Part 79 (2/2)

Forbes flung off his scruples, and promised to ”motor up.” The phrase sounded odd in his ears, for he remembered the poverty of his first visit, when he went as a pa.s.senger in Mrs. Neff's car.

When he spoke of his car Enslee said: ”By the way, if you're motoring up you might bring Mrs. Neff and Alice. The old lady's old car has got the sciatica or something.”

So Forbes brought Mrs. Neff along, and Alice. Mrs. Neff had much to say of his wealth. And now that she knew Persis to be out of the running, she had evidently entered Alice for the Forbes stakes. Forbes could feel the idea in the air, and he was exceedingly embarra.s.sed.

He was embarra.s.sed more by his arrival at the country home. The great hill was as bleak as the granite bridge. The trees were s.h.a.ggy with snow. The house was part of the winter, as white as an igloo. The statues were oddly distorted with icicles and snow; they looked very cold--especially the Cupid in the temple--a windy and forlorn white kiosk where a naked child suffered exile. It struck him as pitifully appropriate to the Enslee menage that Love should be left out in the cold.

Persis received him now in her quality of owner and housewife, with a flock of servants everywhere. He found her in the living-room, surrounded by guests, chattering and lounging and sprawling. He had not seen her since he left her that night in Paris.

She gave him her hand and a few commonplace words, but their eyes embraced and their lips were tremulous with unspoken messages and ungiven kisses.

Her manner warned him, and her apparent neglect of him gave him the cue of his behavior. But there were brief collisions when it was possible to murmur a word or two before one of the numerous other guests drifted up and ruined the tete-a-tete. He pleaded ruthlessly for a meeting; she pleaded for discretion above all things. She reminded him of the great difference between the condition of their former visit and the present.

With only a few about them before, they had narrowly escaped discovery; what chance had they now?

As the dinner-hour approached, and the others went up to dress, Forbes lingered, and Persis sat with him a moment in the embrasure of that drawing-room window where they had once held rendezvous. The mystery was gone from it, and the poetry. But they seized each other in one swift embrace of arms and lips. Even this was broken just in time to escape the sight of the butler, who entered to ask a question as to the wines for the dinner.

Persis gave her orders with an impatience that could hardly have escaped the man's notice. She felt a little extra effort at impa.s.sivity in his manner, and was sure that he suspected her of more than a hospitable interest in Forbes. She could not resent an unexpressed intuition, but she felt humbled and shamed and afraid.

When the butler was gone she repeated her warning to Forbes, but he took her in his arms again. Her mind told her that she must not go on risking, go on registering faint impressions in the minds of servants and of guests; but her heart would not defer entirely to her intelligence.

Forbes was taciturn at the dinner. Mrs. Neff could not provoke him to vivacity. She noted that his gaze returned constantly to Persis, and that when her look came down the board to him it softened strangely.

After dinner little cliques were formed about the billiard and the pool tables, the card-tables, and a few danced the everlasting tango with some new variation. Forbes and Persis danced together, and many eyes noted the perfect rapport of their mood, the solemn joy they took in the welded union.

”How well they dance!” was the spoken comment; but the thought was, ”How congenial they seem!”

Shortly after nine there was an excitement. On the hill opposite a building was on fire. The guests crowded and jostled at the windows.

Somebody proposed that they all go to the scene of the blaze. The irresistible fascination of a burning building at night was inducement enough. Motors were telephoned for from the distant garage, and there was a scramble for wraps. Forbes' car was not brought up, and he was invited into Enslee's. He climbed in, but clambered out again to get an extra wrap for Mrs. Neff. A maid had already run for it, and by the time he returned the cars had all gone.

He stood regretting boyishly the loss of the opportunity to go to a fire. He watched for a few moments from the steps, and then turned back into the house. He found Persis at the drawing-room window. She had declined to go. He joined her. Out on the white edge of the lawn they could see the servants in a little mob staring at the pyrotechnics of an upward rain of sparks.

”I'll put out the light. We can see better,” he said.

”No, no!” she protested; but he had already found and turned the switch.

They were in a cavern of darkness, with one window dimly reddened. He found his way back to her. She urged him to turn the light on again, but he refused. She moved to turn it on herself, but he held her fast, and compelled her back to the deep embrasure, and drew the curtains behind them.

She could count the servants on the lawn outside. They were all there.

She felt that it was safe to be alone with Forbes, at least till one of the domestics should detach himself from the group and move across the snowy sheet of white.

They watched in silence awhile the leaping red geyser of the flames. It grew and expanded till it formed a huge ember-mottled orchid with vast petals trembling in the wind.

On the far-off roads they could see the long shafts of motor-lights wavering like antennae. From all the homes of the region the neighbors were hastening to the spectacle, huge night moths drawn by the flaring lamp.

For a long, blissful while the flame-flower bloomed against the black sky. At last it wilted and failed and shriveled. Then the servants turned back to the house. Persis fled from Forbes' arms to her own room, where Nichette found her, apparently established the past hour.

Forbes waited at another window, and when at last the motors came puffing back the home-comers were too benumbed with cold and too eager for warming drinks to know or care whether Forbes had been with them or not. Any one who might have missed him would have supposed him to be in one of the other cars.

<script>