CHAPTER XI

LAUGHTER IN THE DARK

Neither Lionel Fitz-Brown nor Kate Clendennin knew the precise degree of cousinship that constituted the bond of relationship between them. That such a bond existed had been the natural inference from their common relationship to Mrs. Baxter, since, to paraphrase Euclid, cousins that are related to the same cousin must be related to one another.

But when Cousin Lionel attempted to solve the genealogical problem with a proposition beginning "If your greatuncle, who was second cousin to Mrs. Baxter's grandmother, was a first cousin once removed to my aunt----" Kate put her hands to her ears and fled from the room. And when a few days later he attempted it again she threw a book at him.

On the third occasion (by this time they had dropped the "cousin" and were just Lionel and Kate) she suppressed him by putting her hand over his mouth, which only goes to show that relationship, if sufficiently remote, is no bar to friendly intimacy.

Lionel's frame of mind after meeting the new secretary at luncheon was a perplexing one. He retired to the billiard room to think it over, under cover of the noisy osculation of compulsory billiard balls. Lionel had never made claim to cleverness; indeed, he regarded it as rather stupid to be clever and downright bad form to be brilliant. "If a chap is a good shot and isn't afraid of a hedge with a barb wire in it, and knows how to fasten his tie, what more does he want?"

But this American girl--strange a girl like that should be a secretary!--had discovered to him unsuspected possibilities in himself. He had actually talked, he had even gone so far as to say one or two rather good things--that about aeroplanes, for instance--no, come to think of it, it was she who said that--what was it he had said? Anyhow, it had made the American girl laugh, so it must have been rather good. Extraordinary people, these Americans; how they sharpen one's wits! On the whole, he was rather pleased with himself. He wondered if Kate had noticed it.

As he thought of Kate, there rushed through his brain a succession of pictures of the countess and Robert Baxter at the luncheon table, mental snapshots forgotten at the moment, now vividly developed.... Kate with her head thrown back, laughing at something Baxter had said and incidentally displaying a curve of throat that would humiliate the most conceited lily petal.... Kate, leaning forward on her elbow, her chin slightly elevated on the palm of her hand, with an expression of rapt attention that is well worth while for a girl whose eyelids have such a delicious downward sweep.... Kate, in profile perdu, showing the pink lobe of an exquisite ear and her "jolly well brushed tan-colored hair" curving smoothly up from the nape of her neck.... Kate, with her upturned palm resting on the hand of Robert Baxter--confound him!

The billiard balls were in tempting position and Lionel, sighting for a follow shot, found his gaze irresistibly prolonged to the stretch of sunlit lawn, backed by dark firs, to which the window opposite formed a frame. At the same moment two figures crossed his line of vision, walking slowly and apparently quite oblivious to their surroundings. With cue drawn back for the stroke, Lionel watched them pass slowly out of the picture. It was Kate Clendennin and Robert Baxter!

The next instant an osculatory outbreak of earsplitting intensity echoed through the billiard room, and the red and white affinities went spinning round the table, as Lionel slammed his cue into the rack and stormed out of the room. A few minutes later (when Kate came in to look for him) there was no sign of Lionel, and the demeanor of the billiard balls was as frigid and standoffish as if they had never been introduced--or were lately married.

At the evening meal, called supper by Hiram, Lionel did not appear, to the keen disappointment of Kate, who had descended into the kitchen in the loneliness of the late afternoon and prepared a _crême renversée_ for his especial benefit.

It was late dusk when Fitz-Brown returned, by the golf course, from a ten-mile ramble over Ippingford downs. All his rancor, jealousy, if you will, had disappeared. He had clarified his mind by a physical process, a process at once primitively simple and profoundly scientific. For, if it is true that a physical ailment may be healed by a mental process, it is equally true that a mental ailment can be cured by a physical process. All Lionel did was to walk and walk and walk and allow the fresh summer wind, bounding over miles of gorse and heather, to sweep the fog from his brain. So that, by the time he emerged upon the Millbrook golf course he was able to see himself quite clearly and his self-appraisement was not flattering. He stood on the top of a high bunker and took a long breath as he delivered this ultimatum: "I'm a beastly ass," he said to himself. "Kate would be a fool to marry a duffer like me."

He broke off suddenly as he caught sight of the countess, bareheaded and clad in a dinner gown, putting pensively in the twilight.

Kate had already caught a glimpse of him as his tall figure stood for an instant silhouetted against the fading sky, and, divining his intention to take her by surprise, she addressed herself to the business of putting with convincing absorption.

As the ball for a breathless moment hesitated at the rim of the cup, then, Curtius-like, plunged into the dark abyss, a cheery "Bravo! Kate!" directly behind her caused a genuine start as perfect as any imitation she could have given.

"Gad! How you startled me!" There was an alchemy in Kate's personality that transmuted the sounding brass of profanity into the gold of pure speech. She swung round as she spoke.

"Sorry, old girl," said Lionel, "it's not like you to be so jumpy. I say, that was a ripping putt, almost in the dark, too."

Kate laughed. "That's just it. I couldn't see to miss it."

"Couldn't see to miss it?" mused Lionel; then brightening suddenly, "I say, that's rather good!" he laughed for sheer delight at having seen the point so quickly.

"Good boy!" said Kate, patting him on the back. "You're improving."

Lionel stopped laughing. "Am I? By Jove! then you've noticed it, too. Most extraordinary how it sharpens one's wits, rubbing up against Americans! Did you see me at lunch?" he inquired eagerly.

"Rubbing up against Americans?" Kate opened her eyes in feigned astonishment.

"Really, Kate, I wish you'd heard me," he went on earnestly. "I said one or two rather good things."

"To Mrs. Merle?"

"Oh, come, I say!" protested Lionel. "You know who I mean, the American girl--Miss--Miss----"

"Oh, the secretary," Kate stifled a yawn. "Sorry I didn't notice her. What's she like?"

A Machiavellian suggestion entered Lionel's artless mind. "Awfully jolly sort!" he exclaimed with enthusiasm. "Devilish pretty eyes--and fluffy hair--I wish I could remember it," he frowned.

"You've just said it was fluffy."

"I don't mean her hair; of course I couldn't forget that. I was trying to remember something I said to her."

"How unfortunate," purred Kate. "You should have written it down."

"It really wasn't bad," he went on. "Anyway it made her laugh, but--she wouldn't look at a duffer like me." He sighed athletically. "She's much too clever; half the time you don't know what she's driving at, but you can bally well believe what she says."

It was nearly dark and they had drifted toward a semi-circular rustic bench at the foot of a towering horse-chestnut. Lionel lighted his briar and sank, in sack-like ease, into the uncomfortable seat, lulled by the incense man burns only to himself, the envy of the watching gods who invented eating and drinking and fighting and loving, and created the tobacco plant, but never thought of smoking.

Kate lighted a cigarette. But rustic seats with tree trunks for backs are not made for women. After picking some pieces of bark from her hair and attempting to fish others from the back of her neck, only to push them hopelessly out of reach, she jumped up impatiently and fell to pacing the soft turf behind the tree, the wavering light of her cigarette swaying hither and thither in the deepening gloom like a dissipated firefly.

"How very funny," she said at length, pausing in her walk to break the smoke silence, "that she can make you believe everything she says when you don't know what she's driving at. It sounds like mind reading."

Lionel watched a ball of gray smoke unravel itself and trail swiftly into the darkness above. "What's funny about mind reading?" he asked. "It strikes me it isn't any funnier than palm reading." Then after a contemplative pause, "That Baxter chap seemed to find your palm very interesting. Did he tell you anything exciting?"

"Very exciting," her voice came from the other side of the tree.

"I say, mayn't I know?"

"Oh, it wouldn't interest you."

"I hope it was something good. I'll punch Baxter's head if it wasn't."

"Then you do believe in palmistry?"

"What's that got to do with it? I say, Kate, what did he tell you?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"Because"--he hesitated--"because I----" He stopped abruptly to listen. The blackness above them was stirring. A tremor ran through the great tree. The darkness high overhead swayed with a sound like the sigh of rain on a lake. Unseen branches moved heavily and then were still. Mysteriously as it came, the wind died away. It was now quite dark under the tree. For a time neither spoke.

A fear he could not explain had come upon Lionel and stopped his speech. A few moments ago his only word for palmistry was tommyrot and now the writing on Kate's hand was to him the most momentous thing on earth.

Suddenly, out of the darkness came a strange sound----the sound of laughter, viewless laughter, that died away, leaving an uncanny silence.

"Kate! What is it? Where are you?"

There was no answer. He circled the tree swiftly with outstretched hand, guiding himself by the edge of the seat.

"Kate! For God's sake. What's the matter? Where are you?"

The next instant his free hand touched something and his arms closed around her. It was as if, in the space of a minute, he had lost this woman forever and suddenly found her again. And now he, Lionel Fitz-Brown, was holding Kate Clendennin in his arms. If the stone Diana in the sunken garden had turned to flesh and blood and found her way into his embrace it would not have been more astonishing, incredible. Here she was resting limply against him, her lovely head on his shoulder. He could feel her hair against his cheek.

"By Jove! She must have fainted," he muttered.

Carefully he placed Kate beside him on the rustic seat, supporting her tenderly with his arm, her head on his shoulder, her cheek touching his. How feverish it felt! He began to be alarmed.

"Kate!" he said in a low tone.

"Yes? What is it?" she whispered.

"How do you feel?"

"Pretty comfy." She nestled closer.

Lionel was astonished. "Didn't you faint?" he asked anxiously.

"Faint?" Kate sat up suddenly. "Is that what you thought?"

"What were you up to just now when I--when I found you?" stammered Lionel.

"I was--giving you the slip," said Kate.

"Giving me the slip? What for?"

"I wanted to get away before I--before I made a bally fool of myself and now--and now I've done it. Are you aware," she demanded abruptly, "that it's horribly late?"

Lionel struck his repeater. The tiny chimes clinged the hours and quarters against his right and Kate's left ear. They counted nine and three-quarters.

Kate straightened up and began smoothing her hair. "We must be getting back," she said.

Then an inspiration came to Lionel, born of romantic literature. "I say, Kate, I--er--I wish we could count all our hours that way."

There was an agonizing pause.

"It would be economical," she mused, "to make one watch do for two people."

"Oh, I say, you know what I mean, Kate," he went on desperately, "get married and all that sort of thing. I know an awfully jolly little farm down in Kent, only forty pounds a year."

"Yes? And what would we live on?"

"Why, we'd keep a cow--and a hen--and a bee--and all that sort of thing."

"A bee?" Kate burst out laughing, then, suddenly, dropping her bantering tone, she cuddled her firm white hands into Lionel's big brown ones.

"Lionel," she reasoned, "I don't think I've ever really been in love in my life and you're the only man I ever met that made me want to--no, no! Please, Lionel, listen to me," she held him gently away from her--"made me want to run away. Now I'm going to tell you what the palm-reader said," she continued, purposely avoiding the name of Robert Baxter.

"You don't really believe that tommyrot?"

"I do this time because what he told me is going to come true." She placed her hands on his shoulders with an affectionate movement. "He told me I'm going to have heaps and heaps of money! Lionel, aren't you glad?"

There was something far from gladness in Kate's own voice and Lionel's heart sank in utter desolation.

His thoughts flew back to the day of their first meeting three months ago--to the first time she had called him "Cousin Lionel"--to the time when somehow or other they had dropped the "cousin" and were Lionel and Kate to one another--three milestones on the road that led to--where might it not lead to? And now she was turning back. Where? He reflected that he knew nothing of Kate's world before she had come to Ipping House. From time to time there had been letters for her with German or Swiss postage stamps. That was all.

"So you see," Kate was going on, "it's a case of Hobson's choice. There's nothing else to be done. My money's all gone. Old Baxter has behaved like a brick, but I can't bank on him forever, and now if I--if I marry Bob----" she broke off with the sound of a laugh.

Lionel shivered. He seized her hand which showed dimly white at his side. It was like ice. It slipped from him upward and his ear caught the multitudinous whisper of chiffons.

"Come on," she said.

He rose stupidly and followed her in the darkness.

Half an hour later, as they approached Ipping House, Kate saw what seemed like a shadowy figure that glided past the conservatory and disappeared.

"What was that?" She clutched his arm.

"I didn't see anything," answered Lionel.