# Weird Tales/Volume 5/Issue 4/Invaders From the Dark

Author of "The Tortoise-Shell Cat," "The Remorse of Professor Panebianco," etc.
FOREWORD
SOME time during the latter part of May, 1924, I received a communication from a well-known publishing house, a communication sufficiently out of the ordinary to merit my immediate attention. I had sold these publishers considerable fiction treating of the occult and supernatural; they wrote me to inquire if I were an actual student of the occult, or if I had merely gone into the subject. superficially to give more color to my stories. They intimated that there was a special reason back of their inquiry.
I wrote back that I was a serious student of the occult, but that the more I studied it the more I found to learn and the more I realized that I had only scratched the surface of the subject. The publishers wrote back that they had been requested to get in touch with a student of the occult and to ask such a person to communicate immediately with Miss Sophie Delorme, Differdale House, Meadowlawn. Lynbrook. (It is understood, of course, that I am using the fictitious names furnished in the manuscript written by Miss Delorme.)
I was naturally interested and wrote to Miss Delorme at once. The lady informed me that she had a manuscript of about fifty thousand words which she had written to explain an extremely strange matter that had occurred in her neighborhood. She believed this story to be vitally important and insisted that she dared not entrust the manuscript to any other than a person instructed along occult lines, as she had every reason to believe that efforts would be made to reach and destroy the papers before their message could be transmitted to the world. She asked me to call on her and take over the manuscript personally, and see to it that it was printed.
I ascertained that Miss Delorme was a responsible person, quite able and willing to defray the costs of printing her book, in case it proved to be out of the line of the regular publishing houses. I arranged to visit her home on June 18th, an easy matter, as I found I could get there by subway. On June 18th, therefore, I walked across the fields to the great wall which she had described in her letters, and rang the bell of the bronze gate. From that moment, I began to ​realize what Miss Delorme meant when she wrote that she feared for the safety of her manuscript.
Even as I stood there waiting, things started to happen in a most bewildering fashion. I heard somebody throw up a window on a side of the house (to my right), and then there came a woman’s scream, which sounded to me more angry than fearful. The scream was followed by a heavy, metallic clang upon the pavement just around the corner from where I stood. I left the gate and ran in the direction of the noise.
On the sidewalk lay a black tin box such as is often used to preserve papers of importance. It was dented badly where it had struck the pavement. I picked it up and then turned my eyes toward the windows above me.
An elderly woman stood at the open window nearest the corner of the house, holding with both hands to the window-frame at either side of her. Although she appeared to be alone, I received a strong impression that she was being pulled from behind, for she was struggling as if with all her power to maintain her position there. As I looked up, the tin box in my hand, she called to me anxiously.
"Who are you?"
I told her.
"Thank God you came in time!" she cried excitedly. "Take the box and get away from here as quickly as you can. Don’t let it out of your sight until it has been printed and the books distributed. You’ll understand why, when you’ve read it. Never mind about me! My work is done!"
As the last words were flung down at me, she disappeared backward into the room, as if pulled there by invisible hands.
I DID not doubt for a moment that I had been talking with Miss Sophie Delorme, and I saw no immediate reason for lingering in the vicinity. She spoke with a forcefulness that made a strong impression upon me. I felt intuitively that it was of infinite importance for me to leave that spot at once with the tin box and its precious contents. As for Miss Delorme, even if she needed assistance of some kind, I should hardly be able to clamber over that high wall; common sense urged me to call for other help, if it proved necessary.
I hugged the box tightly in my arms and ran away just as fast as I could go, forgetting dignity in my anxiety to carry out the other woman’s wishes. Even had I known what was to happen, I doubt if I should have lingered; there are some things in the world of more importance even than a human life, and when one recognizes this fact, one acts upon the knowledge when necessary. I know now that I did well to save the manuscript and to carry out Miss Delorme’s desire for its publication. It was well that I stood not upon the order of my going, for hardly had I reached the boulevard when a loud and terrible explosion rent the air.
I was flung upon the ground by the force of the concussion, still holding (oh, do not doubt it!) that black box in my arms. When I rose to my feet, dismayed by my premonitions, and turned to look, the Differdale residence with its high surrounding wall no longer marked the spot. A black and smoking mass bulked hugely in its place. Apparently Miss Delorme had not been far wrong when she had warned me that other than human powers would make their attempts to ruin the papers she had entrusted to me; I felt that something had, in a fury of disappointment, brought about her death and the ruin of that splendid and strange house, and that this same something would presently be upon my track.
The thought was more than sufficient for me. I rushed down into the subway and caught the next train ​back to town. Not that this ended the matter. Oh, no! Nor had I imagined that it would. I knew that while the devoted Sophie Delorme’s valiant and successful effort to place it in my hands had succeeded, even at the cost of her life, the attempts to destroy it would not cease until they had become futile; that is, until there were enough replicas of the manuscript spread broadcast to make it impossible to suppress the message entirely.
Things became quite too lively from that moment on. I had little time to do more than admire the courage and fidelity of the woman who had undoubtedly perished in the Differdale house, before I was myself involved in one accident after another. The motorman on the train I caught had a fainting spell and the train ran wild, smashed into the one ahead and broke things up pretty badly. I escaped with the tin box still in my arms, but scratched and cut by flying glass.
I got out at the next station, having walked the subway rails with other passengers, and took a taxi which proceeded to have a blowout and skid into a telegraph post. The driver was thrown out and injured severely, but I escaped—with a broken arm. My good arm still held the tin box. When the ambulance came for the driver, I made them take me to my own home. My doctor could not understand why I insisted upon hiding that tin box under the bedcovers, where I could hold on to it. He put my broken arm into a cast, and I had to resign myself to some weeks of inactivity.
I went over the manuscript at the first opportunity, with burning curiosity. I had to have the lock of the box broken open. It was done in my presence, of course, but in spite of my repeated warnings, the man who opened it let his tool slip and drove a hole through some of the sheets, making several words indecipherable. Fortunately, the damage was not great.
Meantime, I negotiated with several publishers for the printing of the manuscript. When I found a publisher, my next difficulty arose. How was I to safeguard it until it was in book form? I explained this to the head of the publishing concern, who provided two watchmen who never for a single instant let the manuscript out of their sight during the day, and at night it was locked into a safe in the presence of two people. Notwithstanding these precautions, things happened. I have never spent such a harrowing, nerve-racking time in my life as I spent last July and August, 1924.
IN SPITE of the care with which the manuscript was watched, a lighted match was dropped upon some of it, and it was saved in the very nick of time. That caused a suggestion that it be typed in duplicate, which was done. During the typing, the young woman typist—whose probity is unquestionable, for she is a personal friend of mine, interested also in occult subjects—crumpled up quite a bunch of sheets given her to work from and threw them into the wastebasket, by mistake. Fortunately the loss was discovered before too late, and the pages retrieved. The typist cried, she felt so badly about it, and begged that I take charge of the manuscript sheets myself. I dictated it to her, after that, so that the papers did not leave my hands until safely typed.
​Then, after the books were printed, the entire printing plant was dynamited, and the books destroyed in the resulting fire. I had taken the proofsheets home with me, however, and from these I dictated the entire manuscript again to a typist.
I know there are plenty of people who will sneer at the recital of these accidents, calling them coincidences. That word covers a multitude of strange, inexplicable happenings. I know too much about those powers who are averse to publishing broadcast the message contained in Miss Delorme’s manuscript to call these occurrences coincidences.
As I write this, I know that Miss Delorme’s message of warning will go out into the world as she intended, a message for those who can understand. It may be only a piece of fiction for those who are ignorant of what the most casual students of psychic phenomena now consider everyday occurrences. The declaration that there "ain’t no ghosts" today is nothing but a display of the speaker’s deplorable backwardness in current news, alone.
I wish to state, before closing my little foreword, that I have not touched Miss Delorme’s manuscript except to try to separate it into parts, not chapters. It was a single long narrative, as it came to my hands; the writer evidently considered it more important to get her message on paper than to divide and subdivide it in the manner of modern letters. I found it awkward to draw any dividing lines in the text, myself.
There is little doubt in my mind that that fine and noble woman lost her life because she was not sufficiently instructed in psychic phenomena to protect herself against invasions from the darkness on the other side of the veil that separates the human entity from the mysterious and too often malevolent entities of the astral plane. Fortunately for the world—at least for that portion of the world that can understand—she had secured with careful foresight the printing and distribution of her weird and terrible experience, even to the final detail of a large check made out to me and enclosed with the manuscript in the tin box. That she was safeguarded until her work was finished and passed on to me, is proof that other and higher powers of good watched over her while her presence on this plane was necessary.
It is my earnest hope that her sacrifice and devotion will not have been in vain.
    —Greye La Spina.
PART 1
THERE is no real reason for the inside history of that summer to remain unrecorded and there are strong reasons why it should be made public. I understand fully that many will pronounce the whole affair one of sheer fabrication on my part, but on the other hand there are those in America, in the world, who will know that my story is not only possible but probable. It is for these last I write, that the knowledge of those strange happenings may put them on their guard; that they may realize the full extent of the danger in this terrible invasion of our dear country by the potent influences of evil that have for centuries flourished in the wild spots of Europe and Asia.
The world ought to know that these forces of the dark are organizing for the advancement of their own individual and collective purposes, just as the forces of the light are co-operating for the advancement of humanity; that invasions from the dark will periodically be made—slyly, subtly, whenever opportunity offers; that embodied and disembodied evil is marching upon the New World, intent on conquest. And most terrible of all, the New World is ignorant of these potent influences upon mind and body, ​attributing the ancient wisdom of the Old World along these lines to the superstitious tales of ignorant peasants.
I know from my own experience that these entities are not figments of the fevered imagination. I know that they have arrayed themselves against those who know them and would give them battle. I myself am in deadly peril of their bitter enmity, and one thought only can uphold and strengthen me: God is more powerful than all the combined forces of evil, and while I have a message to give the world, no harm can come to me. When that message has been delivered, my work shall have been finished, and I shall be ready to go, to take up the good fight on another plane of existence.
If I were to relate the whole story in a few terse lines, I am sure that I would be marked down at once as mentally unbalanced and thus my effort to gain the ear of those who can understand would have failed. I must not shear the tale, then, of any of the trifling incidents, the petty happenings, that will unfortunately give my tale the earmarks of fiction for the uninstructed, but must equally place it beyond cavil as a recital of facts in the opinion of the initiated. I shall try, therefore, even at the cost of seeming tedious, to relate even the slightest things that may throw light on an as yet comparatively unknown subject upon the existence of which my claim to sanity, as well as that of my niece Portia and that of Owen Edwardes, depends.
The strange and inexplicable disappearance of two police officers from their station; the unsuccessful attack upon a third; the disappearance of a girl of twelve; these incidents may perhaps be recalled to the memory of citizens of the suburban town where they took place, when they read this explanation of those mysterious happenings. It is of course necessary to disguise to a certain extent the names of the principals in the affair, as well as the name of the town itself; I am not writing to satisfy anyone’s morbid curiosity or to make Lynbrook—let me call it that—a place of pilgrimage. My sole incentive is to notify the "initiated" in America of what has actually taken place in this New World, of this invasion by the evil powers of the Old World’s waste places. This accomplished, I shall feel more than repaid for the effort which it is for me, a woman unaccustomed to writing more than a friendly note, to pen this story which I have an intuition may prove a long one.
Since the heroic deaths, in the World War, of my niece and of Lieutenant Owen Edwardes, I have often debated within myself the advisability of setting down an account of those strange and awful happenings, and at last it was borne in upon me that I must carry on Portia’s work as far as it was possible for me to do so. I lost no time in getting to work, once persuaded where my duty lay.
It is easy to begin, because my part in it really started with Portia’s letter inviting me to make my home with her in Lynbrook.
Portia was the only child of my brother Chester, who was killed with his wife in an automobile accident in a day when automobiles were a rarity and not as perfect in their mechanism as they are nowadays. Portia was fifteen at that time. She was left an orphan with little or no means of support, as Chester, manager of the sales department of the Wilton Front Lace Corset Company, had lived up to his income to the last penny. I was, I suppose, the only living relative the child had here in the East, and when I found by inquiry that her mother’s people were far from well-to-do ranchers in Montana and that Portia had scholarly ambitions, I decided to take ​her to live with me until such time as she married or managed for herself.
When father died, he left the old home in Reading, Massachusetts, with sufficient income to keep it up. Chester had refused to benefit by father’s death; he always said he could take care of himself better than a woman could take care of herself. For this reason alone, I felt morally engaged to do what I could for Chester’s girl.
Portia came to live with me, then, and attended the public school of Reading and later on went to high school. By the time she had graduated from high school she had already made up her mind what she wanted to do. She intended to go to Vassar, where her father had made application when she was born, as proud parents do nowadays. The only obstacle was the lack of sufficient money to pay her tuition and other expenses. This did not dismay my niece.
Early in her girlhood I had occasion to admire her courage; her absolute fearlessness, rather. She faced the situation of no funds, and made herself mistress of it. The details I do not fully know, but I learned afterward that she eked out the little I managed to send her, by tutoring, by taking down lectures in shorthand and selling the transcribed copies to fellow students. Portia passed her final examinations with high marks and returned to me for a brief period of repose while looking about for a position of some kind.
Just what she was fitted for, she herself did not know. She had thought of library work, but I believe this was merely because she loved books so dearly, not because the career of a librarian appealed to her. Finally she decided that her best opportunity might lie in a secretaryship and was about to leave Reading for New York, when a letter arrived one morning that had been forwarded to her from college.
It was a wonderful morning in early July, 1910, when this momentous letter arrived. The sun was no brighter than my girl’s face when she lifted it from the letter to exclaim: "Here is the very thing I would have chosen out of all the world, Aunt Sophie, could I have put my wishes into words."
She tossed the letter across the table to me and turned to stare out of the window into the dappled sun and shade of our pretty yard, which I realized she was really not seeing at all.
I took up the letter and read it hastily. It was from one Howard Differdale, of Lynbrook, N. Y., a frank, straightforward statement of his needs. As nearly as I can remember, it ran somewhat in this tenor:
He was a bachelor, living alone in a great isolated house about five city blocks, however, from a community known as Meadowlawn, and near subway lines that made it but half an hour from the heart of Lynbrook. The management of the house was in the hands of a "faithful Chinaman, Fu Sing." Mr. Differdale was engaged in occult research and experiment and desired a young woman assistant who was not only interested in his line of work but capable of helping materially, and of making the necessary observations in shorthand and on the typewriter.
He gave references as to his financial standing. He mentioned that his mother and sister lived in Meadowlawn and attended a Presbyterian church there. He would be glad to pay all expenses for Portia and a chaperon, if my niece were sufficiently interested to make the trip to Lynbrook for the purpose of deciding personally whether or not she desired to take the position he was offering.
The salary he offered was comparatively small, so much so that I wondered at my niece’s enthusiasm. The matter of remuneration, however, was taken up later by Mr. Differdale ​when Portia went down to see him, and augmented to an extent that would have made the position a highly desirable one from the financial standpoint, had it been known beforehand. Mr. Differdale explained to my niece a bit dryly that he had purposely made it very small in his letter, because he did not care for the type of woman who would have been attracted for the sake of the remuneration alone; he wanted someone whose strongest motive was the character of the work. But I am getting ahead of the story.
Portia went down to Lynbrook. She did not take me with her. She told me that she considered herself capable of judging both the character of the man and the nature of the work. She did not return to Reading, but I received a series of letters telling of her arrival, and of various other matters of interest. Some of these I still have, and shall quote here and there to show her first impressions, especially as some of them have a bearing on later events.
With a check, she wrote:
"Dear Aunt Sophie:
"I am enclosing a check for my first month’s salary in advance, I am sending it all, because I really cannot foresee any particular needs that may arise to necessitate my having on hand more money than the amount of my fare down, which Mr. Differdale refunded, as he offered in his letter.
"I suppose you would like to know what kind of a man my employer is and what the work is for which I am engaged. I am bound by my honor not to divulge the exact nature of the work, but I can say that it is something which is for the good of all humanity, and that Mr. Differdale can be best judged by this: every penny he derives from an invention of his for weighing and sorting watch mechanisms, he devotes to his researches, the nature of which I cannot tell you. His whole life is bound up in carrying on this work.
"He is the most absent-minded of individuals, when it comes to his personal wants, although his mind is astonishingly alert when it is fixed upon his work. Fu Sing, the Chinese man-of-all-work, has to call him to his meals or I verily believe he would forget that such a thing as food existed. Fu Sing is a model servant, by the way; one never sees him about the house, but he accomplishes wonders in making everything clean and comfortable.
"The floors are hardwood with oriental rugs. No chairs; just piles of cushions. I sleep on cushions every night, and I must admit I find it extremely luxurious and comfortable. This is a part of Mr. Differdale’s theory; he believes that the part of our lives spent in repose or recreation should be made as relaxing as possible and that complete change is a relaxation in itself. Oh, we need to gain fresh strength daily for the demanding work in which our nights are passed!
“Yes, all our work is done at night. So far, I have been out under the stars every night except when it has rained. We sleep all day. I am entering upon an entirely different life, Aunt Sophie, and it is wonderful—and fascinating—and inspiring! I admire my employer hugely; he is really a splendid man. You feel this just by being in his vicinity; it is a kind of atmosphere spreading about him."
A later letter read: "The first week I was here I did practically nothing but read his books or listen to his explanation of some of the experiments in which I am to assist him later on. I am all impatience, but I cannot help him materially until I have learned many, many things. I am studying now, every minute that I am not sleeping or taking the out-of-door recreation upon which he ​insists and which is great sport, for it consists in exercising Boris and Andrei (huge white Russian wolfhounds) on the leash, in the fields that completely surround the high walls of the building where we live in what amounts to isolation.
"About five blocks away through the fields lies a little community called Meadowlawn. There are seven or eight solidly built-up blocks of brick and stucco houses, bounded on the side nearest us by a wide highway called Queens Boulevard. There are little stores along the boulevard, and the built-up streets run at right angles to this wider highway, which is much traveled by trucks and automobiles.
"Mr. Differdale took me to call on his mother and his married sister, the afternoon of the day that I arrived, and left me to lunch with them, as he wanted me to get in touch with everybody and everything in his neighborhood, so that I could satisfy myself about his standing. He did not need to do this, Auntie; I made up my mind to remain the moment I first laid eyes on him, and he told me afterward that he knew immediately that I was the one woman who could help him in his work, when he read my graduation thesis. He had managed to get hold of several essays by girls in my class, through the dean’s influence, and said that he had selected Vassar girls because he believes that Vassar sends out adventurous spirits from her halls!
"Mrs. Differdale and Mrs, Arnold do not at all resemble Mr. Differdale, who is invested with a kind of nobility of bearing, a dignity—well, it is something spiritual that you feel about him and that his mother and sister do not possess in the smallest degree. They are both of the earth, earthy; although I'm sure it would hurt their feelings immeasurably to think that anyone considered them other than intensely—well, I'll call it religious, as being apart from spiritual.
"Mrs. Differdale is tall and thin, with snappy black eyes and frizzed gray hair that she conceals under a soiled boudoir cap mornings when it's in crimpers. She usually removes them before dinner at night, when she dons a silk dress and becomes a lady of leisure. I've found in talking with her that she is intolerant of people who think differently from herself, and very dictatorial in stating her opinions as settled facts. She has a curious nature that is really astonishing.
"Apropos of her curiosity, she has a trick of catching up a broom and rushing out to sweep the immaculately kept sidewalk on a moment's notice, if any out-of-the-ordinary noise happens to reach her listening ear; and it would be a mighty small noise that didn't, Aunt Sophie, I can assure you. During the two hours I was in her home that first afternoon, she questioned me on about every subject conceivable, but as I was not at all sure of my ground, I managed to evade most of her inquiries, especially those that concerned her son, about whose work she apparently knows quite nothing. She speaks of him with grudging admiration, chiefly because of the money he has made by his invention, it seemed to me.
"Her daughter, Aurora Arnold, is as much like the older woman as one pea is like another, except that she is younger. She has thin blond hair and pale blue eyes to which she tries to give an expression of sincerity and sympathy, although she didn’t affect me as being what she pretended, and evidently wanted me to believe her. Mr. Arnold works in some kind of machine shop, but she refers to him with a considerable air as a "professional" man. She used to be a kindergarten teacher and—well, you may remember that. I always disliked the idea of teaching because of that air of ​superiority that teachers assume among their pupils until it is second nature, Mrs. Arnold has that air to a degree that, I'm ashamed to admit, I find insufferable.
"Like her mother, she is curious about everything and everybody in the neighborhood. I heard more gossip, disguised as friendly criticism, during luncheon time than I've ever heard in all my life before, even in Reading.
"I got an impression, vague to be sure, that Mr. Differdale’s mother was jealous of my advantage in being his assistant, and in thus being admitted to the knowledge of his work. She told me, with rather a dry air, that she had never been invited to set foot within the precinets guarded by that ten-foot wall that surrounds the house where her only son lives and works. The thought that I had already been admitted there was only too evidently distasteful to her, and I felt that her disposition to be friendly was motivated by her belief that it would give her later opportunities to satisfy her curiosity, when more confidential relations should have been established between us.
"There are two Arnold children, disagreeable little brats of nine and eleven respectively. Their names are Alice and Minna. I have rarely had the misfortune to meet such malicious children. I can well believe their mother’s complaint that they are always quarreling with other children on that street, but I do not believe it is the others who are at fault, as Mrs. Arnold declares. Their mother says she cannot make them obey her because they are so high-spirited. If this is the actual reason, then deliver me from high-spirited children for the rest of my life! The neighbors appear to share my dislike, for the two children seem extremely unpopular.
"Mrs. Differdale asked if her son had provided a chaperon for me and seemed very much put out at what she called his lack of consideration, assuring me that I would undoubtedly find myself very much talked about unless I insisted upon the presence in my employer's house of an older woman whose presence would protect me. I inquired innocently enough if her son had such a bad reputation, and she was quite wild at the insinuation, but kept returning to her observation that people in Meadowlawn were very gossipy."
In a previous letter Portia described the great square building of two stories that contained the immense laboratory and a roomy library where thousands of ancient and modern volumes were shelved. A dining room furnished in modern fashion, an up-to-date kitchen, and the sleeping quarters of Mr. Differdale, Portia, and Fu Sing, took up the rest of the building. Laboratory, dining room and Fu's kitchen and bedroom were on the ground floor, the library and other sleeping quarters and private bathrooms on the second floor.
Most of Portia's work when she first went there was the indexing for easier reference of the thousands of books in the library. The letter from which I quoted at length about Mr. Differdale's family was written about a month after Portia left Reading. From that time on her work must have absorbed her to the exclusion of everything else, for letters became more and more infrequent. The only things I could glean from these brief messages were that her employer was a great and noble benefactor of humanity; that she had hurt her knee when racing with the wolfhounds one evening and a Mr. Owen Edwardes (who had a real estate office on the boulevard) had escorted her home, and that the dogs had "behaved like angels although he was a complete stranger to them"; that Mr. Owen Edwardes had motored her one evening to Pleasure Beach, an amuse​ment resort near Lynbrook: that Owen Edwardes had a really exceptional mind: that Owen had been telling her how he was carrying out his dead father’s ideals to build real homes for middle-class families at nominal cost.
I may be an old maid (Portia has since told me that I couldn't be an old maid if I tried, despite my unmarried state, and that the two Differdale women were typical old maids in spite of being married), but I can scent a romance while it’s still a-budding. There was more mention of "Owen" in Portia's letters than any other one thing. It can be imagined, then, that it was like a bolt from the blue to have her write me a quiet, dignified letter without much detail, stating that owing to the neighborhood gossip (which had been strengthened by old Mrs. Differdale in her bitter jealousy of my niece’s position of vantage) Howard Differdale and she had been quietly married, so that, as she expressed it, they could carry on their work without interruption or disturbance in future.
From this time on, Portia's letters became yet rarer. In them, too, there was no mention of Owen Edwardes, although I inquired directly about him twice. I tried to believe that Portia had misled me purposely in writing so much about the young man, in order to cover her infatuation with her employer, but I couldn’t seem to reconcile this guile with her letters.
After her marriage, her communications took on a certain dignity and aloofness. It was as if Portia had "put aside childish things." She had suddenly grown up, had come to maturity of mind and spirit. Nevertheless, I could not disabuse my mind of the idea that there had been a close congeniality of mind and spirit between herself and the young man of whom she had written so much before her marriage.
Portia's marriage took place in January, 1910, six months after she went to Lynbrook. Her husband’s death came very suddenly in December of the same year. She wrote me no details; merely said that he had been struck down most cruelly in the midst of his work, a victim to the evils from which he had been laboring to save humanity. She added that his death made her prouder of him, if anything, although it was of course a deep loss to her personally as well as to the world, which did not know what it had lost. She intended carrying on his work, I gathered.
I could not help being troubled at the thought of her in that lonesome spot, with no one but a Chinaman (to whom she referred as "my faithful Fu") to look after her comfort, and very glad I was when she wrote me in March, proposing that I sell or lease my house and make my home with her.
Perhaps I was getting a bit tired of living alone in a country town. Perhaps I was just plain homesick for the girl whom I had helped bring up. I leased my house, and hurried all preparations so that I should be free to go down to Lynbrook at the earliest possible moment.
I must confess that I was also actuated by a burning curiosity as to the nature of the work which my niece admitted had been the death of her husband, and which she continued to carry on, courageously, declaring that it was for the benefit of humanity.
PART 2
My niece met me at the Center Station in Lynbrook, and we took the subway out to the Meadowlawn district.
Portia had changed very much, though very subtly, since she left me a year and a half before. Her blue eyes were dazzlingly clear and looked at one uncompromisingly: there was mystery in their depths, though. Her ​straight chestnut hair with its reddish shadows, which she usually wore in a coronet braid, was partially concealed by her black hat, a bit of millinery that east a dark shade upon her warm brown skin and her glowing cheeks.
She did not look in the least like a sorrowing widow. Her manner, her glance, was that of a human being which knows itself so well that it cares little or nothing for the opinions of others. Her figure had grown fuller without being buxom, Portia being the type of woman called magnificent. She had not lost the odd charm of her mouth, which, when slightly parted, showed two upper front teeth a bit; this touch of lightness distracted from her otherwise serious expression, which was the first thing I noted about her.
As we emerged from the subway station upon the street, we were encountered by an elderly woman who inclined her head very slightly in recognition, but with a certain air. Portia touched my arm and stopped me.
"Aunt Sophie, I want to have you meet Mr. Differdale’s mother, of whom I’ve already written you," she said very sweetly.
Mrs. Differdale jerked her head high. She made me think of a superannuated warhorse that hears the military band passing. She almost snorted, in fact, as she acknowledged the introduction. I had an idea that she was embarrassed about something, and Portia told me later that curiosity had made the other woman wait near the subway entrance so that she would be the first to meet me.
"I hope you will be able to persuade your niece to shut up that big, lonely house and live like a civilized human being," she said to me quite sharply. "It's her duty to come out of her seclusion and interest herself in worthwhile work for this community and the world."
Portia did not appear at all disturbed by this little stab, but as we went on our way she remarked, just a bit sadly: "Poor soul, she has never gotten over it that Mr. Differdale left everything to me, except an annuity sufficient for her modest needs. She considers me an interloper, especially as I've been obliged to refuse to admit her to the laboratory since my husband's death. She made several visits of condolence within a week."
We walked up about three blocks along Queens Boulevard. Portia pointed out the great ten-foot wall in the middle of the fields. I couldn’t have missed it; it was a landmark, and a mysterious one at that.
We had just returned up Gilman Street, which runs from the boulevard to the Differdale place, when an automobile came up behind us. The driver stopped it and called Portia's name.
I knew before I was told that this young man with the merry twinkle in his dark gray eyes, the whimsical smile hovering about his generous mouth, and the light brown hair showing under his cap, was Owen Edwardes. I could not refrain from stealing a glance at my niece, but although I imagined I saw a deeper rose creeping up in her blooming checks, she maintained a quiet dignity and composure that told me quite nothing.
"Do let me take you home," implored the newcomer, leaning back to open the car door for us.
"Aunt Sophie, this is Owen Edwardes," Portia said. "My aunt is going to make her home with me, Owen."
"Aunt Sophie, I'm overjoyed to meet you and to learn that you are going to keep Portia company. I think she needs just you."
Portia smiled slowly. There was a certain gentle enjoyment of this masculine directness in her expression.
​"I'm quite contented just now with my work, Owen," she rebuked. "It is everything to me, you know."
At that, his tone changed.
"You're right, I know," he said, with what I interpreted as a touch of bitterness. "You are the most self-sufficient woman I ever knew, Portia. All you have to do is to shut yourself away from the rest of humanity in your gray prison, and you're quite happy. No intruding friends for you, eh?"
Then turning to me: "I know it's only a matter of three blocks across the fields, from here, but it's hard walking on the frozen ground. If you get in, Portia will have to," he insinuated, with an appealing and boyish smile.
I liked him at once, so I got into the automobile, and of course Portia had to follow me. As Owen Edwardes backed the car around, my niece touched my arm and motioned with her head to a woman who, accompanied by two little girls rather strikingly dressed in bright red like twins, was walking toward us about a block away.
"That's Mr. Differdale's sister and her children," murmured my niece. "Thanks to you, Aunt Sophie, I'm now giving Aurora Arnold something to gossip about."
I promptly said "Fiddlesticks!" Really, I didn't care. I had taken a strong liking to young Owen Edwardes at first sight, and if he showed himself interested in Portia, I didn't intend to put obstacles in the way of his courtship of a charming young widow, in spite of what the neighbors might say.
Mr. Edwardes asked Portia if there were anything he could do for her, before he went. He offered to go to the Center Station for my trunk and bag, instead of leaving them to come over by express. Of course, I refused his offer, but I told myself that unless he were interested in Portia he wouldn't have offered to go so much out of the way for me.
Portia pressed a bell button inserted in the deep wall beside the heavy bronze door that presently swung open before her key, the bell being to notify Fu Sing that she had returned, so that he could regulate the hour for serving dinner accordingly. For a moment I had a feeling of panic when I heard that great door clang shut behind me. I remembered all at once that in this enclosure some mysterious work was carried on: that somewhere here, inside those unsurmountable walls, Howard Differdale had dropped dead under Portia's very eves, almost at her side. I couldn't help shuddering.
The next moment Portia had thrown her arms around my neck and her warm kiss fell upon my cheek.
"Welcome home, dearest Aunt Sophie!" she was crying.
Her words, her voice, her kiss, swept unpleasant associations out of my mind, and I followed her cheerfully enough across the wide courtyard to the massive granite building that was to be my home in future. The house door was opened to us by the bowing, smiling Fu Sing, sucking in his breath in excruciatingly polite manner as he retreated before us.
Portia took me at once to my room on the second floor. It was wonderfully attractive, except that it had no bed, only a pile of silken cushions. She asked me if I wanted to try the cushions, or if she should telephone into Lynbrook for a regulation bed. It happens that I really do like to try new things, so I vetoed her suggestion at once; I thought I might enjoy playing that I was in some kind of Eastern palace.
At dinner, which was served in a handsome, entirely modern dining room that opened off the kitchen through a butler's pantry, Portia tried to give me a brief resumé of the ​events of the year covered by her married life. I shall put it into a few words just at this point in my narrative.
Quite without the slightest attempt at concealment, she told me that she and Owen Edwardes had come close to having had an understanding, but that what she had learned of her employer's work had decided her that so long as Howard Differdale needed her, it would be her joy as well as her duty to work beside him. She had given Owen to understand this, delicately, as a woman can.
And then Mrs. Differdale had written her son a venomous note, quite as wicked as only so-called good, religious people could have made it. Mr. Differdale had quietly put the matter before my niece. As between his work and any personal inclinations, his work stood first, he told her. He needed her presence in his experiments; he felt the necessity of her aid in his work. But he would not take advantage of her interest, her good heart, at the expense of her reputation. When she indignantly declared that she would remain because she believed his work the most important thing that had come into her life, he asked her to permit him to give her his name.
"I married him, Auntie, but our marriage was nothing more than a wall of protection that we put up between our work and the malicious tongues of people in Meadowlawn. Mr. Differdale never made the slightest claim upon me as a husband. You see, Auntie, in order to be of assistance to him, I had to remain a maid; only a virgin can help in such experiments as he was carrying on."
As can well be imagined, I was interested by this simple statement of a rather astonishing situation. I inquired, tentatively, about the nature of this work to which Portia now referred as "ours" instead of "his". She tried to explain it, I could see, in some general fashion, but I found myself in such a daze after her explanation that I gave up trying to understand it, quite in despair.
I did glean, however, that Mr. Differdale was what she called "an initiate"; that he had gone deeply into occultism and the practise of magic; that he had actually performed incantations to call spirits into materialization, out in that great courtyard where I had seen mystical hieroglyphics cut into the stone. I learned, too, that he had come to his death because in over-excitement he had forgotten for a single moment that he must never overstep the limits of a circle within which he performed his spells. One night, my niece told me with perfect gravity, he had gone outside that circle, and Portia, standing beside him, had seen the results of the terrible blows which he must have received from invisible hands. (The newspapers had it that he had fallen from a window during a sudden attack of dizziness.)
The whole matter was so weird, so unbelievable, that my tired brain almost refused to accept it; I found myself wondering if my niece's brain had not been turned. But I was astonished at my own mental attitude when I discovered that in my new and strange surroundings I was deliberately trying to digest Portia's tale as gospel truth, taking it at her valuation. When I went with her after dinner into the great library and handled some of the curious old books, many in Latin and other foreign languages, and noted their queer titles, I began to swallow her story in great gulps, explaining away the difficult parts as things that I might not understand at the moment but should shortly be in a position to clear up for my logical, disbelieving mind.
The following morning I suggested to Portia that she let me do the marketing, which she or Fu Sing had ​previously done by telephone. I wanted to occupy my time, and this appeared to me the most sensible thing for a woman of my habits; it would give me a little walk each morning, and it is human nature for a tradesman to give you better service when you appear in person than when you are nothing but a voice heard daily over the telephone. Portia did not care; she told me to do exactly as I chose, if it made me happy and contented. I got the names of her tradespeople and about 9 o'clock went out with my list of needed articles.
Directly opposite where Gilman Street adjoins the boulevard I saw a little building about twelve feet square, with gold lettering on the door: OWEN EDWARDES, Successor to A. J. Edwardes, Real Estate.
It gave me quite a comfortable feeling to know that the young man's office was so close at hand. A silly thought, perhaps, being quite illogical, but I felt it just the same. An automobile was standing outside and as I crossed the boulevard Owen himself came out and locked his office door. Then he looked up and took off his hat to me with a smile that warmed my heart, it was so frank and pleased-looking.
"Well, if here isn't Aunt Sophie!" said he gayly. "What is she wandering about for, so early in the morning?"
"I am going to do the marketing, Mr. Edwardes," said I, trying hard to be severe with him, for he really hadn't the slightest right to call me Aunt Sophie, although I believe Portia had not introduced me as Miss Delorme.
"Please don't frown on me so! I can't bear to start the day with a scowl," he implored whimsically. "And for pity's sake don’t call me Mr. Edwardes. I can only be Owen to Aunt Sophie."
How could anybody maintain dignity with such a rogue? I laughed outright. whereat he joined me with a good will.
"Now, I call that fine, Aunt Sophie. We're good friends now, aren't we? Now that we've laughed together? Let me take you down to the butcher's or the baker's or wherever you're headed, won't you? I'm going that way myself—have to call on a Russian princess who's buying a house from me."
I hesitated. There would in all likelihood be further inferences drawn from my seeming familiarity with this pleasing young man. But, after all, the harm must have been done the evening before, for Portia had quite indifferently observed that most of the neighborhood gossip had its fountain-head at the Differdale-Arnold home on Elm Street. I got into the automobile, assisted by the affable Owen, who insisted upon covering me up as carefully as if we were starting for a long drive.
He let me out at the butcher's, about six blocks off. I noticed that everybody seemed to know him, hailing him cordially and familiarly as we went along. Even the policeman opened the door of his little station opposite the butcher-store, and shouted a facetious greeting. I thought he said something about going to see the princess, and not to be too proud of his swell friends; to which Owen called back as he started away, that he'd introduce O'Brien to the princess as soon as she settled in the neighborhood.
Poor O'Brien, looking so straight and robust in his blue uniform! How little did he dream then under what circumstances he was to meet the Russian princess!
That morning I made the acquaintance of Mike Amadio, the Italian fruiterer and green-grocer, and of Gus Stieger, the butcher. I left my orders, stating that I would call two ​or three times a week at least for the purpose.
When I was returning, I met and recognized by their red dresses the two little Arnold girls, both of whom stuck their small noses pertly into the air at sight of a stranger, and went by me with the most impudent expressions on their faces. Had they been mine, I would have spanked them soundly for their insolence, but from what Portia had written me I felt sure their mother would commend them for having shown their "high spirits". I must add that I was so astonished at the behavior of the two children who at ten and twelve years should have known better, that I actually turned around as they passed me, distrusting my own eyes, and Minna stuck out her red tongue at me with considerable gusto.
I have always been rather glad that I did not feel anything but an itching desire to spank Minna, or I might have been conscience-stricken later on. But again, I'm getting ahead of my story. It is hard to get everything into its proper sequence, when one is looking back and can understand things that at the time seemed out of place and inexplicable.
I walked briskly back to the house without any other experiences, rang the bell, and was admitted by Fu Sing, who bowed and scraped his way backward as I entered. He informed me in his heathen dialect that "Missee" was in the "Libelly", which information I was unable to understand until my own inclinations drove me to resort to Mr. Differdale's books, there being really nothing else for me to do except read. There I found my niece lying comfortably among her silken cushions, absorbed in a black-covered volume with queer-looking circles and triangles on the cover.
She glanced up as I came in, and closed the book.
"Did you enjoy your marketing expedition? I so dislike running into Mrs. Differdale or Aurora, or those two insufferable children, that I'm coward enough to resort to the telephone," she observed lazily.
I tried to let myself down gracefully on to the cushions, and failed dismally.
"I've simply got to make some loose, flowing robes like yours, Portia," said I.
"They're ever so much more comfortable than ordinary clothes, Auntie," said my niece dreamily.
Just then I suddenly took note of a detail that had escaped my attention. It had been so becoming, and it seemed so natural to me, that I hadn't noticed it. Portia's negligee or whatever you could call it was not black nor did it have a touch of crape about it: instead, it was some kind of shimmering orchid shade over a metallic and shiny green, not mourning at all.
"Why, Portia!" I exclaimed. "You're not dressing in mourning, are you, my dear?"
She looked down at her flowing garments, regarded them quietly for a moment, then raised her eyes to mine.
"I don't believe in putting on black, Auntie, and neither did Mr. Differdale." (I realized then for the first time. that she had never called him by his first name to me.) "I do put it on to go out around Meadowlawn, for the sake of his mother and sister, who would believe otherwise that I was not showing the proper respect to his memory. I do not wish anyone to think that I am not respecting sufficiently the memory of that splendid man—but here—in the privacy of my own home, may I not relax sufficiently to permit myself the relief of this color, instead of wearing depressing black?"
"What do you wear at night, when you exercise Boris and Andrei?" I inquired. Boris and Andrei were the wolfhounds to whom I had been ​introduced that morning, and who had shown a decided disposition to be friends with me.
"I wear whatever happens to be handy," Portia answered, with a slight curl of her fine lips. "Frequently I wear riding breeches when I go out with the dogs at night, as I am freer to run that way than I would be in skirts. Of course, I try to avoid Meadowlawn people; they’d be scandalized at such a costume," she added, shrugging her shoulders.
"wen took me down to the butcher's in his automobile," I informed my niece. "He was on his way to call on a Russian princess."
PART 3
Portia sat up suddenly on her cushions, betraying a tense interest in what I was telling her.
"The Princess Tchernova?"
"He only said a Russian princess, Portia. Your butcher pointed out a very interesting house and beautifully landscaped grounds, some distance farther along the boulevard, which he told me the lady was on the point of acquiring."
"I'm sorry," Portia ejaculated, half to herself, as if in answer to some secret thought.
I regarded her with astonishment.
"Why sorry, my dear?"
"Well, really, Aunt Sophie, it would be hard to say just why I'm sorry that the Princess Irma Andreyevna Tchernova has decided to settle permanently in this neighborhood. I—I really don't like the lady."
"You have met her, then?"
"At Owen's office a couple of weeks ago. I was passing, and she was just going back to her automobile, so Owen insisted upon introducing her. She was—oh, it's quite impossible to put one's intuitions into words. She was — well, decidedly exotic, you know."
"What did she look like, Portia? Pretty?"
I began to have a faint suspicion that Portia's dislike for the Russian might be founded upon an unacknowledged jealousy.
"Pretty!" cried my niece. "She is one of the loveliest, and at the same time most evil, creatures I have ever seen in all my life."
"You haven't lived so very long," I reminded her dryly. "You're only going on twenty-five now, you know."
"She has a dead-white skin," Portia continued reminiscently. "Her mouth is like a crimson stain across that milky whiteness. Delicately flaring nostrils, like a spirited horse's. Her hair is ash-blond and she wears it drooping over her small ears, which must be low-set or they wouldn't show beneath it at all."
"I must confess I can't see what extreme loveliness there is in your Princess What-you-call-her, if she has a chalky complexion, and wide nostrils, and—"
Portia turned on me.
"I wish to heaven she weren't so exquisitely lovely!" cried she with passion. "It's not right! It's not fair, that such as she. . . . Oh, Auntie, you would have to see her to understand how fascinating she is!"
"Well, go on, Portia, and tell me more of her loveliness," I begged ironically.
"There's something about her light-hazel eyes that I can't quite understand, unless. . . . But then, I don't see how that could be possible—I mean probable," she corrected herself, vaguely.
"You are really making yourself very clear, Portia."
"I mean that when she looked down so that her eyes were in shadow, or when the shade of her wide-brimmed fur hat fell across her face, there was a warm light in her eyes that was almost, if not quite, garnet. I didn't—I don't—like that, Aunt Sophie."
"She must be an albino, if she has pink eyes," I snapped.
​“But they’re not pink. Her eyebrows, too—they’re finely penciled and several shades darker than her hair. They curve downward until they meet in a sharp angle over her thin, delicately modeled nose. She shows her teeth too much when she smiles, too,” mused my niece.
“Do you mean that she has a ‘gummy’ smile?” I insinuated.
“Oh, no, not at all. Her teeth just show a little, but they are small—and glittering white—and sharp—. She has a trick of moistening her red lips with her pointed little tongue.”
“It seems to me that you were very observant, when one considers that you’ve only met the lady on a single occasion,” I observed. “She must be almost as unpleasant as those Arnold children,” said I, recalling my encounter with those disagreeable and precocious infants.
“Her hands are slender, fascinating, with polished almond-shaped nails. I wish I could have seen enough of them in repose to have noted the length of the third fingers.”
“It sounds to me as if you thought you were on the track of something, Portia.”
“I believe I am, Auntie! The more I think of it—.”
She jumped up from her cushions, managing her flowing draperies with an easy grace that I envied, and went browsing about among the books, taking out first one, then another, and laying them aside. Afterward she brought them across the room, made a little pile beside her cushions, and sank down near by.
She began then to turn their pages so absorbedly that I went up to my own room after a little while and began to unpack my trunk, which had arrived that morning during my absence. It was just as well that I busied myself without depending upon Portia for distraction; she hardly spoke during lunch, after which she returned at once to her books, making notes here and there as she read.
It was late in the afternoon when she apparently finished whatever she was looking up. I had walked past the library door a couple of times, and peeped in to see if she was through.
She came up to my room, yawning widely.
“After more than a year of sleeping all day, it’s hard to overcome the habit,” she said, stretching luxuriously as she halted on the threshold.
“Why don’t you take a little nap?”
“Because I’m trying to keep regular hours like yours, Aunt Sophie. Still . . . . Oh, you can have no idea how much I miss Mr. Differdale! The uplift, the inspiration, of his companionship, his work! If I could only have an opportunity to talk with him right now,” said she tensely, “how thankful I’d be! He could solve my problem so quickly and easily—and I don’t know that I’m prepared to undertake his work and carry it on alone, yet.”
“For the Lord’s sake, keep away from those magic spells you’ve been telling me about, Portia Delorme!” I cried in considerable alarm.
The very idea of her raising—figuratively, if not actually—the devil, made me sick with apprehension. I thought of her late husband’s dreadful fate, and shuddered.
“Oh, don’t be afraid, Auntie. I’m not going to take any risks if I can help it. But I certainly should like to talk with him,” she finished musingly.
At this juncture Fu Sing came trotting up into the hallway to remark that the automobile of the honorable Mr. Edwardes was without, and that the honorable Mr. Edwardes wanted to know if the distinguished ladies wouldn’t like a little spin up the boulevard to the bay, as the day was so springlike.
​My niece was very much pleased, I could see, but she sent back word that she regretted that her work had piled up so that she couldn’t take advantage of Mr. Edwardes’ kind offer, but that her aunt would be delighted to accept. I was provoked with her. but then . . . how were other people to know that the marriage between herself and Howard Differdale was nothing but a business partnership? At least, she owed him the respect of not entertaining the attentions of another suitor for a few months.
Owen (he would have it that I must call him that) had the diplomacy to make me feel that my presence was what he had particularly desired. He tucked me in warmly and we went rolling along up the boulevard. We didn’t talk much, for there was really very little to say, but he had the faculty of making you think that he was all the time considering your comfort. If I had married, I should have liked a husband like Owen. I thought to myself, that if this attitude was sincere. he ought to make a mighty agreeable husband for someone, and couldn't help wondering just what Portia was going to do with him, for that he was at her disposal I hadn’t the slightest doubt.
At a point where the boulevard turned into Bayside Avenue, he stopped the car, so that I could enjoy the sight of the sun glittering on the waters of the bay. I leaned back, drinking in deep drafts of the balmy air with its promise of spring. A limousine with a fur-swathed chauffeur drew up alongside and Owen took off his hat, smiling that irresistible smile of his. The occupant of the other car pressed a button, and then leaned across the opening made by the dropped window-glass.
It was a woman, swathed in rich furs so completely that at first sight I could hardly distinguish more than the warm glitter of her eyes. At sight of them, I recalled Portia’s description of the Russian princess, for those eyes glowed with a ruddy gleam that certainly made them seem garnets in the deep shadow of the enveloping sables.
“Ah. Ow-een, how charming, this so-spring day!” trilled the woman’s voice blithely, with a little thrilling undernote of rich meaning that made my backbone stiffen involuntarily. . . That woman called him “Owen!” And with what an intonation!
“Aunt Sophie,” at once exclaimed Owen, with a possessive air as he indicated me to the occupant of the limousine, “permit me to present the Princess Tchernova. My adopted aunt, Miss Sophie Delorme.”
The princess pushed out slender, taper-tipped fingers with pretty impulsiveness. She appeared to take it for granted that she must be very much persona grata with anybody whom she chose to honor with her friendship.
“Ah, now I begin to feel myself so happy, with Ow-een’s dear Aunt Sophie for a friend!” she exclaimed with what in any other woman would have been called gush, but was only delightfully friendly coming from her. “In my new home, I shall not be lonely, for I have the good friends about me, already, is it not? Yes, Ow-een?”
“Right, princess,” my escort said heartily.
She thrust that slender white arm yet farther from the protecting furs and laid her outstretched fingers possessively on Owen’s sleeve. My eyes followed the motion, as I thought to myself that the princess was either much interested in the young man or was a finished coquette. And then I ascertained an interesting fact, one that I felt would prove highly entertaining for Portia; the third finger of that patrician hand was so much longer than the middle and index ​fingers that it amounted to an abnormality.
“Ow-een, have I not tell you that you must say the friendly ‘Irma’ to me, not the cold ‘princess’? Ah. bad boy, how fast you forget a woman’s words! It is doleful, is it not. chère Aunt Sophie?”
I jerked my eyes away from that strange hand with an effort, and met her keen glance. I knew immediately that she had seen and understood my absorption. She withdrew the hand with a slow, caressing movement, half smiling at me meantime with an odd significance that made me hot all over for some reason. First of all, I was displeased at her calling me aunt; even for a woman of her undeniable charm and aristocracy, it was an unwarrantable liberty. And then her expression when she smiled! I could not explain why, but it was as if she had suddenly taken me into her confidence in some secret matter in which she expected my tacit acquiescence and approval.
I could not reply to her implied expectancy of an affirmative answer; my blood must have flushed my face noticeably, for she all at once turned her gaze from me with a glitter of those hazel eyes, which now seemed almost green as she leaned away from her sables and out into the sunlight. Her lips parted, ever so little, disclosing sharp white teeth, beautifully regular. I suppose most people would have said that her smile was charming, but I know that when she smiled at me I felt only a dreadful sinking feeling, a kind of growing terror, blind terror at I knew not what. I leaned back in the automobile with a sickness in my heart that suddenly took all the beauty out of that delightful day.
“I could not resist to look at the new home, Ow-een,” purred the princess, drawing her furs about her sinuous body with the hand that she now kept hidden beneath those luxurious folds. “I have already send the furnitures, so that I may live here, with my so-dear friends close by—soon—soon.”
How those words lingered on her red, red lips! An involuntary shudder gripped me and made me tremble. I felt premonitions of evil; shook them off angrily; felt them return stronger than before at the princess’ little side glance at me, a glance half amused, wholly tolerant, as of one who knew her innate powers but disdained to use them upon so entirely insignificant an individual. She moistened her full crimson lips with a pointed little tongue and addressed herself again to Owen.
“When I make the house-warm, my Ow-een, you will be my guest? And the beautiful Mrs. Differdale? And of course, the chère Aunt Sophie.”
Delicate raillery sounded in her well-modulated voice. She sank back languidly into the brocaded interior of her car, nodded her head like a queen dismissing her court, and was whirled away.
Owen drew a deep breath and turned to me, eyes sparkling.
“Some princess, eh. Aunt Sophie? The Princess Irma Andreyevna Tchernova. Isn’t she a wonder? Won’t it wake things up to have her in the neighborhood? She and Portia ought to be great friends, don’t you think? Two such brilliant women,” he went on fatuously.
I was furious. I suppose I showed it in my voice and manner. I remarked coldly that the princess had not impressed me especially as being anything but a finished coquette. Of course I should not have said that; men are proverbially obtuse where pretty women are concerned, and Owen was no exception to the rule.
“Why, Aunt Sophie!” he gasped, evidently astonished at my bitter attack upon the Princess Tchernova.
​“Don’t ‘Aunt Sophie’ me, young man!” I responded, somewhat tartly. “I have no intention of being an aunt to everybody in this vicinity.”
I regretted my abruptness the moment I had spoken, for Owen turned genuinely hurt eyes to me.
“Do you really mind my calling you ‘Aunt’?” he asked.
“I don’t mind you,” I qualified, “but I don’t see why that—that Russian should call me ‘Aunt’.”
He smiled.
“I’m glad you don’t mind me, Aunt Sophie, for I want you to know that I’m hoping, some day, really to be your nephew.”
His dark gray eyes sparkled and his lips compressed determinedly as he looked honestly into my eyes.
I couldn’t help it. I leaned forward and patted the arm that lay across the seat in front of me. Owen did an odd thing for an American; he caught up my hand and touched his lips to it very gently. Then he started up the car and without any further conversation we turned back, for a slightly chilly wind was springing up.
When he helped me out, he took both my hands in his and stood for a moment without speaking, his eyes on mine. Then, “Be my friend with Portia, Aunt Sophie,” he said in a low voice, dropped my hands and went away without looking back.
Portia was sleeping when I returned, and did not waken until long after dinner, which I had to eat alone, as Fu Sing managed to explain that my niece had given orders not to be disturbed. She came into the library about 10 o’clock that night, just when I was telling myself that I ought to go to bed. She was looking especially beautiful, it appeared to me; a wholesome beauty that did my heart good, not that exotic, evil loveliness possessed by the Russian.
“Well, Aunt Sophie, did you and Owen have a heart-to-heart talk this afternoon, and get things nicely settled?”
Her question brought my eyes smartly to her mischievous face.
“Portia Delorme!” (I never could remember her married name to say it at the proper times.) “Just what do you mean to insinuate?”
“Oh, nothing, Auntie.”
But she laughed as she flung herself across a pile of cushions opposite me.
“If you really want to know,” I said with dignity, “that young man is deeply interested in you.”
Portia fumbled with the tassels that adorned her negligee, eyes downcast.
“I’m not so sure of that, Auntie. He’s—he’s been rather taken up by the Princess Tchernova since she’s been haunting his office of late.”
“She’s nothing but a client,” I reminded her.
And then there flashed into my mind a picture of the Princess Irma’s slender white hand, with that strange finger.
“Portia, she has the oddest hand I’ve ever seen. Her third finger is so long that—”
“Aunt Sophie, are you sure?”
My niece had suddenly grown extraordinarily grave. She sat up among the cushions stiffly, her lips parted tensely.
I described the Russian’s hand minutely. I tried, rather stumblingly, to impart the impression (so fleeting, so vague, but so definitely unpleasant) that her intimate smile had made upon me, and finished by saying with considerable acidity that she was the most perfect specimen of finished flirt I had ever met.
Portia, who had listened without interrupting me while I described the princess’ hand, suddenly flashed into vivid life at my last words.
“Ah! And Owen? I mean, how does it appear to him? Does he—is ​he letting that—that creature beguile him?”
It was so natural, that touch of woman’s jealousy. that I felt like smiling, but controlled my features by an effort.
“Owen Edwardes is a young man whom it would be hard to persuade into believing evil of any woman.” I told Portia thoughtfully.
“In other words. Owen is letting that woman fool him with her studied wiles? Oh. and I can do nothing, quite nothing! I am tied down, quite helplessly, by the respect I owe to Mr. Differdale’s memory!”
“Why, Portia, is it as bad as all that?” I said stupidly, as I saw her fling out clenched hands with a gesture of desperation.
She laughed shortly, recovering her poise as abruptly as she just had lost it.
“Yes, Aunt Sophie, it’s as bad as that,” she echoed. “I love him. I loved him from the time we first met. But—”
“You loved him, and yet let your wretched work come between you?” I exclaimed reproachfully. I may be an old maid, but I could not appreciate my niece’s strange attitude.
Portia turned her grave face upon me.
“You see, Aunt Sophie, you don’t entirely understand the nature of the work Mr. Differdale was doing. If you did, I’m sure you would have been the first to advise me to sacrifice even thing else in the world for just that.”
Her voice rang with earnestness, but I shook my head slowly. I had to admit that I couldn’t conceive of any work that would be so important as to be allowed to stand between two eminently suitable young people who cared for each other as I felt she and Owen cared.
“You see, you don’t understand,” Portia repeated insistently, “And then, later on, I married—and it was too late.”
“And now, you’re so particular to pay public respect to a man who wasn’t your husband, only your business partner, that you cannot even give Owen the satisfaction of some kind of an understanding, so that he won’t be on pins and needles during the months of your—widowhood!”
I suppose I did say that in a very nasty manner. I couldn’t help it. I was exasperated with Portia. But she did not seem angry at my words or my manner. Instead, she began fussing again with a tassel.
“I suppose I might do something like that,” she admitted.
I was jubilant.
“Of course, you know I cannot be seen with him in public for some time to come, and it wouldn’t be wise to have him calling here for a while yet,” she went on, musingly.
“You’re thinking of that old Differdale female, aren’t you? And your husband’s sister? And the rest of the Meadowlawn gossips? Shame on you, Portia Delorme!”
She laughed right out then.
“You’re an incorrigible matchmaker, aren’t you, Auntie? Well,” she added lightly, “we’ll see what can be done in the matter.”
“I’m going to bed,” I said shortly, rather disgusted at the indifferent way in which she seemed to take things. “You can stay here and laugh over that boy’s love, if you wish.”
“Aunt Sophie, I’ve got other things to do than sneer at the honest love of a man whom I—of whom I think as highly as I do of Owen. I’ve been sleeping this afternoon because I’ve work to do tonight, and it’s time now that I began it. Fu Sing is fixing me something to eat, and then—”
“You’re going to do that—that—?”
“Auntie, don’t you realize that Mr. Differdale was taken away just at the ​zenith of his powers and knowledge, with his work unfinished? I’ve got to carry it on; it’s up to me. Especially since the Princess Inna Andreyevna Tchernova is going to settle in this neighborhood.”
So stern, so uncompromising was her intonation, that I got right up off my cushions, kissed her a bit timidly, and scooted up to my room. Yes, scooted is the right word; I felt that my room was going to be a haven of refuge for me that night, as far as possible from the open courtyard where Portia might later be carrying on her strange performances.
I couldn’t help thinking, as I put my hair into crimpers (Portia likes it better waved and it’s quite the same to me) that my niece was going a little too far in her jealousy of the beautiful foreigner. A coquette the princess might be, but now that I tried to look at the matter without prejudice, if she were infatuated with Owen, it was no one’s business but her own if she attempted to win his affection. Of course, as Portia’s friend I didn’t want the princess to succeed, but if Owen were to prefer Irma to Portia, and Portia didn’t feel like lifting a finger to hold him, then it was Portia’s loss and Irma’s gain.
I went to bed, wondering only what my niece would be doing throughout the long night hours. I had my suspicions. As for me, I slept splendidly, in spite of a heavy electrical storm that must have come up in the middle of the night, for when I went to the market the following morning, there were traces of the destruction wrought, such as many trees with broken boughs. One telegraph pole and all the wires attached to it lay across the side street running parallel with Gilman street.
Gus Stieger, Portia’s estimable if expensive butcher, beamed happily at me as I waited for him to finish a big order he was just preparing.
“Let it wait, let it wait, ma’am. I’m just cutting off the tough pieces”—he winked atrociously—“for the Russian lady’s wolves. That’s sure going to be fine business.”
“The Russian lady’s wolves?” I echoed, somewhat at a loss, until the truth flashed across me and I interpreted his facetiousness aright. “Oh, you mean the Princess Tchernova, don’t you?”
“Uh-huh. She’s movin’ today into that there big house and she’s brought a cage with five big gray wolves, for pets.”
A huge laugh widened his good-natured mouth.
“Ain’t, that a good one, though?” he added. “Wolves for pets!”
I gave him my order and went over to the grocer’s. Mike Amadio appeared somewhat disgruntled, and upon inquiry I found that he was as disgusted and disappointed in the newcomer as Gus had been delighted.
“No bread! No sugar! No butter! No eggs!” mourned Mike with expressive hands a-spread in gesticulation. “No salads! No vegetables! What does the lady eat, I want to know? Meat!” disgustedly. “Just meat—and meat—and meat! Red, bloody meat! Like a savage, that proud lady, she eats nothing but meat. Gus has told me what quantities he sends to her where she has been boarding. Pounds and pounds of bloody meat every day!”
“Perhaps she has some savage Russian pets, Mike,” I suggested.
Evidently Mike had not thought of this. He nodded with sullen acquiescence, but I could see that he was much disgruntled. It was apparent that the tradesmen in Meadowlawn had been making their plans with regard to the newcomer and were being sadly disappointed. It seemed that the Princess Tchernova was not a tremendously large ​consumer of fancy groceries, greens, or dairy products.
“Two servants,” grumbled Mike, selecting romaine for my order. “A big man who goes around in a fur coat like a walking bear. And an old woman with bare feet, signorina. Bare feet!”
PART 4
I told Portia when I got home (she came out at my entrance, heavy-eyed from loss of sleep) about Mike’s complaints, merely as indicative of the attitude of the tradespeople, and as a matter of humorous interest. To my surprize she appeared to take it seriously, questioning me about the item of the meat and the lack of other staples such as salt and sugar with a pointed interest that roused my curiosity.
Fu Sing brought in a tray with a light salad and a pot of tea, and Portia ordered it taken into the library, where she let herself down wearily upon a pile of cushions, her odd breakfast on a tabouret in front of her.
“I wish I were a man,” she remarked, poking aimlessly at the salad. “I mean, of course, a man like Mr. Differdale. It is very hard for a woman, especially for me, feeling as I do about Owen, to undertake what I fear must be undertaken, now that the Princess Irma has actually come to stay in Meadowland. I doubt my own powers. I fear my own impulses. I would give anything—anything—for a talk with him.”
I knew whom she meant by that “him”; she was referring to the man who had given her his name that he might carry on his work uninterruptedly, a thing that I could not help regarding as a stupendous piece of egotism, no matter what my niece thought about it.
“You see,” went on Portia, her smooth brow crinkling a bit as she looked up to meet my eyes with frank sincerity, “people will think I’m jealous, and Aunt Sophie, you must believe me with all your heart when I tell you I’m not jealous. That is, not as people interpret jealousy. No, if Owen can be happier with another woman, I would be the first to wish him joy. I love him enough for that. But—oh, it must not be Irma Andreyevna Tchernova! No, no!”
The sudden passion in her voice, the actual horror that now writhed across her tortured face, startled me.
“Why, Portia, my dear! Whatever put the princess into your mind as a rival?” I said stupidly.
She stared at me for a minute without speaking.
“It’s my opinion that the princess is just an idle woman who is looking for a flirtation to pass away the time. She’s the type of woman who wants a good-looking man always hanging about her, Portia. I don’t think she’s really interested in Owen.”
“Oh, these unutterably narrowminded Meadowlawn people!” cried my niece, suddenly veering about in another direction. “If only they were not so contemptibly small-minded! If they would only not believe me disrespectful to Mr. Differdale’s memory, I should be free to let Owen put his ring on my finger. Then—perhaps—that woman—”
“My dear Portia, why don’t you tell Owen that you are willing to be engaged to him, privately, until such time as the proprieties would consider it good form to announce the engagement publicly?”
“Aunt Sophie! If I am going to be engaged to Owen, I’m not going to hide it from the world as if I were ashamed of our love. I won’t carry on a clandestine love affair. No, no! There ought to be some other way.”
​She poured herself another cup of tea.
“You and I are going to take a walk with Boris and Andrei tonight” she said, all at once, as if she had made up her mind to something. “We’ll go up across the subway bridge back of the house, and down by the old Burnham place which the princess has taken. Wolves for pets—it’s strange.”
Her inferences left me deeply stirred. It was if she had made a conclusion that she could not put into words. She did not mention the matter again, changing the subject to one of summer clothes, which she thought we’d better be thinking about soon, for spring would shortly be upon us.
After breakfast, Portia went to her room, leaving me again to my own devices. I began to realize that I was going to be very much alone, and that it might be wise on my part to associate myself with some church in the vicinity, in order to form a little circle of acquaintances. I thought it would only be decent, under the circumstances, for me to make a little call on Mrs. Differdale and her , and make the inquiry of them; they would undoubtedly be fully advised as to what churches were nearest, and what their denominations were. About half past 3 o’clock, then, I went out, leaving word with Fu Sing (Portia had apparently gone to sleep again to make up for her night’s wakefulness) that I would return about 5.
When I walked up Elm Street, Mrs. Differdale stood on the porch steps, wrapped in a shawl. In the cellar-area, holding a pair of her husband’s old trousers about her head, the suspenders dangling strangely about her ears, stood Aurora Arnold, absorbedly listening to Gus Stieger. When Mrs. Arnold caught sight of me, she rightly inferred that I was about to call, and disappeared into the cellar with her interesting and original head-dress hastily pulled down out of sight. Her mother did not see me until I was almost at the foot of the steps. I could hear Gus plainly.
“Meat. Great hunks of bloody meat, she orders for the wolves,” he was saying with unction. “Big gray fellows they are, that snarl and bare their yellow teeth at you. I’ll say I’d hate to be near if one of ’em got out. How do, Miss Delorme?”
He touched his hat hastily, crossed to the curb, mounted his bicycle and rode away.
“Come right in, dear Miss Delorme,” Mrs. Differdale hastened to say cordially. “You’ll excuse my hair being in curlers, and my boudoir cap. I know. There’s a church sociable tonight, and you know, it’s one’s duty to look one’s best in the house of the Lord.”
As she ushered me in at the front door, her daughter rushed up the front stairs precipitately. She did not meet my eyes and I pretended not to have seen her. She was certainly a sight, curlers sticking out all over her head, and those trousers legs hanging down over her shoulders, suspenders dangling.
“Go right into the parlor, and I’ll call Aurora down, Miss Delorme. So glad you came of your own accord,” declared Mrs. Differdale, somewhat ambiguously I thought, “without waiting for a formal invitation. I did have some ironing to do, but perhaps it will be much better for me to sit here with you and chat. I can iron tonight. Oh, I forgot, there’s the sociable. Well, tomorrow will have to do,” she added graciously.
I hated to sit down, after what seemed to me hardly a cordial welcome.
“I’m really in a great hurry,” I prevaricated. “I just ran in to see if you could advise me what church is ​nearest here, and what denomination it is.”
“There’s a Lutheran church three blocks away; that’s the nearest. But I don’t think you’d enjoy the preacher, really; he’s egotistical. "When people give him clever suggestions about building up membership and so forth, he quite scorns them. Then there’s a Presbyterian church five blocks up the boulevard. Aurora and I go there. We find the people very congenial, and so appreciative of our efforts to build up the church. And our minister is such a nice little chap, not at all above listening to our advice when we try to help him with suggestions. Aurora! Why don’t you come down? We might give Miss Delorme a cup of tea.”
“I’ll be down as soon as I get my hair fixed,” called back the younger woman, in a far from agreeable voice.
“Please don’t make any tea for me,” I murmured, getting to my feet hurriedly. “I must return at once. I really must. I don’t want to interrupt your ironing, and I have much to do myself.”
Mrs. Differdale did not try to detain me.
“I know just how that is,” she said with a very discernible effort to be agreeable. “I won’t detain you, of course.” Then with a sudden lowering of her voice: “Did you hear about the Princess Tchernova’s five wolves?”
“Oh, are there five?” I murmured.
“Five great savage wolves,” affirmed Mrs. Differdale, the soiled boudoir cap bobbing in asseveration. “And the quantities of meat they consume is simply unbelievable. One might almost suspect that the whole household ate nothing but meat,” she finished with gusto, her eyes rolling.
“I believe Gus Stieger is pleased with his new customer,” I offered, lightly.
“Naturally, Miss Delorme. But if she weren’t keeping those wolves well penned up in a strong cage on her grounds, one would feel nervous about having such a menagerie in the neighborhood. They must be frightful, ferocious beasts.” she shuddered.
Just as we reached the front hall, Mrs. Arnold came down the stairs. She had removed the white curl-papers and her unnaturally crimped hair lay in ropy locks across her forehead. A sweater of brilliant rose-color concealed part of a not especially fresh blouse.
“I met the princess this morning, mother,” said Aurora, with an affected air. “She’s really very charming. I had both girls with me, and she admired them so much. She says she simply adores children, and begged me to let her have them over to spend an afternoon with her when she’s settled. She was so attracted to Minna. But she told me that she thought Alice needed a more fattening diet, that the child was growing too fast and getting too thin. She is certainly a delightful person,” declared Aurora, with a genteel simper.
“She said she wanted us to be over to tea some time, didn't she, Aurora?” Mrs. Differdale added, with a poorly done attempt at indifference. I could just feel her sense of importance at having thus been singled out of the entire community for this signal honor.
“How lovely!” I said hypocritically, and made my escape with difficulty after all, for both women pursued me out on to the piazza, talking about the Princess Tchernova’s beauty, her charm, her wealth, her poise, the social importance of her settling upon Meadowlawn as a place of permanent residence.
As I turned up Gilman Street on my way home, I saw the princess’ limousine standing outside Owen’s little office, the chauffeur muffled almost to the eyes in shaggy gray fur. I had sufficient curiosity—perhaps on ​account of my interest in Owen, for Portia’s sake—to walk past the office before crossing. I glanced at the chauffeur as I went by, and was simply aghast at the fierceness of his black eyes; he looked to be a veritable Tartar, as he stared unseeingly past me into Owen’s office, where the princess sat comfortably enough in a chair near the flat-top desk behind which Owen was ensconced.
The Russian leaned forward, plucking at the same time something from the bosom of her dress. She stretched out slim white arms from the ermine wrap that swathed her lissom figure, and I distinctly saw her fasten something to Owen’s coat lapel. It made me feel furious again on Portia’s account.
I crossed the road, in front of the limousine. The chauffeur’s inscrutable black eyes snapped with such ferocity at the pretty little scene that I actually jumped when he ground out—so explosively, with such concentrated fury that it sent cold chills down my spinal column—what sounded like “Volko Dlak!” The sounds stuck so tenuously in my memory that when I got into the house (about half past 4 it was, then) and met Portia, dressed in one of her lovely, clinging, colorful negligees, I asked her at once what the words could be, and articulated them painstakingly for her.
She stared at me for a moment, uncomprehending. Then the soft color began to fade out of her cheeks.
“Not two words, just one,” she said, her smooth brow contracting, a strained expression on her face that had grown strangely serious. “I’m afraid that what he said was ‘volkodlak’.”
“You seem to recognize the word phonetically, Portia. Was it Russian? I didn’t know you were acquainted with that tongue.”
“It was Russian, Aunt Sophie. No, I’m not particularly up in that language, except in the case of a few words, or combinations of words, which I’ve had occasion to learn during my work with Mr. Differdale. That particular word I know. I wish it had been anything else,” she finished somberly. “Don’t ask me about it just now, please, Auntie. I’m in no mood to discuss Russian or any other language. But I would like to know just why that chauffeur said that,” she finished, musingly.
“It’s my opinion that he was fearfully upset about something,” I contributed. “Do you suppose that he was disgusted to be kept waiting there while milady pinned flowers in Owen’s buttonhole?”
There! The cat was out of the bag. I hadn’t intended to bother Portia with that, but it just slipped out, inadvertently. I could have bitten off my tongue when she turned her slow gaze upon me as if to verify with her eyes what her ears had heard.
“The Princess Tchernova was pinning a flower on Owen’s coat? You saw that? Oh, it is infamous! And I must stand by and do nothing!” burst out my niece. Her feeling seemed to me all out of proportion to the offence. “Yet—I must save him, somehow.”
She wrung her hands tensely, then with a sudden change of front, took a strong grip on herself and laughed, albeit rather an apology of a laugh.
“Let’s have dinner, Aunt Sophie. I think perhaps I worked too late last night and didn’t sleep enough today. It’s made me irritable. A brisk walk with Boris and Andrei will do me good tonight, after dinner—wake me up a bit, perhaps.”
“Oh, Portia, you’re not going to work again tonight?” I began, when she silenced me with a single high look.
“Aunt Sophie, when the Bible told us to watch and pray, it should have added, and work, lest we fall into the clutches of such foul evil as the human brain can hardly conceive. Come, ​let’s have dinner. Fu must have it ready.”
We ate in almost complete silence. I could see that my niece was more than ordinarily abstracted, so I did not try to make conversation, merely replying to such queries as she put to me from time to time.
“What kind of flower was it that the princess pinned on Owen?”
I did not know. I had been too far away to see what it was. And then, while I searched my store of subjective impressions, I remembered that I had seen in the limousine, in passing, a vase of full-blown yellow marigolds.
Portia appeared disturbed again, out of all proportion, when I told her my impression, remarking that I didn’t understand how an aristocratic woman like the princess could bear the acrid, pungent odor of those old-fashioned flowers, which are all very well for decorative purposes in flowerbeds. but hardly sweet-perfumed enough for a fastidious woman’s taste.
“I mustn’t lose my grip on myself. I mustn't. I mustn’t,” Portia repeated several times.
I thought she must be very tired indeed to let such a trivial incident trouble her so deeply, but laid it to her love for Owen and her fear of losing him.
PART 5
After dinner my niece told me she was going to put on outdoor clothes and I had better change into something darker than the light gray tailored suit I had worn with my fox-furs that afternoon. When she came into my room, she wore riding breeches under a three-quarters rough tweed overcoat. Boris and Andrei leapt repeatedly upon her, overjoyed with the prospect of an outside run, which they understood they were to have when they saw leashes and a short whip in their mistress’ leather-gauntleted hands.
“Will you take Boris, Aunt Sophie? Boris is easier to manage, I think. You’d best take the whip, too. I shan’t need it with Andrei. In fact, I shouldn’t need it at all, both dogs are so accustomed to immediate obedience to my voice. You may possibly be obliged to use it as a persuasive for Boris, who isn’t entirely used to you yet.”
She leashed the hounds and gave Boris over to me, and we went out into the quiet night. The plan was to walk up Gilman Street in the opposite direction from Queens Boulevard, and return past the old Burnham house.
Portia seemed worked up about something. I presumed she was still thinking about the Russian and the flower in Owen’s buttonhole, so I remained silent rather than to appear cognizant of her thoughts. Presently, however, as we turned to the left, I asked her if we had any special objective, apart from walking past the Burnham house. I could feel her eyes upon me in the soft darkness.
“We’re going to take a little walkabout the Burnham grounds, Aunt Sophie. I want to see—I want—oh, it’s very hard to explain! You may think it dreadful of me—but—Auntie, you’ve just got to trust me, that’s all. I’ve got to go into the princess’ grounds. I’ve got to look into her windows, if I get a chance. I can’t explain everything now, but my reason is very important, more than I can possibly tell you. Won't you trust me, please?”
Her voice was so entreating that I felt my heart pushing the words of assent to my tongue’s tip. After all, Portia was my niece. She cared for Owen Edwardes. I really could not believe that the Russian, so exotic and bizarre a creature, could have become in reality fascinated by a young man who was, after all, just a good-looking, healthy young American business man. If the princess did not care for him, then she only wanted to flirt, to ​pass away some idle moments in what to her was only a pastime. I ranged myself on Portia's side immediately, feeling that my niece was being urged by some motive bigger than mere feminine jealousy, and that she would make this clear to me in good time.
"Portia, my dear, you do just what you think is best. I can't say I'm especially attracted to the princess. And," I added, my heart suddenly warming pleasantly at the recollection, "I like the way Owen calls me Aunt Sophie!"
Portia came close to my side, reached out her free hand, and gave my arm a caress that meant more than words. I felt that she understood what a strong ally she had in Sophie Delorme.
By the time we reached the grounds of the princess' house, the dogs had quieted down a little from the exuberant spirits they had shown during the first part of our walk, when they had pulled at their leashes wildly. It may have been fancy, but I felt that Boris showed distinct reluctance to enter the grounds of the Russian's house, grounds full of deep, dark shadows from the shrubbery that would be so beautiful in summer but that now seemed terrifyingly like hideous, ragged-garbed skeletons in the dim light of the stars.
"Auntie," whispered my niece guardedly, although we were far enough from the house to have spoken loudly without having been overheard, "will you take Andrei's leash, please, and wait for me here? I'm going into the grounds and I can see that the dogs won't be pleased to accompany me."
"I don't want you to go alone," I whispered back, suddenly oppressed with a disinclination to remain there myself alone, where every bush seemed a skulking beast ready to spring out upon me. I was ashamed, but I preferred going with Portia into I knew not what, to remaining alone.
"Well, we can try it with the dogs, but I'm afraid they won't come, Aunt Sophie."
We experienced no particular trouble, however. Keeping close to the hedge that bordered the path to the rear of the house, Portia and I walked cautiously along with Boris and Andrei held tightly and close to us, until we had reached the house. There were lights in front, and I felt Portia’s hand drawing me in the direction of the drawing room windows. We managed to get behind a great scrawny bush that scattered the light streaming from one as yet uncurtained French window. (I have since wondered at the carelessness of the princess that night in exposing her intimate home life to the curious eye of the midnight prowler. At any rate, the following day curtains hung at all the windows and were drawn at dusk.)
The scene within the great drawing room was a lively one. The princess, glittering and shimmering in a gown of some clinging green metallic cloth, reclined on a heap of what appeared to be rich rugs thrown over piled cushions. A band of gold set with diamonds flashed about her head and from it hung a square diamond by a link, so that it flashed with dazzling rainbow splendor as she turned her head from side to side. Her garments clung about her as if they had been molded to her supple form and were indeed a part of her own personality.
She was evidently directing the arrangement of draperies and furniture in her new home. As she directed, long white arms and pointed fingers glittering with flashing gems, the chauffeur and a bent old woman hurried hither and thither to carry out her orders.
The chauffeur was a handsome fellow in a heavy way, and apparently deeply attached to his mistress, to ​judge from the solicitous manner in which he carried out her commands.
The woman (I learned later that her name was Agathya) was much older than her mistress, who might have been any age from sixteen to forty, so vivid and strange was her exotic loveliness. Agathya looked about sixty. She had straggling gray hair, drawn tightly back into a bunch at the top of her head. Her face was deeply lined, her eyes roving, her manner shrinking and servile. She wore a dark brown one-piece dress, girdled by a brown silk cord, and was barefooted. Her stooped shoulders made her appear of medium height, but I think Agathya would have been a tall woman had she thrown back her shoulders and stood upright.
These two people approached their mistress with attitudes so entirely different that it was like watching a drama on a stage to look through that wide window and see them; the man with a proud kind of watchful anxiety to please, the woman seemingly half terrorized, trembling and shrinking every time the princess addressed her.
"Portia, I believe that poor old woman is ill-treated," I whispered, as we saw Agathya shrink backward at a sudden motion of the Russian’s hand toward her.
I had hardly said it before something happened in the lighted room. The old woman, attempting to place a vase upon the tall mantel shelf, miscalculated, slipped, and to save herself let the vase go. It fell, crashing, to the tiled hearth. Agathya did not rise from the crumpled, shrunken heap into which she had huddled her body.
The Princess Irma rose, however. She flew out of the pile of cushions, her face transformed by fury. She ran over to that prostrate figure crouching there. She stood over it for a moment, saying something that we could not hear, nor could we have understood her Russian had we heard. Then she thrust out a small foot shod with a buckled shoe, the heel of which sparkled with brilliants, and gave that poor old woman's form a harsh push that sent Agathya sliding across the hearth. Nor did it end there. The Russian snatched at something that had been lying on the mantel, and lifted one arm high over the poor creature who now began to struggle upward, with lifted hands and arms over her face.
From my reading I recognized the instrument that the princess wielded as a knout, and felt sick at what was apparently about to happen. But the man came springing across the room to her side. He leaned down with careless indifference to the princess' rage and helped Agathya to her feet. Then he turned and began to talk to his mistress, who listened with head thrown back, eyes flashing redly upon him. Her arm dropped; she let the knout slip from her jeweled fingers, and laughed. Her begemmed hand motioned away Agathya, who slunk from the room, head bowed, shoulders bent, like one in mortal fear.
"Sergei! Sergei!" I could hear the princess cry out clearly, between trills of gurgling laughter that I rather saw than heard. She put out her hand to him, with an inimitably gracious gesture, and he caught it to his lips, sinking to one knee as he kissed it with passionate abandon. She withdrew it then, with a kind of indifference, leaned over, passed her cheek lightly across his upturned, adoring face. At that, he flung himself flat upon the rugs at her feet, and I could see that he was putting her dress to his lips as he almost groveled there.
So quick had been the little drama that neither Portia nor I had a chance to interchange a word, but now Portia pulled at me, and I wakened to ​the realization that it was not my niece alone who was drawing me from the vicinity of that lighted window, but Boris, who tugged at his leash, whimpering softly. I let myself be drawn away, and followed Portia until we emerged from the path that led to Queens Boulevard, down which we went in the direction of home.
"The man's mad over her!" exploded Portia, as we regained the boulevard. "Now I can account for his exclamation. He was furious with jealousy, and his position as her chauffeur restrained him from interrupting her flirtation with Owen. In that moment he forgot himself and said what he would not have breathed, had he known that you had such a keen car and such a good memory. Oh, I begin to see! I begin to understand!"
"The poor old woman!" I exclaimed indignantly. "Why does she remain with such a cruel mistress?"
"A serf, perhaps. Or an old nurse. Such a woman will bear all kinds of abuse from the mistress who was once a child she nurtured at her breast," explained Portia.
Just then we passed the lower end of the princess’ grounds, and both dogs began behaving uneasily. Boris pulled and twisted at his leash so that I had hard work to hold him in; Andrei sniffed and whined.
"I wonder—" murmured Portia. Then, as if with a sudden thought that did not affect her agreeably, she said in a low, cautiously modulated voice, "The quicker we get home the better. The dogs are so uneasy that it disturbs me. Suppose that cage of wolves happened to be less strong than I hope it is?"
The supposition certainly was one to lend wings to our feet. I said immediately, "Let's run, Portia!"
"Can you?" answered she, as if gratified. "Come on, then!"
The dogs pulled us strongly toward home, the moment they found we were going to race them. We passed the Burnham house grounds at a run and went tearing along the boulevard toward Gilman Street in a way that surely would have ruined any reputation for dignity either of us might have hoped to sustain in the neighborhood, had we been seen. Fortunately we met no one, the night being very crisp and sharp. Too, we kept to the farther side of the street from the lamps, which are in front of the store-block only, the other side of the boulevard being as yet nothing but wide fields, except for the Burnham house.
We reached home out of breath; even the dogs were panting hard. After Portia unleashed them, they seemed quite contented to walk sedately beside us when we went up to our rooms, instead of leaping up playfully as they usually did. Boris insisted upon sleeping on the fur rug in my room that night; perhaps because he felt we were better acquainted after our long run together that evening. As for Andrei, he accompanied Portia to her room, where both dogs usually slept nightly on a rug before her door. She left him there, and half an hour later passed my door on her way to the laboratory, wearing a black silk bungalow apron, I should call it, with a girdle of silk cord. Portia called it her working uniform.
My sleep was broken that night. Twice I waked with the uncomfortable feeling that I was not alone in the room, and turned on the electric light quickly to find nothing but the dog, which lifted wide open eyes to me. It was as if some malign influence had come with me from the old Burnham house. I think Portia looked upon it from another standpoint, for when I mentioned it to her at lunch she looked rather serious and observed that she really shouldn’t have exposed me to those influences without preparation. Evidently she was of the ​opinion that I was open to psychic powers that had either followed me from the princess’ house, or had escaped from Portia’s magical circles in the courtyard! I laughed at her solemnly, but her grave expression was rather disquieting.
"There's a great deal going on that I cannot explain to you just now, Auntie." she said earnestly. "I hope that the necessity for explanation will never come, but I fear my hope is vain."
Fu sing came rather hurriedly into the room as we were rising from the table, with the information that Mr. Edwardes was on the wire. There was an extension in the hall just off the dining room and I could hear my niece's voice distinctly.
"Yes, this is Portia Differdale. Oh, yes, Owen. What? My dogs loose last night? Impossible! What? The princess saw them? Really. Owen, I—I don't know what to say. Aunt Sophie and I had both dogs out with us last night, on the leash, and we didn’t let them away from us once."
All at once her voice sounded pleading.
"Owen, as a favor to me, please don't mention that my dogs were out last night. Deny it, please, in my name. I—I have a special reason for my request. Thank you, dear friend."
She rang off and came to rejoin me in the dining room. Her eyes were alight with the fire of purpose. Her whole bearing had become invested with a dignity, a force, that reminded me of the tone of some of her letters to me after her marriage with Mr. Differdale.
"Aunt Sophie, the Princess Tchernova has been complaining that two immense white wolfhounds were loose in her grounds last night, trying to worry her wolves in the wolf-den at the foot of her grounds."
"Impossible that she could have seen us, Portia!"
"It matters little how she knew, Aunt Sophie. I am persuaded that her selecting last night to complain of my dogs is merely a coincidence, and that she has made the accusation to cover up something, to afford an excuse for some trick she is contemplating—what, I can only imagine, and my imagination is playing me unholy tricks this morning," my niece said thoughtfully.
"But what, good could it possibly do her to have it known that Boris and Andrei were loose last, night in her grounds?" I persisted, very much puzzled.
"I can surmise, Auntie, but I cannot make my surmises public at this stage. It's hard to do so, but I must wait until—until something happens."
There was in Portia's voice a strange note that troubled me vaguely, yet it was nothing upon which I could put my finger, so to speak. "One thing I must ask of you, Aunt Sophie, and that is that you keep within the walls of this place after dusk. I'm not asking this for a whim, but out of my knowledge of a terrible danger that I am now persuaded lurks about us: that is crouching, ready to spring out upon us at the moment when we least suspect it."
"I presume you will remain inside yourself, then?" I inquired, naturally enough.
"If I can manage to do so, I will," she rejoined. "Do not forget that I have learned much since I lived with you in Reading, Auntie. There are certain potent influences, certain natural laws, upon which I can depend for protection by my knowledge of them, and hence my power over them. But there—I see that you do not in the least understand me."
"I must say you are talking in riddles, my dear Portia."
"I see that I must speak plainly. There is a certain mighty power for evil that has taken up its residence ​in Meadowlawn. I hesitate to name it, but it is, nevertheless, here in this community. I know how to protect myself against it, but you do not. Therefore you must remain within these walls after nightfall."
I was somewhat provoked at Portia’s rather high-handed order, as I have walked alone through the loneliest parts of Reading outskirts, unaccompanied.
"If you are so anxious about me, how about Owen?" I inquired, a bit maliciously, I admit.
"Oh!" She expelled her breath sharply. "Owen I am powerless to protect! I cannot give an order to him as I can to you, Auntie. He would want to know my reasons, and I’m sure he would laugh at them when he knew them, because he couldn't understand."
Ingenuous girl, thought I to myself, how little she really knew me, if she thought I would let myself be ordered about in that manner. I made up my mind that she was letting her imagination run away with her. I intended to go to the Sunday evening service at the end of the week, and I certainly did not expect to ask for an escort of policemen to accompany me, because my niece was nervous and (perhaps) notional.
PART 6
The balance of the week passed quietly enough. Portia devoted herself again to her laboratory work nights. I did my marketing daily, occasionally running into Mrs. Differdale or Mrs. Arnold, almost invariably with their hair done up in curl-papers over which they airily wore their soiled satin boudoir caps.
Mrs. Arnold kept me fifteen minutes at Mike's one morning, telling me that Minna had been very sick with a bilious attack from eating too much candy. She retailed all Minna’s symptoms; her own prompt use of the clinical thermometer; the doctor’s report; Minna’s recovery; ending with the remark that the next time the Princess Irma gave Minna chocolates, she (Aurora) had ordered Minna to bring them home and not try to eat all at one sitting. I received the impression, somehow, that had Minna been of a less fine and delicate constitution, she would not have been affected by the sweets, Aurora remarking that Minna was, like herself, as high-strung as a violin, this simile appearing to afford her much innocent satisfaction, as placing her on a higher plane than the rest of us vulgarly healthy mortals.
Sunday morning I told Portia that I intended to go to the evening service. She looked simply aghast. "But I thought I explained to you," she began, when I interrupted her.
"My dear Portia, at my age I don't intend to be dictated to as to what hours I shall appear on the street. Curfew emphatically does not ring for me, my dear girl. If you're worrying about the Princess Tchernova's wolves, I may as well tell you that yesterday Owen took me into the grounds to show me the wolf-dens of cement and steel that she has had built, and they're quite strong enough to keep the animals inside."
Portia stared at me, her face disturbed by some deep emotion.
"I'll go with you," she suddenly decided.
"By no means interrupt your laboratory work," I retorted. "You know church services always did bore you to extinction. I won't have you going on my account."
Portia did not answer me. but I felt that she would do or say something to prevent me, and was agreeably surprized that she did not attempt to dissaude me at 7 o'clock, when I looked into the ​library to bid her good-bye. On the contrary, she was dressed in knickers and tweed coat, and the dogs were leashed, the leashes slipped over her left wrist. In her right hand she held the whip she had given me to carry a few nights before.
"I'm going to walk along with you, if you don't mind. I won't go in," she said.
I couldn't very well object, so she and Boris and Andrei went along up Queens Boulevard with me, very much to the astonishment of other church-going people, of whom not a few were on their way in my direction. I mentioned this to Portia, but she acted rather sulkily for her. and continued to walk along beside me. As we passed the police station—a little boxlike shanty opposite Mike's store on the boulevard—O'Brien came out and crossed the road toward us.
"Good evenin', ma'am. Did I see one of your dogs over in the Burnham house grounds last night?" he asked.
Portia straightened up and met his eyes determinedly.
"Neither last night, nor any other night, officer. I keep my dogs on the leash when they're out, and when they're not with me in the street, they're inside ten-foot walls. It was not one of my dogs you saw, I can assure you."
Her voice became hard and tense then.
"If I were you, I'd keep an eye on those wolves. Is there—is there a white one among them, perhaps?"
Her insinuation was entirely lost on O'Brien. Still, he looked at Boris and Andrei as if he would have liked to put the blame of whatever he had seen upon them. Then he went back across the road.
Portia was more than ever grave after this snatch of conversation.
"Do you see, Aunt Sophie, how the princess is trying to shift blame for something upon my noble dogs? I suppose you don't understand yet why I am accompanying you? I hope you'll never have to learn the real reason," she ended sadly.
"I think you might be doing a sensible thing to take your aunt into your confidence, Portia Delorme," I responded heatedly. "I'm sorry, but I fear it is a very small and petty feeling on your part that makes you so prejudiced against the Princess Tchernova. She may be cruel and a flirt, but I hardly believe that she is laying deep plans to get a couple of innocent dogs into trouble."
I couldn't help laughing. Portia lightened her lips and did not speak again, until she said good-bye at the church steps.
When I came out after the service I attached myself to the Arnolds, Aurora having attended with her husband. As we came down the boulevard, we became aware that something of an alarming nature had undoubtedly happened in the vicinity of the stores. There were many people buzzing about, the crowd seeming to center near the drug-store on the corner. Mr. Arnold left us and penetrated the crowd, returning after a minute with exciting news.
Officer O'Brien had been attracted by some large white animal that looked over the hedge of the Burnham place. He went over to investigate, loosening his revolver in case of emergency. It was the firing of his revolver that had attracted people to his rescue, among them Portia Differdale, with her two wolfhounds, which she had loosed from their leashes. (When Mr. Arnold said this, his wife pursed her lips with a significant look and remarked that those dogs were savage beasts that would some day attack her or somebody else.) Boris and Andrei had last been seen disappearing ​into the dark of the Burnham grounds, in pursuit, so Portia declared, of the beast that had so badly torn and clawed the arm and shoulder of the policeman.
Not for a single minute did I believe that those dogs had been guilty of attacking O’Brien, but I could see how the people around considered the matter. In public opinion Boris and Andrei had already been tried and condemned. It made me furious. I pushed my way into the drug-store, although they tried to hold me back, for I was determined to get at Portia. I could see her kneeling by the man’s side, bandaging his arm and shoulder, and the smell of iodoform filled the night air.
Presently she stood up, just as I entered the pharmacy. I thought for a moment that I saw a fleeting reproach in her eyes, and I remembered that it was my insistence upon going to church that had brought Portia out with the dogs.
“There’s nothing else to be done but send him to the hospital when the ambulance comes,” I heard her saying to Dietz, the druggist. “When the relieving officer arrives and starts investigations, I wish it to be given as my statement that my two dogs were leashed securely and I only gave them their freedom after I heard the shot, because I wanted to send them to O’Brien’s assistance.”
Her eyes, cold and stem, passed over the faces of the listeners, who stopped their whispering until she had passed through the crowd. She joined me at the door. We went off down the boulevard together, Portia occasionally whistling to summon the dogs, which dashed up to us just as we turned off the boulevard. I must say that I felt somehow very glad of the protection of those stanch beasts; if I were to take Portia’s word and the officer’s experience, then there was a third white dog abroad, not an entirely agreeable dog to meet, judging from the badly chewed left arm and shoulder of O ’Brien.
We reached home without further incident. Portia let the dogs loose in the enclosure about the house and herself went down at once into the laboratory, with an implacable, set expression on her face that impressed me she knew more than she chose to tell about the happenings of that evening.
Next morning a policeman named O’Toole came to the house to interview Portia as to her share in the evening’s happening. He took down her simple and direct statement without comment, but he did seem (I was present, to confirm Portia’s statement as to her reason for being abroad with the dogs) vastly interested in the great ten-foot wall and in the immense courtyard with its circles and strange symbols cut into the cement paving. He was tactful enough to say nothing, although his eyes roved everywhere. I had a feeling that his reports to interested inquirers in the community would stimulate interest and speculation yet further about the Differdale house. I could almost hear him saying: “Nary a chair. Nothing but cushions to sit on.”
Mrs. differdale called me on the telephone about 11 o’clock to ask if I wouldn’t drop in for tea that afternoon about half past 3; she said she was having somebody else whom she thought I’d enjoy meeting. I really had no good excuse to offer, and on second thought it occurred to me that it might be as well to go, in order to put in a good word for the dogs. I was morally certain that I was being asked to satisfy the curiosity of those two women. I asked Fu to tell his mistress where I’d gone (Portia did not ​appear at luncheon) and left the house about 3 o’clock.
Owen Edwardes was not in his office when I passed. I wondered if he were also out at tea that afternoon, perhaps with the Princess Tchernova. As I turned up Elm Street, a limousine flashed past me, and stopped before the Arnold house. A moment later the sinuous form of the Russian stepped out of the shining car and mounted the house steps. Then it flashed across me whom it was Mrs. Differdale had meant by someone I’d enjoy meeting.
I felt angry. I had been trapped into meeting a woman who was striking underhanded blows at Portia, trapped into meeting her in a friendly, social way. I hesitated. I was half of a mind to turn back. And then it was too late, for Mrs. Differdale, opening the door to the princess with a gushing greeting which the Russian acknowledged with her inscrutable smile, saw me and called my name. I could not very well get out of it, so I went forward with what grace I could summon on such short notice.
“Ah, it is the dear Ow-een’s Aunt Sophie! Chère Aunt Sophie, in this wilderness how charmant to meet a kindred soul!”
She turned to her hostess, a pointed pink tongue moistening her lips with a lapping motion, that unpleasant little habit of hers to which Portia had referred.
“You are a good creature to have prepare this so beautiful surprize for me, chère amie. But let us go in; the spring air is not yet so warm.”
Her trailing metallic silks made it necessary for me to maintain a respectful distance from her, for which I was not sorry. It certainly seemed that in a moment she would have put her slender arms about me, have touched my cheeks with her red lips, such did her enthusiasm appear to be over our meeting. I could not help being a little flattered; after all, I am but human, and even if I did dislike her, why should I be displeased because she tried to be nice to me?
The two Arnold girls, Minna and Alice, had been dressed in white dresses for the grand occasion, and stood with beribboned hair, waiting for the company to arrive. Minna evidently felt very much at home with the princess, for she immediately went forward with the assurance of a favorite, and seated herself beside the charming Russian, who put an arm about the girl, pinching the plump shoulders playfully.
“So you were sick eating my chocolates, Minna? Pauvre enfant! Another time we must not eat so much at one time. But the sweets are good for you, little one; they will make you as round and plump as a fat partridge!”
The princess’ laugh rang out merrily at her comparison. Minna laughed, also, but even in her pert pride at having been singled out by the princess, the child did not forget to give me a saucy look. She certainly was a disagreeable child; there is no doubt about that.
“It is a pity Minna didn’t share her chocolates with Alice,” put in Mrs. Arnold, who wore the dress she had worn to the Sunday evening service, a home-made black velvet with a lace collar that was the only redeeming feature of the garment. “Alice needs to put on flesh far more than Minna.”
“You are right, chère Mrs. Arnold.”
The princess turned her attention to Alice.
“It shall be the little sister who shall have the next boxful of bonbons.”
The pointed little white teeth showed in a smile that for some ​reason did not give me pleasure. Instead., I felt as if something unbenign lay hidden behind the Princess Tchernova's apparent interest in the two children. I wondered if her own impulsive, cruel nature, as I had seen it illustrated that other evening when she thought herself unobserved, drew her to the two children, children disliked by everyone on the street and in the neighborhood for their bad dispositions.
"Minna shall come to my house this evening," purred the princess, "and I shall have for her a very big box of sweets, but she must give half of them to Alice."
Minna laughed throatily and threw a self-conscious look at me.
"I can't come. Princess Tchernova" (her childish tongue tripped over that outlandish name) "because my Aunt Portia's big dogs might bite me the way they did O'Brien."
"Mr. O'Brien, darling," corrected her mother primly.
"Your Aunt Portia's dogs didn't bite Mr. O'Brien," I put in at this point, determined not to let that story go any farther if I could prevent it.
"Oh, chère Aunt Sophie, what a loyal heart is yours!" sighed the Russian, turning those green shining eyes full upon me. "How nobly you try to shield the savage beasts of Mrs. Differdale! But why?"
"Why, princess? Because I've had Boris out with me on the leash and I've seen both dogs around the house every day. They sleep in my room or Portia's half the time. They're as gentle as babies and as sweet-dispositioned," I retorted.
"But then," hesitated she prettily, again with that pointed tongue lapping her deep red lips, "you must know Mrs. Differdale very well indeed, that she let you enter her so-mysterious house of many secrets. I thought you were the Aunt Sophie of my Ow-een!"
There! How was that for sheer nerve on her part? She rested her green eyes on me with a kind of amused smile flickering over her dead-white face, a smile that said much to the contrary of what her lips uttered.
"I am Mrs. Differdale's aunt, her father's sister," said I, pointedly. "And I consider myself in a position to deny spiteful rumors about such magnificent beasts as Boris and Andrei."
"The aunt of the mysterious Mrs. Differdale? A-ah, that explain everything. Vraiment!"
She brushed away my denial, my explanation, with a little wave of her gemmed fingers. I was furious, but there was nothing more for me to say at the moment. I took the cup of tea Mrs. Arnold offered, and sipped it hurriedly. I like my tea with sugar and lemon, and my hostess had asked if I wanted cream.
When they asked the princess she cried at once: "No sugar, please! I do not like the sweet things. Sweet things are for dear little plump girls. The plain tea, please, without anything."
"No sugar? No milk?" cried Aurora.
"Cream," corrected the mother in an undertone, looked up, caught my eye and colored.
"Nothing, kind friends, but the plain tea. No, thank you, no cakes. The doctor he do not permit sweet cakes for the poor Irma, who must do what she is order."
I made a mental note of these preferences and dislikes, thinking that it might interest Portia, who seemed to find such weighty matter in my most trifling reports.
The door bell rang and Mrs. Differdale, throwing me a peculiar look, went to answer it. I heard and recognized a man’s voice.
“Here’s the copy of that deed, Mrs. Differdale. I rushed it through just as quickly as I could, to get it to you this afternoon as you wished.”
“Do come in and have a cup of tea,” urged she. “Miss Delorme’s here.”
“That is an inducement. Of course, I’ll have a cup of tea, if I can drink it with her,” laughed Owen, parting the portieres and smiling down upon us.
“Ah, cher ami,” cried the princess, extending a jeweled hand and monopolizing Owen entirely, so that all he could do was to bow and smile at me across the room, “what a pleasure is this so unexpected meeting, to drink the friendly tea with you in the home of these so kind ones!”
She caressed the two women with her green, glowing eyes, then turned her gaze full upon me.
“What, Ow-een? You do not pay to the Aunt Sophie your respects? Bad man! Go, at once, on the command of Irma Andreyevna Tchernova, and kneel at the feet of Aunt Sophie!”
Owen took immediate advantage of the order, which the Russian flavored with a peculiar smile at me, a smile tinctured with irony and that confidence in her own entire command of the situation that is so exasperating from one woman to another.
Mrs. Differdale poured a cup of tea for the newcomer, and I caught an interchange of glances between her daughter and herself.
“I would have invited my sister-in-law, Miss Delorme, but one doesn’t exactly care to be snubbed more than two or three times,” suddenly burst out Mrs. Arnold with a vehemence that spoke of her having only waited a fitting time to explode her bottled-up indignation. “Portia is so odd about going out socially,” and she shrugged her shoulders expressively, if inelegantly, under the clumsy velvet.
“Oh, I’m sure Portia—Mrs. Differdale.” hastily corrected Owen, coming to the defense of the absent accused with a warmth that did my heart good, “wouldn’t dream of snubbing anybody, least of all her late husband’s people.”
“How kind are the thoughts of Ow-een!’” murmured the guest of honor, an expression of deep admiration on her oval face. “Always he wishes to think the best about everybody. Ah, we are not all so noble,” sighed she. For some reason, her green eyes still sought my face.
Illogical on my part, if you will, but I could have slapped the princess: her inference was by far too plain to be ignored by a friend of Portia’s. I jumped boldly into the fray.
“My niece is one of the kindest-hearted, noblest women I ever had the privilege of knowing, Mrs. Arnold. She would never dream of snubbing anybody. I’m sure you’ve misinterpreted her unwillingness to leave her work, to which she is absolutely devoted.”
​“What work can possibly keep a woman as occupied as Portia, so that she never goes out socially, dear Miss Delorme? I’ve tried to let my daughter-in-law know that she’s being frightfully gossiped about, staying in that great house all alone, doing Lord knows what.”
“Whatever Mrs. Differdale is occupied in doing must be of a splendid and worthwhile nature. Anybody who has the honor of her acquaintance knows that," broke in Owen.
He glanced quickly about the little circle and caught the subtly ironical smile of the Russian. I could see that he was slightly disconcerted by it. "Ow-een, we must all believe you too much interest’ in the mysterious lady, if you defend her so warmly," accused Irma, shaking an index finger at him merrily.
Owen colored deeply. It was a betrayal for those who were able to read the signs, but I do not think anyone but myself and the argus-eyed princess translated that blush. Irma Tchernova did not appear pleased, for through her parted lips I could see those white teeth set tightly together.
"Mr. Edwardes is quite right, princess, to defend my niece, exactly as I did. When you know her better, you will jump to her defense at the first word of criticism," I exclaimed in quick refutal of the Russian’s innuendo.
She turned her head ever so slowly, until her long, narrow eyes were full upon me, In the growing dusk it seemed to me that red light glinted across the oriental-looking orbs, and it disturbed me, affecting me most disagreeably. I was glad when the momentary tension was broken by Alice, who suddenly thrust out one hand and made a snatch at the bonbons on the tea-table.
Her mother slapped at the child’s wrist, so that the candy tumbled helter-skelter over the embroidered tea-cloth and upon the carpet. It was the princess who intervened, her attention drawn from me to the miniature battle between mother and daughter.
“Oh, dear Mrs. Arnold, do let Alice have the bonbons! She love them so," cooed she. "And she is so thin, poor little one. If she were only like her sister, how glad I should be! But then, if she eat many bonbons, perhaps she will some time be round and rosy, eh, Alice?’’
She finished by taking a handful of the candy and filling the outstretched hands of Alice, who smirked her triumph. (Odious child! I cannot help it, even today.)
I had finished my second cup of tea by this time, and felt no inclination to remain longer. I rose to my feet and observed that I had promised to be home by 5 o’clock. Owen stood up at once and offered to accompany me, if I would allow him. Then the princess interfered, with honeyed sweetness that sickened me with an intuition of her depths of deception, for I was not deceived; I knew she did not like me.