The Lure of the Mask, Harold MacGrath [best beach reads of all time .txt] 📗

on the cloth.

"I bought that stein two seasons ago. This is the Sandfords' place, and you are the veiled lady who has been riding Mrs. Sandford's favorite hunter in the park."

"And so?"

"I shall find out who you are presently."

"How?"

"That shall be my secret. Mutual friends, indeed! You will not have to send me home blindfolded."

"That is precisely what I shall do, in a certain sense. My name? Perhaps. But you will never know my face."

"Suppose I should determine to cross the line, despite your precepts?"

They stood up simultaneously. In a matter of this sort he was by far the quicker. In an instant he had caught her by the wrist, at the same time drawing her irresistibly round the table toward him. His grasp was not rough, only firm. She ceased to pull against him.

"I must see your face. I shall never be at peace if I do not."

"Certainly you will never know any peace if you do. Be careful!"

His free hand stole toward the strings of her mask. She moved not. His face was very close to hers now. If only she would struggle! Yes, he was certain now that her eyes were blue. But they looked at him with a menace which chilled his ardor. He dropped the hand from the mask and released her wrist.

"No, I haven't the courage. If I take that mask from your face, it will be the end. And I do not want this ever to end. If you will not let me see your face of your own free will, so be it. I shall see it some day, mark me. Fate does not cross two paths in this manner without a purpose." He stepped back slowly. "You do not understand the lure of that mask."

"Perhaps I do. I am beginning to admire your self-control, Mr. Hillard; I am beginning to admire it very much. But I am tired now, and I must ask you to go."

"Once more, will you let me see your face?"

"No. If, as you say, fate intends for us to meet again, you will see it. But I have my doubts. So it is my will to pass out of your life as completely as though I had never entered it; from one fog into another. No, I am not a happy woman; I am not happy in my friendships. Listen to me," and her voice grew low and sweet. "Let me appeal to your imagination. This light adventure shall be a souvenir for your old age. One night Romance stepped into your life and out of it. Think! There will always be the same charm, the same mystery, the same enchantment. Knowing nothing of me, there will follow no disillusions, no disenchantments; I shall always be Cinderella, or the Sleeping Beauty, or what your fancy wills. Do you understand me?"

He nodded.

"Nothing," she proceeded, "nothing lasts so long in the recollection as a pleasant mystery. In other days, in other times.... Well, on my side I shall recall this night pleasantly. Without knowing it, you have given me a new foothold in life. I did not believe that there lived a single man who could keep to the letter of his bargain. Presently you will forget the chagrin. Good night! And do not lean out of any more windows," she added lightly.

"You are right," he said reluctantly. "Something to dream over in my old age. And certainly I shall dream of it; a flash of sunlight in the shadow."

Then slowly he reached down toward her wine-glass. She understood his purpose and essayed to stop him.

"Do not deny me this little thing," he said.

She let her hand fall. He took the glass, held it against the light to see where her lips had touched it. Carefully he poured out the wine from the opposite side and kissed the rim.

"I shall keep this glass. I must have some visible object to make sure that this hasn't been a dream. Mrs. Sandford may send me the bill."

"You may kiss my hand, Mr. Hillard."

He bent quickly and kissed, not the hand, but the wrist where the marks of his fingers still remained faintly. He squared himself, and gazed long and steadfastly into her eyes. In that moment he seemed to her positively handsome; and there was a flutter in her heart that she was unable to define. On his part he realized the sooner he was gone the better; there was a limit to his self-control.... He gained the street somehow. There he stopped and turned. Did the curtain move? He wasn't sure; but he raised his hat, settled it firmly on his head, and walked rapidly away. He was rather proud of himself. He had conquered a hundred temptations. And he confidently knew that it would be many a day before she ceased to think of him. Was she single or married? Well, it mattered not, one way or the other; he knew that long years ago this night had been written and his fate summed up. Unhappy? There was more than one mask. Once in his own room, however, the longing to see her face grew terribly strong. He stood the glass on the mantel and stared at it. Why must she go out of his life? What obstacle was there to stand between them and a kindly friendship?

There was little sleep for him that night; and in the morning the first thing he did was to pick up the wine-glass. It was all true. And then his good resolutions melted and vanished. He must have one more word with her, happen what might. So at ten o'clock he called a cab and drove rapidly to the Sandford place. Snow had fallen during the night, and many of the steps were still spotless white. Impossible! He leaned from the cab and rubbed his eyes. Absolutely impossible! For, what did he see? Wooden shutters over all the lower windows and the iron gates closed before the doors! And not a footprint anywhere. This was extraordinary. He jumped from the cab, ran up the steps, and rang the bell, rang it ten times with minute intervals. And no one answered. Then he heard a call from across the street. A man stood in one of the area-ways.

"Nobody home!" he shouted. "Gone to Egypt."

"But there was some one here last night," Hillard shouted back.

"Last night? Guess you've got the wrong street and wrong house, young man."

"But this is the Sandford place?"

"Nothing else."

"I was here last night."

"Dreaming. That house has been empty since November. I happen to be the caretaker."

Hillard went back to his cab, dazed. No one there last night? Come, come; there was a mistake somewhere. It was out of the question that he had been in another house. He would soon find out whether or not he had dined there the night before.

"A cable-office!" he cried to the cabby. "Hurry!"

Once there he telephoned down-town and secured Sandford's cable address. Then he filled out a blank which cost him ten dollars. Late that night at the club he received his reply. It was terse.

You are crazy. House absolutely empty. SANDFORD.


CHAPTER VII

THE TOSS OF A COIN


Hillard made an inexcusably careless shot. It was under his hand to have turned an even forty on his string. He grounded his cue and stood back from the table. That was the way everything seemed to go; at tennis, at squash, at fencing, at billiards, it was all the same. The moment victory was within his grasp his interest waned. Only last night he had lost his title as the best fencer in the club; disqualified in the preliminaries, too, by a tyro who would never cease to brag about the accident.

"I say, Jack, what's the matter with you, anyhow?" asked Merrihew, out of patience. "A boy could have made that three-cushion, his hands tied behind him."

"It was bad," Hillard agreed. "Perhaps I am not taking the interest in the game that I formerly took."

"I should say not. You lost me fifty last night. Corlis has no more right to cross foils with you than I have; and yet he goes in for the finals, while you are out of it. Where's your eye? Where's your grip?"

Hillard chalked his cue silently.

"And when I make a proposition," pursued Merrihew, "to ride to the Catskills and back-something you would have jumped at a year ago-you shake your head. Think of it! Through unbroken roads, nights at farm-houses, old feather beds, ice in the wash-basin, liver and bacon for breakfast, and off again! Snow or rain! By George, you had a bully time last year; you swore it was the best trip we ever took on the horses. Remember how we came back to town, hungry and hardy as Arctic explorers? Come on; everything is dull down-town. Where's your spirit of adventure?"

"I'm sure I don't know where it is. Shall we finish the game?"

"Not if you're going to throw it like this," declared Merrihew. He was proud of his friend's prowess in games of skill and strength, and he was wroth to see him lose all interest unaccountably.

"Ten and a string against your half a string," said Hillard, studying the score. "I'll bet a bottle that I beat you."

"Done!" said Merrihew. Being on his mettle, he made a clean score of twenty, five to go. "I can see you paying for that check, Jack."

But the odds tingled Hillard's blood. He settled down to a brilliant play and turned sixty-one in beautiful form. There were several shots which caused Merrihew to gasp.

"Well, it's worth the price of the bottle. If only you had had that eye last night! We'll have the bottle in the alcove at the head of the stairs. I want to talk to you."

So the two passed up-stairs to the secluded alcove, and the bottle shortly followed. Merrihew filled the glasses with the air of one who would like to pass the remainder of his days doing the same thing. Not that he was overfond; but each bottle temporarily weeded out that crop of imperishable debts, that Molochian thousand, that Atalanta whose speed he could not overtake, having no golden apples. To him the world grew roseate and kindly, viewed through the press of the sparkling grape, and invariably he saw fortune beckoning to the card-tables.

"Now, then, Jack, I've got you where I want you. Who is she?"

"On my word, I don't know," answered Hillard, stirring restlessly.

"Then there is a woman!" cried Merrihew, astonished at his perspicacity. "I knew it. Nothing else would so demoralize your nerve. Shall we drink a health to her?"

Hillard raised his glass and touched that of his comrade. For the good of his soul and the peace of his mind, he then and there determined to tell Merrihew the whole adventure, without a single reservation.

"To the Lady in the Fog!" he said.

"Fog?" blankly.

"Well, the Lady in the Mask."

"Fog, mask? Two of them?"

"No, only one. Once I met her in the fog, and then I met her in the mask."

"I'll drink to her; but I'm hanged if I don't believe you're codding me," said Merrihew disappointedly. "This is New York."

"I know it; and yet sometimes I doubt it. Here's to the lady."