Hide in the Dark Page 3

  Just at present, Doug is apparently in an even higher state of elation than usual. As far as he is concerned, this is obviously the beginning of a simply top-hole, bang-up, A-I party, and already he is pawing the air like an old war horse who sniffs powder freshening on the breeze. His voice booms exultantly and there is a jubilantly irrepressible swagger to his walk—metaphorically, his cordial arm is about every man’s shoulder and every lady’s waist. It is difficult to refrain from bursting into “For he’s a jolly good fellow” at the mere sight of so genial a glow.

  “This is the life, children—hey, hey!—this indubitably is the life! Here’s where we make every party that we ever had before seem like a rehearsal for this one. How come the gorgeous inspiration, Lindy?”

  “Thank Trudi. She ran into Kit at a delightful little haunt of hers called the Silver Stallion last week, and wrote me that she thought we ought to celebrate the prodigal’s return properly. So here we are!”

  “I’ll say we are! We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because WE’RE HERE! One more round, Sherry, because we’re here….”

  “Did you come down here often?” inquired Ray over the jubilant clamour. “All of you, I mean? It must seem too wonderful to be back.”

  “Oh, it does!” cried Chatty Ross exultantly. “We came down dozens of times, didn’t we, Lindy? In 1916 and’17 we did it over every holiday, and even in 1918 the men came up from Quantico and Mead and Fort Myers for over New Year’s—”

  “That was the last party,” said Lindy, sipping the golden liquid as fastidiously as though it were Château Yquem. “No one’s been in it since then but Sam—he lights the fires now and then during the winter to keep the whole thing from moulding away. Sherry, this is good.”

  “Don’t you ever come down yourself?” inquired Gavin Dart. “It’s just a little better than good, Sheridan. I’ll dispose of any of the remaining dregs.”

  “No, not ever.” She put down her glass softly. “Of course, the house has been in the family nearly two hundred years, but it’s been fifty since any of us have really lived in it. Too far from either Washington or Richmond, you see. And the roads really are nightmares !”

  “You flatter them,” remarked Kit Baird drily. “Those last six miles made the river beds that I used to ride in France in the dark seem like the Lincoln Highway. That motor bike of mine was crying like a child all that last stretch from the creek.”

  “Did you go in for despatch riding in France, too?” asked Ray. “I thought Joel said Poland—”

  “I said he broke his leg in Poland, Ray,” added Joel mildly. “Never does listen to more than one word out of every three that I say. Sometimes it’s the right one and sometimes it isn’t.”

  “Do you know he says that you’re the only one that he wrote to in ten years, Joel?”

  “Well, I wasn’t what you’d call stupefied with pride by the letter!” Joel grinned reminiscently from the settee. “My dear old pal, whom I so touchingly parted from in 1918, took his pencil in hand in 1921 and wrote me sixteen words informing me that he and his leg were broke as hell in Warsaw, and inviting me to sell three hundred shares of oil stock that he’d left with me. That’s the last I heard of ole Massa Baird for seven years and three months. He’s a swell correspondent!”

  “You’ve got to take into consideration that a really first-class postage stamp from Poland cost a good round nickel,” remarked Kit, reaching over to give the cocktail shaker a dispirited rattle. “Good Lord, Sherry, you might as well try to get blood out of a stone—or is it sermons you get out of stones?”

  “Have you been in Poland ever since, Kit?”

  “No, lady, giving you a civil answer to a civil question, I have not been in Poland ever since.”

  Lindy, looking diverted with her mouth and apprehensive with her eyes, continued dauntlessly: “Well, then, where have you been?”

  “Ah, where haven’t I? If you’ve got an atlas around I’ll show you a place in Peru that I didn’t come within two hundred miles of, and there was another one near Patras and a mining camp somewhere in Nevada. Outside of those, I think that I can truthfully say that I’ve hit them all. Quite a gypsy in my quiet way.”

  “And that,” said Joel Hardy admiringly, “is about all the information you’re going to get out of young Mr. Baird during your lifetime, my child.”

  “Hey!” interrupted Trudi vigorously from the depths of her winged chair. “Will you all pipe down long enough to find out what in heck is being done about this fire?”

  “Trudi,” said Joel solemnly, “I swear to goodness I thought you’d gone away somewhere and frozen up hard. I was just going to send out the Saint Bernard dogs. You aren’t telling us that you’ve been sitting there all this time without a squeak out of you, are you?”

  “I’ve been drinking,” explained Trudi. “I don’t mind much who talks while I’m drinking—it makes me feel large and generous and tolerant—you know. ‘They say—what say they? Let them say.’ That kind of stuff. But if anyone says anything more for the next five minutes except to answer my questions, it’ll be because I’ve lost my strength.”

  “Shake you up a few more, my poppet?” shouted Doug King genially.

  “No. Two’s enough for any girl that knows her mind—or maybe it’s three. You know, Lindy, I still get so blankety blank tired when I don’t talk that I get pains behind my ears—sharp shooting ones—right through here.” She indicated the precise location with a lustrously manicured finger tip, and added complacently, “If you ask me, I think it’s darned dangerous.”

  Hanna Dart stirred in the corner of the sofa, smiled her ineffable smile, and extended the still brimming glass that she had politely accepted when it was proffered her and even more politely touched with her lips.

  “Here, Gavin, give her this, it’s too delicious. If only I wasn’t on this stupid regime—”

  “Same stupid regime you’ve been on since you were sixteen, isn’t it?” inquired Trudi over the edge of the glass. “No smoking, no drinking, no swearing, bed at ten and breakfast at eight—regime of being a good little girl, eh what?”

  “Oh, Trudi, you do make it sound loathsome!”

  “You’re sweet, Hanna. I think Gavin’s rather sweet, too, not to change you a bit. Of course, you may not have all those interesting lines in your face that make some of us such fascinating studies, but neither do you have to sit up till three in the morning trying to decide if orange blossom anti-wrinkle cream would do you more good if you ate it. I suppose if I asked you how you got that skin of yours you’d tell me that you used a little bit of castile soap and a good rough wash rag?”

  Hanna, the frosted silk of her skin flushed a transparent rose, murmured incredulously, “Oh, Trudi, how did you know? But I think it does have some kind of oil in it, too, and—”

  The flush deepened at the shout of laughter that drowned her out, but she continued to smile, remarking mildly as it subsided:

  “I think that you’d all be rather horrid if you weren’t so nice. Gavin, if we aren’t going to get ready for dinner yet, I think I’ll take my cloak again. It is a little cold.”

  Trudi, swinging lightly off the edge of the table on which she had perched, commented blithely, “A little cold! It’s cold enough to freeze hell over. Personally, I’m in a fine glow, but I can tell from just one look at my fingers that they’re frost-bitten to two inches below the knuckles. Are you brave lads going to do anything about hauling in the Yule log, or do you think it’s more fun standing around and rattling an empty cocktail shaker?”

  “How about it, boys? Shall we give these little hot-house flowers a great big fire for an All Hallowe’en present?”

  Doug’s ruddy countenance beamed invitingly on the somewhat less responsive visages of his comrades, who under his insistent glow reluctantly relinquished glasses, and shrugged themselves into abandoned coats and mufflers with anticipatory groans.

  “If you gals think it’s cold in here,” said Joel Hardy, “I’
d thank you to incline an ear to that wind that’s been yowling for the last five minutes around the north corner of this house. I don’t want to intrude my personal troubles on any of you gay madcaps—still, it wasn’t ten years ago that a fairly crack doctor told me that the best thing for me to do was to find a nice warm dry climate and stick to it. A darned eminent guy he was, too, with little orange cat whiskers and a very intelligent pair of pop eyes. Nice and dry and warm—his very words.” He placed one hand on his chest and gave two expertly hollow coughs before he was interrupted by a heartless thump between his shoulder blades from the jovial leader of the enterprise.

  “Can’t cough yourself out of this, young feller. All set? On your mark!”

  “I’ll come, too,” suggested Ray promptly. “I’m a perfectly elegant wood carrier.”

  “Darling, you are the most sickening little tagger,” said Joel adoringly. “Of course, it’s nice of you to prefer ten minutes in a coal-room with me to ten years in a barroom with some less fortunate fellow—still, this is probably as good a time as any to call your attention to the fact that woman’s place is in the home. We’re probably going to mean all the more to each other after this harrowing separation, too—”

  “God, I hope not,” commented Trudi despairingly. “If you two keep on moping and mowing at each other much longer I’ll pick out the nearest corner and dash my brains out against the wall. Doug, for the love of Labrador close that door before we all get blown up the chimney!”

  “The quickest way is down through the cedars behind the little graveyard,” called Lindy after the retreating figures. “Do hurry, it really is dreadful in here!”

  “Through the cedars behind the little graveyard?” repeated Ray in an awe-stricken undertone. “I shall die before I get out of this place. And Joel without a rabbit’s foot to his name. A graveyard! What in heaven’s name do you do with a graveyard?”

  “The usual thing,” said Lindy gently. “Though there haven’t been any Pallisers buried there for close on a hundred years. Girls, how about getting some of these bags and hampers straightened out? We can put them at the foot of the stairs for the men to carry up; it really is getting late.”

  Trudi, staggering under a brief case, a blanket roll, and something that looked like the offspring of a ward-robe trunk and a jewel case, remarked sepulchrally over her shoulder, in the direction of the pallid Ray:

  “Girl, you ain’t heard nuffin’. Wait till Lindy tells you about the old boy who inaugurated the graveyard.”

  “Wh-what happened to him?”

  “Trudi, you’re spoiling everything. It’s despicable to tell a murder story with the lights on.”

  “Murder?” echoed Ray hollowly. “Here? You’re making up.”

  Trudi, halfway to the hall, uttered a sinister laugh.

  “Ha! Wait a bit, that’s all I say, wait a bit. In the meantime you might give us a hand before you pass into a decline. Thanks a lot—ouf! Shall we start setting the tables, Lindy? Are we going to eat in here?”

  “Yes, card tables in front of the fire, don’t you say? Just picnic to-night, I thought, because it’s so late. Most of the things to eat are in those hampers, and I suppose the silver and china are still in the lacquer cabinet—no, the right-hand one. Now where in the world did we leave those card tables?”

  “I remember!” cried Chatty triumphantly. “In the closet, back of the love-seat. Kit and I folded them up the very last thing. Is it locked, Lindy?”

  “Heavens, no, nothing’s locked. It may stick a little, though; just give it a hard push.”

  The hard push precipitated the energetic Chatty somewhat abruptly into the already crowded closet, but her voice rose triumphantly from its depths.

  “Oh, there’s everything! The tables, and the phonograph and the floor cushions—and Kit’s Spanish guitar and the ping-pong rackets—and that terrible old cap of Sherry’s and both the targets. Jill, come and help—I can’t wiggle these tables out all alone.”

  Jill, who had been sitting motionless in the far corner of the sofa, slipped readily to her feet and the rescue.

  “Twist them sideways. Never mind the hampers now, Trudi—let’s get these set up. Look out, Chatty—there goes the phonograph!”

  “D’you think it’s broken anything?” inquired Chatty, placing it gently on a stand, ali contrite solicitude. “Oh, look, it’s still got a record on it. Now why in the world that didn’t smash! Look, it winds all right … and it plays all right, too, thank Heaven! Listen to that—does it make you feel a hundred and fifty-two or doesn’t it? ‘Underneath the Stars’ … I wonder how many hundred miles we’ve danced to that?”

  Jill, her face bent over the recalcitrant catches of the card table, pushed it abruptly from her and crossed the room toward the hall, saying without turning her head:

  “Which room am I having, Lindy? There’s something I was to get.”

  “Journey’s End, darling. Need any help?”

  “Thanks, no. I won’t be a minute.”

  Chatty, following the progress of the slight figure across the hall with stricken eyes, murmured:

  “Oh, Lindy, I’m so frightfully sorry. Honestly and truly I forgot—honestly I did.”

  “Of course you did, darling. Never mind; just go on with the tables. She’ll be back in a minute.”

  Chatty made a panic-stricken gesture in the direction of the little whirling disk that, oblivious of time and memory, was spinning out its old tale of magic and romance and stars on a summer night.

  “Underneath the stars,” sang the violins, forever young and unwearied, “underneath the silver—”

  “Don’t turn it off, you little dumb-bell,” adjured Trudi, flinging a consoling arm about the culprit’s shoulders. “It’ll make her much more comfortable if we pretend not to notice anything. Just forget it—after all, ten years is ten years.”

  “I’d like awfully to be tactful and discreet and dignified,” remarked young Mrs. Hardy wistfully from the pile of floor cushions that she was distributing in a semi-circle. “I know it’s none of my business, and that I ought to keep my mouth shut and my nose out of it, and that I haven’t any finer feelings, but I’ll lie right down here and die if somebody doesn’t tell me what it is we’re to pretend not to notice, and to forget because ten years is ten years.”

  Lindy Marsden, her arms full of silver and china, said gently:

  “We really are dreadfully rude; but I do think it’s rather a compliment, because it means that we can’t remember that you don’t know as much about us as we know ourselves. It isn’t half as mysterious as it sounds. ‘Underneath the Stars’ was Sunny’s favourite tune, that’s all—she put it on the phonograph herself on the last party that we were out here.”

  “I remember,” said Hanna. “I remember perfectly. It was out in the hall—she and Doug were dancing together, and Kit came out and cut it off—and Doug pretended to be furious. It must have gone on right from where it stopped then—Jill must have remembered, too, poor child. It is rather dreadful, you know.… There, thank Heaven, it’s stopping.”

  “Sunny?” repeated Ray, her eyes still bright with unanswered questions. “Oh, that was Jill Leighton’s sister Sylvia, wasn’t it? The one that died?”

  “The one that died. Hanna, if you’ll fix the china, I’ll tend to the glasses. We can use that long table against the wall as a sort of buffet, and just stack the plates and the silver on it.”

  “Well, but how did she die?” inquired Ray humbly but firmly. “She was awfully young, wasn’t she?’

  “Nineteen,” said Lindy. “My age. She was my room-mate at school, you know. She was drowned.”

  “Drowned? Here—in Washington?”

  “The Elephant’s child has nothing on you when it comes to’satiable curiosity, has he?” remarked Trudi, grimly diverted. “Let’s just suspend all this nonsense about table setting till the little stranger in our midst catches up with us, shan’t we? Fire ahead, Rachel—only I’d like to know first why the informa
tive Joel didn’t keep you posted on the subject?”

  “I can’t imagine,” said Ray solemnly. “I can’t remember his ever talking about her at all, except to say that she’d died.”

  “I hope your questions aren’t going to be as foolish as mine,” remarked Trudi amiably. “Just for the moment it had slipped what passes for my mind that Joel was as cuckoo about her as any man I know, saving your presence. Of course it did take Sherry about a year after she died to realize that I was even alive, but it may have taken Joel longer.”

  “Probably that’s the reason he couldn’t even abide me at first,” said Ray reflectively. “The first three times I asked him to marry me he simply laughed in my face; for quite a while it upset me a good deal, but if she was as fascinating as that, you certainly can’t blame him for being somewhat unimpressed by me.”