The Game and the Candle Part 2

He brought the cup and she extended a slim, jeweled hand to receive it.

Theodora had a somewhat oriental taste; odors of sandalwood and rose breathed from her laces, her white wrist sparkled with slender bracelets, and the high comb in her blonde hair held the glint of gems.

"Why do you not laugh at my epigram?" she demanded. "Thank you; I would say you were adorable if you did not already know it. Please give me a biscuit, and give yourself some tea. Why are you so serious to-night?"

"I had something to tell you, I think."

She waved a commanding spoon.

"Then sit down and begin."

But Allard remained silent, regarding her. It was not easy to begin.

Moreover, the glamour of the future had fallen away, leaving the naked ugliness; and he was held by a prescient certainty that to-night ended for ever this gracious life.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Allard remained silent, regarding her.]

"Robert is not up?" Theodora queried presently, too fine to insist on the suggested confidence.

"No. Are you sorry, Theo?"

Surprised at the tone, she glanced up, but the shadows were heavy where he sat.

"Why, yes, of course." And recovering herself, "Certainly; how could we exist without him?"

"How, indeed?" he echoed, rather too quietly for naturalness. "Suppose he were to go away?"

"I should expire immediately of ennui. You see, he and I have a bond of frivolity; while against you we all lean for support. You are very supporting, John; now, this tea," she laughed gleefully. "Robert probably would have pressed champagne upon me, because it is less trouble to get."

"You might have made tea yourself," he suggested, drawing a branch of the wistaria to shade his face more completely.

"I hate to do things for myself. I hope that I never will have to."

"I hope not. But I promised to tell you something. I am going on a trip to South America; part business, part restlessness."

"You!"

"Why not? I can not play all the time, you know, not being a girl myself. I may be away only a few months, or--much longer. But let me be quite frank; surely you are aware Robert loves you, Theo. If I should not be home before you are married, still you will understand how much good I wish you both, and remember that I said this now. Forgive me for speaking of this; it is ventured because I start to-morrow."

She sat very still, and he heard her hurried breathing in the hush.

"I did not know you meant that," she said at last, her accents unsure.

"Or you would not have confessed? Never mind my blundering interference, little cousin; I have no wish so dear as that you two should care for each other. You are not angry?"

She rose abruptly to set down the cup, the shadows now a cloak for her.

"Angry? Oh, no; I have never learned to be angry with you. I--It is damp out here; I must go in. Good night, John."

"Good night, Theo," he responded with all gentleness. It was so wonderful, this exquisite timidity, this virginal shyness that only Robert should have seen. He saw her quivering as she pa.s.sed him in the moonlight, her head averted.

But in the doorway she turned back.

"John, as we entered the avenue to-night, there was a man standing near the olive-trees. Mr. Preston stopped the car and called to ask what he did there. The man answered that he was waiting to see you about some gardening work, but it was so late that you must have forgotten. He sounded honest, but Mr. Preston bade me warn you, saying that a man, once your father's servant, had just been released from prison, and might use a knowledge of Sun-Kist to attempt burglary. You will be careful?"

"I will be careful," he answered calmly. "Thank you, dear."

She slipped hurriedly across the threshold, as if in escape, ruthlessly tearing her thin gown upon the door-latch. Allard wearily rested his head against the column behind him, and so remained.

At the end of an hour he rose and went down across the moon-blanched lawns, walking steadily and directly toward the group of olive-trees. He knew for what Desmond was waiting, knew what answer would be given, and it seemed to him that he had already severed the connection between the present and the future. It seemed to him that not to-morrow, but to-night, he was taking leave of all things; that the unblazed trail led straight on from behind those dark trees just beyond him.

The white statues stirred with the wavering shadows as he pa.s.sed; the rich scent of the tuberoses called as a familiar voice; like a patter of tiny footsteps the ripple of the fountain followed.

CHAPTER II

THE KEY TO THE DOOR

"The road you called, and I believed to be, an unblazed trail through a grave forest, I am beginning to see is just the old sordid, musty Bridge of Sighs across which common malefactors are led," wrote John Allard to Robert three months after his departure from Sun-Kist. "But if we can agree with Browning's dictum, there is a certain virtue simply in keeping on at a task a.s.sumed, even if the end be questionable. And I am keeping on. Do not fancy I am saying this to trouble you, or in weak regret. All is going better than we dared hope, as you know; and I see no danger near, at present. No; it is only that I have been fearing I gave you some edged doctrines; do not close your hand upon them, for they cut. You can not write to me, of course, since you do not know where I am. Nor shall I myself write again, even with this guarded and unsigned precaution. When this venture ends, I am going away from America; I think I shall enlist in France's Foreign Legion. Not because I am afraid, but because I want to work. Yet, in spite of success, it seems to me that, like Saxon Harold, I hear a cry in the night: '_Sanguelac, the arrow, the arrow!_'"

There was nothing in the quiet, sun-filled, little hut nestled on the mountain-side, to indicate that here rested one end of the _Ponte degli Sospiri_. Yet to one of the two men here at bay, the dark bridge arched away as a thing visible.

A siege had been held there all the June afternoon, until now this grateful lull had fallen,--a siege whose tale was punctuated with the snap of bullets, the crash of loosened stones down the cliff, and the shouts of men below. No one yet had ventured on the steep, narrow path winding up to the hut, although there was but one defender, and so far the battle had been bloodless. But neither the big Irishman leaning by the door, nor John Allard, lying helpless on a rough cot, had any doubt of the final result. They were simply waiting for the end to come.

"Desmond, have you hurt any of them?" Allard asked suddenly, rousing himself from a reverie bordering on stupor.

"I have not," answered the other in accents just touched with Hibernian softness. "But I am thinking they will not come up until dusk. Bird shot scatters."

"Our own men have gone safely?"

"They have. And if you had not slipped through that hole in the old floor and broken your ankle--"

Allard raised himself on his elbow. Fever lent an artificial brightness to his firm young face and shadowed gray eyes, the waving chestnut hair clung boyishly around a forehead which had acquired one straight line between the brows during the five months since he had left Sun-Kist.

"You should not have stayed, Desmond," he said earnestly. "You can not help me; I have my own way out of this. You must go now, at least, and try the mountain. I ask you to go."

"And if I do, it must be at dusk. Look out that door; not a cloud or a shade--and me with a hundred yards of bare mountain-side to cross. Lie easy, sir."

"Desmond!"

"Oh, it's a word slipped! Old times are close enough for their ways to come to my tongue in the rush."

Allard shook his head, but sank back upon the pillow and let his gaze go out the open door opposite. Far below, the silver and azure Hudson widened into the Tappan Zee, set in purple and emerald hills which curved softly away to the distant outposts of the Palisades. Fair and tranquil, warmly palpitating under the summer suns.h.i.+ne, the scene was cruel in its placid indifference to the struggle here upon the cliff-like mountain. The very breeze that fluttered in brought taunting perfumes of cedar and blossom from a country-side out of reach; poised airily between earth and sky, a snowy sea-gull flaunted its unvalued liberty. Sighing, the Californian dropped the curtain of his lashes before a world no longer his. He had been so near safety, the arrow had been held so long upon the cord, that disaster came now with a double keenness of stroke.

"Desmond," he said, after a pause, "we have nothing to do with old times or t.i.tles. I can trust your will, I know; but do not let your memory betray me. I mean, words _must_ not slip. I hope you are going to get out of this safely; I can not, of course. After my--capture," a curious expression flickered across his face, "no matter how things end, you may count that I will say nothing of you or the others. Will you, at all times in the future, remember that I am just Leroy?"