Part 27 (1/2)

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

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

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

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

”I didn't really hear you.”

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

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

”Nothing's the matter. Nothing new.”

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

There comes Harry.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm so afraid.”

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

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

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

”Come and talk to Norah.”

”No, we'll go straight home.”

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

”It must be nearly morning.”