The Green Mouse
her lap. If the maid came before Brown returned she'd flee. If Brown came
back before the maid arrived she'd tell him plainly what she had decided
on, thank him, tell him kindly but with decision that, considering the
incredible circumstances of their encounter, she must decline to
encourage any hope he might entertain of ever again seeing her.
At this stern resolve her heart, being an automatic and independent
affair, refused to approve, and began an unpleasantly irregular series of
beats which annoyed her.
"It is true," she admitted to herself, "that he is a gentleman, and I can
scarcely be rude enough, after what he has done for me, to leave him
without any explanation at all.... His clothes are ruined. I must
remember that."
Her heart seemed to approve such sentiments, and it beat more regularly
as she seated herself at a desk, found in it a sheet of notepaper and a
pencil, and wrote rapidly:
"_Dear Mr. Brown:_
"If my maid comes before you do I am going. I can't help it. The maid
will stay to look after Clarence until I can return with some of the
family. I don't mean to be rude, but I simply cannot stand what you told
me about our--about what you told me.... I'm sorry you tore your clothes.
"Please believe my flight has nothing to do with you personally or your
conduct, which was perfectly ('charming' scratched out) proper. It is
only that to be suddenly told that one is predestined to ('marry'
scratched out) become intimately acquainted (all this scratched out and a
new line begun).
"It is unendurable for a girl to think that there is no freedom of choice
in life left her--to be forced, by what you say are occult currents,
into--friendship--with a perfectly strange man at the other end. So I
don't think we had better ever again attempt to find anybody to present
us to each other. This doesn't sound right, but you will surely
understand.
"Please do not misjudge me. I must appear to you uncivil, ungrateful, and
childish--but I am, somehow, a little frightened. I know you are
perfectly nice--but all that has happened is almost, in a way, terrifying
to me. Not that I am cowardly; but you must understand. You will--won't
you?.... But what is the use of my asking you, as I shall never see you
again.
"So I am only going to thank you, and say ('with all my heart' crossed
out) very cordially, that you have been most kind, most generous and
considerate--most--most----"
* * * * *
Her pencil faltered; she looked into space, and the image of Beekman
Brown, pleasant-eyed, attractive, floated unbidden out of vacancy and
looked at her.
She stared back at the vision curiously, more curiously as her mind
evoked the agreeable details of his features, resting there, chin on the
back of her hand, from which, presently, the pencil fell unheeded.
What could he be doing upstairs all this while. She had not heard him for
many minutes now. Why was he so still?
She straightened up at her desk and glanced uneasily across her shoulder,
listening.
Not a sound from above; she rose and walked to the foot of the stairs.
Why was he so still? Had he found Clarence? Had anything gone wrong? Had
Clarence become suddenly rabid and attacked him. Cats can't annihilate
big, strong young men. But _where_ was he? Had he, pursuing his quest,
emerged through the scuttle on to the roof--and--and--fallen off?
Scarcely knowing what she did she mounted on tiptoe to the second floor,
listening. The silence troubled her; she went from room to room, opening
doors and clothespresses. Then she mounted to the third floor, searching
more quickly. On the fourth floor she called to him in a voice not quite
steady. There was no reply.
Alarmed now, she hurriedly flung open doors everywhere, then, picking up
her rose-silk skirts, she ran to the top floor and called tremulously.
A faint sound answered; bewildered, she turned to the first closet at
hand, and her cheeks suddenly blanched as she sprang to the door of the
cedar press and tore it wide open.
He was lying on his face amid a heap of rolled rugs, clothes hangers and
furs, quite motionless.
She knew enough to run into the servants' rooms, fling open the windows
and, with all the strength in her young body, drag the inanimate youth
across the floor and into the fresh air.
"O-h!" she said, and said it only once. Then, ashy of lip and cheek, she
took hold of Brown and, lashing her memory to help her in the emergency,
performed for that inanimate gentleman the rudiments of an exercise
which, if done properly, is supposed to induce artificial respiration.
It certainly induced something resembling it in Brown. After a while he
made unlovely and inarticulate sounds; after a while the sounds became
articulate. He said: "Betty!" several times, more or less distinctly. He
opened one eye, then the other; then his hands closed on the hands that
were holding his wrists; he looked up at her from where he lay on the
floor. She, crouched beside him, eyes still dilated with the awful fear
of death, looked back, breathless, trembling.
"That is a devil of a place, that closet," he said faintly.
She tried to smile, tried wearily to free her hands, watched them, dazed,
being drawn toward him, drawn tight against his lips--felt his lips on
them.
Then, without warning, an incredible thrill shot through her to the
heart, stilling it--silencing pulse and breath--nay, thought itself. She
heard him speaking; his words came to her like distant sounds in a dream:
"I cared for you. You give me life--and I adore you.... Let me. It will
not harm you. The problem of life is solved for me; I have solved it; but
unless some day you will prove it for me--Betty--the problem of life is
but a sorry sum--a total of ciphers without end.... No other two people
in all the world could be what we are and what we have been to each
other. No other two people could dare to face what we dare face." He
paused: "Dare we, Betty?"
Her eyes turned from his. He rose unsteadily, supported on one arm; she
sprang to her feet, looked at him, and, as he made an awkward effort to
rise, suddenly bent forward and gave him both hands in aid.
"Wait--wait!" she said; "let me try to think, if I can. Don't speak to me
again--not yet--not now."
But, at intervals, as they descended the flights of stairs, she turned
instinctively to watch his progress, for he still moved with difficulty.
In the drawing-room they halted, he leaning heavily on the back of a
chair, she, distrait, restless, pacing the polished parquet, treading her
roses under foot, turning from time to time to look at him--a strange,
direct, pure-lidded gaze that seemed to freshen his very soul.
Once he stooped and picked up one of the trodden roses bruised by her
slim foot; once, as she passed him, pacing absently the space between the
door and him, he spoke her name.
But: "Wait!" she breathed. "You have said everything. It is for me to
reply--if I speak at all. C-can't you wait for--me?"
"Have I angered you?"
She halted, head high, superb in her slim, young beauty.
"Do I look it?"
"I don't know."
"Nor I. Let me find out."
The room had become dimmer; the light on her hair and face and hands
glimmered dully as she passed and re-passed him in her restless progress--
restless, dismayed, frightened progress toward a goal she already saw
ahead--close ahead of her--every time she turned to look at him. She
already knew the end.
_That_ man! And she knew that already he must be, for her, something that
she could never again forget--something she must reckon with forever and
ever while life endured.
She paused and inspected him almost insolently. Suddenly the rush of the
last revolt overwhelmed her; her eyes blazed, her white hands tightened
into two small clenched fists--and then tumult died in her ringing ears,
the brightness of the eyes was quenched, her hands relaxed, her head sank
low, lower, never again to look on this man undismayed, heart free,
unafraid--never again to look into this man's eyes with the unthinking,
unbelieving tranquillity born of the most harmless skepticism in the
world.
She stood there in silence, heard his step beside her, raised her head
with an effort.
"Betty!"
Her hands quivered, refusing surrender. He bent and lifted them, pressing
them to his eyes, his forehead. Then lowered them to the level of his
lips, holding them suspended, eyes looking into hers, waiting.
Suddenly her eyes closed, a convulsive little tremor swept her, she
pressed both clasped hands against his lips, her own moved, but no words
came--only a long, sweet, soundless sigh, soft as the breeze that stirs
the crimson maple buds when the snows of spring at last begin to melt.
From a dark corner under the piano Clarence watched them furtively.
XII
SYBILLA
_Showing What Comes of Disobedience, Rosium, and Flour-Paste_
About noon Bushwyck Carr bounced into the gymnasium, where the triplets
had just finished their fencing lesson.
"Did any of you three go into the laboratory this morning?" he demanded,
his voice terminating in a sort of musical bellow, like the blast of a
mellow French horn on a touring car.
The triplets--Flavilla, Drusilla, and Sybilla--all clothed precisely
alike in knee kilts, plastrons, gauntlets and masks, came to attention,
saluting their parent with their foils. The Boznovian fencing mistress,
Madame Tzinglala, gracefully withdrew to the dressing room and departed.
"Which of you three girls went into the laboratory this morning?"
repeated their father impatiently.
The triplets continued to stand in a neat row, the buttons of their foils
aligned and resting on the hardwood floor. In graceful unison they
removed their masks; three flushed and unusually pretty faces regarded
the author of their being attentively--more attentively still when that
round and ruddy gentleman, executing a facial contortion, screwed his
monocle into an angry left eye and glared.
"Didn't I warn you to keep out of that laboratory?" he asked wrathfully;
"didn't I explain to you that it was none of your business? I believe I
informed you that whatever is locked up in that room is no concern of
yours. Didn't I?"
"Yes, Pa-_pah_."
"Well, confound it, what did you go in for, then?"
An anxious silence was his answer. "You didn't all go in, did you?" he
demanded in a melodious bellow.
"Oh, no, Pa-_pah!_"
"Did two of you go?"
"Oh-h, n-o, Pa-_pah!_"
"Well, which one did?"
The line of beauty wavered for a moment; then Sybilla stepped slowly to
the front, three paces, and halted with downcast eyes.
"I told you not to, didn't I?" said her father, scowling the monocle out
of his eye and reinserting it.
"Y-yes, Pa-_pah_."
"But you _did?_"
"Y-yes----"
"That will do! Flavilla! Drusilla! You are excused," dismissing the two
guiltless triplets with a wave of the terrible eyeglass; and when they
had faced to the rear and retired in good order, closing the door behind
them, he regarded his delinquent daughter in wrathy and rubicund dismay.
"What did you see in that laboratory?" he demanded.
Sybilla began to count on her fingers. "As I walked around the room I
noticed jars, bottles, tubes, lamps, retorts, blowpipes, batteries----"
"Did you notice a small, shiny machine that somewhat resembles the
interior economy of a watch?"
"Yes, Pa-_pah_, but I haven't come to that yet----"
"Did you go near it?"
"Quite near----"
"You didn't touch it, did you?"
"I was going to tell you----"
"_Did_ you?" he bellowed musically. "Answer me, Sybilla!"
"Y-yes--I did."
"What did you suppose it to be?"
"I thought--we all thought--that you kept a wireless telephone instrument
in there----"