The Blue Window/Chapter 25
IT was raining hard when, the next afternoon, a small, rubber-caped figure rode up to the inn. Entering the great room, where a half-dozen men in canvas coats lounged in front of the fire, a voice came from under the dripping rubber hat:
"I'm almost drowned."
The men jumped to their feet. "It's Sally Hulburt!"
They gathered about her.
With her hat off, her gold hair clung as close as a metal cap. She stood on the hearthstone and talked to them.
"Where's Winslow?" one of the men demanded.
"He's gone to town."
They teased her about that with shouting laughter. So this was the way the mouse played when the cat was away cutting coupons! Riding down alone in the rain. A rendezvous? They would have something to tell Neale when he came back!
Sally took their teasing good-naturedly. Her cheeks were red and her eyes bright. Her tongue had a pointed wit, and she was a match for the best of them.
But when at last she left the hearthstone and spoke alone with Christopher, she showed her agitation.
"I'm being clandestine again. Merry is coming here to meet me. Can you find us a quiet corner where we can talk?"
Christopher suggested the big pantry off the kitchen. "You can watch your chance and slip through the swinging door. I'll have one of the men keep an eye out for Mr. Meriweather."
Having executed this maneuver with success, Sally found herself presently in a small, square room with shelves along the sides on which were great china platters, covered silver dishes, and copper casseroles. There was another swinging door which led to the serving room where Christopher carved the meats. The place was secluded and cozy, with the driving rain making a gray curtain for the window, and a low-hung lamp bringing out the high lights on the silver and copper and showing the gay-colored designs on the china platters.
When Merry was ushered in by Christopher, and the big man had departed, Sally said:
"What did you think when you got my telegram?"
"I didn't stop to think. I came."
"After I had sent it, I was scared stiff."
"You needn't have been. I was coming anyhow. I had my bag packed. But why all this mystery, Sally? Meeting me like this? Not that I don't like it. I do. I feel like the hero of a swashbuckling novel. Riding post-haste through the rain!"
He laughed and drew out a chair for her at the small table which Christopher had set for them. "It is rather an adventure, little Sally."
Something in his voice made her turn and look up at him as he stood behind her. The expression in his golden eyes as they met hers set her heart to beating wildly. The blood seemed to pound in her temples, as she said:
"I am not going to marry Neale."
"What!"
"I made up my mind yesterday."
"What happened?"
"Something that I'll tell you sometime. I feel now as if I had never intended to marry him. I was like a person in a nightmare and couldn't wake up."
He dropped into the chair opposite her and leaned across the table. Again that look in his eyes made her heart beat. "It's a remarkable thing, Sally, that I should have made up my mind before I got your telegram to come to you today. I had made up my mind to beg you not to marry Neale. I had made up my mind to ask you to marry me!"
From across the table Sally stared at him. "You are just saying that . . . as a joke. . . ." Her lips were dry.
"I'm not. I swear it. I've wanted it for a long time—ever since your letters began to come to me from Paris. But I didn't know positively until one night when I was talking with Uncle Buck—"
Christopher came in with tea and muffins and departed hastily. Any one with half an eye could see what was happening. Merry went on as if there had been no interruption.
"After he died, I was tied up with things I had to do. Yet I knew the time before your wedding was short. So last night I packed my bag . . . and now you tell me you are free. It is more than a coincidence. It is a miracle, Sally."
"But I'm not free, Merry."
"Why not?"
"I haven't told Neale or mother. I don't know what they'll say to me. That's why I sent for you. I felt that then they couldn't exactly throw me to the lions! That you'd find some way to save me."
"Easy enough. We'll be married tomorrow without telling them. You can meet me in Baltimore."
"Merry, I haven't said 'yes.'"
"Dear child, there's no time for formalities. You can say 'yes' when the clergyman asks you questions." The golden eyes were dancing.
Sally found herself protesting with a quaver in her voice. "But things like this don't happen to me, Merry. I shall wake up presently and find myself in the wood with the Wolf walking beside me."
"You'll wake up and find yourself in Harford County, walking up the stairs of my old house with a candle in your hand—which is much better. And now—come over here and let me kiss you, Sally!"
It was the next night that Neale, arriving with his bag of birds, found a note from Sally. She had written it before she went to town: She would, she told him, be married to Merry by the time he received it!
Winslow's world crashed! He crumpled the note in his hand and went to look for Mrs. Hulburt. He met her hurrying down from the upper floor to the first landing.
"You've heard?" he demanded.
"Sampson just gave me a note. He said Sally's orders were that they were not to be delivered until you came in. Neale, the child must be mad—"
"Sit down," he said in a hard tone. "Speculation doesn't get us anywhere. "We've got to talk it over."
She dropped on a seat under the Blue Window, but none of its peace entered into her soul. "Go on."
"Meriweather ought to be shot. He's a hound." Winslow still wore his shooting jacket; his bag of birds was in the hall below. "Does Carew know?" he asked. "Or any one?"
"No. Sally says in her note she will leave it to you to tell the world whatever you will."
He was savage. "What can I tell?"
He was thinking with sensitive agony how the world would laugh at him! Young beauty, it would say, had scorned him. Merry's golden eyes and golden youth had outweighed the moneybags of the old man. He should have known better than to believe in the love of May for December.
He made a quick decision. "I don't want the reporters down here until I have something to talk about. Just keep your mouth shut, Ethel, until after dinner."
He was not polite. He didn't want to be. He felt that in some way Ethel must be culpable. She should have brought Sally up better. To be obedient.
"I don't see how I can face them all." Ethel was struggling with a touch of hysteria. "They'll be sure to ask about Sally."
He considered that. "Very well. I'll send you off to town in my motor. You can say Sally wanted you to join her. What reason did she give for going in?"
"Hats. Another one. I told her she had enough. But she wouldn't listen."
"You might have suspected." He caught himself up. No use to quarrel with Ethel. "Of course, every one will know the truth eventually. But I've got to have time. . . . Get on your wraps. I'll have the car around as soon as you are ready."
Thus, protesting a little, but half-glad to be out of it, Mrs. Hulburt was spirited away to Baltimore to spend a lonely night in a hotel. And so it happened that at the Round Hill dinner table were just four of them—Carew and Winslow, Miss Anne and Hildegarde. Winslow, perfectly groomed, apparently at his ease, glittering, seemed to reflect the shine of the silver. He might almost have been hung with prisms like the candelabra. He beamed on them all, told scintillating stories, laughed in that crackling way of his at Carew's jokes.
Hildegarde, listening, told herself that Neale's manner was too perfect. Something had happened. She was sure of it. Mystery was in the air. Sally had taken an early train that morning and had asked no one to go with her. And now Ethel gone, with no reason at all. For why shouldn't Sally have come back for the night? And then, added to that, had been a scene with Sally in the morning, when the bride-to-be had come into Hildegarde's room and had asked:
"Do you believe that the good Lord answers prayers, Hilda?"
"Of course."
"Did you ever pray for a husband?"
"Sally!"
"I'm not joking. I got that from Crispin. He told me if I ever wanted a good husband, I should ask for one."
Hildegarde, sitting up in bed, had demanded: "Aren't you being a bit flippant? I am sure Crispin wouldn't make light of such matters."
"He was in dead earnest. He said if I wanted one, I must ask. And I've been asking for weeks."
She stopped there, radiant. "Darling, I can't tell you. But a lovely thing has happened."
After dinner Neale went up to use Carew's telephone. He had, he said, some important messages. Miss Anne motored out to the Country Club for a promised game of bridge. Hildegarde and her father sat on the porch alone, while Carew smoked his after-dinner cigar.
It was an enchanting night. There was a bit of chill in the air, and Hildegarde was wrapped in a Spanish shawl which she had brought back with her from abroad. Carew wore an old army cloak of his father's. The wind ruffled his hair so that it stood up like an eagle's crest. By the light of the moon he resembled more than ever the red-coated grandfather in the library. He was indeed as much a part of the background as the white columns, the fan-lighted door, and the coat-of-arms above the portico.
Hildegarde spoke of the moon. "Christopher calls it the hunter's moon. And it is wonderful."
"It will be even more wonderful later. There's something weird about it as the night wanes."
They sat in silence watching the gold creep across the waters of the bay. Carew was in a chair, and Hildegarde on the step below him. She laid her cheek against his knee. "Love me, Daddy?"
"You know I do."
"Sometimes . . . I like to think when we are together that mother . . . is with us."
His hand was on her hair. "Hildegarde . . . I want you to know that she was the dearest. . . . Yet I never made her happy."
Hildegarde looked up at him. "You've made me happy."
"Have I? I am afraid I wasn't born to make people happy. And some day you'll leave me."
"What do you mean?"
"You'll marry. All girls do."
Out of the content of the moment she laughed. "Why look so far ahead?"
A cloud darkened the moon, but the dead gold of it still illumined the scene, and in that dead-gold light they saw a figure moving among the trees.
"It's Winslow," Carew said. "He must have come out of the side door."
Neither of them called, although Neale in the stillness could easily have heard their voices. They watched him go in and out, threading his way along the sable trunks until he was lost to view.
"He has some important matters pending," Carew remarked. "He says exercise makes his mind work. The thing he is interested in just now interests me. If it goes through our fortunes are assured. If it doesn't, we are done for."
"What do you mean by 'done for,' Daddy?"
"It's our last hope. I've practically no assets. I'd have to sell the house."
Hildegarde wished he wouldn't talk about unpleasant things. She didn't want to think about finances. She wanted to think how wonderful it was to sit here with her hand in her father's, and to know that he loved her.
The cloud which had darkened the moon was gone. The trees once more caught the light—and up through that shining world, transmuted by its radiance into something hard and gleaming like a golden statue, came Winslow.
He walked straight toward them and stopped at the steps. "On such a night as this one ought to ride. What do you say to my ordering the horses for us, Hildegarde?"
She was speechless with surprise. Recovering herself, she asked, "Is Daddy invited?"
Winslow's laugh crackled. "No."
"Then I'm not going."
Again he laughed. "Carew, tell your daughter to come with me."
"Why not include me in the party, Neale?"
"I want Hildegarde's advice about Sally. Does that satisfy you?"
"Oh, well, run along with him, Hildegarde."
She rose with some reluctance. "Of course, if it's about Sally. I'll get into my riding-clothes. . . ."
When she again joined them, the horses were ready, and Winslow, too, had changed. Presently the two of them were riding down toward the Bay, with the world like gold lacquer in that strange, still light.
Hildegarde spoke of it. "The valley looks like a Japanese tray. I feel if the moon should drop, it would clink."
"I didn't bring you out here to talk about the moon." Winslow stopped his horse, and her horse, too, stopped. "I am in the dickens of a mess, Hildegarde. Sally has run away with Merry."
So that was it! Sally's radiance!
"They were married this afternoon," Winslow went on with a touch of violence in his tone, "in Baltimore. I had a note, and Ethel had one. I sent Ethel into town because I didn't want her telling the world. The reporters will be after me presently like dogs after a fox. I've held them off temporarily, but by morning I must have a story for them."
Hildegarde said with a touch of sharpness, "What have I to do with it?"
"A great deal, I hope. You can help me out of a most embarrassing situation." He leaned toward her and said without further preamble, "I want you to marry me, Hildegarde. . . ."
She gave a startled exclamation and drew back from him, then she set her horse in a mad gallop toward home.
He galloped after her and caught at her bridle. "Listen to me," he said. "This isn't a new thing. For a long time I've known I made a mistake in choosing Sally. It came into my mind first at the ball and afterward in Paris. But it was too late to draw back. And now she has taken it into her own hands, and I can tell you. The other day, when you sat in the king's chair, you were like a queen—I wanted you—"
She was beating her heel against her horse's flanks. "Let me go," she said wildly. "Oh, what would Daddy say if he knew you were talking to me like this?"
"I think he would be reasonable."
"He wouldn't. He wouldn't be reasonable. He would be furious. . . ."
"I can make or break him, Hildegarde. And he knows it. He won't go against me."
His voice was at a flat level. It was as if by some trick of ventriloquism the golden statue had been made to speak.
Hildegarde struggled desperately with a sense of fright. Her lips were dry. "You know I can't marry you."
"Why not? If you say 'no,' I shall wash my hands of your father's affairs."
"It is 'no,' of course."
"With your father taking the consequences?"
"He'll be glad to take them."
"Will he? Well, we'll ask him. This thing has got to be settled tonight, Hildegarde. We'll ride now to the house and find Carew and put the question before him."