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The Lighted Match, a novel by Charles Neville Buck |
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Chapter 2. Benton Plays Magician |
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_ CHAPTER II. BENTON PLAYS MAGICIAN In the large living-room, Van Bristow, the master of "Idle Times," had expressed his tastes. Here in the almost severe wainscoting, in inglenook and chimney-corner, one found the index to his fancy. It was his fancy which had dictated that the broad windows, with sills at the level of the floor, should not command the formal terraces and lawns of a landscape-gardener's devising, but should give exit instead upon a strip of rugged nature, where the murmur of the creek came up through unaltered foliage and underbrush. Shortening their entrance through one of the windows, the trio found their host, already in evening dress. Bristow was idling on the hearth with no more immediate concern than a cigarette and the enjoyment of the crackling logs, unspoiled by other light. As the clatter of boots and spurs announced their coming, Van glanced up and schooled his face into a very fair counterfeit of severity. "Lucky we don't make our people ring in on the clock," he observed. "You three would be docked." The girl stood in the red glow of the hearth, slowly drawing off her riding-gauntlets. Pagratide went to the table in search of cigarettes and matches, and as the light there was dim, the host joined him and laid a hand readily enough upon the brass case for which the other was fumbling. As he held a light to his guest's cigarette, he bent over and spoke in a guarded undertone. Benton noticed in the brief flare that the visitor's face mirrored sudden surprise. "Colonel Von Ritz is here," confided Bristow. "Arrived by the next train after you and was for posting off in search of you instanter. He acted very much like a summons-server or a bailiff. He's ensconced in rooms adjoining yours. You might look in on him as you go up to dress. He seems to be in the very devil of a hurry." Pagratide's brows went up in evident annoyance and for an instant there was a defiant stiffening of his jaw, but when he spoke his voice held neither excitement nor surprise. "Ah, indeed!" The exclamation was casual. He watched the glowing end of his cigarette for a moment, then magnanimously added: "However, since he has followed across three thousand miles, I had better see him." The host turned to the girl. "I'm borrowing this young man until dinner," he vouchsafed as he led Pagratide to the door. Cara stood watching the two as they passed into the hall; then her face changed suddenly as though she had been leaving a stage and had laid aside a part--abandoning a semblance which it was no longer necessary to maintain. A pained droop came to the corners of her lips and she dropped wearily into the broad oak seat of the inglenook. There she sat, with her chin propped on her hands, elbows on her knees, and gazed silently at the logs. "Why did they have to come just now and spoil my holiday?" She spoke as though unconscious that her musings were finding voice, and the half-whispered words were wistful. Benton took a step nearer and bent impulsively forward. "What is it?" he anxiously questioned. She only looked intently into the coals with trouble-clouded eyes and shook her head. He could not tell whether in response to his words or to some thought of her own. Dropping on one knee at her feet, he gently covered her hands with his own. He could feel the delicate play of her breath on his forehead. "Cara," he whispered, "what is it, dear?" She started, and with a spasmodic movement caught one of his hands, for an instant pressing it in her own, then, rising, she shook her head with a gesture of the fingers at the temples as though she would brush away cobwebs that enmeshed and fogged the brain. "Nothing, boy." Her smile was somewhat wistful. "Nothing but silly imaginings." She laughed and when she spoke again her voice was as light as if her world held only triviality and laughter. "Yet there be important things to decide. What shall I wear for dinner?" "It's such a hard question," he demurred. "I like you best in so many things, but the queen can do no wrong--make no mistake." A sudden shadow of pain crossed her eyes, and she caught her lower lip sharply between her teeth. "Was it something I said?" he demanded. "Nothing," she answered slowly. "Only don't say that again, ever--'the queen can do no wrong.' Now, I must go." She rose and turned toward the door, then suddenly carrying one hand to her eyes, she took a single unsteady step and swayed as though she would fall. Instantly his arms were around her and for a moment he could feel, in its wild fluttering, her heart against the red breast of his hunting-coat. Her laugh was a little shaken as she drew away from him and stood, still a trifle unsteady. Her voice was surcharged with self-contempt. "Sir Gray Eyes, I--I ask you to believe that I don't habitually fall about into people's arms. I'm developing nerves--there is a white feather in my moral and mental plumage." He looked at her with grave eyes, from which he sternly banished all questioning--and remained silent. They passed out into the hall and, at the foot of the stairs where their ways diverged, she paused to look back at him with an unclouded smile. "You have not told me what to wear." His eyes were as steady as her own. "You will please wear the black gown with the shimmery things all over it. I can't describe it, but I can remember it. And a single red rose," he judiciously added. "'Tis October and the florists are fifty miles away," she demurred. "It would take a magician's wand to produce the red rose." "I noticed a funny looking thing among my golf sticks," he remembered. "It is a little bit like a niblick, but it may be a magic wand in disguise. You wear the black gown and trust to providence for the red rose." She threw back a laugh and was gone. When she disappeared at the turning, he wheeled and went to the "bachelors' barracks," as the master of "Idle Times" dubbed the wing where the unmarried men were quartered. Two suites next adjoining the room allotted to Benton had been unoccupied when he had gone out that forenoon. Between his quarters and these erstwhile vacant ones lay a room forming a sort of buffer space. Here a sideboard, a card-table, and desk made the "neutral zone," as Van called it, available for his guests as a territory either separating or connecting their individual chambers. Now a blaze of transoms and a sound of voices proclaimed that the apartments were tenanted. Benton entered his own unlighted room, and then with his hand at the electric switch halted in embarrassment. The folding-doors between his apartment and the "neutral territory" stood wide, and the attitudes and voices of the two men he saw there indicated their interview to be one in which outsiders should have no concern. To switch on the light would be to declare himself a witness to a part at least; to remain would be to become unwilling auditor to more; to open the door he had just closed behind him would also be to attract attention to himself. He paused in momentary uncertainty. One of the men was Pagratide, transformed by anger; seemingly taller, darker, lither. The second man stood calm, immobile, with his arms crossed on his breast, bending an impassive glance on the other from singularly steady eyes. His six feet of well-proportioned stature just missed an exaggeration of soldierly bearing. The unwavering mouth-line; level, dark brows almost meeting over unflinching gray eyes; the uncurved nose and commanding forehead were in concert with the clean, almost lean sweep of the jaw, in spelling force for field or council. "Am I a brigand, Von Ritz, to be harassed by police? Answer me--am I?" Pagratide spoke in a tempest of anger. He halted before the other man, his hands twitching in fury. Von Ritz remained as motionless, apparently as mildly interested, as though he were listening to the screaming of a parrot. "My orders were explicit." His words fell icily. "They were the orders of His Majesty's government. I shall obey them. I beg pardon, I shall attempt to obey them; and thus far my attempts to serve His Majesty have not encountered failure. I should prefer not having to call on the ambassador--or the American secret service." "By God! If I had a sword--" breathed Pagratide. His fury had gone through heat to cold, and his attitude was that of a man denied the opportunity of resenting a mortal affront. Von Ritz coolly inclined his head, indicating the heaped-up luggage on the table between them. Otherwise he did not move. "The stick there, on the table, is a sword-cane," he commented. Pagratide stood unmoving. The other waited a moment, almost deferentially, then went on with calm deliberation. "You left your regiment without leave, captain. One might almost call that--" Then Benton remembered an auxiliary door at the back of his apartment and made his escape unnoticed. A half hour later, changed from boots and breeches into evening dress, Benton was opening a long package which bore the name of his florist in town. In another moment he had spread a profusion of roses on his table and stood bending over them with the critically selective gaze of a Paris. When he had made the choice of one, he carefully pared every thorn from its long stem. Then he went out through the rear of the hall to a stairway at the back. He knew of a window-seat above, where he could wait in concealment behind a screening mass of potted palms to rise out of his ambush and intercept Cara as she came into the hall. It pleased him to regard himself as a genie, materializing out of emptiness to present the rose which she had chosen to declare unobtainable. In the shadowed recess he ensconced himself with his knees drawn up and the flower twirling idly between his fingers. For a while he measured his vigil only by the ticking of a clock somewhere out of sight, then he heard a quiet footfall on the hardwood, and through the fronds of the plants he saw a man's figure pace slowly by. The broad shoulders and the lancelike carriage proclaimed Von Ritz even before the downcast face was raised. At Cara's door the European wheeled uncertainly and paused. Because something vague and subconscious in Benton's mind had catalogued this man as a harbinger of trouble and branded him with distrust, his own eyes contracted and the rose ceased twirling. Just then the door of Cara's room opened and closed, and the slender figure of the girl stood out in the silhouette of her black evening gown against the white woodwork. Her eyes widened and she paled perceptibly. For an instant, she caught her lower lip between her teeth; but she did not, by start or other overt manifestation, give sign of surprise. She only inclined her head in greeting, and waited for Von Ritz to speak. He bowed low, and his manner was ceremonious. "You do not like me--" He smiled, pausing as though in doubt as to what form of address he should employ; then he asked: "What shall I call you?" "Miss Carstow," she prompted, in a voice that seemed to raise a quarantine flag above him. "Certainly, Miss Carstow," he continued gravely. "Time has elapsed since the days of your pinafores and braids, when I was honored with the sobriquet of 'Soldier-man' and you were the 'Little Empress.'" His voice was one that would have lent itself to eloquence. Now its even modulation carried a sort of cold charm. "You do not like me," he repeated. "I don't know," she answered simply. "I hadn't thought about it. I was surprised." "Naturally." He contemplated her with grave eyes that seemed to admit no play of expression. "I came only to ask an interview later. At any time that may be most agreeable--Pardon me," he interrupted himself with a certain cynical humor in his voice, "at any time, I should say, that may be least disagreeable to you." "I will tell you later," she said. He bowed himself backward, then turning on his heel went silently down the stairs. She stood hesitant for a moment, with both hands pressed against the door at her back, and her brow drawn in a deep furrow, then she threw her chin upward and shook her head with that resolute gesture which meant, with her, shaking off at least the outward seeming of annoyance. Benton came out from his hiding-place behind the palms, and she looked up at him with a momentary clearing of her brow. "Where were you?" she asked. "I unintentionally played eavesdropper," he said humbly, handing her the rose. "I was lying in wait to decorate you." "It is wonderful," she exclaimed. "I think it is the wonderfulest rose that any little girl ever had for a magic gift." She held it for a moment, softly against her cheek. He bent forward. "Cara!" he whispered. No answer. "Cara!" he repeated. "Yeth, thir," she lisped in a whimsical little-girl voice, looking up with a smile stolen from a fairy-tale. "I am just lending you that rose. I had meant to give it to you, but _now_ I want it back--when you are through with it. May I have it?" She held it out teasingly. "Do you want it now--Indian-giver?" she demanded. "You know I don't," in an injured tone. "I'm glad, because you couldn't have it--yet." And she was gone, leaving him to make his appearance from the direction of his own apartments. _ |
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