Joan Thursday Part 17

Then Helena said quietly:

"Not in the least. But this makes you the first to learn the news, Mr.

Marbridge. Venetia and my nephew are engaged to be married."

"Engaged--!" The man's chin slacked: his eyes widened; a cigarette fell unheeded from his fingers. He smiled a trace stupidly.

"Why!"--he recollected himself almost instantaneously--"this certainly is some surprise, but I do congratulate you--both!"

With a stride he seized the hand Venetia could not refuse him, and pressed it warmly. "You're the luckiest man I ever knew!" he declared, turning to clasp hands with Matthias.

Instinctively the latter met his powerful grasp with one as forceful.

"Thank you," he said, smiling gravely into the other's eyes. Under his firm but pleasant regard they wavered and fell, then steadied with a glint of temper. Their hands fell apart. Marbridge stepped back.

"Perhaps I don't know you well enough, Mr. Matthias, to congratulate Miss Tankerville as heartily as I do you; but I'm persuaded she's not liable to make any serious mistake."

Matthias nodded thoughtfully. "I understand: your intentions are excellent. I'm sure we both thank you. Venetia--?"

"Mr. Marbridge is very amiable," said the girl, a hint of mirth modifying her composure. "But I'm afraid, Helena," she added quickly--"if you don't mind--I think I'll go to my room."

To Marbridge she gave a quaint little bow that was half an old-fas.h.i.+oned courtesy, robbed of formality by her spirited smile: to Matthias her hand and a gentle "Good night!" Taking the arm of her sister-in-law, she drew her toward the house.

Watching them until they disappeared, Marbridge chuckled quietly.

"Took my breath away!" he declared. "Why, I never suspected for an instant!..." He dropped heavily but with characteristic grace into a chair. "It takes you quiet boys to get away with the girls like Venetia--all fire and das.h.!.+"

"Yes," said Matthias reflectively: "it does--doesn't it? Have another cigarette?" He offered his case. "You dropped yours...."

"Thanks.... She's a thoroughbred, all right. I reckon if I wasn't a mite too middle-aged, maybe I might've set you a pace that you'd've found lively going."

"Well, let's be thankful nothing of that sort happened, at all events."

Marbridge looked up over his match and lifted his brows; but if in reality a retort trembled on his lips, he thought better of it; and before either spoke again, Tankerville was on the terrace, brandis.h.i.+ng pudgy arms.

"Hey, you!" he called fretfully. "Don't you know you're holding us all up? Come on in...."

But the game held less attraction for Matthias than ever, and after another and final failure to establish himself in Tankerville's good graces, he pocketed his losses, relinquished his place to Marbridge and--with even less inclination for bed than for cards--took himself again out into the open night. But now the terrace was all too small to contain his spirits. The need of action--movement, freedom, s.p.a.ce--was strong upon him. Striding away down the drive that wound like a broad band of whitewash through its dark bordering lawns and darker coppices, he found even the grounds of Tanglewood too constricted for the extravagant energy that animated him; and took to the broad highways, with all Long Island free to his tireless spirit.

For several hours or more he trudged valiantly hither and yon, with little or no notion of whither he went--with his head in the stars and his feet in the dust and kicking up a famous smother of it--and in that time was wittingly as near to happiness as he had ever been in all his days. The faculty of coherent thought had pa.s.sed from him utterly, but it pa.s.sed unmourned: Venetia was his! This thought alone sufficed him.

He had neither time nor inclination to entertain those doubts, those questionings and apprehensions which had beset him in saner humour theretofore. It mattered nothing now that he was poor and she wealthy, nothing that all his efforts to make something of himself had thus far proved vain and fruitless. She loved him: it was enough....

He came to his senses, eventually, long enough to recognize anew the grounds of Tanglewood. Of a sudden his impetuosity had run out; remained the pleasant languor of a healthy body thoroughly exercised, the peace of a mind vexed by no insatiable desire. And still he was not sleepy.

Purposefully he r.e.t.a.r.ded his footsteps, approaching the house with stealth, eager to escape observation and gain his room, unhindered.

Tomorrow would be soon enough to submit to the ordeal of congratulations....

It was with a shock of amazement that he saw the house all quiet and dark. He pulled out his watch and studied its face by moonlight, finding its evidence difficult to credit: twenty minutes past one in the morning!

Gingerly, keeping to the gra.s.s in order that the gravel of the drive might not, by its crunching underfoot, betray him or alarm some wakeful member of the house-hold, he approached the front door, wondering if he were locked out, and--not without amus.e.m.e.nt at his self-contrived predicament--what to do if he were. To his relief one-half of the double door stood a foot or two ajar--thanks, he had no doubt, to the thoughtfulness of Helena or Tankerville. Blessing both on general principles, he entered, shut the door and softly shot the bolt; turned in deep obscurity to grope his way to the foot of the stairs; but paused with a hand on the newel-post and his breath catching in his throat.

In the hallway above a night-light was burning dim and low but sufficiently diffused to show him the figure of a woman silently descending the stairway. When he first became aware of her she was indeed almost within arm's length: a shape of shadow scarce three shades lighter than the encompa.s.sing gloom.... Venetia, possibly, having waited and watched for him from her windows overlooking the drive, stealing down to bid him that good night they had perforce foregone in the presence of Helena and Marbridge....

That wild and extravagant surmise had no more than entered his mind when he found the woman in his arms. She gave herself into them with a gesture of abandonment, with a little sigh that escaped in broken measure, murmurous and fond. An arm that, lifting, flashed naked to the shoulder as the sleeve of her negligee fell back, encircled his neck and drew down his head to hers. And her mouth fastened to his with clinging lips....

Half stunned by receipt of that mad caress, one thought shot like light through the turmoil of his senses: this was never Venetia!

With an effort he straightened his neck against the pressure of the woman's arm. She strove to overcome his resistance, wooing him in accents hushed, shaking with pa.s.sion:

"_Vincent ... sweetheart!..._"

He interrupted hastily: "I beg pardon!" The inadequacy of that stilted form, disgusting him, he added: "I am John Matthias."

Immediately the woman released him and, with a gasp, sank back against the newel-post. Her breath came gustily, with a sound like smothered sobbing. Pitifully he divined her shame and terror; and though he knew her very well, beyond mistake, he said evenly: "Don't worry--there isn't any light."

In a stupefied voice she iterated: "No light--?"

"It's so confounded' dark," he complained: "I couldn't tell you from Eve. So perhaps you'd better run back to your room now...."

He turned away deliberately. Behind him, after a pause of an instant, there rose a sound of soft rustling draperies, a swift and hushed patter of footsteps on the stairs. A moment or two later a latch clicked very gently in the corridor above.

Quietly Matthias switched on a single light, returned to the door, unbolted and quickly opened it.

He was not disappointed that this manoeuvre surprised a shadow skulking in the penumbra of rose bushes that bordered the steps, the shadow of a man who drew back swiftly when he recognized Matthias. This last stepped out, turned in the direction of the fugitive shadow, and pursuing at leisure, hailed in a quiet and natural tone: "I say--Marbridge!--that you?"

Immediately he came upon Marbridge at a standstill round the corner of the house, awaiting him in a curious posture of antagonism: his feet well apart, heavy body inclined a trifle forward, round dark head low between his shoulders, hands clenched, upon his face a cloud of anger.

Matthias greeted him suavely: "I was afraid I'd locked you out."

Ignoring his att.i.tude even as he seemed to ignore the fact that Marbridge had changed from evening dress to a suit of dark flannels, he added: "Coming in now? It's a bit late."

Marbridge pulled himself together. "Perhaps you're right," he a.s.sented surlily. But it was with patent effort that he mastered his resentment and accompanied Matthias back to the doors.

"A fine night, what?" Matthias filled in the awkward silence.

"Yes," agreed Marbridge brusquely. "Too fine," he amended--"too fine to waste in bed."

"Sleepless, eh?"

"Yes."

Following him in, Matthias refastened the door. "Several of us seem troubled with the same indisposition," he observed coolly, swinging to face Marbridge. "That's why I bothered to call you in, you know."

Marbridge scowled: "Perhaps I don't get you...."

"She has gone back to bed," Matthias explained pleasantly. "I didn't like to think of you waiting out there, all alone."

Marbridge choked on a retort, turned and began slowly to mount the stairs.

"Oh--going? Half a minute."

The man paused, and in silence looked down.