Chiffon Scarf (11 page)

“You mean he knows?”

“He doesn’t know P. H. is a detective. He knows the crash oughtn’t to have happened. He knows I’m after something and I can count on him.” Jim paused thoughtfully, thinking of Ludovic Strevsky, wondering just how much he could actually count on him.

“He looks a little primitive,” said Eden. “I hope he doesn’t go out for wholesale revenge.”

“Lud?” Jim laughed a little shortly. “Lud’s all right. He’s pretty worked up about his brother, naturally; they were very close to each other, always worked together, shared everything. But he’s not the type to start a vendetta of his own. No—I can count on Lud.” He hoped he was right.

“What will Mr. Sloane do, exactly?”

“I don’t know.” He sounded worried. “I—I suppose it’s a faint hope of mine that he can do anything. But I didn’t know what else to do; the whole thing is so nebulous really—no real evidence except my own conviction. But if anything can be done P. H. will know what. And do it.” He stopped short. “What’s that?” he said sharply and listened.

Eden listened, too, but there was only the distant tinkle from the piano, nothing nearer. Jim laughed a little.

“I’m on edge. Thought I heard something rustling in the pines.” They walked on in silence for a few steps. Jim said in a different voice, musingly, “It seems a shame to bring our quarrels to a place like this. It ought to remain unsullied, apart from tragedy and the shadow of war. Look at those mountains, Eden; they’re earthly somehow—and yet at the same time elemental, wise, as if they know old secrets of life and living.”

He stopped again in the heavy shadow of the pines and Eden stopped too and her sleeve brushed against him and , their shoulders touched.

For a long moment they both looked at that distant lofty line, lifting into the night sky, touched to silver by the starlight, mysterious. It was almost breathlessly still.

Then quite deliberately Jim dropped his cigarette in the path, stepped on it, turned to look down through the night into her face and then quite slowly, as if there were finality about it, took her in his arms.

“Eden,” he said. “Eden—” and kissed her.

The night was as quiet as if its heart had stopped too, as Eden’s had. The stars looked down and paused in their course and were so near and clear that it was as if they could reach up and pluck them down. And hold their stars in their own hands.

Stars, thought Eden, fate. And closed her eyes, breathless again, shaken by his nearness, by the hard, tight circle of his arms, by his mouth upon her own.

He kissed her again slowly. And said: “Eden—you know. I loved you the first moment I saw you. I—knew it was you.”

Her face was warm against his sweater and his tweed coat smelled of smoke and she wanted her head to remain there. But he lifted her face.

“Did you know, too?”

She couldn’t answer. He said urgently: “Did you know? Tell me.”

“Yes,” she whispered. And remembered.

They didn’t really hold their stars in their hands. Stars were already set in an inexorable course and couldn’t be altered.

There was Averill.

There was, even, Noel.

“What is it, Eden?”

“Averill,” she said. “This is all wrong, Jim. I didn’t realize—”

He continued to hold her but he was thinking.

“Yes,” he said at last, “there’s Averill. And I know what this makes me. But I—I can’t help it, Eden. There are such things as broken engagements.”

“Not—two or three days before a wedding,” said Eden. “Not like this.”

She must have spoken with rather desperate conviction for Jim’s hands went to her shoulders in a tight, hard grip and he said quickly:

“Eden, you’re not going to be silly about this. I’m going to marry the woman I love and that’s you. And thank God you came when you did—and not a week or two later.”

Eden took a long breath.

“I can’t do this to Averill. Jim, I can’t. I feel so—guilty. It—you see the same thing happened before—only, of course, it wasn’t the same thing, because I didn’t really love him. But, Averill—”

“Pull yourself together, my child; don’t gibber. Now then, what do you mean?”

“I mean Noel—a long time ago—was all but engaged to Averill; and then he—I—”

“You jilted him; I know that. What of it?”

“But, Jim, I can’t—”

“Listen, my girl, is that the extent of the desperate barrier you’re trying with bated breath to tell me about? My God, I love you, dear, but you really are being very silly. Now listen, and get this straight in your crazy little head. I love you. I loved you the moment somebody trotted you out on the terrace and said ‘This is Eden,’ and you looked at me and I looked at you. I don’t know what happened; I just instantly, then and there, loved you. And I love you now; I’ll always love you. How’s that for a declaration?”

“Jim—”

“Shush. I’m doing the talking. I love you and we’re going to be married. I know it’s not very—nice about Averill. If I’d had any sense I’d have waited till that was all over and in the past. But I didn’t.”

“It’s—it’s only been two days—”

“Time has nothing to do with it,” said Jim in a simple statement of fact.

“If—if we could have met another way—without Averill—”

“I’m sorry about Averill. I—well, I hate that part of it. But I’m not a fool. I’ll settle with Averill; and I’m going to marry you. If you’ll have me.”

It was just exactly then that both of them became aware of quick, light footsteps along the gravel drive. Involuntarily Eden moved away from Jim, who would have held her. A woman’s figure, light cloak distinct in the starlight, came rapidly toward them—rapidly and certainly as if she knew where to find them—and it was Averill.

Her small face, framed in black neat hair, looked extraordinarily pale in the starlight. She said at once but with the utmost composure:

“Jim—oh, it’s Eden with you. Eden, I want to talk to you. Won’t you come with me—it won’t take long.”

“Averill,” said Jim, “I want to talk to you myself. Something has happened—”

“Later, darling,” said Averill and linked her cool, slender hand around Eden’s arm and drew her toward the path leading to the cabins. “Later, Jim. No—no, you mustn’t come along. It’s a very private conversation.” She laughed a little, lightly, when she said it.

She was perfectly friendly, perfectly calm and restrained.

“But I really do want to talk to you, Averill. Now. I’ll come along,” said Jim.

“If you insist,” said Averill, still lightly. “But Mr. Sloane was asking for you. And Eden and I will be only a moment; then you can talk to me as long as you like.”

“Oh,” said Jim, “all right. It’ll keep. I’ll go and see what Sloane wants.”

“I’ll be along in five minutes,” said Averill, with nothing in the world except gayety and confidence in her voice. It struck Eden as queer that with such gayety in her voice, still her hand on Eden’s arm was exactly like a small band of steel.

They separated at the place where the two paths branched from the gravel drive. Jim said briefly, “See you after I’m done with Sloane,” and walked rapidly toward the lighted house.

And the two women turned along the path that led to the group of cabins at the south end of the house. Pines cast a heavy shadow over it and obscured the lights of the main house although they were so near it now that they could hear the piano clearly—could have heard voices perhaps had there been conversation instead of music.

A single light burned above the door of the cabin nearest the house which Eden and Averill shared. They entered the cabin silently. There was a tiny hall and Eden’s room was on the left, away from the house; the door was open with a small light burning above the bed.

“I’ll not take a moment,” said Averill and drew Eden inside and closed the door.

Her face in the light was extraordinarily pale; her eyes had suddenly retracted so they were small and wary. She too had pulled her heavy sports coat over her dinner dress. Her small black head rose from the wide fur collar venomously somehow. Like a small snake waiting to strike.

Unexpectedly it gave Eden the strangest sensation that was like—but couldn’t be—fear.

Averill said, almost lisping as if her mouth had gone dry, but very distinctly:

“Listen, Eden. We’ve known each other long enough—and too well. People don’t change, after all. I’m engaged to marry Jim Cady; we’ll be married in a day or two. My marriage will take place exactly as it has been planned. I’m not going to be humiliated—jilted at the altar.”

“Averill—”

“I won’t talk of loyalty or friendship or decency. We’ve known each other all our lives—and really, in spite of pretense, hated each other. You’re jealous of me, now. You’re trying to take him away from me because you’re jealous, because you want to hurt and humiliate me. To show me you can still—but you can’t. You always won in the past: well, that’s over. You can’t do this to me. I won’t let you. That’s all.”

Her dry voice shook a little; her fingers worked as if actually they wanted to claw. She gave Eden one still, concentrated look that despite its hatred had something thoughtful and purposeful in it, and turned without another word and left the room. The door closed behind her.

But the really singular thing about that terse, altogether curious interview was that Eden was left with a sense, mainly, of threat.

She didn’t hear Averill leave the cabin; she did hear a door close, and she did hear a murmur of voices—women’s voices. It lasted only a moment or two and she was only vaguely aware of it.

Silence followed; and she was only vaguely aware of the silence.

But after a long time she stirred, walked absently toward a chair near the fireplace and then leaned instead on the mantel, her elbow on the low wooden piece, her chin in her hand.

Averill was, again, wholly within her rights. Eden was poaching on another woman’s preserves; she was as culpable, really, as she would have been if the wedding had already taken place. She was, altogether, indefensibly in the wrong.

And in a definitely strong sense she was the more culpable because of what had already gone on between her and Averill. Because of those years of rivalry—because of Noel.

Jim had taken a perfectly simple, perfectly straightforward, slightly rebellious masculine view. But Jim was wrong.

And she was wrong and Averill—bitter though it was to admit and contemplate it—was right.

Moments must have passed when she heard a kind of jar in the next room. It was loud enough to rouse her from her reverie—yet not exactly loud and sharp either. It sounded as if Averill had opened or closed a door—perhaps dropped something—or jerked hard at a sticking drawer.

She listened simply because it was so still, after that sound, in the next room and because she was standing so close to the fireplace and could hear in that position so clearly. Evidently the fireplace in her room and the one in Averill’s room were built on the same chimney.

Hadn’t Averill gone, then? She tried to recall what sounds she had heard but there was nothing clear and definite.

But she did all at once hear the door of the cabin open and a second or two later, the door into Averill’s room.

It closed quietly and she heard that, too.

As she heard footsteps which crossed the room, very quiet footsteps. It struck her that they were cautious.

There was a long silence before the footsteps recrossed the room.

She heard that quite distinctly. She heard the door to Averill’s room close very softly and then softly, too, the outside door of the cabin. And there was certainly a quality of stealth in the cautiousness of those footsteps, in the soft closing of both doors.

It was completely silent in the next room. A long moment or two passed. Then she went to her own door, opened it, crossed the bare little hall and opened Averill’s door. She moved quickly; if she gave herself time to think, some indescribably ominous quality in that continued silence would frighten her.

Averill’s room was dark. If the night light had been turned on when the bed was turned down as her own had been, then someone had turned it out again.

The room was perfectly quiet—but it was a laden kind of quiet. Ominous again. As if someone were there, waiting, observing.

She started to speak and her throat was dry. She reached inside the doorway and found the electric light switch and turned it on.

And froze there—fingers still on the little brass plate.

A woman lay on the floor; the yellow cloak was flung out around; there was a small spreading mass of crimson—wet, shining dreadfully in the garish light. Over her face and tight around her throat in strong knots was a gray scarf.

A gray chiffon scarf that belonged to Eden.

A window across the room was open and the shade was up and there was no screen over it—so the stars looked in, too, and the waiting night. Breathless and still with horror.

Beyond the pines lights in the main house were visible—so near yet, just then, so dreadfully far away.

Her knees were dissolving under her; she took a fumbling step or two and knelt. Her knees struck something hard and painful and without thinking she reached for whatever it was, thrust it aside and bent over the figure on the floor, stretching out her hand as if to pull the scarf away from the face.

But the gray scarf was so horribly blotched and stained that she couldn’t touch it. However, it was then that she saw that the dead woman was not Averill. It was Creda Blaine.

M
OST OF THE FACE
mercifully was covered by the gray folds of chiffon. But there were soft yellow curls in wild disarray above it and one white fat little hand lay on the floor beside the yellow outflung cloak with its fingers doubled over. And it was Creda.

Not Averill as Eden had thought in that first horrified, Incredulous instant.

But Creda couldn’t be dead. It wasn’t possible.

She tried to speak and whispered: “Creda.” And then cried aloud: “Creda …
Creda!
”

Her own voice was unrecognizably thin and high.

There was no flutter of motion in the inert mass there at her feet. No sound in the room but the thud of her own heart.