The Danger Mark

R >> Robert W. Chambers >> The Danger Mark

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30

[Illustration: "'Please do tell me somebody is scandalised.'"]

THE DANGER MARK

BY

ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

A.B. WENZELL

1909

TO

MY FRIEND

JOHN CARRINGTON YATES

CONTENTS

I. The Seagraves

II. In Trust

III. The Threshold

IV. The Year of Discretion

V. Roya-Neh

VI. Adrift

VII. Together

VIII. An Afterglow

IX. Confession

X. Dusk

XI. Fete Galante

XII. The Love of the Gods

XIII. Ambitions and Letters

XIV. The Prophets

XV. Dysart

XVI. Through the Woods

XVII. The Danger Mark

XVIII. Bon Chien

XIX. Questions and Answers

XX. In Search of Herself

XXI. The Golden Hours

XXII. Cloudy Mountain

XXIII. Sine Die

XXIV. The Prologue Ends

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"'Please do tell me somebody is scandalized'"

"'Can I have what other women have--silk underwear and stockings?'"

"'Duane!' she gasped--'why did you?'"

"Oh, the horror of it!--the shame, the agonized surprise"

"'This is one of those rare occasions ... where goodness is ... amply
rewarded'"

"'I want to confess! I've been horribly depraved for a week!'"

"She dropped him a very low, very slow, very marvellous courtesy"

"Crumpled up like a white flower in his arms"

CHAPTER I

THE SEAGRAVES

All day Sunday they had raised the devil from attic to cellar; Mrs.
Farren was in tears, Howker desperate. Not one out of the fifteen
servants considered necessary to embellish the Seagrave establishment
could do anything with them after Kathleen Severn's sudden departure the
week before.

When the telegram announcing her mother's sudden illness summoned young
Mrs. Severn to Staten Island, every servant in the household understood
that serious trouble was impending for them.

Day by day the children became more unruly; Sunday they were demons; and
Mrs. Farren shuddered to think what Monday might bring forth.

The day began ominously at breakfast with general target practice,
ammunition consisting of projectiles pinched from the interior of hot
muffins. Later, when Mrs. Farren ventured into the schoolroom, she found
Scott Seagrave drawing injurious pictures of Howker on the black-board,
and Geraldine sorting lumps of sugar from the bowl on the
breakfast-tray, which had not yet been removed.

"Dearies," she began, "it is after nine o'clock and----"

"No school to-day, Mrs. Farren," interrupted Scott cheerfully; "we
haven't anything to do till Kathleen comes back, and you know it
perfectly well!"

"Yes, you have, dearie; Mrs. Severn has just sent you this list of
lessons." She held out a black-edged envelope.

Geraldine, who had been leisurely occupied in dropping cologne on a lump
of sugar, thrust the lump into her pink mouth and turned sharply on Mrs.
Farren.

"What list?" she demanded. "Give that letter to me.... Oh, Scott! Did
you ever hear of anything half so mean? Kathleen's written out about a
thousand questions in geography for us!"

"I can't stand that sort of interference!" shouted Scott, dropping his
chalk and aiming a kick at the big papier-mache globe. "I'm sorry
Kathleen's mother is probably going to die, but I've had enough
geography, too."

"Mrs. Severn's mother died on Friday," said the housekeeper solemnly.

The children paused, serious for a moment in the presence of the
incomprehensible.

"We're sorry," said Geraldine slowly.... "When is Kathleen coming back?"

"Perhaps to-night, dearie----"

Scott impatiently detached the schoolroom globe from its brass axis:
"I'm sorry, too," he said; "but I'm tired of lessons. Now, Mrs. Farren,
watch me! I'm going to kick a goal from the field. Here, you hold it,
Geraldine; Mrs. Farren, you had better try to block it and cheer for
Yale!"

Geraldine seized the globe, threw herself flat on the floor, and, head
on one side, wriggled, carefully considering the angle. Then, tipping
the globe, she adjusted it daintily for her brother to kick.

"A little higher, please; look out there, Mrs. Farren!" said Scott
calmly; "Harvard is going to score this time. Now, Geraldine!"

Thump! came the kick, but Mrs. Farren had fled, and the big globe struck
the nursery door and bounced back minus half of South America.

For ten minutes the upper floors echoed with the racket. Geraldine
fiercely disputed her brother's right to kick every time; then, as
usual, when she got what she wanted, gave up to Scott and let him
monopolise the kicking until, satiated, he went back to the black-board,
having obliterated several continents from the face of the globe.

"You might at least be polite enough to hold it for me to kick," said
his sister. "What a pig you are, Scott."

"Don't bother me; I'm drawing Howker. You can't kick straight,
anyway----"

"Yes, I can!"

Scott, intent on his drawing, muttered:

"I wish there was another boy in this house; I might have a little fun
to-day if there was anybody to play with."

There ensued a silence; then he heard his sister's light little feet
flying along the hallway toward their bedrooms, but went on calmly with
his drawing, using some effective coloured crayon on Howker's nose.
Presently he became conscious that Geraldine had re-entered the room.

"What are you going to do to-day?" he asked, preoccupied.

Geraldine, dressed in her brother's clothes, was kneeling on one knee
and hastily strapping on a single roller-skate.

"I'll show you," she said, rising and shaking the dark curls out of her
eyes. "Come on, Scott, I'm going to misbehave all day. Look at me! I've
brought you the boy you wanted to play with."

Her brother turned, considered her with patronising toleration, then
shrugged his shoulders.

"You look like one, but you're no good," he said.

"I can be just as bad as any boy!" she insisted. "I'll do whatever you
do; I'll do worse, I tell you. Dare me to do something!"

"You don't dare skate backward into the red drawing-room! There's too
much bric-a-brac."

She turned like a flash and was off, hopping and clattering down-stairs
on her single skate, and a moment later she whirled into the red
drawing-room backward and upset a Sang-de-boeuf jar, reducing the maid
to horrified tears and the jar to powder.

Howker strove in vain to defend his dining-room when Scott appeared on
one skate; but the breakfast-room and pantry were forcibly turned into
rinks; the twins swept through the halls, met and defeated their nurses,
Margaret and Betty, tumbled down into the lower regions, from there
descended to the basement, and whizzed cheerily through the kitchen,
waving two skateless legs.

There Mrs. Bramton attempted to buy them off with tribute in the shape
of cup-cakes.

"Sure, darlints, they do be starvin' yez," purred Mrs. Bramton. "Don't I
know the likes o' them? Now roon away quietlike an' ladylike----"

"Like a hen," retorted Scott. "I want some preserves."

"That's all very well," said Geraldine with her mouth full, "but we
expected to skate about the kitchen and watch you make pastry. Kindly
begin, Mrs. Bramton."

"I'd like to see what's inside of that chicken over there," said Scott.
"And I want you to give me some raisins, Mrs. Bramton----"

"I'm dying for a glass of milk," added Geraldine. "Get me some dough,
somebody; I'm going to bake something."

Scott, who, devoured by curiosity, had been sniffing around the spice
cupboard, sneezed violently; a Swedish kitchen-maid threw her apron over
her head, weak with laughter.

"If you're laughing at me, I'll fix you, Olga!" shouted Scott in a rage;
and the air was suddenly filled with balls of dough. Mrs. Bramton fled
before the storm; a well-directed volley drove the maids to cover and
stampeded the two cats.

"Take whatever is good to eat, Geraldine. Hurrah! The town surrenders!
Loot it! No quarter!" shouted Scott. However, when Howker arrived they
retired hastily with pockets full of cinnamon sticks, olives, prunes,
and dried currants, climbing triumphantly to the library above, where
they curled up on a leather divan, under the portrait of their mother,
to divide the spoils.

"Am I bad enough to suit you?" inquired Geraldine with pardonable pride.

"Pooh! That's nothing. If I had another boy here I'd--I'd----"

"Well, what?" demanded Geraldine, flushing. "I tell you I can misbehave
as well as any boy. Dare me to do anything and you'll see! I dare you to
dare me!"

Scott began: "Oh, it's all very easy for a girl to talk----"

"I _don't_ talk; I _do_ it! And you know perfectly well I do!"

"You're a girl, after all, even if you have got on my clothes----"

"Didn't I throw as much dough at Olga and Mrs. Bramton as you did?"

"You didn't hit anybody."

"I did! I saw a soft, horrid lump stick to Olga!"

"Pooh! _You_ can't throw straight----"

"That's a lie!" said Geraldine excitedly.

Scott bristled:

"If you say that again----"

"All right; go and get the boxing-gloves. You _did_ tell a lie, Scott,
because I did hit Olga!"

Scott hastily unstrapped his lone skate, cast it clattering from him,
and sped up-stairs. When he returned he hurled a pair of boxing-gloves
at Geraldine, who put them on, laced them, trembling with wrath, and
flew at her brother as soon as his own gloves were fastened.

They went about their business like lightning, swinging, blocking,
countering. Twice she gave him inviting openings and then punished him
savagely before he could get away; then he attempted in-fighting, but
her legs were too nimble. And after a while he lost his head and came at
her using sheer weight, which set her beside herself with fury.

Teeth clenched, crimson-cheeked, she side-stepped, feinted, and whipped
in an upper-cut. Then, darting in, she drove home her left with all her
might; and Scott went down with an unmistakable thud.

"One--two--three--four," she counted, "and you _did_ tell a lie, didn't
you? Five--six--Oh, Scott! I've made your nose bleed horridly! Does it
hurt, dear? Seven--eight----"

The boy, still confused, rose and instinctively assumed the classic
attitude of self-defence; but his sister threw down her gloves and
offered him her handkerchief, saying: "You've just got to be fair to me
now, Scott. Tell me that I throw straight and that I did hit Olga!"

He hesitated; wiped his nose:

"I take it back. You can throw straight. Ginger! What a crack you just
gave me!"

She was all compunction and honey now, hovering around him where he
stood stanching honourable wounds. After a while he laughed. "Thunder!"
he exclaimed ruefully; "my nose seems to be growing for fair. You're all
right, Geraldine."

"Here's my last cup-cake, if you like," said his sister, radiant.

Embarrassed a little by defeat, but nursing no bitterness, he sat down
on the leather divan again and permitted his sister to feed him and tell
him that his disaster was only an accident. He tried to think so, too,
but serious doubts persisted in his mind. There had been a clean-cut
finish to that swing and jab which disturbed his boy's conceit.

"We'll try it again," he began. "I'm all right now, if you like----"

"Oh, Scott, I don't want to!"

"Well, we ought to know which of us really can lick the other----"

"Why, of course, you can lick me every time. Besides, I wouldn't want to
be able to lick you--except when I'm very, very angry. And I ought not
to become angry the way I do. Kathleen tries so hard to make me stop
and reflect before I do things, but I can't seem to learn.... Does your
nose hurt?"

"Not in the least," said her brother, reddening and changing the
subject. "I say, it looks as though it were going to stop raining."

He went to the window; the big Seagrave house with its mansard roof, set
in the centre of an entire city block, bounded by Madison and Fifth
Avenues and by Ninety-fifth and Ninety-sixth Streets, looked out from
its four red brick facades onto strips of lawn and shrubbery, now all
green and golden with new grass and early buds.

It was topsy-turvy, March-hare weather, which perhaps accounted for the
early April dementia that possessed the children at recurring intervals,
and which nothing ever checked except the ultimate slumber of infantile
exhaustion.

If anybody in the house possessed authority to punish them, nobody
exercised it. Servants grown gray in the Seagrave service endured much,
partly for the children's sakes, partly in memory of the past; but the
newer and younger domestics had less interest in the past glories and
traditions of an old New York family which, except for two little
children, ten years old, had perished utterly from the face of the land.

The entire domestic regime was a makeshift--had been almost from the
beginning. Mrs. Farren, the housekeeper, understood it; Howker, the
butler, knew it; Lacy knew it--he who had served forty years as coachman
in the Seagrave family.

For in all the world there remained not one living soul who through ties
of kinship was authorised to properly control these children. Nor could
they themselves even remember parental authority; and only a shadowy
recollection of their grandfather's lax discipline survived, becoming
gradually, as time passed, nothing more personal to them than a pleasant
legend kept alive and nourished in the carefully guarded stories told
them by Kathleen Severn and by Anthony Seagrave's old servants.

Yet, in the land, and in his own city of Manhattan, their grandfather
had been a very grand man, with his large fortune, now doubled and still
increasing; he had been a very distinguished man in the world of fashion
with his cultivated taste in art and wine and letters and horses; he had
been a very important man, too, in the civic, social, and political
construction of New York town, in the quaint days when the sexton of Old
Trinity furnished fashionable hostesses with data concerning the
availability of social aspirants. He had been a courtly and fascinating
man, too. He had died a drunkard.

Now his grandchildren were fast forgetting him. The town had long since
forgotten him. Only an old friend or two and his old servants remembered
what he had been, his virtues, his magnificence, his kindness, and his
weakness.

But if the Seagrave twins possessed neither father nor mother to
exercise tender temporal and spiritual suzerainty in the nursery, and if
no memory of their grandfather's adoring authority remained, the last
will and testament of Anthony Seagrave had provided a marvellous,
man-created substitute for the dead: a vast, shadowy thing which ruled
their lives with passionless precision; which ordered their waking hours
even to the minutest particulars; which assumed machine-like charge of
their persons, their personal expenses, their bringing-up, their
schooling, the items of their daily routine.

This colossal automaton, almost terrifyingly impersonal, loomed always
above them, throwing its powerful and gigantic shadow across their
lives. As they grew old enough to understand, it became to them the
embodiment of occult and unpleasant authority which controlled their
coming and going; which chose for them their personal but not their
legal guardian, Kathleen Severn; which fixed upon the number of servants
necessary for the house that Anthony Seagrave directed should be
maintained for his grandchildren; which decided what kind of expenses,
what sort of clothing, what recreations, what accomplishments, what
studies, what religion they should be provided with.

And the name of this enormous man-contrived machine which took the place
of father and mother was the Half Moon Trust Company, acting as trustee,
guardian, and executor for two little children, who neither understood
why they were sometimes very unruly or that they would one day be very,
very rich.

As for their outbreaks, an intense sense of loneliness for which they
were unable to account was always followed by a period of restlessness
sure to culminate in violent misbehaviour.

Such an outbreak had been long impending. So when a telegram called away
their personal guardian, Kathleen Severn, the children broke loose with
the delicate fury of the April tempest outside, which all the morning
had been blotting the western windows with gusts of fragrant rain.

The storm was passing now; light volleys of rain still arrived at
intervals, slackening as the spring sun broke out, gilding naked
branches and bare brown earth, touching swelling buds and the frail
points of tulips which pricked the soaked loam in close-set thickets.

From the library bay windows where they stood, the children noticed
dandelions in the grass and snowdrops under the trees and recognised the
green signals of daffodil and narcissus.

Already crocuses, mauve, white, and yellow, glimmered along a dripping
privet hedge which crowned the brick and granite wall bounding the
domain of Seagrave. East, through the trees, they could see the roofs of
electric cars speeding up and down Madison Avenue, and the houses facing
that avenue. North and south were quiet streets; westward Fifth Avenue
ran, a sheet of wet, golden asphalt glittering under the spring sun, and
beyond it, above the high retaining wall, budding trees stood out
against the sky, and the waters of the Park reservoirs sparkled behind.

"I am glad it's spring, anyway," said Geraldine listlessly.

"What's the good of it?" asked Scott. "We'll have to take all our
exercise with Kathleen just the same, and watch other children having
good times. What's the use of spring?"

"Spring _is_ tiresome," admitted Geraldine thoughtfully.

"So is winter. I think either would be all right if they'd only let me
have a few friends. There are plenty of boys I'd like to have some fun
with if they'd let me."

"I wonder," mused Geraldine, "if there is anything the matter with us,
Scott?"

"Why?"

"Oh--I don't know. People stare at us so--nurses always watch us and
begin to whisper as soon as we come along. Do you know what a boy said
to me once when I skated very far ahead of Kathleen?"

"What did he say?" inquired Scott, flattening his nose against the
window-pane to see whether it still hurt him.

"He asked me if I were too rich and proud to play with other children. I
was so surprised; and I said that we were not rich at all, and that I
never had had any money, and that I was not a bit proud, and would love
to stay and play with him if Kathleen permitted me."

"Did Kathleen let you? Of course she didn't."

"I told her what the boy said and I showed her the boy, but she wouldn't
let me stay and play."

"Kathleen's a pig."

"No, she isn't, poor dear. They make her act that way--Mr. Tappan makes
her. Our grandfather didn't want us to have friends."

"I'll tell you what," said Scott impatiently, "when I'm old enough, I'll
have other boys to play with whether Kathleen and--and that Thing--likes
it or not."

The Thing was the Half Moon Trust Company.

Geraldine glanced back at the portrait over the divan:

"Do you know," she ventured, "that I believe mother would have let us
have fun."

"I'll bet father would, too," said Scott. "Sometimes I feel like kicking
over everything in the house."

"So do I and I generally do it," observed Geraldine, lifting a slim,
graceful leg and sending a sofa-cushion flying.

When they had kicked all the cushions from the sofas and divans, Scott
suggested that they go out and help Schmitt, the gardener, who, at that
moment, came into view on the lawn, followed by Olsen wheeling a
barrowful of seedlings in wooden trays.

So the children descended to the main hall and marched through it,
defying Lang, the second man, refusing hats and overshoes; and presently
were digging blissfully in a flower-bed under the delighted directions
of Schmitt.

"What are these things, anyway?" demanded Scott, ramming down the moist
earth around a fragile rootlet from which trailed a green leaf or two.

"Dot vas a verpena, sir," explained the old gardener. "Now you shall
vatch him grow."

The boy remained squatting for several minutes, staring hard at the
seedling.

"I can't see it grow," he said to his sister, "and I'm not going to sit
here all day waiting. Come on!" And he gave her a fraternal slap.

Geraldine wiped her hands on her knickerbockers and started after him;
and away they raced around the house, past the fountains, under trees by
the coach-house, across paths and lawns and flower-beds, tearing about
like a pair of demented kittens. They frisked, climbed trees, chased
each other, wrestled, clutched, tumbled, got mad, made up, and finally,
removing shoes and stockings, began a game of leapfrog.

Horror-stricken nurses arrived bearing dry towels and footgear, and were
received with fury and a volley of last year's horse-chestnuts. And when
the enemy had been handsomely repulsed, the children started on a tour
of exploration, picking their way with tender, naked feet to the
northern hedge.

Here Geraldine mounted on Scott's shoulders and drew herself up to the
iron railing which ran along the top of the granite-capped wall between
hedge and street; and Scott followed her, both pockets stuffed with
chestnuts which he had prudently gathered in the shrubbery.

In the street below there were few passers-by. Each individual wayfarer,
however, received careful attention, Scott having divided the chestnuts,
and the aim of both children being excellent.

They had been awaiting a new victim for some time, when suddenly
Geraldine pinched her brother with eager satisfaction:

"Oh, Scott! there comes that boy I told you about!"

"What boy?"

"The one who asked me if I was too rich and proud to play with him. And
that must be his sister; they look alike."

"All right," said Scott; "we'll give them a volley. You take the nurse
and I'll fix the boy.... Ready.... Fire!"

The ambuscade was perfectly successful; the nurse halted and looked up,
expressing herself definitely upon the manners and customs of the twins;
the boy, who appeared to be amazingly agile, seized a swinging wistaria
vine, clambered up the wall, and, clinging to the outside of the iron
railing, informed Scott that he would punch his head when a pleasing
opportunity presented itself.

"All right," retorted Scott; "come in and do it now."

"That's all very well for you to say when you know I can't climb over
this railing!"

"I'll tell you what I'll do," said Scott, thrilled at the chance of
another boy on the grounds even if he had to fight him; "I'll tell you
what!" sinking his voice to an eager whisper; "You run away from your
nurse as soon as you get into the Park and I'll be at the front door and
I'll let you in. Will you?"

"Oh, _please_!" whispered Geraldine; "and bring your sister, too!"

The boy stared at her knickerbockers. "Do _you_ want to fight my
sister?" he asked.

"I? Oh, no, no, no. You can fight Scott if you like, and your sister and
I will have such fun watching you. Will you?"

His nurse was calling him to descend, in tones agitated and peremptory;
the boy hesitated, scowled at Scott, looked uncertainly at Geraldine,
then shot a hasty and hostile glance at the interior of the mysterious
Seagrave estate. Curiosity overcame him; also, perhaps, a natural desire
for battle.

"Yes," he said to Scott, "I'll come back and punch your head for you."

And very deftly, clinging like a squirrel to the pendant wistaria, he
let himself down into the street again.

The Seagrave twins, intensely excited, watched them as far as Fifth
Avenue, then rapidly drawing on their shoes and stockings, scrambled
down to the shrubbery and raced for the house. Through it they passed
like a double whirlwind; feeble and perfunctory resistance was offered
by their nurses.

"Get out of my way!" said Geraldine fiercely; "do you think I'm going to
miss the first chance for some fun that I've ever had in all my life?"

At the same moment, through the glass-sheeted grill Scott discovered
two small figures dashing up the drive to the porte-cochere. And he
turned on Lang like a wild cat.

Lang, the man at the door, was disposed to defend his post; Scott
prepared to fly at him, but his sister intervened:

"Oh, Lang," she pleaded, jumping up and down in an agony of
apprehension, "please, _please_, let them in! We've never had any
friends." She caught his arm piteously; he looked fearfully embarrassed,
for the Seagrave livery was still new to him; nor, during his brief
service, had he fully digested the significance of the policy which so
rigidly guarded these little children lest rumour from without apprise
them of their financial future and the contaminating realisation
undermine their simplicity.

As he stood, undecided, Geraldine suddenly jerked his hand from the
bronze knob and Scott flung open the door.

"Come on! Quick!" he cried; and the next moment four small pairs of feet
were flying through the hall, echoing lightly across the terrace, then
skimming the lawn to the sheltering shrubbery beyond.

"The thing to do," panted Scott, "is to keep out of sight." He seized
his guests by the arms and drew them behind the rhododendrons. "Now," he
said, "what's your name? You, I mean!"

"Duane Mallett," replied the boy, breathless. "That's my sister, Naida.
Let's wait a moment before we begin to fight; Naida and I had to run
like fury to get away from our nurse."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30