The Hollow of Her Hand

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They had fallen behind Colonel Castleton, who walked on stiffly
ahead of them.

Leslie treated her to his most engaging smile.

"Looks very Goochy, doesn't it? I'm coming to believe more than
ever that blood will tell. Sara knew what she was doing when she
cleared her decks for action a few months ago. 'Gad, I understand
now why she was so eager to bring off the--well, another match we
know about. Pretty canny, eh?"

"It is incredible," said she, with unnecessary vehemence.

"Not in the least. Clever person, Sara is. Sets her heart on a thing,
and--woof! she gets it, whether or no. Now, don't misunderstand
me. I'm fond of Brandon Booth. We all are. We don't object to him
as a sort of family attachment. But if she's going to marry him,
we want to know where we stand in a business way. You see, he will
not only step into my brother Chal's shoes at home, but at the
office. And, heaven knows, Brandy is not a good business man. He's
great on portraits, but--I beg pardon!"

"I must leave you here, Mr. Wrandall. Good-bye!"

"Oh, I say, can't we see something of--"

"I am afraid not."

He kept pace with her through the hall.

"I suppose your father told you that I--I haven't altogether given
up hope of--you."

"He spoke of going to America with you, if that's what you mean,"
she said coldly, and left him at the foot of the staircase.

Leslie's hand trembled as it went up to his moustache. "I can't
understand her beastly obstinacy," he said to himself.

CHAPTER XIX

VIVIAN AIRS HER OPINIONS

Chief among Booth's virtues was his undeviating loyalty to a set
purpose. He went back to America with the firm intention to clear
up the mystery surrounding Hetty Castleton, no matter how irksome
the delay in achieving his aim or how vigorous the methods he would
have to employ. Sara Wrandall, to all purposes, held the key; his
object in life now was to induce her to turn it in the lock and
throw open the door so that he might enter in and become a sharer
in the secrets beyond.

A certain amount of optimistic courage attended him in his campaign
against what had been described to him as the impossible. He could
see no clear reason why she should withhold the secret under the
new conditions, when so much in the shape of happiness was at stake.
It was in this spirit of confidence that he prepared to confront
her on his arrival in New York, and it was the same unbounded faith
in the belief that nothing evil could result from a perfectly just
and honourable motive that gave him the needed courage.

He stayed over night in New York, and the next morning saw him on
his way to Southlook. There was something truly ingenuous in his
desire to get to the bottom of the matter without fear or apprehension.
At the very worst, he maintained, there could be nothing more
reprehensible than a passing infatuation, long since dispelled, or
perhaps a mildly sinister episode in which virtue had been triumphant
and vice defeated with unpleasant results to at least one person,
and that person the husband of Sara Wrandall.

Pat met him at the station and drove him to the little cottage on
the upper road.

"Ye didn't stay long," said he reflectively, after he had put the
bag up in front. He took up the reins.

"Not very," replied his master.

After a dozen rods or more, Pat tried again.

"Just siventeen days, I make it."

"Seems longer."

"Perhaps you'll be after going back soon."

"Why should you think that, Patrick?"

"Because you don't seem to be takin' much interest in your surroundin's
here," said Pat loftily. He delivered a smart smack on the crupper
with his stubby whip, and pursed his lips for the companionship to
be derived from whistling.

"I suppose you know why I went to Europe," said Booth, laying his
hand affectionately on the man's arm.

"Sure I do," said Pat, forgetting to whistle. "And was it bad luck
you had, sor?"

"A temporary case of it, I'm afraid."

"Well," said the Irishman, looking up at his employer with the most
profound encouragement in his wink, "if it's anny help to you,
sor, I'll say that I've niver found bad luck to be annything but
timporary. And, believe ME, I've had plinty of it. Mary was dom
near three years makin' up her mind to say yis to me."

"And since then you've had no bad luck?" said Booth, with a smile.

"Plinty of it, begob, but I've had some one besides meself to blame
for it. There's a lot in that, Mr. Brandon. Whin a man marries, he
simply divides his luck into two parts, good and bad, and if he's
like most men he puts the bulk av the bad luck on his wife and
kapes to himself all he can av the good for a rainy day. That's
what makes him a strong man and able to meet trouble when it comes.
The beauty av the arrangement is that bad luck is only timporary
and a woman enjoys talking about it, while good luck is wid us
nine-tinths of the time, whether we know it or not, and we don't
have to talk about it."

This was fine philosophy, but Booth discerned the underlying motive.

"Have you been quarrelling?"

"I have NOT," said Pat wrathfully. "But I won't say as much for
Mary. The point av me argument is that I have all the good luck in
havin' married her, and she claims to have had all the bad luck in
marryin' me. Still, as I said before,'tis but timporary. The good
luck lasts and the bad don't. She'll be after tellin' me so before
sundown. That's like all women. You'll find it out for yourself
wan o' these days, Mr. Brandon, and ye'll be dom proud ye're a man
and can enjoy your good luck when ye get it. The bad luck's always
fallin' behind ye, and ye can always look forward to the good luck.
So don't be down-hearted. She'll take you, or me name's not what
it ought to be."

Booth was inclined to accept this unique discourse as a fair-weather
sign.

"Take these bags upstairs, Pat," said he on their arrival at the
cottage, "and then come down and drive me over to Mrs. Wrandall's."

"Will ye be after stayin' for lunch with her, Mr. Brandon?" inquired
Pat, climbing over the wheel.

"I can't answer that question now."

"Hiven help both av us if Mary's good luncheon goes to waste,"
said Pat ominously. "That's all I have to say. She'll take it out
av both av us."

"Tell her I'll be here for lunch," said Booth, with alacrity. From
which it may be perceived that master and man were of one mind when
it came to considering the importance of Mary.

Pat studied his watch for a moment with a calculating eye.

"It's half-past eliven now, sor," he announced. "D'ye think ye can
make it?"

Booth reflected. "I think not," he said. "I'll have luncheon
first." Whereupon he leaped from the trap and went in to tell Mary
how happy he was to be where he could enjoy home-cooking.

At four he was delivered at Sara's door by the astute Patrick,
announced by the sedate Watson and interrogated by the intelligent
Murray, who seemed surprised to hear that he would NOT have anything
cool to drink. Sara sent word that she would be down in fifteen
minutes, but, as a matter of fact, appeared in less than three.

She came directly to the point.

"Well," she said, with her mysterious smile, "she sent you back to
me, I see." He was still clasping her hand.

"Have you heard from her?" he asked quickly.

"No. But I knew just what would happen. I told you it would prove
to be a wild goose chase. Where is she?"

He sat down beside her on the cool, white covered couch.

"In Switzerland. I put her on the train the night before I sailed.
Yes, she did send me back to you. Now I'm here, I want the whole
story, Sara. What is it that stands between us?"

For an hour he pleaded with her, all to no purpose. She steadfastly
refused to divulge the secret. Not even his blunt reference to
Challis Wrandall's connection with the affair found a vulnerable
spot in her armour.

"I shan't give it up, Sara," he said, at the end of his earnest
harangue against the palpably unfair stand both she and Hetty were
taking. "I mean to harass you, if you please, until I get what I'm
after. It is of the most vital importance to me. Quite as much so,
I am sure, as it appears to be to you. If Hetty will say the word,
I'll take her gladly, just as she is, without knowing what all this
is about. But, you see, she won't consent. There must be some way
to override her. You both admit there is no legal barrier. You
tell me to-day that there is no insanity in her family, and a lot
of other things that I've been able to bring out by questioning,
so I am more than ever certain that the obstacle is not so serious
as you would have me believe. Therefore, I mean to pester you until
you give in, my dear Sara."

"Very well," she said resignedly. "When may I expect a renewal of
the conflict?"

"Would to-morrow be convenient?" he asked quaintly.

She returned his smile. "Come to luncheon."

"Have I your permission to start the portrait?"

"Yes. As soon as you like."

He left her without feeling that he had gained an inch along the
road to success. That night, in the gloaming of his star-lit porch,
he smoked many a pipeful and derived therefrom a profound estimate
of the value of tact and discretion as opposed to bold and impulsive
measures in the handling of a determined woman. He would make haste
slowly, as the saying goes. Many an unexpected victory is gained by
dilatory tactics, provided the blow is struck at the psychological
moment of least resistance.

The weeks slipped by. He was with her almost daily. Other people
came to her house, some for rather protracted visits, others in
quest of pillage at the nightly bridge table, but he was seldom
missing. There were times when he thought he detected a tendency
to waver, but each cunning attempt on his part to encourage the
impulse invariably brought a certain mocking light into her eyes
and he veered off in defeat. Something kept telling him, however,
that the hour was bound to come when she would falter in her
resolution; when frankness would meet frankness, and the veil be
lifted.

A rather impossible relative in the person of an aunt came to
spend the month of August with Sara--her father's sister. She was
a true, unvarnished Gooch. Booth shuddered at times when she emerged
flat-foot from the background and revelled in the Goochiness that
would not stay put, no matter how hard she tried to subdue it. She
was a good soul,--much too good, in fact,--and her efforts to live
up to requirements were not only ludicrous but exasperating. Sara
was quite serene about her, however. She made no excuses for the
old lady; in fact, she appeared to be quite devoted to her. Booth
was beginning to appreciate something of the horror the Wrandalls
must have felt when Challis took unto himself a Gooch. He berated
himself in secret for his snobbishness and in public made atonement
by being expansively polite to Mrs. Coburn. The good lady had the
habit of telling every one what a wonderful person Sebastian Gooch
had been, sometimes comparing him not unfavourably with Napoleon
Bonaparte and George Washington: he was like the Corsican in getting
the better of his adversaries, no matter how he had to go about
it, but like the Father of his Country in the matter of veracity.
So far as she knew, Sebastian had never told a lie. To Mrs. Coburn,
Sebastian was Saint Sebastian.

The portrait was finished before Mrs. Coburn left. She liked
everything about it except the gown, the drapery and--yes, the
hands. They were too long and tapering. No Gooch ever had a hand
like that. The Gooch hands were broad and strong: like her own.
All this, notwithstanding the fact that Sara's hand lay exposed all
the time she was speaking, a physical contradiction to her assertion.

She stayed the month and then re-entered Yonkers.

There were no letters from Hetty, no word of any description. If
Sara knew anything of the girl's movements she did not take Booth
into her confidence.

Leslie Wrandall went abroad in August, ostensibly to attend the
aviation meets in France and England. His mother and sister sailed
in September, but not before the entire colony of which they were
a part had begun to discuss Sara and Booth with a relish that was
obviously distasteful to the Wrandalls.

Where there is smoke there is fire, said all the gossips, and
forthwith proceeded to carry fagots.

A week or so before sailing, Mrs. Redmond Wrandall had Booth
in for dinner. I think she said en famille. At any rate, Sara was
not asked, which is proof enough that she was bent on making it a
family affair.

After dinner, Booth sat in the screened upper balcony with Vivian.
He liked her. She was a keen-witted, plain-spoken young woman,
with few false ideals and no subtlety. She was less snobbish than
arrogant. Of all the Wrandalls, she was the least self-centred.
Leslie never quite understood her for the paradoxical reason that
she thoroughly understood him.

"You know, Brandon," she said, after a long silence between them,
"they've been setting my cap for you for a long, long time." She
blew a thin stream of cigarette smoke toward the moon.

He started. It was a bolt from a clear sky. "The deuce!"

"Yes," she went on in the most casual tone, "mother's had her heart
set on it for months. You were supposed to be mine at first sight,
I believe. Please don't look so uneasy. I'm not going to propose
to you." She laughed her little ironic laugh.

"So that is the way things stood, eh?" he said, still a little
amazed by her candour.

"Yes. And what is more to the point, I am quite sure I should
have said yes if you had asked me. Sounds odd, doesn't it? Rather
amusing, too, being able to discuss it so unreservedly, isn't it?"

"Good heavens, Viv!" he cried uncomfortably. "I--I had no idea you
cared--"

"Cared!" she cried, as he paused. "I don't care two pins for you
in that way. But I would have married you, just the same, because
you are worth marrying. I'd very much rather have you for a husband
than any man I know, but as for loving you! Pooh! I'd love you in
just the way mother loves father, and I wouldn't have been a bit
more trouble to you than she is to him."

"'Gad, you don't mind what you say!"

"Failing to nab you, Brandy, I dare say I'll have to come down to
a duke or, who knows? maybe a mere prince. It isn't very enterprising,
is it? And certainly it isn't a gay prospect. Really, I had hoped
you would have me. I flatter myself, I suppose, but, honestly now,
we would have made a rather nice looking couple, wouldn't we?"

"You flatter me," he said.

"But," she resumed, calmly exhaling, "you very foolishly fell in
love with some one else, and it wasn't necessary for me to pretend
that I was in love with you--which I should have done, believe me,
if you had given me the chance. You fell in love, first with Hetty
Castleton."

"First?" he cried, frowning.

"And now you are heels over head in love with my beautiful
sister-in-law. Which all goes to prove that I would have made just
the kind of wife you need, considering your tendency to fluctuate.
But how dreadful it would have been for a sentimental, loving girl
like Hetty!"

He sat bolt upright and stared hard at her.

"See here, Viv, what the dickens are you driving at? I'm not in love
with Sara--not in the least,--and--" He checked himself sharply.
"What an ass I am! You're guying me."

"In any event, I am right about Hetty," she said, leaning forward,
her manner quite serious.

"If it will ease your mind," he said stiffly, "I plead guilty with
all my heart."

She favoured him with a slight frown of annoyance.

"And you deny the fluctuating charge?"

"Most positively. I can afford to be honest with you, Viv. You are
a corker. I love Hetty Castleton with all my soul."

She leaned back in her chair. "Then why don't you dignify your soul
by being honest with HER?"

"What do you mean?"

For a half-minute she was silent. "Are you and I of the same stripe,
after all? Would you marry Sara without loving her, as I would have
done by you? It doesn't seem like you, Brandon."

"Good heaven, I'm not going to marry Sara!" he blurted out. "It's
never entered my head."

"Perhaps it has entered hers."

"Nonsense! She isn't going to marry anybody. And she knows how I
feel toward Hetty. If it came to the point where I decided to marry
without love, 'pon my soul, Viv, I believe I'd pick you out as the
victim."

"Wonderful combination!" she said with a frank laugh. "The
quintessence of 'no love lost.' But to resume! Do you know that
people are saying you are to be married before the winter is over?"

"Let 'em say it," he said gruffly.

"Oh, well," she said, despatching it all with a gesture, "if that's
the way you feel about it, there's no more to be said."

He was ashamed. "I beg your pardon, I shouldn't have said that."

"You see," she went on, reverting to the original topic, "people
who know Sara are likely to credit her with motives you appear to
be totally ignorant of. She set her heart on my brother Challis,
when she was a great deal younger than she is now, and she got him.
If age and experience count for anything, how capable she must be
by this time."

He was too wise to venture an opinion. "I assure you she has no
designs on me."

"Perhaps not. But I fancy that even you could not escape as St.
Anthony did. She is most alluring."

"You don't like her."

"Obviously. And yet I don't dislike her. She has the virtue of
consistency, if one may use the expression. She loved my brother.
Leslie says she should have hated him. We have tried to like
her. I think I have come nearer to it than any of the others, not
excepting Leslie, who has always been her champion. I suppose you
know that he was your rival at one time."

"He mentioned it," said Booth drily.

"I should have been very much disappointed in her if she had accepted
him."

"Indeed?"

"I sometimes wonder if Sara spiked Leslie's guns for him."

"I can tell you something you don't know, Vivian," said he. "Sara
was rather keen about making a match there."

Vivian's smile was slow but triumphant. "That is just what I thought.
There you are! Doesn't that explain Sara?"

"In a measure, yes. But, you see, it developed that Hetty cared
for some one else, and that put a stop to everything."

"Am I to take it that you are the some one else?"

"Yes," said he soberly.

"Then, may I ask why she went away so suddenly?"

"You may ask but I can't answer."

"Do you want my opinion? She went away because Sara, failing in
her plan to marry her off to Leslie, decided that it would be fatal
to a certain project of her own if she remained on the field of
action. Do I make myself clear?"

"Oh, you are away off in your conclusions, Viv."

"Time will tell," was her cabalistic rejoinder.

Her father appeared on the lawn below and called up to them.

"You are wanted at the telephone, Brandon. I've just been talking
to Sara."

"Did she call you up, father?" asked Vivian, leaning over the rail.

"Yes. About nothing in particular, however."

She turned upon Booth with a mocking smile. He felt the colour rush
to his face, and was angry with himself.

He went in to the telephone. Almost her first words were these:

"What has Vivian been telling you about me, Brandon?"

He actually gasped. "Good heavens, Sara!"

He heard her low laugh. "So she HAS been saying things, has she?"
she asked. "I thought so. I've had it in my bones to-night."

He was at a loss for words. It was positively uncanny. As he stood
there, trying to think of a trivial remark, her laugh came to him
again over the wire, followed by a drawling "good-night," and then
the soughing of the wind over the "open" wire.

The next day he called her up on the telephone quite early. He knew
her habits. She would be abroad in her gardens by eight o'clock.
He remembered well that Leslie, in commenting on her absurdly early
hours, had once said that her "early bird" habit was hereditary:
she got it from Sebastian.

"What put it into your head, Sara, that Vivian was saying anything
unpleasant about you last night?"

"Magic," she replied succinctly.

"Rubbish!"

"I have a magic tapestry that transports me, hither and thither,
and by night I always carry Aladdin's lamp. So, you see, I see and
hear everything."

"Be sensible."

"Very well. I will be sensible. If you intend to be influenced by
what Vivian or her mother said to you last night, I think you'd be
wise to avoid me from this time on."

Prepared though he was, he blinked his eyes and said something she
didn't quite catch.

She went on: "Moreover, in addition to my attainments in the black
art, I am quite as clever as Mr. Sherlock Holmes in some respects.
I really do some splendid deducing. In the first place, you were
asked there and I was not. Why? Because I was to be discussed. You
see--"

"Marvellous!" he interrupted loudly.

"You were to be told that I have cruel designs upon you."

"Go on, please."

"And all that sort of thing," she said sweepingly, and he could
almost see the inclusive gesture with her free hand. He laughed
but still marvelled at the shrewdness of her perceptions.

"I'll come over this afternoon and show you wherein you are wrong,"
he began, but she interrupted him with a laugh.

"I am starting for the city before noon, by motor, to be gone at
least a fortnight."

"What! This is the first I've heard of it."

Again she laughed. "To be perfectly frank with you, I hadn't
heard of it myself until just now. I think I shall go down to the
Homestead with the Carrolls."

"Hot Springs?"

"Virginia," she added explicitly.

"I say, Sara, what does all this mean? You--"

"And if you should follow me there, Vivian's estimate of us will
not be so far out of the way as we'd like to make it."

True to her word, she was gone when he drove over later on in
the day. Somehow, he experienced a feeling of relief. Not that he
was oppressed by the rather vivacious opinions of Vivian and her
ilk, but because something told him that Sara was wavering in her
determination to withhold the secret from him and fled for perfectly
obvious reasons.

He had two commissions among the rich summer colonists. One, a full
length portrait of young Beardsley in shooting togs, was nearly
finished. The other was to be a half-length of Mrs. Ravenscroft,
who wanted one just like Hetty Castleton's, except for the eyes,
which she admitted would have to be different. Nothing was said of
the seventeen years' difference in their ages. Vivian had put off
posing until Lent.

The Wrandalls departed for Scotland, and other friends of his
began to desert the country for the city. The fortnight passed and
another week besides. Mrs. Ravenscroft decided to go to Europe when
the picture was half-finished.

"You can finish it when I come back in December, Mr. Booth," she
said. "I'll have several new gowns to choose from, too."

"I shall be busy all winter, Mrs. Ravenscroft," he said coldly.

"How annoying," she said calmly, and that was the end of it all.
She had made the unpleasant discovery that it WASN'T going to be
in the least like Hetty Castleton's, so why bother about it?

Booth waited until Sara came out to superintend the closing of her
house for the winter. He called at Southlook on the day of her
arrival. He was struck at once by the curious change in her appearance
and manner. There was something bleak and desolate in the vividly
brilliant face: the tired, wistful, harassed look of one who has
begun to quail and yet fights on.

"Will you go out with me to-morrow, Brandon, for an all-day trip
in the car?" she asked, as they stood together before the open
fireplace on this late November afternoon. Her eyes were moody,
her voice rather lifeless.

"Certainly," he said, watching her closely. Was the break about to
come?

"I will stop for you at nine." After a short pause, she looked up
and said: "I suppose you would like to know where I am taking you."

"It doesn't matter, Sara."

"I want you to go with me to Burton's Inn."

"Burton's Inn?"

"That is the place where my husband was killed," she said, quite
steadily.

He started. "Oh! But--do you think it best, Sara, to open old wounds
by--"

"I have thought it all out, Brandon. I want to go there--just once.
I want to go into that room again."

CHAPTER XX

ONCE MORE AT BURTON'S INN

Again Sara Wrandall found herself in that never-to-be-forgotten
room at Burton's Inn. On that grim night in March, she had entered
without fear or trembling because she knew what was there. Now she
quaked with a mighty chill of terror, for she knew not what was
there in the quiet, now sequestered room. Burton had told them on
their arrival after a long drive across country that patrons of the
inn invariably asked which room it was that had been the scene of
the tragedy, and, on finding out, refused point-blank to occupy it.
In consequence, he had been obliged to transform it into a sort of
store and baggage room.

Sara stood in the middle of the murky room, for the shutters had
long been closed to the light of day, and looked about her in awe
at the heterogeneous mass of boxes, trunks, bundles and rubbish,
scattered over the floor without care or system. She had closed
the door behind her and was quite alone. Light sneaked in through
the cracks in the shutters, but so meagrely that it only served to
increase the gloom. A dismantled bedstead stood heaped up in the
corner. She did not have to be told what bed it was. The mattress
was there too, rolled up and tied with a thick garden rope. She
knew there were dull, ugly blood-stains upon it. Why the thrifty
Burton had persevered in keeping this useless article of furniture,
she could only surmise. Perhaps it was held as an inducement to the
morbidly curious who always seek out the gruesome and gloat even
as they shudder.

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