Part 2

Cynthia Moore scrutinized her list. “All right! We have varied it agreeably! We began with ‘gift of the bridegroom, one hundred thousand dollars,’ and we drift along to a pigskin purse, value one dollar fifty, I should say, and close with a medium note, a little four thousand! Tell me about Ramsay.”

Miss Moore had arrived the day before, coming back with the Herefords from the races, to a large house party of which Jack Hereford, son of the house, home from France, and Captain Ralph Ramsay were part.

“Jack’s crazy about him,” said Mrs. Hereford. “He is Jack’s best friend.”

“’M!” murmured Miss Moore. “Excuse me, my dear! You have a soft spot in your heart for Jack. I don’t understand it--I never have.”

Mrs. Hereford went on.

“They have been together for two years in France in the same sector. Captain Ramsay is an ace with a ripping record, as you know.”

“No,” returned the bridesmaid, giving her book up to Mrs. Hereford, “I don’t know anything about him.”

Miss Moore was an unusually understanding young person; some people said she had ten senses where others have only seven.

“Well!” said the lady of the house. “He is quite poor; lots of nice people are. He is from the West as you can hear by his accent.”

“No one has a chance to hear much of his accent but you! He never speaks to any one else.”

“Ridiculous!” said the lady of the house. “Jack told me that every one in the sector from the mascot to the colonel was crazy about Ralph, and as you see, he has all the medals that can be won.”

“Too bad he couldn’t have worked off a few on Jack,” said Cynthia. “Jack is as bare as a bone, and his father seems to have it in for him harder than ever! What has Jack done since he was demobilized, Nell?”

Mrs. Hereford shook her head.

“Don’t ask me! My husband doesn’t like my interference. I learned that and I don’t try to know. Jack is going to California to-morrow. He is going on with aviation, and I hope will go into the United States army for good. I _hope_ he will.”

“Too bad!” murmured Miss Moore. For in her kind and understanding heart there was a very warm place for the master of the house. “Too bad such a fine man as Tommy should have a son like Jack.”

“You are very unfair to him,” said the lady of the house warmly. “I think I am the only one to understand him. I believe the very best of Jack, and I know he’ll come out all right. He has a good military record over there.”

Miss Moore laughed. “Well, he did not get shot in the back! I know I’m rotten, but--” She came impulsively over to her friend and put her arms around her. “Now the Earl of Moray is another thing. _He’s_ all right. You can see his record on his face and on his breast, and I excuse his ‘stounin’ through the town’ and his entire absorption in another woman--he is all right!”

Cynthia Moore kissed Mrs. Hereford and then went upstairs to Patricia, who had been waiting for her for the last half hour. The lady of the house was not sorry to be alone.

She knew about Ralph Ramsay only what her stepson had told her in his letters from France during the past two years. In these letters Ralph Ramsay had been described as a “wonder, a corker, a dare-devil in the air, a chap who defied danger and death, a little bit of all right,” and when Jack took the trouble to detail some thrilling event or to tell of fine achievements, Ralph Ramsay would turn out to be the man who had done the thing. In Jack’s letters the ace had charmed this imaginative and loveless woman, and his valor and his courage had fascinated her from afar. In her room, on her bureau and on her desk, were numerous snapshots of the two young men, and the ace seemed always to be smiling at her and to be the expression of _la joie de vivre_. He attracted her enormously, and in the little pictures she grew to know every line of his slim body and of his beautiful head. As he waved his cap at the side of a broken machine from which he had landed that time safely, he seemed to wave to her and to greet her.

When her husband came into her little room, if he resented the fact that there were no pictures of himself there and too many of his scapegrace of a son, his good breeding did not allow him to comment on the fact! He showed a friendly approval of Captain Ramsay, however.

“Now there is a fine-looking chap, Nell, and I hope to God he does Jack good. I’d like a son like that!”

But he saw the flying man under different colors when Ramsay appeared at Waybrook. Ramsay came into a conventional atmosphere with a vivid charm of which no one was unconscious, and if Jack had written that from the mascot to the colonel he was popular in France--he was popular at Waybrook, from the chauffeur by whose side he had sat on the way from the train, to the lady of the house. Not even the big wedding with the rush, excitement, and absorption had been able to cloud over the brightness of the passing of Ralph Ramsay. If he defied danger in the air, the young man defied convention here; and with utter disregard of propriety he fell in love with the lady of the house and took no pains to conceal his passion. Mrs. Hereford remembered what her stepson had said of him: “Women go crazy about Ralph. In the hospital he had the nurses nailed. It was comic, the poor chaps on either side of him stood no chance at all!”

Tommy Hereford, the best host on Long Island, had on this occasion displayed a perfect hospitality! For ten days he watched this young man make love to his wife and did not throw him out! Hereford sincerely loved his wife, and was determined to win her if he could. He had no intention of playing the losing game of a jealous husband.

The day before, to protect Ramsay and to get him away where she could warn him, and try to make him behave, she had snatched half an hour from the rushing day and taken him to the graperies. He had drawn her into his arms and held her in spite of the fact that the gardener was in the next glass house and talking across to Mrs. Hereford. Ramsay had said over the man’s voice and over the scent of violets:

“I love you terribly--with every bit of me--thank God I was not smashed up in France before I could tell you this!”

Now she knew he would think of every moment of this. She could never go into those graperies again without a thrill. Her husband was going to town on the yacht and came in smoking and holding out two _one-thousand-dollar_ bills.

“Nell, I want Patricia to have some pocket money in her dressing case. Slip these in, will you?”

“Tommy,” exclaimed his wife, “you never stop, do you?”

“I am glad I don’t _have_ to stop,” said the father, “when it is the case of doing something for my little girl.”

“I’ll put them in this little leather purse,” said Mrs. Hereford and she took up the little pocketbook. “Pat says she is going to take it with her, Tommy, and she’ll be frightfully pleased.”

He gave her the bills, and Mrs. Hereford slipped them into the little purse.

“Going to leave it there around loose like that?” asked the business man.

“Why not? Jones’ men will be here in a minute. Think of the things farther along and what they are worth. There is no one here but ourselves.”

Through the other doorway Jack Hereford and Ralph Ramsay came in together. Since he had been at Waybrook, Ramsay had never seen the husband and wife alone together. He stopped short on the threshold, but the son went in.

“I’ve not been robbing the graperies,” Ramsay said. “These are going in your daughter’s lunch basket, Mr. Hereford.”

“I dare say,” nodded the father. “Everything goes with Pat!”

“Look what dad has just given her.” Mrs. Hereford held up the purse and the bills. “I am putting them in this little pigskin purse so that if she wants to buy some stamps she’ll find them handy.”

Jack looked at his father’s last generous gift without a word, turned about and went and stood at the window. The piper, who felt he had done as much as his salary demanded, was silent. With his back to the house he gazed beyond the Sound toward the bonnie hills of Scotland. Ramsay seemed to appreciate the generosity, however.

“Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “Wonderful to be able to do things like that for one’s children!”

And he looked from the husband to the wife, but his tone was bitter. Mrs. Hereford had never heard a note like this in his voice. As her husband went out of the room and his son slowly followed him, Mrs. Hereford asked Ramsay:

“Why did you speak so bitterly when my husband gave Patricia his parting gift? It was not like you!”

“Bitterly!” he exclaimed. “My dad threw me out when I was twelve--he married again--I wasn’t wanted, and since then I have never known a home. I have knocked about the world. I have never seen a family life and when Jack used to talk of his people I never believed that anything like this existed! And now that I see what it means to a chap, it makes me bitter, that’s all!”

“Poor boy!”

“Oh, no! Oh, no,” he hurried. “For God’s sake, don’t pity me! I don’t want to grouch. I have been hungry, I have always been poor, but I’ve managed to get something of life everywhere! I suppose you’d call me an adventurer.”

He threw back his beautiful head and laughed.

“It is a good adventure all right and I am glad I am part of it.”

He took her hand, looked down at her with his wonderful frank smile, and with the courage that conquers the world.

“I am glad that all those hard paths have brought me here to you. I have seen a lot of women, but I never cared like this.”

She believed it and he kissed her again deeply, deeply, many times; indifferent to the fact that they might be observed, and how serious it would be for her; but she freed herself saying:

“What madness! This must have its end, you know!”

And he murmured passionately, “Yes, it must have its end, dearest. When can I see you?”

“To-night,” she said, “in the music room at twelve--at half past twelve.”

Unmistakably some one was coming in the hall. Mrs. Hereford turned and hurriedly left the room.

After she had gone out Ramsay stood motionless beside the long tables. Life, which had been so full of unkindness to him and so full of caprices, seemed at last to have smiled upon him. Only certain moments in the air when above the German lines he had escaped the enemy’s barrage and later brought down his black foe--seen him fall, only in moments of such magnitude, had he felt lifted as high as to-day.

Here some one called:

“Nell! Nell, where are you?”

And down through the long room, next where his own eager footsteps had gone “stounin’” on the parquet floor, came Patricia Hereford, the bride, in her wedding dress, looking for her stepmother. She stood hesitatingly on the threshold between the rooms.

“Where’s mother, Captain Ramsay?”

Patricia passed for a beauty. She was happy and healthy, lit by young expectancy and young hope and love. White as a lily, and tall as a lily, she stood looking about at her beautiful things as a child might at his Christmas gifts.

“What a crowd of things!” she murmured. “What an awful lot, isn’t it? And all for little me.” She nodded and laughed. “It will take a thousand years to write letters of thanks for them all. I’ll make Nelly do it.”

She slowly walked along in front of the presents, lifting a card here, stopping a moment there, only half attentive, half seeing them, having this day more dazzling things than material jewels to think about. She stopped finally, before the pigskin purse lying between the sapphire ring and the lacquer box. The young man who had been thrown out of family life at twelve to fight for his existence, watched this spoiled society girl in her satin dress, surrounded by objects whose value footed up to hundreds of thousands.

“I have not _half_ seen the things yet! Aren’t they wonderful?”

She picked up the purse.

“This is from my chauffeur. Wasn’t it kind of him?”

She opened it mechanically, looked up at Ramsay, and said, laughing:

“Oh, gracious! That’s daddy!”

“It was meant for a surprise for you.”

“Never mind,” she said, “I won’t tell. Indeed, if any one asks, I’ll swear it was empty.” She laughed and put it down again.

“It is great of you, Captain Ramsay, to have watched the presents for me. Thank you a thousand times.”

Ramsay looked up at the prayer rug.

“I wish since you are here, Miss Hereford, you’d tell me what the letters around this prayer rug mean! What do they say?”

She thought a minute.

“I have got it written out upstairs somewhere.”

It was difficult for the bride to bring her attention to Persian characters.

“As near as I can remember they say:

“To the Great Lover Honor and Dishonor Life and Death are in the hands of the Beloved.”

Ramsay nodded. “Great!” he said. “I like it awfully. It’s ripping.”

“Hello, Pat!” Her brother stood on the threshold she had crossed. “Hello, people! I have been looking for you, Pat. I have been up to your room.”

The two young people, absorbed in a saying of the Far East, did not answer. Patricia and Ralph stood with their backs to the sapphire ring and the maharajah’s red lacquer box and the pigskin purse.

“The Maharajah of Singapore,” said Miss Hereford, “gave me wonderful lessons last year in Boston. All the girls were crazy about him. You read from left to right.” She pointed with her slender finger of the left hand on which the wedding ring would be very soon. “There like that, see:

“‘To the Great Lover Honor and Dishonor’ on the first line; ‘Life and Death are in the hands of the Beloved’ on the second line.”

The Scotch piper without, on the flawless lawn with his twenty-five astoundingly clean sheep, had decided to take his grazing herd farther along and had gone to the end of the park. From the distance they could hear the tune of his melancholic music as it came to them faintly as they stood there reading the rug.

“And the gallant Earl of Moray he was the queen’s love.”

“The Great Lover,” Ramsay repeated the words; they were fascinating. Oh, it was worth while in life to be a great lover! Ah, he could be it now for her--for her--for the woman he had kissed and held in his arms!

“Mr. Rolland would like to speak to Miss Hereford in her room.”

No one but the family was allowed in the gift room and the footman with a message for Patricia from the bridegroom stopped halfway down the next room, and even though she was so near being Mrs. Rolland, the girl blushed at the name and started forward.

“I’ll come at once. Captain Ramsay, do find Nell. Ask her to come up to my room. I must see her.”

“I can’t leave here,” said Ramsay. “Jack will tell her. I say, old man--” And he turned round to speak to Jack, but Hereford had simply crossed the room and gone out by the other door.

* * * * *

As Mrs. Hereford, after leaving Ramsay, went out of the gift room she ran into young Hereford, who caught her arm and drew her toward her own room.

“Nell, come along with me a second, will you?”

Her stepchildren called her by her first name. She was more like a sister than a mother to them. She was always dreading demands of money from Jack, for whenever he wanted either to confess to her or to demand a favor, he made her boudoir a confessional.

Mrs. Hereford was a Southerner, accustomed to a great deal of admiration from young men, and Jack Hereford was especially chivalrous and devoted to her. He might well be, for she had been his defender against his father more than once. Now he put her in a comfortable chair and called in to her maid, who happened to be in the next room.

“Marie, like an angel fetch a couple of cocktails for Mrs. Hereford and me, will you?”

“You should rest, Nell; you’ve been worn out with all this rush.”

When he had made his stepmother comfortable, he lit a cigarette for her, took one himself, and looked around at the photographs of himself and Ramsay.

“Gee, what a lot of me! You framed everything I ever sent you, I guess. Isn’t Ralph a corker? Now he’s got the good luck to be staying on. I’ve brought you here, Nell, to say good-by. I’ve got to go to-day.”

She looked at him in surprise.

“You mean to say you are going to miss the wedding?”

“I am awfully cut up about it--military orders, and--honestly, I’m not sorry to get away. Dad has been rotten to me--absolutely rotten!”

The maid brought the two cocktails on a tray. Jack drank his and said half smiling:

“You’re a brick, Nell. Ralph will bring me news of everything when he comes. Good-by--don’t get too tired. See you at Christmas.” He leaned over, kissed her, and went to bid his sister good-by.

The lady of the house, while alone in her room the next few moments, received countless telephone calls and messages. As soon as they knew she was to be found every one came to her. Only after she had dismissed the last messenger could she draw a long breath and remember Ralph in the room beyond.

Ramsay had become a great excitement and a problem. To-morrow he would be gone, however, and to-night she would try to put things on another footing, and in his absence turn to the occupations of her busy social life to try to forget him.

As she passed through the apartment adjoining the gift room, she could see the tables weighed down with their priceless things, and Ralph still alone in front of the maharajah’s lacquer box and the sapphire ring opposite the prayer rug on the wall. She could see, too, that in his hands _was the little purse_; _he was closing it--slipping the strap under the band_. He put it quickly down as he heard her steps and came toward her with a radiant face as though he had no thought beyond the fact that she had come back and alone. She had time only to meet his eyes with a troubled question in her own, for, sharp and alert, Mr. Jones, with one of the other detectives, followed behind her. The three together entered the room where Ramsay stood. Jones said briskly:

“Now, we’ll take charge here, Mrs. Hereford, and relieve you, Captain Ramsay.”

But the young man paid no more attention to them than if they had been ghosts. He was looking only at the woman whom he had taken lately in his arms.

“Since you went away I have learned to read the writing on the wall.”

She did not answer. She was not thinking of Persian characters and Persian rugs.

“Miss Hereford came in her wedding gown. She was looking for you and she read me the writing on the wall.”

“I have forgotten what it says.”

At the far end of the big room Jones and his man were comparing the lists and checking them.

“I saw Miss Hereford, too,” said Jones. “She came to the fur room to tell me about the little pigskin purse with loose cash--two thousand dollars! I told Miss Hereford it was a mistake to let loose cash like that lie around.”

And the detective took up the little pocketbook, undid the strap which Mrs. Hereford had just seen Ramsay close. Jones was perfunctory, and he looked into the little purse out of habit. Finding it empty, he held it over to Mrs. Hereford and Ramsay, saying:

“Empty as a drum.”

Jones was delighted. He was glad of the snappy little incident, and his man, at the other end of the room, turned round with alacrity at his chief’s voice. Captain Ramsay, his hands in his pockets, stood perfectly motionless, looking quietly at the lady of the house. Before he could speak she said:

“Miss Hereford is very careless, and how could she possibly exchange two thousand-dollar bills on her honeymoon? I thought as you did, Mr. Jones, and I told her father before he went to town I had a lot of large bills to pay on the place and I wanted some cash. Mr. Hereford asked me to slip in my own check instead. I left it out on my desk in my boudoir. I’ll go and fetch it now.”

There was nothing whatsoever to say to the lady of the house--it was perfectly _en règle_.

“All right,” said Jones. “We’ll list it properly and it will be much safer.”

As the lady of the house went out the detective said to Captain Ramsay:

“Now if you want to go off duty?”

The young man even then looked at nothing but the disappearing figure of Helen Hereford. He stared at it as if he wanted to follow her, then wheeled about and went out by the opposite door. He called out to Jones:

“I am going to have a bit of air before luncheon.”

* * * * *

How that day passed she never knew. She had gone to Patricia and kissed her under her wedding veil, and there had been the bustle in the busy house--countless things to be done, to be decided--endless messages and calls. No one saw Captain Ramsay or knew where he had gone and, at dinner, when the host asked for him, a manservant answered:

“Captain Ramsay was called over the phone by a brother officer and has gone to the club. He has taken his traps.”

“_Après la guerre comme à la guerre!_” said Cynthia Moore. “Manners! That’s the Earl of Moray all over!” And she made a grimace at Mrs. Hereford as much as to say: “You packed him off at last, and no wonder.”

He had simply fled, and the shame and the degradation sickened her to the soul. He had not given her time to recover from his passionate declarations before he had stolen under her very eyes, one might say, under her very kisses. How had he dared to touch her? How _had_ he dared?

By dinner time she was so overcome by her wretchedness that she was obliged to go to her boudoir to shut herself away. As she saw him on the little photograph by the side of his machine, ready to ascend--and in another near the broken wing of a fallen plane after an accident, she thought: