Читать книгу The Professor's Mystery - Hastings Wells - Страница 8

Table of Contents

There was nothing that I could ask, nothing that I could say, and aside from her thanks she was silent. So without a word I turned and helped the other woman to her feet, and still in silence the three of us walked along until we came to an easy rise where I helped them both to the track. We were just in time, for as we gained the track our trolley rounded the curve and took us aboard.

So for a mile or so Miss Tabor and I sat in intimate aloofness, while the car bore us through the beauty of the fading summer day. Everywhere birds were chanting the evening, and ever and again with growing insistence the vivid breath of the nearing sea blew past us. All my life this first summer tang of salt air had never failed to stir me. It had meant vacation and the vague trumpet call of the unknown. But now I sat unheeding, burning with an unreasoning and sullen resentment. I knew that I was a fool. What possible difference could it make to me if the acquaintance of a merry week and a few more intimate hours chose to hide a wedding-ring in her breast. It certainly was no business of mine, nor could she owe me any explanation. Yet I wanted explanation more than anything else in the world. It certainly could not be her own and yet—whose was it, anyway? Certainly not her mother's, for her mother I knew was alive. But then, whose could it be? And why did it matter so much? Why should such a patent terror fill her at the thought of its loss? Why was it again so finally and so quickly hidden away? It was even strange, I thought, that she should let the emotion that she must know I had seen, pass with no effort of explanation.

I glanced at her. She was sitting, looking wearily ahead, distress was in her eyes, and every little line of her body spoke fatigue without hope; only her hands, tightly clasped in her lap, showed the determination of some hidden thought. The blue of a little bruise had begun to show near her temple. A wave of tenderness swept over me, the pity of a man for a woman tired and in unvoiced distress. Who was I that I should question her? What possible claim had I upon even the least of her thoughts? She was pathetically weary and disturbed, and I was a sullen brute.

I spoke to her as if conversation had been unbroken. "Of course I am to take you home."

She shook her head.

"That's perfectly absurd," I said. "There must be some inn or other near you. I can put up there for the night and go on in the morning. In fact, I am pretty tired, myself; the nearest place that I can get supper and a bed is the best place for me."

She considered for a long moment. "Very well," she said at last, "I am tired and still a little dizzy; it would be nice to be taken all the way home. I don't generally mind the dark, but I suppose that we were a good deal shaken up. There is an inn, too, but it would be very silly of you to go there, unless—unless for some reason we could not put you up."

"Oh, come," I said, "you probably have a houseful at the present moment, and you know it. Nothing is more upsetting in the world than the unexpected guest."

"Well, we shall see," she answered. "I am pretty sure that nobody but the family is at home, and father will want to see you and thank you. Knight-errantry appeals to him. We will leave the asking to mother. If she can she will want you to stay. If she can't, well the inn is not so bad after all. There it is, by the way, on that little hill. I had no idea that we were so near home. We get off at that next electric light. Will you please signal to the conductor?"

The car stopped and I helped her down, taking our two bags with the strange feeling that I was suddenly coming to the end of a brief sentimental journey. Our companion in misfortune, who had chosen a seat by herself, scarcely looked up. It was no great walk to the house and presently Miss Tabor pointed it out to me. It was large and low, set well back upon a great lawn that a tall, dark hedge divided from the outer world.

As we neared the pillared gate a high-shouldered man stepped out nervously from the shadow. Miss Tabor put her hand upon my arm. "Just wait here a moment, please," she said and ran forward to him.

It had grown almost dark, but I could see that she leaned toward him, placing both hands upon his shoulders. The soft sibilance of her whispered words and the startling rumble of his bass came to me indistinctly, merely wordless tones. I grew red in the darkness and turned my back, for I had caught myself trying to listen.

Presently Miss Tabor came to me. "I didn't mean to keep you so long," she apologized, "but you see—"

"It wasn't long," I said shortly, surprised to find myself angry. So as we climbed the steps the shadow had dropped between us again.

For a moment I stood blinking when the door had shut behind us. The large, low room in which we stood was not brilliantly lighted, but the sudden change from the soft outdoor gloom dazzled me. The room was very large indeed, floored with dull red tile, paneled in dark oak; a great Dutch fireplace, filled with flowers, breathed fragrance. Opening from the room's far end, and raised three steps above its level, was a dining-room. On our entrance two chairs had been pushed back from the table, and now a slim, pretty little woman came running down the steps and across the big room.

"Lady, dear," she cried, "what on earth has made you so late?" She flung herself into Miss Tabor's arms, hugging her as a child would.

Miss Tabor kissed her gaily. "We will tell you all about it, mother, dear," she laughed. "Let me introduce Mr. Crosby, without whose help I should have probably been much later. And, Mr. Crosby, this is my mother."

She greeted me graciously, turning to introduce me to her husband, who had followed her more slowly. He was a florid man and rather tall, his gray eyes being level with my own.

When places had been made for us at the table, and we were gathered in the close radius of the table lights, I found myself surprised that the daughter looked so little like either. Her mother was much smaller than she, one of those women who never grow thin or fat, but whose age comes upon them only as sort of dimming of color and outline. And indeed, in the more intimate light I found her looking more her years, pretty and soft and doll-like, but too delicate a vessel for any great strength of spirit, a sweet little woman, affectionate and inconsequent. Her words came quickly and with a certain merry insistence, but with little nervous pauses that were almost sad in their intensity; and once when a bicycle sounded faintly from the street she stopped altogether, her hand at her heart, her head turned and listening, until her husband's quick laugh brought her blue eyes questioningly to him. Then we all plunged into conversation at once as if ashamed of the sudden pause it had given us.

Miss Tabor and I were made to give an account of our accident, or rather she gave it, and a very nicely tempered account it was, too. I was kept busy devising plausible confirmation of surprising understatements. She seemed for some reason very anxious to hide a possible seriousness in the matter, and her first brief, pleading glance bound me to her, freely accepting the judgment of her conscience for my own. Under these circumstances I expected no mention of the loss and finding of the ring and there was none.

Both mother and father called Miss Tabor "Lady"; so, I remembered, had all her intimates at the Christmas house party. Yet her bag had been initialed "M. B. T." I thought the nickname a gracious one and well suited to all the manner of her bearing. I wondered idly as they talked what the M. stood for, sure in my heart that it, too, was graceful and fitting. And as "Lady" told of the beauty of the meadow where we had been delayed "almost two hours by an old flat wheel, or something like that—isn't that the term, Mr. Crosby?" I decided that if the rest of my three months were spent in the most humdrum of ways, my vacation as a whole would not have been a barren one.

There was little conversation after we had left the table. Miss Tabor said that she was too sleepy to sit up—and, indeed, the strain that she had been under was already beginning to show through even the vivacity of her acting. For my part, I had no inclination to sit in the family circle that she left. I, too, was tired, and I had many things to think and little to say. So that as she got up I, too, pleaded fatigue, and my need of finding my room at the inn.

"The inn! Indeed you will do nothing of the sort," said Mrs. Tabor. "There is a bed just waiting for tired young men here." She glanced for confirmation at her daughter.

Miss Tabor said nothing but looked across to her father. He paused an uncomfortable second, then turned to me with a smile.

"Of course you are to stay here," he said.

His pause had troubled me, and I hesitated, but Mrs. Tabor would hear no arguments or excuses, and overwhelmed my stammering in a rippling torrent of proof that I was a very silly young man, and that she would not hear another word about any such an absurdity as my going; and as I stood embarrassed, Mr. Tabor, with another glance at his daughter, took my bag himself, and, his hand upon my shoulder, fairly bore me off to my room. I was too comfortably tired to lie long awake, even with so eventful a day to turn over in retrospect. As I floated downward into the dark through a flood of incongruous images, green meadows and roaring trains, clamorous streets and calm rooms, delicate with white and silver, I distinctly heard a step upon the porch, the click and closure of the front door, and the deep voice of the man we had met at the gate. But even my angry interest in him was weaker than the waves of drowsiness.

I roused into that dubious half-consciousness which is the territory of the powers of darkness; in which the senses are vaguely alive, while no judgment restrains or questions the vagaries of imagination; the place of evil memories and needless fears, of sweeping reforms whose vanity appears with the new light, and of remembered dreams whose beauty faints upon the threshold of the day. It was still so dark that before I could place myself amid my unfamiliar surroundings, I was aware of smothered commotion. People were awake and in trouble; the house was full of swishing garments and the hurry of uncomfortable feet. Some one passed my door swiftly, carrying a light, whose rays swept through the cracks and swung uncannily across the ceiling. Another door opened somewhere, letting out a blur of voices, among which I seemed to distinguish the bass growl of the man at the gate. My first thought was of fire; and with the shock of that I sprang up and across the room, groping for the handle of the door. It would not open. I pulled and tugged at it, feeling above and below for a bolt. There was none, nor was any key in the keyhole. After some stumbling, I found the switch of the electric light, and in the sudden radiance explored the floor for the fallen key. It was not there; and a hurried examination of the crack showed me that the lock had been turned from the outside.

I sat down on the bed and tried to gather my common sense. I remembered perfectly having left the door unlocked and the key in its place within. By what conceivable design or accident had I been made a prisoner? The melodramatic suggestions born of the hour and my excited fancy were simply absurd in such a place. I was in a Connecticut suburb, a home of lawn parties and electric lights, and this was the Twentieth Century; yet I could find no explanation more reasonable. Fire was by this time out of the question; and an accident or practical joke would have been evident by now. Meanwhile, the muffled turmoil of the house continued. A man's voice and a woman's broke into inarticulate altercation, and presently I thought I heard a cry and a sound like the fall of something soft and heavy. I sprang to the door again and shook it with all my strength, but it was so solidly fitted that it did not even rattle. Then some one ran softly down-stairs; the front door banged sharply; and, looking out, I saw the figure of a man, his shoulders raised and his elbows bent with haste, run swiftly across the bar of light that streamed from my window and disappear in the dark. Could he have broken into the house, locking the bedrooms against interruption, and fled upon being discovered? I was opening my window to shout for help when I was arrested by a voice that there was no mistaking.

"I can't! We mustn't!" she wailed. "What will he think of us?"

An angry whisper answered, and of the rest I could distinguish only the tone. The whisper grew more volubly urgent, while her replies hesitated. At last she came quietly down the hall and knocked at my door.

"Mr. Crosby—are you awake?"

"I should think so," I answered. "What has happened? I'm locked in."

"Nothing. It's all right—really. Will you come down-stairs as soon as you can, very quietly?"

"Certainly. Half a minute. What's the matter?"

"Nothing," she said. "Hurry!" The key turned in the lock and she was gone. I dressed with a haste that made my fingers clumsy, and ran down-stairs. The bustle in the house had quieted into an irregular murmur.

Miss Tabor was waiting for me in the hall below. The lights were not on, and I could see only that she was wrapped in something long and dark, her hair gathered into a loose knot above her head. Perhaps only the dim light made me imagine traces of tears.

"Thank you for being so ready," she began in a quick undertone. "Now, listen! you must—"

"Tell me what's the trouble," I broke in. "Is it burglary, or is somebody taken suddenly ill?"

"There isn't any trouble," she repeated. "You must believe that, and you must do as I tell you. I'm terribly sorry, but it's impossible for you to remain here any longer. You must go away—now, at once, and without knowing or asking anything. Of course there's a good reason, and of course you can be trusted not to talk or inquire. That's all. It's perfectly simple; there's nothing really surprising about it."

"You mean I'm to leave this minute—in the middle of the night?"

"Yes; now. Don't wonder or worry. Think as well of us as you can—don't think about us at all! There's nothing the matter. I ought to have known. Accept my apologies for all of us, and—good-by." She held out her hand.

"That's all very well," I said. "Of course I'll go if you wish it, and ask no questions. Only tell me when I can see you again, and if there's anything in the world I can do for you. I'll be staying at the inn."

A latch-key clicked behind us, and the man I had seen at the gate tiptoed in. "All right?" he whispered.

"I think so; hurry," she replied, and he passed swiftly and quietly up-stairs. She turned to me a drawn face, speaking in strained monotone.

"You must never see me again. You mustn't stay in town, nor try to do anything. Oh, can't you understand? The only help you can give is to go—go away utterly and forget all about it as if you had never met me. Honestly I'm grateful, and I think everything good of you, but—oh, go away!"

"As you please," I said. "What about my things?"

"Wait a minute." She ran lightly up to the landing and returned with my suit-case, closed and strapped. I took my hat from the table by the door.

"Good-by," she said. "Promise me not to try to come back."

What is there in darkness and the sense of night to make even the plainest woman so lovely? She was close before me as I turned, the mysterious oval of her face wavering upward as though rising through dim water; her hair a heavier shadow against the gloom, her lips a living blossom, and her eyes luminous out of undiscoverable depths. The dark wrap she wore lost itself downward in long, fading lines; and all the hidden form and the nameless fragrance of her were wonderfully the same, one with midnight and midsummer. As I took her hand, I do not know what agony of restraint held my arms from around her; only I kept repeating over and over to myself, "I have no right—I have no right"—and because of that I could not for a moment answer her in words. Suddenly from above came a sharp shock and the metallic splash of broken glass. The voices broke out in a quick murmur, and she shrank and shook as if cringing away from a blow.

"Oh, go quickly!" she cried. "They need me!"

I opened the door. "Good-by," I said weakly, "and—God bless you!" And even as I turned on the threshold to lift my hat the latch clicked behind me.