it an indisputable impasse and Sally gave it up, reserving the grievance for tender nursing (she had a very human weakness for selected wrongs) and turned her attention to the puzzle involving Lyttleton's business on the beach at 2 A. M. and the signals exchanged between yacht and window.

Nor did she make much headway in this quarter. Instinct indicated a delicate harmony between those events and the formless shadow to which Sally had all along been sensitive, of something equivocal in the pretensions of Mrs. Standish. But that clue played will-o'-the-wisp with her fancy, leading it ever farther astray in a bottomless bog of black bewilderment.

None the less, she had just succeeded in establishing to her own satisfaction the probability that her sponsor had been, if not active in, at least acquainted with the business of the signals--reasoning shrewdly upon that lady's high-handed treatment of Sally's insinuation as inconsequential--when Mr. Trego elected to appear for breakfast.

That unhappy young man had been more wise if he had not taken it for granted that nine o'clock would be too early for Sally as well as for everybody else who didn't make breakfast in bed a habit; and a more diplomatic person would have been at pains to prepare himself against that inevitable rencontre with a young woman of exacerbated sensibilities. Nothing could have been more surely predestined to ghastly failure than his cheerful assumption of a complete understanding, with the hint implicit that, having done Sally a signal service, he was willing to let bygones be bygones and take as tacit a sense of obligation not easy for her to express.

"Hel-lo!" he saluted the charming vision of her with undisguised pleasure and surprise. "You down already? Why, I made sure I had at least two hours' lead of the field."

"Yes," Sally agreed quietly; "I am early, I presume."

"Want to be careful," Trego cautioned; "it's hardly the thing, this early rising, you know; it's not really clawss; it isn't done."

Sally said nothing. It was safer not to. And cheerfully unaware of her self-restraint, Trego armed himself with a plate and foraged at the side-table, with its array of silver-hooded hot-water dishes.

"Been for a swim," he volunteered with a thrill of coarse creature satisfaction in his tone. "Wonderful water along this coast--not too warm, like the Jersey beaches--to my taste, anyway, and not too all-fired cold, as it generally is north of the Cape, but just right. Like bathing in champagne properly chilled. No such pick-me-up in the world as a dip in the cool of the morning. You should have tried it."

"I dare say," said Sally briefly, and was very glad she hadn't. "But that dreadfully long climb up from the beach--" she amended, feeling it obligatory upon her not to seem too short of civility.

"You don't mind that when you come to it after a swim," Trego declared. "It's only in anticipation, when you're snug between sheets and debating the rival claims of the distant beach and your handy bathtub; then, I grant you, the climb up the cliff weighs heavily in the scale of disadvantages."

He drew out the chair adjoining Sally's and attacked the half of an iced canteloup, but after the first mouthful put down his spoon.

"Sugar, please," he said with a deprecatory grimace, indicating the bowl just beyond the girl's place. "I know I ought to go in for salt if I want to come through as a regular guy; but if you won't tell on me, I'm going to enjoy this melon in my own primitive Western way. Thanks."

He committed the unpardonable deed with a liberal hand. "Frightfully weird, you know," he mimicked with a chuckle, adding: "It takes the rude, untutored mind of a barbarian to be satisfied with sweetening a thing with sweetness instead of bitterness, doesn't it'?"

"But I prefer salt myself," said the girl; "it brings out the flavour."

She concluded her defence in some confusion due to Trego's practically synchronous utterance of her identical phrase: "it brings out the flavour." Then she realised that he had deliberately trapped her and was meanly laughing in the triumph of his low cunning. And she had to laugh, too, to save her face; but it was an empty laugh and accompanied by a flush that might have warned the man had he not too soon returned attention to his melon.

"Never fails," he remarked. "Though, of course, it isn't safe to work it on anybody in this outfit--not, at least, unless you're pretty sure there's a trace of human humour in the make-up of the specimen. I'm making a collection of those stereotypes; it helps a lot. O table-talk! where is thy sting--when a fellow knows all the answers?"

He rose, set aside the shell of the maltreated melon, and returned with his plunder from the hot-water dishes, to find Sally on the point of leaving.

"Not going?" he protested more soberly. "Don't tell me I offended you, catching you up like that!"

"How absurd!" the infuriated girl replied, smiling falsely. "But--"

"Then, if you've nothing pressing on, keep me company for a little. I want to ask your advice. I'm puzzled. Maybe you can suggest something."

She couldn't well go, then, without betraying umbrage, so she settled herself with a resigned temper, and for want of a better lead contented herself with a conversational stop-gap--"Puzzled?"--spoken in an encouraging tone.

"Yes. Something I noticed this morning. But it weaves into last night--maybe. Maybe not. I'm a slow thinker when it comes to puzzles."

He filled a cup with coffee from the shining urn and resumed his chair.

"You see . . ." Some intimation of his gaucherie made him stumble. "Of course," he went on, semi-apologetic, "you understand that I'm going on the assumption that you're as human as I am."

"Thank you," said Sally sweetly.

"Human enough," he explained, "not to think I'm a savage because I've reminded you of last night."

"I see no reason--" she began with dignity.

"And there isn't any," he argued heartily. "We're both old enough to behave like grown-ups. Only, a fellow never can tell where he stands with most of these festive dames. I've been lorgnetted until I'm scared to open my mouth. But with you--well, it's like meeting somebody from home to talk to you."

"But the puzzle?" she reminded him with more patience than he knew.

"Oh, yes. I was going to say when I side-tracked myself: what got me up was Lyttleton. He has the room next mine, you know. I'd just turned out my bedside light--been reading, you understand--when I heard his door open very gently and somebody go pussy-footing down the hall. And for some reason that kept me awake--because it was none of my business, I guess--waiting for him to come back and wondering what in thunder took him out on the prowl like that. And when I had wondered myself wide awake I got up and dressed--thought I'd take a walk, too, since the night was so fine. I honestly had no idea of following him--that was all an accident, my butting in the way I did."

Sudden perception of a footing upon ground properly taboo even to angels caused the man to flush brick-red. His eyes sought Sally's in honest consternation.

"Hope you don't mind," he mumbled.

"Please go on," she said, conscious of the heat in her own cheeks, and holding him in an esteem proportionately more poisonous.

"Well. About this morning: As I say, I went down to the beach for a dip. You know how that beach is--about a twelve-foot breadth of sand from the bottom of the cliff when the tide's high, with about twenty feet more when it's low. So foot-prints show until the weather rubs them out--takes a tolerable storm, as a rule. Below high-water mark it's different; the sand is covered up and smoothed out twice a day. Well, then, just below high-water mark--that is, about five feet below it, or at quarter-tide mark--I noticed the print of a rowboat's bows on the sand. It had landed there and waited a while--drawn up only part way out of the water--about three o'clock this morning. Two men had got out; one waited with the boat, the other went up toward the foot of the steps and mixed his footprints up with all the others. I don't know what for and can't imagine; but that's what happened, and presently he turned round and went back to the boat, and the two of them shoved her off again--trusting, I guess, to the tide to cover up the signs of their landing.

"Why they should want to be secret about it, God only knows; but if they didn't, why three o'clock? It's all private beach along here, and whereas I believe there are no property rights below high-water mark, and anybody has a right to land anywhere in an emergency--where was the emergency? There was no gale last night, and if there had been, you'd think distressed mariners would have sense enough to come ashore farther along, toward the village, where they could find shelter--and all that. The more I think about it, the funnier it looks to me."

He finished his breakfast and his statement at the same time, pushed back his chair, and produced a cigarette-case.

"You don't mind? Thanks. Now what do you think?"

Sally shook her head and looked blank. "Three o'clock? How can you be so sure about that?" she inquired obliquely.

"Because it's high tide twice a day--approximately every twelve hours. I looked up a tide-table in the hall out there and found it was high at one eleven this morning and low at seven thirty-five--just about an hour turned when I had my swim, the water-line then about twelve feet short of the marks of the boat. It'll be high again about one forty-eight this afternoon--at least noon before water begins to wash over those marks."

He puffed voluminously. "If there was any shenanigan afoot last night, a couple of thick-heads footed it--that is, if they cared whether they left any clues or not."

Constrained to fill in his expectant pause, she made shift with a "How very odd!" that was a triumph of naturalness.

"Isn't it?" he agreed. "Now what do you make of it?"

"Nothing," she replied truthfully, for she was entirely at a loss to fit this new development into the adventures of Lyttleton and the lighted window--and make sense of it. "I can't imagine--"

"What I want to know is this," Trego propounded cunningly: "had Lyttleton anything to do with it?" She had prepared for that question, had settled her answer beforehand; even with any real reason to suspect Lyttleton of complicity in something underhand, she would not have betrayed him to this man--if to anybody.

"I'm sure I can't say."

"Well--it's funny, anyhow. Guess we better not say anything about it. After all, it's no concern of ours."

She couldn't refrain from the question: "But why should you think he--?"

"Well, what was he doing all that time--?"

He checked and stammered with embarrassment. "I beg your pardon!"

"You needn't. He wasn't--with me--all that time."

The situation grown intolerable, Sally got up suddenly and without a word of excuse took her scarlet cheeks out of the dining-room and back to her bedchamber.

On the dot of their standing appointment she found Mrs. Gosnold unconsciously, perhaps, but none the less strikingly posed in the golden glow of her boudoir window for the portrait of a lady of quality on fatigue duty--very much at her ease in a lavender-silk morning gown and stretched out in a chaise longue, a tray with fruit, coffee and rolls on her left dividing attention with a sheaf of morning notes on the other side and the portable writing-case on her knees.

Acknowledging Sally's appearance with a pleasant if slightly abstracted smile, she murmured: "Oh, is it you, Miss Manwaring? Sit down, please. Half a minute . . ."

On the qui vive for any indication that Mrs. Standish had been false to her word or Mrs. Gosnold informed through any other channel of the secret history of that night and consequently inclined to hold her secretary in distrust, Sally detected nothing in the other's manner to add to her uneasiness. To the contrary, in fact. She sat and watched in admiration, and thought that she had never known a woman better poised, more serenely mistress of herself and of the technique of life. If Mrs. Gosnold nursed a secret sorrow, anxiety, or grievance, the world would never learn of it through any flaw in the armour of her self-possession.

She wrought busily with a fountain pen for little longer than the stipulated period of delay, then addressed and sealed a note and looked up again with her amiable, shrewd smile.

"Good morning!" she laughed, quite as if she had not till then recognised Sally's presence. "You've slept well, I trust?"

Sally did not hesitate perceptibly; the honest impulse prevailed. Secretly she was determined to tell no more major lies, though the heavens fell--only such minor fibs as are necessary to lubricate the machinery of society. She would do her best, of course, to preserve the hateful truth that had been so cunningly covered up by the lies of Mrs. Standish's first invention; but she would do that best, if possible, more by keeping silence than by coining and uttering fresh falsehoods.

"Not so well last night," she confessed. "I don't know what was the matter with me, but somehow I didn't seem even to want to sleep."

"I know," Mrs. Gosnold nodded wisely. "I'm not yet old enough to have forgotten these midsummer moonlight nights of ours. When I was a girl and being courted, from this very house, I know I used to wait until everybody had gone to bed and creep out and wander for hours . . ."

Her pause invited confidences. And momentarily Sally's heart thumped like a trip-hammer. Did she, then, either know or guess?

"I did that last night," she responded; "but I hadn't your excuse."

"You mean, you're not being courted? Don't be impatient. Once to every woman--once too often to most. And it's well to take one's time nowadays. Perhaps it's a sign of age, and I shouldn't own it, but it does seem to me that the young men of to-day are an uncommonly godless crew. I should be sorry to have you make a mistake . . ."

She contented herself with that much warning and no more; but Sally knew their thoughts were one, focused upon a singular though by no means strange example of the young men of the present day.

"I think," her employer pursued, with a look excusing the transient keenness of her scrutiny, "our Island air agrees with you. If you have had one poor night, all the same you're quite another girl than the one who came here--was it only four days ago? I hope you're quite comfortable."

"Oh, yes, indeed."

"And would you care to stay on?"

"With all my heart!"

"I see no reason why you shouldn't. I like you very well; you're quick and willing--and you humour my weakness for the respect of my associates. I don't ask for their dependence. If you like, we'll say your engagement begins to-day, the first of the week."

"You are very kind."

"I'm very selfish. I like intelligence, prettiness, and youth--must have them at any cost! So that's understood. Of course, there are certain questions to be settled, arrangements to be made. For example, I assume responsibility for your losses at bridge, because playing when I wish you to is one of your duties. But these matters adjust themselves as they come up from time to time."

"Thank you," said Sally in a tone that, though little more than a whisper, was more eloquent of her gratitude than the mere phrase could possibly have been.

"So now I shall stop calling you Miss Manwaring."

"Please do."

"It's much too formal, considering I'm old enough to be your mother."

"Oh, no!" Sally protested involuntarily. "That isn't possible."

"I'll not see fifty-five again," Mrs. Gosnold announced. "But that's a boudoir secret."

"I'll never--"

"And a secret of Polichinelle besides," the other laughed; "everybody I know or care a snap for knows it. At the same time, no woman cares to have her age discussed, even if it is public property and she quite old enough to be beyond such vanity. No matter; I'm going to call you Sara, if you've no objection."

"Why not Sally?" the girl suggested tentatively. "That's my name--I mean, what I'm accustomed to."

"Thank you; I like it even better," Mrs. Gosnold affirmed. "I'm conservative enough to favour old-time names. My own, for instance, Abigail, pleases me immensely, though I seldom meet a young woman these days who can hear it without looking either incredulous or as though she doubted the sanity of my sponsors in baptism."

She stayed the obvious reply with an indulgent toss of a hand still fair.

"Now to work. I've mapped out a busy morning for you. To begin with, here are a dozen or so notes to deliver. You may take the dog-cart--no, to save time, one of the motors. We must give these good people as much time as possible, considering it's a spur-of-the-moment affair. That is why, you understand, there are so few invitations--because I'd no time to write and post a number. But each of these is a bid to some friend with a houseful of people to come and bring all her guests.

"Oh!" she laughed, catching the look of puzzlement on the girl's face, "I haven't told you what it is. Well, my dear, it's an old woman's whim. Every so often I break loose this way and keep my memory green as one who, in her day, never entertained but in some unique fashion. I was once famous for that sort of thing, but of late years I haven't exerted myself except when bored to extinction by the deadly commonplace amusements most people offer us.

"For some time I've had this in mind, and everything prepared; you may, if you like, call it a spontaneous masquerade by moonlight. Half the fun of such affairs comes of the last-moment, makeshift costumes; if you give people much time to think them up it is always a stiff and frigid function. Moreover, it demands a perfect night--and we can't count on our Island weather twenty-four hours in advance. But to-day is perfect, and to-night will be fair with the moon at its full. You may dance on the veranda or make love on the terrace, just as you please, from ten o'clock till three--or later. Supper will be served from midnight on. At one we shall unmask.

"As I say, all preparations had been made, weather permitting; I had merely to telephone the caterers, electricians, and musicians, and scribble these invitations. I'd advise you to arrange your day to include a good long nap before dinner, for you'll be up till all hours very likely. I fancy I can promise you some fun."

Mrs. Gosnold ceased upon a note of mischievous enjoyment in anticipation that would have suited a girl of sixteen, then analysed the trouble behind Sally's perturbed countenance.

"As for your costume, you're not to give it a thought! I have arranged for it to be brought to your room at half past nine, and I pledge you my word you'll find it becoming. I have only two requests to make of you: that you refrain from unmasking or admitting your identity until one o'clock, and that if you recognise me, you hold your tongue. Is it a bargain?"

"You're so good to me," said Sally simply, "I can't think how to thank you."

"Leave that, too, to me. It's quite possible I may suggest a way." Mrs. Gosnold smiled curiously as at a thought reserved. "Now run along--order the car and put on your prettiest hat. But a moment!"

She illustrated the process of taking thought by puckering her brows and clipping her chin between a thumb and forefinger.

"Let me see. Have I remembered everybody?" She conned, half aloud, a list of names. "But no! What an oversight! I should never have forgiven myself--or have been forgiven. And my fountain pen needs refilling. No"--as Sally offered to take the pen--"sit there at the desk and write at my dictation. I will sign it."

Obediently Sally took her place at the escritoire, arranged a sheet of the monogrammed note-paper used by Mrs. Gosnold for correspondence with personal friends (as distinguished from the formal letter-head of Gosnold House, with its bristling array of telephone numbers and telegraph, post-office, railroad and steamboat addresses), dipped a pen, and waited with a mind preoccupied by visions of the night to come. Her first ball! Her first real function in Society!

"My dear friend," Mrs. Gosnold enunciated deliberately in a colourless, placid voice. "(Colon, dash, paragraph) It was only late last night, and then by merest chance, I learned you had come to the island yesterday instead of sailing last week, in accordance with your announced intention (period). So I cannot decently begin by berating you (dash) as I should, had you been here twenty-four hours without personally letting me know (period)."

A pause. Sally dreamed a beautiful dream of a crinoline costume, beflowered and beflounced, such as Vogue had lately pictured as a forecast of autumn fashions, an iridescent bubble of a dream shattered by the query: "Where was I, please?"

"'Letting me know,'" she quoted absently.

"Oh, yes. (Paragraph.) I hope with all my heart your change of plans was not brought about by any untoward accident (semicolon); but Italy's loss is the island's gain (semicolon); and I am looking forward with the keenest pleasure to seeing you again (period, paragraph). May I hope that it will be not later than to-night (point of interrogation)? I have arranged an impromptu masquerade by moonlight on the terrace (period). It should be a pretty sight (period). From ten o'clock till any time you like (dash) masks until one (period). Do come and help make the evening a happy one for me (period)."

Another contemplative pause. But this time Sally did not dream. She sat quite still in speculative wonder, troubled with a vague alarm as disturbing as the sound of distant thunder in the evening, of an August day.

"Cue, please?"

The girl replied in a low tone: "'Evening a happy one'--"

"Yes. Add: affectionately yours--or wait! Have you written--?"

"'Affectionately yours'--yes."

"No matter; leave a space for my signature, and add this: P. S. You will be glad to see, no doubt, that your letter to Adele has borne fruit (period). Miss Manwaring does splendidly as an amanuensis (period). Your judgment was always trustworthy (period). And address the envelope, of course, to Mrs. Cornwallis English. She is stopping, I hear, with the Lorimers at Bleak House--the grey stone house on the hill at the end of West Harbor Drive."

After a time Mrs. Gosnold said almost sharply: "Well, Miss Manwaring! You have little time to waste. Bring me the note, please, and a pen."

With a gesture of despair the girl twisted in her chair and showed the woman a stricken face.

"Are you sure--?" she stammered.

"Yes?" Mrs. Gosnold prompted with an accent of surprise. "What is it, Sally?"

The girl gulped hard, and mechanically put a hand to her throat, rising as she spoke.

"Are you sure Mrs. English is on the Island?"

"What of it? Why, I presumed you would be glad of the opportunity to thank her for that letter of--"

"There was no letter!"

"I beg pardon?" Mrs. Gosnold opened wide her eyes.

"I say," Sally faltered, yet with determination, "there was no letter. Mrs. Standish--that is--we both lied to you. I don't know Mrs. English; I never spoke a word to her in all my life. I didn't take any letter to Mrs. Standish. That was a story manufactured out of whole cloth to account for me--get me this position here."

"Oh, yes," Mrs. Gosnold assented coolly. "I felt quite sure of that in the beginning. You never could believe a word Adele said from the time she was able to talk. Even if the truth would have served as well and with less trouble, she was sure to disfigure it beyond identification. And Walter's just as bad. But you, my dear, will never make a good liar; the first words we spoke together I saw your eyes wince, and knew you were tormented by something on your conscience. Moreover, the last person Edna English would send anyone with a letter of recommendation to is my niece, who has not yet been proved guilty of one unselfish act. So I thought I'd test the story. Now you may tear up that note--Mrs. English is in Italy this very day, to the best of my belief--and tell me what it's all about." _

Read next: Chapter 12. Machiavellian

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