Chapter 13. Marplot

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_ CHAPTER XIII. MARPLOT

Once sheltered by the privacy of her bedchamber and seated before the little white-enamel desk with its chintz-covered fittings that suited so well the simple, cheerful scheme of decoration, the girl lingered long, an idle pencil caught between fingers infirm of purpose. Her gaze was fixed as if hypnotised to the blank white face of the bit of cardboard that lay before her on the blotting-pad, her thoughts far astray in a dark jungle of horror, doubts, suspicions, fears.

Immediately after shutting herself in she had gone straight to this desk, possessed by the notion that there was a message requiring to be written upon the card, one self-exculpatory sentence which had framed itself in her mind as she sped down the corridor from that remarkable meeting in Mrs. Gosnold's rooms.

"I have not told you everything--but I am innocent," thus ran the words which she felt were demanded of her and a legitimate privilege, her duty to herself in sheer self-preservation. And as they wrote themselves down before her mental vision she saw two heavy strokes of the pen underlining "everything," and her own true name, Sarah Manvers, following in the place of the signature--no more "Sara Manwaring," Mrs. Gosnold's explicit commands to the contrary notwithstanding.

But that had been an impulse, only natural in the first shock of horror inevitably attending the disclosure of the robbery, to clear herself; or, rather, to reaffirm her innocence.

For with second thought had come the consideration: Was she not already cleared, was her innocence not already established?

She was prepared to believe that Mrs. Gosnold knew everything. That extraordinary woman! What had she not known, indeed? Mark how cunningly she had drawn from Sally the admission that she had been up and about the house and grounds long after she had gone to her bedchamber for the night--at the very time, most probably, when the robbery was being done! And that had been by way of preface to the pledge she had made Sally of her protection before startling confession from the girl--a pledge not only given in advance, but by implication at least renewed when the truth was out.

If she had believed Sally guilty, or party to the crime, or even in possession of guilty knowledge of it, would she have made that generous promise?

She was kind of heart, was Mrs. Gosnold, but she was nobody's fool; if she had not been well satisfied in her own mind as to the thief she would never have so committed herself to Sally, for she was no one to give her word lightly or, as she herself had said, to bait a trap with fair words and flattery.

In vain Sally searched her memory for anything to warrant an assumption that her mistress had been in any way ignorant of that black business of the small hours. She had neither denied such knowledge nor asserted it, but had simply permitted Sally to leave out of her account all reference to the overnight adventure.

And all that assorted consistently with her statement that she did not wish to learn the thief's identity, as well as with her invention of a means for obtaining restitution without such intelligence.

So Sally ended by believing it rather more than possible that Mrs. Gosnold knew as well as the girl herself who had consummated the crime--or, at all events, shared the damning suspicions engendered in Sally's mind by circumstantial evidence.

Lyttleton, of course: Sally entertained but the slenderest doubts of his black guilt.

If innocent, what had he been carrying hidden in the hollow of his arm? What had he left down there on the beach? Why had he left it there? Why such anxiety to escape observation as to make the man alert to notice Sally's head peering over the parapet of the landing at the head of the cliff? And if he had been employed in no way to be ashamed of, and had no consequences to fear, why that roundabout way up the cliff again and that ambush of his watcher?

And why those signals between window and yacht, if not to apprise the latter that something had been consummated, that the coast was clear for its tender to come in and take away the plunder?

It would seem, then, that Mr. Lyttleton must have had a confederate in the house, and for that role Mrs. Standish was plainly designated. An understanding of some close sort between her and Lyttleton had been quite evident from the very first day. And whose bedchamber window had shown the signals, if not hers? Not the pretty young widow's--not in any likelihood Mrs. Artemas'. To believe the latter intimate with the affair was to assume an understanding between her and Lyttleton--or else Trego.

Trego!

Sally was conscious of a slight mental start, a flurry of thoughts and sensations, of judgment in conflict with emotions.

Why not Trego? A likelier man than Lyttleton for such a job, indeed. Trego had such force of personality as to excuse the suspicion that what he might desire he would boldly go after and possess himself of. With a nature better adapted to the planning and execution of adventures demanding courage, daring and indifference to ethical considerations, Trego was capable of anything. Lyttleton was of flimsier stuff, or instinct were untrustworthy.

But after a little the girl sighed and shook her head. It was less plausible, this effort of hers, to cast Trego for the role of villain. True, he might have invented that story of the marks on the sands; true again, he might have acted in accord with Mrs. Artemas. But those were far-fetched possibilities. Unless, indeed, professed distrust and dislike of Mrs. Artemas had been altogether ingenious, a mask manufactured in anticipation of just this development.

No, it wasn't likely of Trego. She could not overlook the impression he conveyed of rugged honesty and straightforwardness. However strong the aversion he inspired, Sally could ignore neither that impression nor yet its correlative, that if he was not an over-righteous scorner of lies, he was the sort that would suffer much rather than seek to profit by a lie.

She perceived, with a little qualm of contrition, that she had been eager to condemn the man out of sheer unreasonable prejudice, all too ready to do him injustice in her thoughts. Unpleasant though she found his personality, harshly though his crudities grated upon her sensibilities, she owed him gratitude for an intimate service in an emergency when she had been only too glad of his personal intervention; and it were rank ingratitude to wish him ill, just as it was frankly base of her to be eager to think ill of him.

Repentance had got hold of this girl by the nape of her neck; it shook her roughly, if justly. For a little time she cringed in shame of herself and was torn by desire in some way to make amends to this animal of a Trego, whom she so despised because he refused to play up to the snob in her and ape the manners of his putative betters even as she was keen to ape them.

Perhaps it had needed this ugly happening, or something as unsettling, to reveal the girl to herself in a true light--at least a light less flattering than she found pleasant.

Certainly its aftermath in the way of private communion served well to sober and humble Sally in her own esteem. Outside the immediate field of her reverie she was now conscious of the words "sycophant" and "parasite" buzzing like mosquitoes about the head of some frantic wooer of sleep, elusive, pitiless, exasperating, making it just so much more difficult to concentrate upon this importunate problem of her duty.

If she was not to protest her own innocence, what ought she to say upon that card?

Was it consistent with loyalty to Mrs. Gosnold to keep silence about matters that might clear up the mystery and repair the wrong-doing?

But how could she attack another? How bring herself to point the finger of accusation at Lyttleton?

On the terrace outside her window a stringed orchestra tuned and hummed softly in the perfumed night. Rumour of gay voices and light laughter came to her in ever greater volume. Before her distracted gaze swam a view of the formal garden, a-glimmer like a corner of fairy-land with the hundreds of tiny lamps half concealed amid the foliage of its shrubs and hedges.

She knew that she must rouse herself and be seen below; not only must her message take its place with its twenty-odd fellows in the mail-box, but nothing could seem so incriminating as prolonged and deliberate absence from the fete.

Yet she had little desire now for what two hours since had seemed a prospect of bewitching promise. The music rose and fell in magic measure without its erstwhile power to stir her pulses. There was not one in all that company below for whom she cared or who cared for her, none but whose interest in her presence or absence was as slight as hers; and her mood shrank from the thought of such casual and conventional gallantries as the affair would inevitably bring forth. She was in no humour tonight to dance and banter and coquette with an empty and desolate heart.

Thus it was made clear to her that she had never been, and never would be, in such humour; that in just this circumstance resided all her insuperable dissociation from these people of light-hearted lives; that this was why she was and forever must remain, however long and intimate her life among them, an outsider; because what she needed and demanded, the blind and inarticulate impulse which had made her aspire to their society, was not the need of a wide social life, but the need of a narrow and constricting love.

And all the love that she had thus far found in this earthly paradise had proved a delusion, a mockery and a snare.

Presently she stirred with reluctance, sighed, resigned herself to the prospect of a night of hollow, grinning merriment, and turned back to contemplation of that importunate card. And while still she hesitated, pencil poised, with neither knock nor any sort of announcement whatsoever the door flew open, and through it, like a fury in a fairy's dress, flew Mrs. Standish clothed as Columbine.

She shut the door sharply, put her back to it, and keeping her gaze fixed on the amazed girl, turned the key.

Her passion was as evident as it was senseless. Bare of the mask that swung from silken strings caught in her fingers, her face shone bright with the incandescence of seething agitation. Her eyes were hard, her mouth tight-lipped, her temper patently set on a hair-trigger.

Quite automatically, on this interruption, Sally rose and, standing, slipped the card into its envelope, an action which brought from the older woman a curt, imperative gesture.

"What have you written there?" she demanded brusquely.

Before answering Sally carried the envelope to her lips, moistened its flap, and sealed it. Thus she gained time to collect herself and compose her attitude, which turned out unexpectedly to be something cold and critical.

"Why do you ask?" she returned.

"Because I've a right to know. If it concerns me--"

"Why should it?" Sally cut in.

"You know very well that if you breathe a syllable about last night--"

"But what about last night? You came to my room while I was inexplicably out and waited till I returned. I can't see why you should care if that became known."

"Have you written anything about that?" Mrs. Standish demanded insistently.

"And even if I had, and you were merely afraid of being embarrassed, I couldn't very well drag you in without incriminating myself, now could I?"

"I don't care to bandy words with you, young woman. Tell me--"

"You needn't to please me, you know. And I shan't tell you anything."

"Why--?"

"My business," said Sally with all the insolence she knew how to infuse into her tone. "I think we covered that question rather completely last night--or rather this morning. I imagined it was settled. In fact, it was. I don't care to reopen it; but I will say this--or repeat it, if you prefer: I'm not going to permit you to interfere in my private affairs."

"You refuse to tell me what you've written?"

"For the last time--positively."

"See here," Mrs. Standish ventured, after a baffled moment: "be reasonable. There's no sense in making me lose my temper."

"I'm sure I don't wish you to."

"Then tell me-"

"No."

"Must I threaten you?"

Sally elevated supercilious eyebrows. "If you like."

"I have a way to force you to obey me."

"Oh?" There was an accent in this innocent syllable cunningly calculated to madden.

"Very well. If you will have it. Do you recall a certain letter of introduction?"

"Why--no."

"That you brought me from Mrs. Cornwallis English."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't be stupid. You surely are not prepared to deny that you came to me last Wednesday, looking for work, with what purported to be a letter of recommendation from Mrs. English."

"Please go on."

"Well," Mrs. Standish announced triumphantly, "I kept that letter, of course, and now I've had occasion to look closely, I find it's a forgery."

"Please!" Sally faltered.

"I tell you, I have safe in my possession a letter recommending you to me and signed with the forged signature of Mrs. Cornwallis English. If necessary to protect myself, I shall not scruple to exhibit that letter."

"Oh!" With a gasp of incredulity Sally sat down and stared at this impudent intrigante.

"Now will you tell me what you've written? No. I won't trust you to tell me. Give me that envelope. I'll see for myself."

"It isn't possible," Sally said, "that you would do anything so cruel and unjust and dishonest?"

"Dishonest? I dare say you consider yourself a judge."

"I can't believe it of you, Mrs. Standish."

"That's your personal affair, of course. You've asked me not to interfere. . . ."

She permitted Sally to think it over, meantime coming closer, holding out her hand with an effect of confident patience.

"Surely you wouldn't show that forgery you've made up to Mrs. Gosnold?"

"I don't know what you mean by 'forgery I've made up.' I shan't hesitate to show the forgery you brought me."

"I guessed all along," Sally told her, "that you were not what you made yourself out to be, neither a good woman nor a kind one. But I never for a moment imagined you would stoop to such infamy."

"Now that's settled, be good enough--"

"But what makes you so afraid I'll tell Mrs. Gosnold about last night?"

"To protect yourself, of course. I don't believe you mean to confess--"

"Confess!"

"Take advantage of this opportunity to restore the jewels--and get off without punishment. Probably you can't. Probably the man you met outside and gave them to is by now so far away that you couldn't, even if you wanted to."

"Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. I don't want to make any mistake."

"Sensible of you, I'm sure."

"You really mean to accuse me of this abominable thing?"

"I know no reason to believe you incapable of it. And you did meet a man out there last night."

"Then why do you hesitate to inform Mrs. Gosnold? Isn't it your duty?"

"I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, providing you--"

"Have you consulted Mr. Lyttleton about this?"

That shot told. Mrs. Standish paused with an open mouth. "Mr. Lyttleton!" she exclaimed, recovering, in a tone that implied complete ignorance of the existence of any such person.

"Mr. Lyttleton," Sally repeated. "You know very well it was he to whom I was talking out there--and I know you know it."

"Say I do, for the sake of the argument; do you imagine Mr. Lyttleton would sacrifice himself--admit that he got up and left the house, for whatever reason, last night after going to bed--to save you?"

"No," Sally conceded; "I don't expect anything from either you or any of your friends. But Mr. Lyttleton will find the facts hard to deny. There was a witness, you must know--though I've no doubt it's news to you. He wouldn't be likely to mention that to you. In fact, I can see from your face he didn't. But there was."

"Who?" the woman stammered.

"That's for you to find out. Why not ask Mr. Lyttleton? It's no good, Mrs. Standish. I don't understand your motive, and I'd rather not guess at it; but I'm not a child to be scared by a bogy. Show your forged letter to Mrs. Gosnold, if you like--or come with me and we'll both show it to her--"

"Are you mad'? Do you want to be exposed?"

"I'm not afraid, Mrs. Standish--and you are!"

After an instant the woman's eyes clouded and fell. "I don't know what you mean," she faltered.

"I mean that this scene has gone on long enough. I'm sick and tired of it--and it isn't getting you anything, either. Good night!"

With this Sally marched to the door, turned the knob, and found it locked and the key missing.

"The key, please, Mrs. Standish."

"Not till you tell me--" the other began with a flash of reviving spirit.

Sally advanced a finger toward the push-button. "Must I call one of the maids to let me out?"

Capitulation was signalled with a distracted gesture. "Miss Manwaring, do tell me--"

"Nothing--I'll tell you nothing! Give me that key."

"Promise you haven't written--"

"The key!"

It was surrendered. "Well--but that jewel-case: what have you done with it?"

"I've hidden it."

"Where?"

"I'll tell you to-morrow, perhaps."

Opening the door, Sally strode out with her head high and the light of battle in her eyes.

A hesitant, pleading call followed her, but she wouldn't hear it. Pursuit and continuation of the scene, with or without another specious semblance of apology and reconciliation such as had terminated their previous passage-at-arms, was out of the question; the corridor was lively with young women in gayest plumage, fluttering to and from the dressing-rooms, and Sally was among them even before she remembered to reassume her mask.

At the head of the main staircase she paused, searching narrowly the shifting groupings of the animated scene disclosed by the wide reception-hall. She was looking for Queen Elizabeth's imperious ruff, anxious to find and keep in the shadow of that great lady's sovereign presence; and she was also looking for the leather-banded sombrero of the cowboy and the skull-cap of Harlequin, with a concern keen to avoid those gentlemen.

Considerably to her surprise, still more to her disappointment, not even the first of these was in evidence (as Sally had made sure Mrs. Gosnold would be) waiting to welcome her guests just within the doorway to the porte-cochere.

None the less, the lady must be found, and that without delay; the envelope, with its blank enclosure half crushed in Sally's hand, was an ever-present reminder of her duty first to herself, secondly to her employer. If she had written nothing, and but for Mrs. Standish would have kept her counsel till the last minute, the latter's threat of denunciation had lent the temper of the girl another complexion altogether; as Sally saw it, she no longer had any choice other than to find Mrs. Gosnold as quickly as possible and make complete the revelation of last night's doings. And her mind was fixed to this, with a cast of angry pertinacity that would prove far from easy to oppose or even to modify; whether or not the hostess wished it, she must suffer herself to be informed immediately and completely.

Threading a swift way in and out among the masks clustered upon the broad staircase in groups of twos and threes, laughing, chattering and watching the restless play of life and colour in the hall, she gained the floor and then the letter-box, near the door where she had thought to find her employer.

A distrustful scrutiny of the near-by masks failed to single out one of those she had marked and memorised in the boudoir, and without detecting any overt interest in her actions, she slipped her blameless message into the box, then turned back and, steadfast to her purpose, made her way forward through the throng to the veranda.

After the glare of the hall the dusk of the veranda was as grateful as its coolth and spaciousness. Beyond the rail the purple-and-silver night pressed close and beckoned; its breath was sweet, its pulses throbbed with the rhythmic passion of violins that sobbed and sang in hiding somewhere in the shadows. Up and down that broad, smooth flooring gay couples swayed, eye to eye and breast to breast: anachronisms reconciled by the witchery of the dance. And when Sally darted across and down the steps she found the lawns, the terrace, and the formal garden, too, peopled with paired shadows, murmurous with soft voices and low-pitched laughter.

And she who quartered so swiftly and so diligently that maze of lights and shadows found nowhere the one she wanted, but everywhere the confirmation of her secret thought--that there was no place here for her, no room, no welcome. On every hand love lurked, lingered, languished, but not for her. Whichever way she turned she saw some lover searching for his mistress, but not for her. They crossed her path and paused and stared, sometimes they spoke and looked deep into her eyes and harkened to the voice with which she answered them, giving back jest for jest--and they muttered excuses and hurried on; she was never for them.

It was as if life and fate conspired to humble her spirit and prove her ambitious of place beyond her worth; to persuade her that she was by birth, and must resign herself to remain always, Nobody.

Forlornly haunted, she circled back to the house, and on impulse sought again the boudoir door.

Marie answered, but shook her head; no, she could not say where Mrs. Gosnold might be found.

Impulse again took her out by the door to the drive. Motors were still arriving and departing, to return at a designated hour, but here, at what might be termed the back of Gosnold House--if that mansion could be said to have either back or front--here on the landward side was little light or noise or movement. And after an undecided moment on the steps beneath the porte-cochere the Quakeress stepped down and out into the blackness of the shadow cast by the western wing, a deep shadow, dense and wide from the pale wall of the house to the edge of the moon-pale lawn.

She moved slowly on through this pleasant space of semi-darkness, footfalls muffled by the close-trimmed turf, her emotions calming a little from the agitation which had been waxing ever more high and strong in her with each successive crisis of the night. Here the breeze was warm and bland, the music and the laughter a remote rumour, stars glimmered in a dome of lapis lazuli; peace was to be distilled of such things by the contemplative mind, peace and a sweet, sad sense of the beauty and pain of life. No place more fit than this could one wish wherein to shelter and to nurse bruised illusions.

Insensibly she drew near the corner of the building, in abstraction so deep and still that she was almost upon them when she appreciated the fact that people were talking just beyond that high, white shoulder of stone, and was struck by the personal significance of a phrase that still echoed in ears which it had at first found heedless: "... a Quaker costume, grey and white, with a cloak . . ."

It never occurred to the girl to stop and eavesdrop; but between that instant of reawakened consciousness and the moment when she came around the corner, three voices sealed an understanding:

"You've simply got to make her listen to reason . .."

"Oh, leave that to my well-known art!"

"She'll see a great light before one o'clock or I'm--"

Silence fell like a thunderclap as the Quaker Girl confronted Harlequin, Columbine, and Sir Francis Drake.

She said coolly: "You were speaking of me, I believe?"

Drake stepped back, swore in his false beard, and disappeared round the corner in a twinkling.

Columbine snapped like the shrew she masked: "You little sneak!"

And Harlequin capped that with an easy laugh: "Oh, do keep your temper, Adele. You've less tact than any woman that ever breathed, I verily believe. Cut along now; I'll square matters for you with Miss Manwaring--if it's possible."

With a stifled exclamation Columbine caught her cloak round her and followed Drake.

The accent of the comic was not lost upon the girl. She could not but laugh a little at Harlequin's undisguised discomfiture.

"So you're nominated for the office of peace-maker, Mr. Savage?"

"I'm afraid so." He shuffled, nervously slapping his well-turned calves with Harlequin's lath-sword. "I swear," he complained, "I do believe Adele is crazier than most women most of the time. She's just been telling me what a fool she made of herself with you. I'm awfully glad you turned up when you did."

"I noticed that, believe me!"

"Oh, I mean it. Ever since dinner I've been looking for an opportunity to explain things to you, but until Adele told me your costume just now--"

"Well?" Sally inquired in a patient tone as he broke off.

"We can't talk here. It's no good place--as you've just proved. Besides, I've got an appointment with another lady." He grinned gracelessly. "No, not what you think--not philandering--but in connection with this same business. I've got to butter thick with diplomacy an awful lot of mistaken apprehensions before I can set Don and Adele right, after that confounded foolishness of theirs last night--and this rotten robbery coming on top of it, to make things look black! It's a frightful, awful mixup, really, but as innocent as daylight if you only understand it. Look here, won't you give me a show to explain?"

"Why, I'm here, and I can't help listening."

"No. I mean later. I can't stop now, really."

"How much later?"

"Let's see. It's nearly midnight, and all this has got to be cleared up and set straight before one. Do be patient with me until a quarter to one, now won't you please?"

"I may be busy then."

"Oh, come! That's all swank, and you know it. Besides, you do owe me, at least, some little consideration. I don't mean that, exactly--our account's pretty well squared, the way I see it. But, after all, life's a give-and-take affair. Say you'll meet me at a quarter to one."

"Well. Where?"

He appeared to take thought. "It's got to be somewhere off the beaten track. And you're not afraid of the dark. Would you mind coming as far as the gate on the drive?"

"Back there, beyond the trees?"

"I mean the gateway to the main road."

"I wonder why you want me there, of all places. Oh, never mind!" She forestalled a protest of injured innocence. "I'm not in the least afraid to find out. Yes; I'll be there at a quarter to one."

"You're a brick!" Savage declared fervently. "You won't regret being so decent to me. Now I'll run along and be a diplomatist."

He cut a light-hearted caper, just to prove he could, slashed the air gaily with his wooden sword, bowed low and skipped round the corner, leaving Sally even more puzzled than before but somehow placated--comforted by a sense of her own consequence conjured up by the way in which apparently she could manage people . . .

Savage, for instance. _

Read next: Chapter 14. Magic

Read previous: Chapter 12. Machiavellian

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