Blacksheep! Blacksheep! by Meredith Nicholson (best books for students to read TXT) 📕

"Julia is usually very prompt but she is motoring from Southampton and we must allow her the usual margin," the Governor remarked when they met in the drawing-room. Traces of the same nervousness he had manifested in announcing that it was his sister who was coming to dine with them were still visible.

The clock had struck the three-quarters when they heard the annunciator tinkle followed by the opening of the front door. The Governor left the room with a bound and Archie heard distinctly his hearty greetings and a woman's subdued replies.

"I'm sorry to be late, but we had to change a tire. No, I'll leave my wraps here."

"Won't you be more comfortable without your hat?"

"No, I'll keep it; thanks!"

The door framed for a moment a young woman who in her instant's pause on the threshold seemed like a portrait figure suddenly come to life. She was taller than the Governor and carried herself with a suggestion of his authoritative bearing. Her face was a feminized version of the Governor's, exquisitely modeled and illuminated by dark eyes that swept Archie with a hasty inquiry from under the brim of a black picture hat. She might have been younger or older than the Governor, but her maturity was not an affair of years. She was a person of distinction, a woman to challenge attention in any company. Archie was not sure whether she had been warned of a stranger's presence in the house, but if she was surprised to find him there she made no sign.

As Archie advanced to meet them he moved slowly, and unconsciously drew himself up, as though preparing to meet a personage who compelled homage and was not to be approached without a degree of ceremony. She was entirely in black save for the roses in her hat. She might have retained the hat, he thought, for the sake of its shadow on her face; or from a sense that it emphasized the formal and transitory nature of her visit.

"Julia, this is my friend, Mr. Comly."

Her "very glad, I'm sure," was uttered with reservations, but she smiled, a quick sad little smile.

The Governor had introduced her as Julia, carelessly, as though of course Archie knew the rest of it. The whole business was as utterly unreal as anything could be. The Governor asked perfunctorily about her drive into town, and whether it had been hot in the country. Dinner was announced immediately and they sat down at a round table whose centerpiece of sweet peas brought a coolness into the room.

The dinner was served with a deliberation befitting the end of a summer day. Julia was the most tranquil of the trio and it was in Archie's mind that she was capable of dominating even more difficult situations. She was studying him—he was conscious of that—and it was clear that she was not finding it easy to appraise and place him. The Governor had given him no hint of the possible trend of the table talk but the woman took the matter into her own hands. As though by prearrangement she touched upon wholly impersonal matters, recent movements in European affairs, a new novel, the industrial situation; things that could be broached without fear of embarrassment were picked up and flung aside when they had served their purpose. The Governor was often inattentive, the most uncomfortable member of the trio. It seemed to Archie as he met a puzzled look in Julia's eyes from time to time that she was still trying to account for him, and her manner he thought slowly changed. Her first defensive hostility yielded to something much more amiable. It was as though she had reached a decision not wholly unflattering and might be a little sorry for her earlier attitude.

The Governor roused himself presently at the mention of a new book of verse she had praised, and threw himself into the talk thereafter with characteristic spirit and humor.

"Mr. Comly shares my affection for the poets. He has been a great resource to me, Julia. I'm sure you'd be grateful to him if you knew the extent of his kindnesses. A new friend, but it's not always the old ones, you know—"

"My brother is hard to please," said Julia. "You score high in meeting his exacting requirements."

A slight smile dulled the irony of this, but the Governor, evidently concerned for the maintenance of amity, introduced the art of the Aztecs, to which he brought his usual enthusiasm.

The Aztecs carried them back to the drawing-room, where Archie, feeling that the Governor and his sister probably had personal affairs to talk about, lounged toward the door; but the Governor was quick to detect his purpose.

"Julia, if you brought those documents with you I'll take them up to my room and look them over. It's only a matter of my signature, isn't it? You and Mr. Comly can give the final twist to prehistoric art. I'll be down at once."

"Very well; you will find them in my bag in the hall. I must start home very soon, you know."

"I had hoped you would spend the night here," said the Governor; "but if you won't I'm grateful even for this little glimpse."

If Julia was displeased by the Governor's very evident intention not to be left alone with her she was at pains to conceal the feeling. Archie turned toward her inquiringly, but he met a look of acquiescence that carried also an appeal as though she wished him not to interfere.

The Governor left the room and reappeared with a small satchel, took out several bundles of legal papers and glanced at their superscriptions.

"Those are chiefly deeds and leases," Julia remarked carelessly. "They're all ready to be signed by the trustees. There are forms for our approval attached to all of them and you'll find that I've signed."

The Governor shrugged his shoulders as though business matters were not to his taste and in a moment they heard his quick step on the stair.

The novelty of the situation that left Archie alone with a woman whose very name he did not know was enhanced by the sumptuousness of the background furnished by the house itself. It was the oddest possible place for such an adventure. Julia sat with one arm flung along the back of a low chair. She fell naturally into poses that suggested portraits; there were painters who would have jumped at the chance of sketching her as she sat there with the spot of red in the big hat and the shadowed face and the white of her throat and arms relieving the long black line.

"It is no doubt clear to you," she remarked without altering her position and with no lowering of the habitual tone of her speech, "that my brother prefers not to be alone with me."

"I rather surmised that," Archie replied with an ease he did not feel. She might ask questions; it might be that she would cross-examine him as to the Governor's recent movements. He turned to drop his cigarette into the brass receiver at his elbow to avoid contact with her gaze, which was bent upon him disconcertingly.

"We have but a moment, and we must have a care not to seem to be confidential. He didn't close his door, I think."

The draperies at the end of the room swayed a little and Archie walked back and glanced into the dining-room. He nodded reassuringly and she indicated a seat a little nearer than the one he had left.

"Please don't be alarmed, but it's a singular fact that I know you; we met once, passingly, at a tea in Cambridge; it's a good while ago and we exchanged only a word, so don't try to remember. I much prefer that you shouldn't." Archie didn't remember; he had attended many teas at Cambridge during commencement festivities and had always hated them. "It was not until we were at the table that I placed you tonight. I'm telling you this," she went on, "not to disturb you but to let you know that I'm relieved, infinitely relieved to know that you are with my brother. How it came about is none of my affair. But you are a gentleman; in the strange phase through which"—her lips formed to speak a name but she caught herself up sharply—"through which he is passing I'm gratified that he has your companionship. I want you to promise to be kind to him, and to protect him so far as possible. I only know vaguely—I am afraid to surmise—how he spends his time; this is my first glimpse of him in a year, and for half a dozen years I have met him only in some such way as this. You have probably questioned his sanity; that would be only natural, but there is no such excuse for him. Once something very cruel happened to him; something that greatly embittered him, a very cruel, hard thing, indeed; and after the first shock of it—" She turned her head slightly and her lips quivered.

"That is all," she said, and faced him again with her beautiful repose accentuated, her perfect self-control that touched him with an infinite pity. She was superb, and he had listened with a shame deepened by the consciousness that, remembering him from a chance meeting, she attributed to him an honor and decency he had relinquished, it seemed to him, in some state of existence before the dawn of time. What she knew or did not know about her brother was not of importance; it was the assumption that he was capable of exercising an influence upon the man, protecting and saving him from himself that hurt, hurt with all the poignancy of physical pain. She did not dream that she had got the whole thing upside-down; that if the Governor was a social pariah he himself was no whit better, and had thrown himself upon the Governor's mercy.

"I shall do what I can," he said. "You can see that I am very fond of him; he has been enormously kind to me."

She gave little heed to this, though she nodded her head slowly as though she had counted upon his promise.

"You probably know that with all his oddities and whimsicalities he has some theory of life that doesn't belong to our day. It may help you to know that there's a crisis approaching in his affairs. He has hinted at it for several years; it's a part of the mystery in which he wraps himself; but I never know quite how to take him. He wears a smiling mask. Please understand that it is because I love him so much that I am saying these things to you; that and because I know I can trust you. You are remaining with him, I hope—"

"Yes; we plan to be together for some time."

"If anything should happen to him I should like to know." She paused a moment. "It was distinctly understood between us when he called me by telephone this morning that I was not to hint in any way as to his identity, or mine for that matter, and I shall not break faith with him. He would be greatly displeased if he knew what I have said to you; but I resolved after I had been in the house half an hour that I could count on your aid. We have but a moment more."

She mused a moment and then with quick decision stepped to a writing table, snatched a sheet of paper and wrote rapidly, while he filled in the interval by talking of irrelevant things