The Business of Life

"I am not," said Jacqueline, smiling.

"But," argued Katharine Frere, "suppose Reggie should find you. You'd never marry him, would you?"

"Great Heavens!" shouted Ledyard. "She might have a worse fate. There's Desboro!"

"You don't really mean it, do you, Miss Nevers?" asked Captain Herrendene.

"Yes, I do," said Jacqueline. "I always was a gambler by nature."

The tint of excitement was bright on her cheeks; she shot a daring glance at Ledyard, looked at Van Alstyne and laughed, but her back remained turned toward Desboro.

He said: "If the papers ever get wind of this they'll print it as a serious item."

"I am perfectly serious," she said, looking coolly at him over her shoulder. "If there is a man here clever enough to find me, I'll marry him in a minute. But" – and she laughed in Desboro's face – "there isn't. So nobody need really lose one moment in anxiety. And if a girl finds me it's all off, of course. May I have twenty minutes? And will you time me, Mr. Ledyard? And will you all remain in this room with the door closed?"

"If nobody finds you," cried Cairns, as she crossed the threshold, "we each forfeit whatever you ask of us?"

She paused at the door, looking back: "Is that understood?"

Everybody cried: "Yes! Certainly!"

She nodded and disappeared.

For twenty minutes they waited; then, as Reggie closed his watch, a general stampede ensued. Amazed servants shrank aside as Cairns, blowing fearful blasts on the megaphone, cheered on the excited human pack; everywhere Desboro's cats and dogs fled before the invasion; room after room was ransacked, maids routed, butler and valet defied. Even Aunt Hannah's sanctuary was menaced until that lady sat up on her bed and swore steadily at Ledyard, who had scaled the transom.

Desboro, hunting by himself, entered the armoury, looked suspiciously at the armoured figures, shook a few, opened the vizors of others, and peered at the painted faces inside the helmets.

Others joined him, prying curiously, gathering in groups amid the motionless army of mailed men. Then, as more than half of the allotted hour had already expired, Ledyard suggested an attic party, where trunks full of early XIXth century clothing might be rifled with pleasing results.

"We may find her up there in a chest, like the celebrated bride," remarked Aunt Hannah, who had reappeared from her retreat. "It's the lesser of several tragedies that might happen," she added insolently, to Desboro.

"To the attic!" thundered Cairns through his megaphone; and they started.

But Desboro still lingered at the armoury door, looking back. The noise of the chase died away in the interior of the main house; the armoury became very still under the flood of pale winter sunshine.

He glanced along the steel ranks of men-at-arms; he looked up at the stately mounted figures; dazzling sunlight glittered over helmet and cuirass and across the armoured flanks of horses.

Could it be possible that she was seated up there, hidden inside some suit of blazing mail, astride a battle-horse?

Cautiously he came back, skirting the magnificent and motionless ranks, hesitated and halted.

Of course the whole thing had been proposed and accepted in jest; he told himself that. And yet – if some other man did discover her – the foundation of the jest might serve for a more permanent understanding. He didn't want her to have any intimate understanding with anybody until he and she understood each other, and he understood himself.

He didn't want another man to find and claim the forfeit, even in jest, because he didn't know what might happen. No man was ever qualified to foretell what another man might do; and men already were behaving toward her with a persistency and seriousness unmistakable – men like Herrendene, who meant what he looked and said; and young Hammerton, Daisy's brother, eager, inexperienced and susceptible; and Bertie Barkley, a little, hard-faced snob, with an unerring instinct for anybody who promised to be popular among desirable people, was beginning to test her metal with the acid of his experience.

Desboro stood quite still, looking almost warily about him and thinking faster and faster, trying to recollect who it was who had dragged in the silly subject of marriage. That blond and hulking ass Ledyard, wasn't it?

He began to walk, slowly passing the horsemen in review.

Suppose a blond animal like Reggie Ledyard offered himself in earnest. Was she the kind of girl who would nail the worldly opportunity? And Herrendene – that quiet, self-contained, keen-eyed man of forty-five. You could never tell what Herrendene was thinking about anything, or what he was capable of doing. And his admiration for Jacqueline was undisguised, and his attentions frankly persistent. Last night, too, when they were coasting under the new moon, there was half an hour's disappearance for which neither Herrendene nor Jacqueline had even pretended to account, though bantered and challenged – to Desboro's vague discomfort. And the incident had left Desboro a trifle cool toward her that morning; and she had pretended not to be aware of the slight constraint between them, which made him sulky.

He had reached the end of the double lane of horsemen. Now he pivoted and retraced his steps, hands clasped behind his back, absently scanning the men-at-arms, preoccupied with his own reflections.

How seriously had she taken the rôle she was playing somewhere at that moment? Only fools accepted actual hazards when dared. He himself was apt to be that kind of a fool. Was she? Would she really have abided by the terms if discovered by Herrendene, for example, or Dicky Hammerton – if they were mad enough to take it seriously?

He thought of that sudden and delicious flash of recklessness in her eyes. He had seen it twice now.

"By God!" he thought. "I believe she would! She is the sort that sees a thing through to the bitter end."

He glanced up, startled, as though something, somewhere in the vast, silent place, had moved. But he heard nothing, and there was no movement anywhere among the armoured effigies.

Suppose she were here hidden somewhere within a hollow suit of steel. She must be! Else why was he lingering? Why was he not hunting her with the pack? And still, if she actually were here, why was he not searching for her under every suit of sunlit mail? Could it be because he did not really want to find her – with this silly jest of marriage dragged in – a thing not to be mentioned between her and him even in jest?

Was it that he had become convinced in his heart that she must be here, and was he merely standing guard like a jealous, sullen dog, watching lest some other fool come blundering back from a false trail to discover the right one – and perhaps her?

Suddenly, without reason, he became certain that she and he were there in the armoury alone together. He knew it somehow, felt it, divined it in every quickening pulse beat.

He heard the preliminary click of the armoury clock, indicating five minutes' grace before the hour struck. He looked up at the old dial, where it was set against the wall – an ancient piece in azure and gold under a foliated crest borne by some long dead dignitary.

Four more minutes now. And suppose she should stir in her place, setting her harness clashing? Had the thought of marrying him ever entered her head? Was it in such a girl to challenge the possibility, make it as near a serious question as it ever could be? It had never existed for them, even as a question. It was not a dead issue, because it had never lived. If she made one movement now, if she so much as lifted her finger, this occult thing would be alive. He knew it – knew that it lay with her; and stood silent, unstirring, listening for the slightest sound. There was no sound.

It lacked now only a minute to the hour. He looked at the face of the lofty clock; and, looking, all in a moment it flashed upon him where she was concealed.

Wheeling in his tracks, on the impulse of the moment he walked straight back to the great painted wooden charger, sheathed in steel and cloth of gold, bearing on high a slender, mounted figure in full armour – the dainty Milanese mail Of the Countess of Oroposa.

The superb young figure sat its saddle, hollow backed, graceful, both delicate gauntlets resting easily over the war-bridle on the gem-set pommel. Sunbeams turned the long spurs to two golden flames, and splintered into fire across the helmet's splendid crest. He could not pierce the dusk behind the closed vizor; but in every heart-beat, every nerve, he felt her living presence within that hollow shell of inlaid steel and gold.

For a moment he stood staring up at her, then glanced mechanically toward the high clock. Thirty seconds! Time to speak if he would; time for her to move, if in her heart there ever had been the thought which he had never uttered, never meant to voice. Twenty seconds! Through that slitted vizor, also, the clock was in full view. She could read the flight of time as well as he. Now she must move – if ever she meant to challenge in him that to which he never would respond.

He waited now, looking at the clock, now at the still figure above him. Ten seconds! Five!

"Jacqueline!" he cried impulsively.

There was no movement, no answer from the slitted helmet.

"Jacqueline! Are you there?"

No sound.

Then the lofty gold and azure clock struck. And when the last of the twelve resounding strokes rang echoing through the sunlit armoury, the mailed figure stirred in its saddle, stretched both stirrups, raised its arms and flexed them.

"You nearly caught me," she said calmly. "I was afraid you'd see my eyes through the helmet slits. Was it your lack of enterprise that saved me – or your prudence?"

"I spoke to you before the hour was up. It seems to me that I have won."

"Not at all. You might just as well have stood in the cellar and howled my name. That isn't discovering me, you know."

"I felt in my heart that you were there," he said, in a low voice.