The utter hopelessness of clearing himself left him silent. How much was to be asked of him as sacrifice to code? How far was he expected to go to shield Sylvia Quest--this unhappy, demoralised girl, whose reputation was already at the mercy of two men?
"Geraldine," he said, "it was nothing but a carnival flirtation--a chance encounter that meant nothing--the idlest kind of----"
"Is it idle to do what you did--and what she did? Oh, if I had only not seen it--if I only didn"t know! I never dreamed of such a thing in you.
Bunny Gray and I were taking a short cut to the Gray Water to sit out the rest of his dance--and he saw it, too--and he was furious--he must have been--because he"s devoted to Sylvia." She made a hopeless gesture and dropped her hand to her side: "What a miserable night it has been for me! It"s all spoiled--it"s ended.... And I--my courage went.... I"ve done what I never thought to do again--what I was fighting down to make myself safe enough for you to marry--_you_ to marry!" She laughed, but the mirth rang shockingly false.
"You mean that you had one gla.s.s of champagne," he said.
"Yes, and another with Jack Dysart. I"ll have some more presently. Does it concern you?"
"I think so, Geraldine."
"You are wrong. Neither does what you"ve been doing concern me--the kind of man you"ve been--the various phases of degradation you have accomplished----"
"What particular species of degradation?" he asked wearily, knowing that Dysart was now bent on his destruction. "Never mind; don"t answer, Geraldine," he added, "because there"s no use in trying to set myself right; there"s no way of doing it. All I can say is that I care absolutely nothing for Sylvia Quest, nor she for me; that I love you; that if I have ever been unworthy of you--as G.o.d knows I have--it is a bitterer memory to me than it could ever be to you."
"Shall we go back?" she said evenly.
"Yes, if you wish."
They walked back together in silence; a jolly company claimed them for their table; Geraldine laughingly accepted a gla.s.s of champagne, turning her back squarely on Duane.
Nada and Kathleen came across.
"We waited for you as long as we could," said his pretty sister, smothering a yawn. "I"m horribly sleepy. Duane, it"s three o"clock.
Would you mind taking me across to the house?"
He cast a swift, anxious glance at Geraldine; her vivid colour, the splendour of her eyes, her feverish laughter were ominous. With her were Gray and Sylvia, rather noisy in their gaiety, and the boisterous Pink "uns, and Jack Dysart, lingering near, the make-up on his face in ghastly contrast to his ashen pallor and his fixed and unvaried grin.
"I"m waiting, Duane," said Nada plaintively.
So he turned away with her through the woods, where one by one the brilliant lantern flames were dying out, and where already in the east a silvery l.u.s.tre heralded the coming dawn.
When he returned, Geraldine was gone. At the house somebody said she had come in with Kathleen, not feeling well.
"The trouble with that girl," said a man whom he did not know, "is that she"s had too much champagne."
"You lie," said Duane quietly. "Is that perfectly plain to you?"
For a full minute the young man stood rigid, crimson, glaring at Duane.
Then, having the elements of decency in him, he said:
"I don"t know who you are, but you are perfectly right. I did lie. And I"ll see that n.o.body else does."
CHAPTER XII
THE LOVE OF THE G.o.dS
Two days later the majority of the people had left Roya-Neh, and the remainder were preparing to make their adieux to the young chatelaine by proxy; for Geraldine had kept her room since the night of the masked fete, and n.o.body except Kathleen and Dr. Bailey had seen her.
"Fashionable fidgets," said Dr. Bailey, in answer to amiable inquiries; "the girl has been living on her nerves, like the rest of you, only she can"t stand as much as you can."
To Duane he said, in reply to persistent questions:
"As a plain and unromantic proposition, young man, it may be her liver.
G.o.d alone knows with what young women stuff their bodies in those bucolic solitudes."
To Kathleen he said, after questioning her and listening in silence to her guarded replies:
"I don"t know what is the matter, Mrs. Severn. The girl is extremely nervous. She acts, to me, as though she had something on her mind, but she insists that she hasn"t. If I were to be here, I might come to some conclusion within the next day or two."
Which frightened Kathleen, and she asked whether anything serious might be antic.i.p.ated.
"Not at all," he said.
So, as he was taking the next train, there was nothing to do. He left a prescription and whizzed away to the railroad station with the last motor-load of guests.
There remained only Duane, Rosalie Dysart, Grandcourt, and Sylvia Quest, a rather subdued and silent group on the terrace, unresponsive to Scott"s unfeigned gaiety to find himself comparatively alone and free to follow his own woodland predilections once more.
"A cordial host you are," observed Rosalie; "you"re guests are scarcely out of sight before you break into inhuman chuckles."
"Speed the parting," observed Scott, in excellent spirits; "that"s the truest hospitality."
"I suppose your unrestrained laughter will be our parting portion in a day or two," she said, amused.
"No; I don"t mind a few people. Do you want to come and look for scarabs?"
"Scarabs? Do you imagine you"re in Egypt, my poor friend?"
Scott sniffed: "Didn"t you know we had a few living species around here?
Regular scarabs. Kathleen and I found three the other day--one a regular beauty with two rhinoceros horns on the thorax and iridescent green and copper tinted wing-covers. Do you want to help me hunt for some more?
You"ll have to put on overshoes, for they"re in the cow-yards."
Rosalie, intensely bored, thanked him and declined. Later she opened a shrimp-pink sunshade and, followed by Grandcourt, began to saunter about the lawn in plain sight, as people do preliminary to effacing themselves without exciting comment.
But there was n.o.body to comment on what they did; Duane was reading a sporting-sheet, souvenir of the departed Bunbury; Sylvia sat pallid and preoccupied, cheek resting against her hand, looking out over the valley. Her brother, her only living relative, was supposed to have come up that morning to take her to the next house party on the string which linked the days of every summer for her. But Stuyvesant had not arrived; and the chances were that he would turn up within a day or two, if not too drunk to remember her.
So Sylvia, who was accustomed to waiting for her brother, sat very colourless and quiet by the terrace parapet, pale blue eyes resting on the remoter hills--not always, for at intervals she ventured a furtive look at Duane, and there was something of stealth and of fright in the stolen glance.
As for Scott, he sat on the parapet, legs swinging, fussing with a pair of binoculars and informing the two people behind him--who were not listening--that he could distinguish a black-billed cuckoo from a thrasher at six hundred yards.
Which edified neither Sylvia nor Duane, but the boy continued to impart information with unimpaired cheerfulness until Kathleen came out from the house.