Part 5 (1/2)

Cool and collected as he knew he was, he remained for a moment in hesitation. Then the sound of voices came to his ear from the garden room, the light frivolity of Susy's laugh and Hooker's huskier accents.

He had forgotten they were there--he had forgotten their existence!

Trusting still to his calmness, he called to Hooker in his usual voice. That gentleman appeared with a face which his attempts to make unconcerned and impa.s.sive had, however, only deepened into funereal gravity.

”I have something to attend to,” said Clarence, with a faint smile, ”and I must ask you and Susy to excuse me for a little while. She knows the house perfectly, and will call the servants from the annex to provide you both with refreshment until I join you a little later.” Satisfied from Hooker's manner that they knew nothing of his later interview with Pinckney, he turned away and ascended to his own room.

There he threw himself into an armchair by the dim light of a single candle as if to reflect. But he was conscious, even then, of his own calmness and want of excitement, and that no reflection was necessary.

What he had done and what he intended to do was quite clear, there was no alternative suggested or to be even sought after. He had that sense of relief which comes with the climax of all great struggles, even of defeat.

He had never known before how hopeless and continuous had been that struggle until now it was over. He had no fear of tomorrow, he would meet it as he had to-day, with the same singular consciousness of being equal to the occasion. There was even no necessity of preparation for it; his will, leaving his fortune to his wife,--which seemed a slight thing now in this greater separation,--was already in his safe in San Francisco, his pistols were in the next room. He was even slightly disturbed by his own insensibility, and pa.s.sed into his wife's bedroom partly in the hope of disturbing his serenity by some memento of their past. There was no disorder of flight--everything was in its place, except the drawer of her desk, which was still open, as if she had taken something from it as an afterthought. There were letters and papers there, some of his own and some in Captain Pinckney's handwriting. It did not occur to him to look at them--even to justify himself, or excuse her. He knew that his hatred of Captain Pinckney was not so much that he believed him her lover, as his sudden conviction that she was like him!

He was the male of her species--a being antagonistic to himself, whom he could fight, and crush, and revenge himself upon. But most of all he loathed his past, not on account of her, but of his own weakness that had made him her dupe and a misunderstood man to his friends. He had been derelict of duty in his unselfish devotion to her; he had stifled his ambition, and underrated his own possibilities. No wonder that others had accepted him at his own valuation. Clarence Brant was a modest man, but the egotism of modesty is more fatal than that of pretension, for it has the haunting consciousness of superior virtue.

He re-entered his own room and again threw himself into his chair. His calm was being succeeded by a physical weariness; he remembered he had not slept the night before, and he ought to take some rest to be fresh in the early morning. Yet he must also show himself before his self-invited guests,--Susy and her husband,--or their suspicions would be aroused. He would try to sleep for a little while in the chair before he went downstairs again. He closed his eyes oddly enough on a dim dreamy recollection of Susy in the old days, in the little madrono hollow where she had once given him a rendezvous. He forgot the maturer and critical uneasiness with which he had then received her coquettish and willful advances, which he now knew was the effect of the growing dominance of Mrs. Peyton over him, and remembered only her bright, youthful eyes, and the kisses he had pressed upon her soft fragrant cheek. The faintness he had felt when waiting in the old rose garden, a few hours ago, seemed to steal on him once more, and to lapse into a pleasant drowsiness. He even seemed again to inhale the perfume of the roses.

”Clarence!”

He started. He had been sleeping, but the voice sounded strangely real.

A light, girlish laugh followed. He sprang to his feet. It was Susy standing beside him--and Susy even as she looked in the old days!

For with a flash of her old audacity, aided by her familiar knowledge of the house and the bunch of household keys she had found, which dangled from her girdle, as in the old fas.h.i.+on, she had disinterred one of her old frocks from a closet, slipped it on, and unloosening her brown hair had let it fall in rippling waves down her back. It was Susy in her old girlishness, with the instinct of the grown actress in the arrangement of her short skirt over her pretty ankles and the half-conscious pose she had taken.

”Poor dear old Clarence,” she said, with dancing eyes; ”I might have won a dozen pairs of gloves from you while you slept there. But you're tired, dear old boy, and you've had a hard time of it. No matter; you've shown yourself a man at last, and I'm proud of you.”

Half ashamed of the pleasure he felt even in his embarra.s.sment, Clarence stammered, ”But this change--this dress.”

Susy clapped her hands like a child. ”I knew it would surprise you! It's an old frock I wore the year I went away with auntie. I knew where it was hidden, and fished it out again with these keys, Clarence; it seemed so like old times. Lord! when I was with the old servants again, and you didn't come down, I just felt as if I'd never been away, and I just rampaged free. It seemed to me, don't you know, not as if I'd just come, but as if I'd always been right here, and it was you who'd just come.

Don't you understand! Just as you came when me and Mary Rogers were here; don't you remember her, Clarence, and how she used to do 'gooseberry' for us? Well, just like that. So I said to Jim, 'I don't know you any more--get!' and I just slipped on this frock and ordered Manuela around as I used to do--and she in fits of laughter; I reckon, Clarence, she hasn't laughed as much since I left. And then I thought of you--perhaps worried and fl.u.s.tered as yet over things, and the change, and I just slipped into the kitchen and I told old fat Conchita to make some of these tortillas you know,--with sugar and cinnamon sprinkled on top,--and I tied on an ap.r.o.n and brought 'em up to you on a tray with a gla.s.s of that old Catalan wine you used to like. Then I sorter felt frightened when I got here, and I didn't hear any noise, and I put the tray down in the hall and peeped in and found you asleep. Sit still, I'll fetch em.”

She tripped out into the pa.s.sage, returning with the tray, which she put on the table beside Clarence, and then standing back a little and with her hands tucked soubrette fas.h.i.+on in the tiny pockets of her ap.r.o.n, gazed at him with a mischievous smile.

It was impossible not to smile back as he nibbled the crisp Mexican cake and drank the old mission wine. And Susy's tongue trilled an accompaniment to his thanks.

”Lord! it seems so nice to be here--just you and me, Clarence--like in the old days--with n.o.body naggin' and swoopin' round after you. Don't be greedy, Clarence, but give me a cake.” She took one and finished the dregs of his gla.s.s.

Then sitting on the arm of his chair, she darted a violet ray of half reproach and half mischievousness into his amused and retrospective eyes. ”There used to be room for two in that chair, Klarns.”

The use of the old childish diminutive for his name seemed to him natural as her familiarity, and he moved a little sideways to make room for her with an instinct of pleasure, but the same sense of irresponsibility that had characterized his reflections. Nevertheless, he looked critically into the mischievous eyes, and said quietly,--

”Where is your husband?”

There was no trace of embarra.s.sment, apology, or even of consciousness in her pretty face as she replied, pa.s.sing her hand lightly through his hair,--

”Oh, Jim? I've packed him off!”

”Packed him off!” echoed Clarence, slightly astonished.

”Yes, to Fair Plains, full tilt after your wife's buggy. You see, Clarence, after the old cat--that's your wife, please--left, I wanted to make sure she had gone, and wasn't hangin' round to lead you off again with your leg tied to her ap.r.o.n string like a chicken's! No! I said to Jim, 'Just you ride after her until you see she's safe and sound in the down coach from Fair Plains without her knowin' it, and if she's inclined to hang back or wobble any, you post back here and let me know!' I told him I would stay and look after you to see you didn't bolt too!” She laughed, and then added, ”But I didn't think I should fall into the old ways so soon, and have such a nice time. Did you, Clarence?”

She looked so irresponsible, sitting there with her face near his, and so childishly, or perhaps thoughtlessly, happy, that he could only admire her levity, and even the slight shock that her flippant allusion to his wife had given him seemed to him only a weakness of his own.

After all, was not hers the true philosophy? Why should not these bright eyes see things more clearly than his own? Nevertheless, with his eyes still fixed upon them, he continued,--