CHAPTER XXII.

“A CHARMING MAN.”

Thomas, waiting that evening on the dinner-party, beamed as he directed his subordinates, so joyful was he to see the old light of happiness and gaiety on his young mistress’ face.

The strange gentleman from London talked so well, and was so quietly amusing, that the old man had to turn away at times to hide the smile forbidden to a well-bred servant. But he showed his gratification by pressing on Mr. Wray Sir Gaspard’s priceless Burgundy, which by degrees warmed that individual to the heart, so that important things seemed curiously less important, even to him.

Ismay surveyed the party from a different point of view.

There sat her mother, probably a murderess, certainly a thief; next her, Wray, a receiver of stolen goods, a blackmailer, with an awful crime waiting for committal; at the head of the table, Cristiane, with death at her elbow, and against them all no one but a girl, fearing all things, hoping nothing. It was certainly an unusual party.

Mrs. Trelane, powdered, painted, nervously gay, was reckless in her conversation.

Ismay, with resigned despair, did not try to warn her even by a glance; Cristiane, perhaps, did not understand her wildest sallies.

“If she did, she’d leave the table,” the girl thought scornfully, looking at the other girl’s smiling density. “But I wonder, wonder, wonder, what brought him down!”

Mr. Wray caught her glance that was so hard and searching.

“Dear Ismay,” he said paternally, “have a little mercy! Don’t sit there, wishing I had stayed at home.”

“I didn’t know you had a home!” cuttingly. “Have you?”

For some unknown reason the shot told; perhaps Mr. Wray knew more of domesticity than he avowed, for he changed his smile with abruptness.

“I hope to have one--some day!” his tone that of a man who takes an undeserved wound bravely; his glance, that only Ismay saw, a cold and savage threat.

Cristiane flushed. How could Ismay, whom her father had saved from starvation, dare to taunt a man, who could not be too well off, with his poverty?

“Homes are uncertain things!” she observed acidly, and Ismay could have wrung her hands under the table as she saw her mother look with open mockery at Wray.

What were they going to do?

“There’ll be no chance of my finding out by listening,” she thought forlornly. “They must have done all the talking they needed in the train. Their plans--his plan”--with bitter correction, “must be cut and dried by now, and that idiot of a girl will walk into their trap!

“But perhaps he means to stand by my mother on account of the money. He must--it would be murder wasted, if he did not. And not even he would waste murder.”

Her face was more somber than she knew, as her thoughts, in spite of her, flew to Cylmer and his business in London. And Wray saw it; he was used to rudeness in her, but not to gloom, and, in spite of the cheering Burgundy, he was suspicious. At bedtime, as he lit Mrs. Trelane’s candle for her in the hall, he spoke to her angrily, and quietly, having ignored her for Cristiane throughout the evening.

“What’s the matter with Ismay? Have you been fool enough to tell her things? She looks simply stuffed with righteous wrath.”

Ismay, on the first step of the stairs, pricked up her ears at his tone. But Cristiane, her arm through hers, was dragging her on--her young blood as light from Marcus Wray’s respectfully adoring eyes as his had been from her father’s Burgundy!

Miss Trelane, for the second time that day, longed to box her ears.

“I hate fools,” she thought grimly, “and this one will ruin herself and me, too, if I can’t teach her some sense. And the worst of it is, I can’t help trying to take care of the silly little donkey. I wish I could speak out to her, but she’d only think me crazy.”

Cristiane gave an ecstatic squeeze to the inert arm in hers.

“Isn’t he a dear?” she whispered, as they turned the corner of the great stairs.

Ismay stopped the second they were out of sight from below, and was listening with all her ears, but not to Cristiane.

Wray was just underneath her, and his voice floated up to her in a far-reaching whisper.

“Mind you find out what ails the girl before you go to bed, and come and tell me in the library. She makes me angry with her tragedy airs.”

“Nothing so fatal as a whisper! I’ll mark that for future reference,” reflected the eavesdropper, with lightning speed. “What did you say, Cristiane, dear?”

“If he’s a bad man, they’re charming things. And he’s going to stay a week; I asked him. Won’t it be nice? Come now, tell the truth! Don’t you honestly think he’s charming?”

“Charming? Yes! But you’ll turn his head if you let him know it.”

Charming was exactly the word; people used it about a snake fascinating a bird before it killed it.

“Of course, I sha’n’t let him know it,” returned Cristiane. “Good night; mind you’re nice to him to-morrow, because he’s going to stay,” with a laughing nod of power, since it was her house and her guest that were in question.

“She won’t let him know it! When she’s been gazing at him all the evening,” said Miss Trelane derisively, when she was safe in her own bedroom. “For pure downright idiocy, commend me to a well-brought-up girl, who thinks the world is a playground where little geese can wear gold collars and show them off to the nice, kind foxes!” but she did not smile at her own parable, as she locked her door and got into bed with incredible speed.

She had not been there five minutes before the door-handle was turned sharply.

“Ismay, open the door at once! You can’t be in bed,” cried her mother, from the corridor, with the assurance of a person who finds a door unexpectedly locked.

“Yes, I am!” with childlike surprise. “What’s the matter? I don’t want to get up again.”

“Let me in at once,” giving the door a cross jerk.

“Delighted!” she crossed the floor with swift bare feet, and turned the key.

“What on earth did you lock your door for?”

Mrs. Trelane banged it, too, behind her as she swept in, her gauzy, glittering gown, that was fit for the stage, trailing behind her.

“And you’ll never keep your looks if you’re going to get into bed like a plowboy, without even washing your face.”

“It’s quite clean. I never use powder,” was the retort.

“Pray don’t be clever. I’m dead tired.” Mrs. Trelane dropped into the most comfortable chair in the room. “I can’t appreciate it. I suppose you locked your door because you’re annoyed with me for bringing Marcus here?”

Ismay, sitting on the edge of her bed, white and exquisite, rubbed one foot with the shell-pink heel of the other; and looked ashamed, as one who is about to disgrace herself by a chicken-hearted confession.

“I always lock my door in this house at night,” looking at her feet. “I’m--afraid!”

“Afraid? What on earth of?”

“Nothing--on earth,” whispering. “But haven’t you heard anything funny since you came here?”

“Nothing so funny as this!” contemptuously. “Do talk sensibly. I came to say something. Do you suppose I came back to this dull hole for fun?”

“I am talking sensibly.” For the first time Ismay looked up, and her gaze would have made the fortune of a tragedienne. Deep, earnest, magnetic, her eyes caught and held her mother’s.

“Do you mean to tell me you don’t know about the things there is in this house?” she demanded. “The thing that moves softly at night, up and down the stairs, that you can hear if you stand in the corridor--coming closer, closer every minute, till it passes you with a cold like snow in your face, and you can’t move for fright----” She was moving her hands in a strange waving motion to and fro, and a strange uneasiness caught at Helen Trelane’s wretched soul, even while she gave a scoffing laugh.

“The thing that is very old and evil, and means no good to any in the house. Because, if you don’t know, ask Thomas! You saw how frightened he was the day I told before him my dream about the music at night,” with a return to her practical manner that was somehow more impressive than her mother liked.

“What has your dream of a piano being played in the night got to do with servants’ stories about ghosts?” Yet Mrs. Trelane could not help glancing at the shut door. With Marcus in the house, with the world against her on every side, it would be too awful to get nervous terrors on her brain.

“It wasn’t a dream--and it wasn’t a piano,” said Ismay quietly. “Thomas can tell you; I’ve had enough without talking about it. And, if I were you, I’d get to bed before it got much later; I want to get my door locked. I don’t care much for those dark corridors outside. And if you get frightened out there it won’t be of any use coming to my door, for no power on earth would make me unlock it after twelve o’clock at night. This is a vile, abominable house, and I’m afraid in it. So now you know.”

“I know I never heard anything so silly,” viciously; yet the cowering, apprehensive look the girl gave at the corridor, as her mother threw open the door into it made Mrs. Trelane uncomfortable.

Ismay hesitated for an instant before she locked the door and returned to bed.

“I never found out why she came back, or why she brought him,” she mused. “But it would have been no good to ask. She would only have made up something; she never looked at me except that once, when I made her. And it would not be wise to go down and listen after telling her ghost-stories. She didn’t believe them, and she’ll tell him, and he won’t believe them, and they’ll laugh. But all the same he will investigate every mouse that squeaks in the passage, and I should get caught.”

She got into bed, suddenly conscious of being very weary as she nestled into the warm sheets, but her mind was alert enough.

“I’ll give them time to interview Thomas, and let my tale sink in a little. I don’t believe they will say anything worth knowing to-night. And by to-morrow night I shall know more. I’ll probably be able to frighten her into anything by to-morrow night!”

Yet the next instant she sat up and listened. She had been right; that was the rustle of her mother’s dress, as she swept by to her bedroom. Ismay sat perfectly quiet as the light steps paused and Mrs. Trelane tried the door again.

Not a sound answered her sharp “Ismay!” but the girl did not smile as she spoke to herself when the steps had passed on.

“I’ve convinced her that I’m not to be got at, at night, from fright,” she muttered, “if I were not really sick with fright for her life--and other things--it might be funny!” and as she lay down she shivered.