Part 27 (2/2)

”It's two.”

”It was after nine when we started.”

”Minna, didn't you hear what I said?”

Mrs. Randall's face had not changed as she heard; it looked unchangeable, like some fixed but charming mask that she wore. The lips still smiled though they had stiffened slightly, and she watched the two women's attempts to blindfold the Colonel--unaided now, but hilariously applauded by the circle around her--with the same mild, interested eyes, wide-set and Madonna calm.

”I tell you, Judith's not there. What does Norah know? Why don't you do something? Where is she?... My G.o.d, look at them. What are they doing now? Look at Everard.”

Mrs. Burr had drawn the knot suddenly tight in the white scarf she was manipulating, and slipped out of the Colonel's arms and out of reach. He followed, and then swung round and stumbled awkwardly after Edith Kent, who had brushed past him, leaving a light, challenging kiss on his forehead, and was further guiding him with her pretty, empty laugh. The game of blind-man's buff was under way.

Crowding the garden enclosure, swaying this way and that and threatening to overflow it, a pus.h.i.+ng, struggling ma.s.s of people kept rather laboriously out of one another's way and the Colonel's, not so much amused by the effort as they were pretending to be; people with heavy and stupid faces who had never looked more irrevocably removed from childhood than now that they were playing a children's game.

In the heart of the crowd, now plunging ahead of it, now lost in it, the first gentleman of Green River disported himself. His white head was easy to follow through the crowd, and the thing that made you follow it was evident even now--much of his old dignity, and the charm that was peculiarly his; you saw it in an occasional stubborn shake of his beautifully shaped head, in the grace of the hand that caught at some flying skirt and missed it. He was the first gentleman of Green River still, but he was something else.

His white hair straggled across his forehead moist and dishevelled, and his face showed flushed and perspiring against the white of the scarf.

The trailing ends of the scarf flapped grotesquely about his head, and the high, splendidly modelled forehead was obscured and the keen eyes were hidden. The beauty of the face was lost, and the mouth showed thin lipped and sensual. The Colonel was really a stumbling, red-faced old man.

”Look at him. That's what she's seen. This was Judith's party. That's what we've hung on in this town for till it's too late to break loose.

We never can get away now. We can't----”

”Keep still, Harry. Do you want to be heard? Did any one hear you at the telephone? Keep still and come home.”

”You're right. You're wonderful. You don't lose your nerve.”

”I can't afford to, and neither can you. Come---- Oh, Harry, look. I saw him following you. What does he want? What's the matter? What is he going to do?”

Mrs. Randall had adjusted her cloak deliberately, and turned to pilot her husband out of the garden, slipping a firm little hand through his arm. Now she clung to him and stood still, silent after her little fire of excited questions. The entrance to the garden was blocked. An uninvited and unexpected guest was standing there.

His entrance had been unheralded, and his welcome was slow to come. The crowd had closed in round the Colonel, with Edith Kent caught suddenly in his arms, and giving a creditable imitation of attempting to escape.

Interested silence and bursts of laughter indicated the progress of it clearly, though the two were entirely out of sight. n.o.body saw the newcomer except the Randalls.

He stood in the entrance to the rose arbour, clutching at the trellis with one unsteady hand, and managing to keep fairly erect, a slightly built, swaying figure, black-haired and hatless. He kept one hand behind him, awkwardly, as a shy boy guards a favourite plaything. He was staring into the crowd in the garden as if he could see through into the heart of it, but had not the intellect just then to understand what he saw there.

It was the man Mrs. Randall had seen lurking in the shadow of the trees, but he was no mysterious stranger, though here in the light of the lanterns she hardly recognized him as she looked at his pale, excited face; it showed an excitement quite unaccounted for by the perfectly obvious fact that he was drunk, and entirely unconnected with that fact.

Here and there on the outskirts of the crowd some one turned and saw him, too, and stared at him. They all knew him. He was Neil Donovan's cousin, the discredited young lawyer, Charlie Brady.

He did not speak or move. He only stood still and looked at them with vague, puzzled eyes, and lips that twitched as if he wanted to speak, but standing so, he had the centre of the stage. He could not command it, he had pushed his way into it doggedly, uncertain what to do first, but he was there. One by one his audience had become conscious of it, and were confronting him startled and uncertain, too. Young Chester Gaynor elbowed his way to the front, but stopped there, grinning at the invader, restrained perhaps by a lady's voice, which was to be heard admonis.h.i.+ng him excitedly.

”Don't you get hurt, dear.”

”How did he get here? Why can't somebody get him out?” other excited ladies inquired.

”Get Judge Saxon,” directed Mr. J. Cleveland Kent's calm and authoritative voice.

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