Читать книгу Face Cards - Carolyn Wells - Страница 8

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The next morning was Sunday, but breakfast was served at nine o'clock, as on other days. There was no compulsion but the family usually drifted to the dining room soon after the hour.

All except Lulie. She was the only one who cared to sleep late, and she was never disturbed until she chose to make her appearance. None of the women at Clearman Court cared to breakfast in her room, so the morning meal was generally rather a pleasant function.

This morning when Stephen and Carlotta came down, they found Phoebe and Jack Raynor already there and eagerly discussing the strange episode of the night before.

Almost immediately Nicky Goring appeared, and then Nan Loftis came flying in, her carefully dressed bobbed hair shaking as she excitedly flung herself into a chair.

"What was it?" she cried. "Oh, Miss Phoebe, what did you see?"

"How do you know I saw anything?" demanded the spinster, looking sharply at Nan.

"Because we heard you. I'm in the next room to Lulie, and she stuck her head out of the door, but she wouldn't let me stick mine out, she ordered me back to bed, and—you know what Lulie is!"

"What is she?" asked Raynor, with interest.

"Why, she's a—oh, a power,—a compeller,—how can I put it strongly enough? I mean, when she tells you to do a thing, why—you just do it, that's all."

"Yours not to reason why——"

"Yes, just exactly that. And she doesn't raise her voice, or speak sternly or anything like that. It's sort of like 'England expects,' and you just do as she says, without thinking about it. She's always like that. At school, we all obeyed her unquestioningly."

"You loved her?" Jack asked.

"Oh, of course, nobody could help it." Jack nodded assent. "But it was a love tempered with a sort of——"

"Fear?"

"No—not quite that, but a terrible uncertainty as to what she would expect next. But, I say, Miss Phoebe, tell us what you saw?"

"Nonsense, Phoebe," put in her brother. "Don't be foolish enough to recount that nightmare story!"

"It was no nightmare," said Phoebe, doggedly. "I saw what I saw. I'm no addlepated ninny to think I'm awake when I'm asleep. I was wandering about, wakeful, you know, and I stepped from my own little hall, out into the big hall and there was that head, floating high in the air, luminous, ghastly——"

"Ooh!" screamed Nan, wriggling with half-scared, half-pleased excitement.

"It's too absurd—" began Stephen, but Carlotta interrupted him. "No, dear, it isn't absurd. You can't tamper with these mystic things and not have them come back at you." She spoke gravely. "You've braved the spirits or demons or whatever they are, and now they're accepting your challenge. You have invoked the curse,——"

She stopped, her eyes full of horror at the thoughts which came flocking to her brain.

"What are you talking about?" said Lulie, calmly, as she entered and took her place at the table.

"About the spook last night," said Nan, with a half hysterical giggle.

"Don't say spook," Clearman said, angrily. "I hate that word!"

"Don't speak to my guest like that, Father." Lulie raised her eyes at him, and their translucent depths showed a slumbering fire. "Nan shall call it a spook if she likes. I saw the thing, myself."

"What!" cried two or three voices at once.

"Certainly I did," Lulie was as calm as if speaking of the weather.

"You weren't in the hall," said Carlotta, but Lulie returned.

"I know, but I had just opened my door a moment before and I saw the thing floating high in the air, just as Aunt Phoebe describes it."

"Who did it?" asked Nicky Goring. "Might as well own up now. It was a good joke while it lasted, but it's lasted long enough."

"Are you implying it was a practical joke of somebody's?" demanded Miss Phoebe, with an injured look, as if she resented having her scare spoiled.

"Exactly, ma'am, you've grasped my meaning perfectly," Nicky responded. "And I wish the joker would own up, before I get any scareder."

"You're wrong," Phoebe spoke with decision. "It could not have been anything of that sort, for there was nothing to it but that terrible head, that frightful Skull mask, moving slowly along toward my brother's door."

"From where?" asked Raynor, who had been quietly listening.

"I don't know. It didn't seem to be going from one point to another,—it just—just hovered,—you know."

"Yes," Lulie agreed, "it just wavered,—floated,—as if it were a disembodied spirit,—and then, it was gone."

"Lulie, hush!" commanded her father, sternly. "You're making all that up. You didn't see anything of the sort, you know very well. And you're pretending you did by way of chaffing me. I won't stand it. Stop it, at once!"

Lulie slowly turned her head, until her gaze rested on Clearman's face.

"Don't you tell me I lie, Dad," she said, and though her tones were soft and even, there was a glint in her eyes that showed a deep anger. "It was exactly as I said. I glimpsed it only for a moment, but it was the Skull mask, and it did float and disappear."

"It did not! It couldn't have done so! The Skull mask is in my study, where it belongs. Don't you dare to contradict me, you chit! You silly!"

For answer Lulie looked her father full in the face and smiled.

It was a most irritating smile. The sort of smile one would give to a child or a half-wit. A tolerant, amused smile and with just enough disdain in it to make Clearman furious. He was accustomed to deference from his wife and sister and to have this slip of a girl try to put him in wrong was too much.

"Go to your room!" he stormed, with a maddened look at her.

"Indeed I won't," she said, calmly. "I'm hungry for my breakfast."

"Then I will," Clearman said, with equal calm, and rising, deliberately, he left the table.

Lulie gave a clear, ringing little laugh.

"Poor old Dad," she said, "I have to teach him his place."

"You were very rude," Carlotta commented.

"I had to be, Carly. Dad and I have always been like that. We have fearful spats, though we love each other dearly."

"But did you see the spook?" queried Goring.

"Oh, I don't know whether I did or not. I guess so. Anyway, Aunt Phoebe did, so it must have been there. Didn't you, Auntie?"

"I won't speak to you. You are a wicked girl to talk to your father like that. Don't speak to me."

Lulie sighed.

"Auntie thinks I'm still a child," she said, looking round on the company at large. "Carlotta thinks so, too. Dad thinks so. I have to assert my independence to let them know I've grown up. Will you stand up for me, Mr. Raynor?"

"Against the world!" Jack declared, fascinated by the smile she gave him.

Lulie's smiles were rare gifts. Usually her calm face was serious, almost grave.

"We'll all stand up for you, Lulie," Nan offered, "but you oughtn't——"

Whatever cautionary advice Nan planned to give never left her lips, for a glance from Lulie stopped it. Surely, thought the two young men, Lulie Clearman is a power—of some sort!

The maid, coming in with a dish, looked in surprise at Clearman's vacant chair.

"What is that, Ellen?" Lulie said.

"It's Mr. Clearman's custard, Miss. Shall I leave it here?"

She stood, irresolute, and Lulie said:

"No, give it to me. I'll eat it. I love it."

"Oh, Lulie," Carlotta remonstrated, "your father will want it."

"He can have some more, then. I want this."

"What is it?" asked Nan, curiously, "looks like a dessert."

"It is, almost. It's a cup custard, flavored with bitter almond. It's Dad's regular morning stunt, instead of a cereal. I don't see why we don't all have it."

"None for me, thanks," said Nan, sniffing at the delicacy. "I hate that flavor. I say, who's for tennis? The day is great."

The two young men and the two girls proved to be the answer to that question and Phoebe and Carlotta drifted out to the terrace.

"I'm sorry Lulie is so quick-tempered," Phoebe said, as if she were responsible. "But she and her father often have a little flare-up. It doesn't mean anything."

"I suppose not," the other returned, slowly. "You see, I don't really know Lulie yet. She seems a strange combination. That gentle calm,—covering that fiery temper."

"Quick,—scarcely fiery," Phoebe observed. "She gets her calm from him, her vivacity from her mother."

"Oh well, let it pass, so far as I'm concerned," Carlotta shrugged her shoulders. "Of course her father can take care of himself. Tell me about the—the apparition, Phoebe. What did you think you saw?"

"Don't put it that way, Carlotta. I did see a mask,—I know them, you know, and it was the Skull mask. That portends death. It means what they call a 'going-away' and it is meant for my brother."

"Don't be so absurd——"

"It isn't absurd. As you know he dared the curse, and the curse will get him. Within a few days my brother will be dead."

"Phoebe Clearman, stop! You give me the shivers! I won't listen to such stuff."

"You don't know the masks, and I do. I've studied them—it's surprising how little you know about them, definitely."

"No, I don't care for that sort of learning, that's all. Stephen often tells me about them, but I stop him, or—go to sleep. I have no interest in them, and of course, no belief."

"Yet you hunt in the loft for old papers."

"Oh, yes, because he is so pleased when I find any. He is, even now, I suppose, poring over those pages I found yesterday. Oh, my goodness!"

"What?"

"I just remembered. I merely glanced over the old writing myself, but it was all about the appearance of a mask and the death that followed!" Carlotta looked aghast. "I wish I hadn't given them to him. It will get him all stirred up!"

"No, it won't. He says he can get around the mask demons——"

"And so he can! It's all rubbish, Phoebe. You know very well, there's no truth in it. Those old Clearmans died by accident or coincidence,—not by the sinister influence of a mask or a curse—and as soon as it's twelve o'clock, I'm going to see what he says about it all."

It was Clearman's invariable rule to shut himself into his study, behind locked doors, every morning from eleven to twelve, and only the most vitally important reason was sufficient to allow of his disturbance.

What he did was no secret; he usually wrote letters, read, studied his heathen lore or perhaps amused himself with a lighter book, but that hour was sacred to his solitude.

In case of an urgent message or letter to be sent, he might summon West to take it for him, and it was on such occasions that West had seen his master wearing one of the grotesque masks.

At first it had startled and frightened the man. But now, accustomed to it, Galley West was no more afraid of the masks than they were afraid of him.

Today, Clearman sat absorbed in the leaves of the diary which Carlotta had found.

It was a very old diary, of a long ago Clearman, and had lost its binding and many of its leaves.

Occasionally a stray page of it came to light, or a page or two of other writing, a letter or a document; and whenever Carlotta, by diligent grubbing among the old archives found any such thing, it was welcomed warmly by her husband and not infrequently was rewarded by a gift of diamonds. Probably she would have been given the gems anyway.

But diamonds had been less frequent of late. For Clearman had a new use for funds in a plan in mind that was to provide missionary stations for certain Far Eastern peoples, who, he thought, might be benefited. Not religious missions, but schools for practical instruction and training in Domestic Economy and business efficiency.

He had conceived this idea when he and Carlotta had traveled among the ignorant and benighted people, and together they had talked over and planned for some means of helping them.

And so, today, when he read his great-great-uncle's diary, and realized how one long dead Clearman had braved the curse of the house, and had fallen a victim to it, it gave him pause, and he was forced to bolster up his belief and conviction that his processes would save him from a like fate.

Clearman was very superstitious, partly because of inborn tendency that way and partly because of his travels and sojourns in the hotbeds of heathen traditions.

His firm belief was that the spirits of good and of evil could be cajoled or threatened to the extent of changing their plans and designs.

He argued that this belief is innate in the human breast, or why do men pray for rain, or pray to end a war, or believe themselves miraculously cured of disease?

But his beliefs took him into the field of demonology, and he believed with the savages who had taught him, that when he put on a mask, he was in some way released from his soul and it could do things and perform deeds that he could not compass in his own identity.

He believed that as he sat there, masked, and attended to his daily avocations, his soul roamed at will, placating the evil spirits, circumventing the curse and protecting his life.

He knew he had broken the law of his tribe, he knew he was under the ban, but he proposed to conquer fate and emerge triumphant.

This state of things had not come about suddenly, but had grown on him by reason of his long and continued devotion to the study of the subject, and doubtless, even more by the desire he had to have his way, and avoid the consequences.

He rang for West, and that functionary appeared.

"Galley West," he said, "here's only one letter this morning, but it must be dispatched at once. Don't merely put it in the box on the porch, take it to the post-office yourself, and at once."

"Yes, sir," returned West, looking unmoved on the spectacle of his master, sitting at his massive carved table desk, garbed in his usual morning suit, but wearing on his face a hideous totem mask, painted in glaring colors and showing a demon grin.

Through the large eye holes, Stephen Clearman's eyes looked at West in normal fashion, and West took the letter and departed; whereupon Clearman relocked the door and went on with his work.

In the hall, Galley West chanced to pass Violet, Carlotta's maid.

"Has he got it on?" the negress asked in a whisper, rolling her eyes toward Clearman's closed door, with a look of fear and curiosity blended.

"Yes," said West, "a terrible one! Looks like this!" and he made a grimace at the woman with the intent of startling her.

She gave a stifled scream, and West said, crossly, "Don't make that noise. Don't you know any better than that?"

"Huh?" said Violet, "Whatcha sayin'? Don' you know I'm deef? Speak up, man!"

But with a further gesture warning her to silence, West took his own noiseless way down the stairs.

West was a perfectly trained servant, and though Violet well knew the rules, as she often expressed it, her "deefness" kep' her out of a lot of house news.

Outside, the young people finished their tennis and then after a short hobnob on the terrace, broke up into pairs and strolled off.

Raynor corralled Lulie.

"Come on, beautiful doll," he said, "let's hop round the Rose garden."

"I'll hop, but I wish you wouldn't call me a doll."

"You don't understand. I don't mean Doll as the vaudeville songs have it. I mean, as Goring said, the line that runs,

"'I am a doll, and very beautiful.'"

"Yes, I know; but I can't see the difference."

"There's a great difference. The doll we mean isn't spelled with a capital."

"How queer you are! I don't understand you."

"You will, though."

"Why?"

"Because I shan't leave you until you do."

"And will you leave me then?"

"That depends on your decision."

"My decision as to what?"

"As to whether you want me to leave you or not. Look here, Lulie, I may as well tell you at once. I'm in love at first sight. Bowled right over. Clean gone."

"On Nan?" and Lulie looked calmly inquiring.

"No." Raynor's calm equalled her own. "On your own beautiful self. Are you in love with any one else?"

"No."

"With me?"

"No."

"No matter. You will be. I suppose I couldn't expect it so soon."

"Is this your regular proceeding with every girl you meet?"

"Nope. Never was in love before in my life."

"But they call you the Jack of Hearts——"

"That's because of my flirting propensities. But here I am, almost thirty years old, a rising young architect, indeed I may say a risen young architect, and I vow I never loved a woman before. Do I get you?"

"How do I know? Certainly not, unless I learn to care more for you than I do now."

"Oh, you will! I'll look out for that. And anyway, I'm still alive! You didn't kill me for my speech!"

"No, I don't make a practice of killing people. It isn't done."

"Yet you could kill, on occasion."

"Why do you say that?" Lulie looked a little curious.

"Well, some old philosopher said, 'We are all capable of crime, even the best of us.' So there you are."

"No, that isn't the reason you said it. Just why did you?"

"I'm glad you ask that. I don't want a wife who accepts everything I say without question. Well, then, I think there's a trace of the killer in you. You're a little of the Lucrezia Borgia type,——"

"Oh, thank you!"

"A little of the Messalina,——"

"With a touch of Jael and Herodias, I suppose!"

"How quick you are, and what a knowledge of the Scriptures."

"Well, I promise if I do marry you, not to kill you."

"Oh, Lord, I don't care what you do with me, if you'll only marry me! That's a sort of promise, isn't it?"

"Oh, no, it isn't meant as one. To tell you the truth your proposal doesn't interest me strangely. You see, you began the wrong way round. You should have made me love you first, and then ask me to marry you."

"But that's the hackneyed way, the old-fashioned way. Oh, Lulie, do say yes,—do be engaged to me. It would be such a lark to be engaged on less than twenty-four hours' acquaintance!"

"Oh, don't be silly! Besides, Carlotta looks on you as her especial property."

"Mrs. Clearman! What nonsense. Why she's a devoted wife."

"I know it, but devoted wives like to have rising young satellites."

"You're wickeder even than I thought. No wonder your Dad scolds you!"

"Oh, that was nothing. You see, Dad and I are more alike than we seem. And when the alike sides of our natures collide, the sparks fly, that's all. But I daren't let him boss me at all, for if I do, he'll boss me all the time. He's by way of being a bit of a tyrant, you see, and neither Carly nor I will stand that."

"Mrs. Clearman adores him."

"So do I adore him. He's a wonderful man——"

"Yes, I know he is."

"But some day he and I will have the big clash, and I'm not sure which one will come off conqueror."

"I know. You will."

"Perhaps not. It will largely depend on the subject of our clash."

"Oh, let me be it! Mr. Clearman isn't a bit fond of me, though he is satisfied with my work on the house. But you let me ask his permission to marry you, and you'll have the materials on your hands for the finest scrap in the world. Will you?"

"But I'm not a bit fond of you, either."

"May I ask you to look me square in the eyes and repeat that?"

Lulie looked at him, but his frank, straightforward eyes, even though they showed a mocking smile, demanded the truth.

And the truth was that Lulie had a suddenly aroused but very persistent interest in the Jack of Hearts, though she was far from ready to acknowledge it.

Calling all her calmness to her aid, she said, in a cold voice:

"This jest has gone quite far enough. Please don't keep it up."

"Admirable!" said Raynor, in a tone of admiration. "I say, I wonder how you'd look with your hair bobbed."

"I'd look like the very old scratch," opined Miss Clearman.

"I'll bet you wouldn't. I'll bet you'd look fine. It would take off that Saint Cecilia edge and give you a little more of the human touch. Try it, won't you?"

"Most certainly not! If you were a landscape gardener instead of an architect, you'd see that it wouldn't suit me at all."

"Oh, dear, you won't do anything I want today. Will you be more amiable tomorrow, do you think?"

"Yes, Jack, dear," and though the smile was more than ever mocking, the voice held such a tender note that Raynor had to clamp down his heart to keep it from bursting.