The Avalanche: A Mystery StoryBut the cause of the change in her was something far less picturesque, something concrete and sinister. He felt sure of that....
VII
Unless--but that was ridiculous! Impossible!
He sprang to his feet, incredulous, disgusted at the mere thought.
But why not? She was very young, and older and wiser women were afflicted with inconsistencies, little tenacious desires and vanities never quite to be grasped by the elemental male.
He went over to a bookcase containing heavy works of reference and pressed his index finger into the molding. It swung outward, revealing the door of a safe. He manipulated the combination, took from a drawer of the interior a box, opened it and stared at a magnificent Burmah ruby. It was or had been a royal jewel, presented to Masewell Price by one of the great princes of India whose portrait he had painted. The pearls had all been captured long since by Price's sisters and by Morgan V. for his wife; but this ruby his mother had given him as she lay dying. She had bidden him leave it in his father's safe until he was out of college, and then keep it as closely in his personal possession as possible. It would be turned over to him with the rest of his private fortune.
"Never let any woman wear it," she had whispered. "It brings luck to men but not to women. Nothing could have affected my luck one way or the other--I was born to have nothing I wanted, but you, dear little boy.
Keep it for your luck and in a safe place, but near you."
He had looked back upon this scene as he grew older as the mere expression of a whim of dissolution, but it had made so deep an impression upon him at the time that insensibly the words sank into his plastic mind creating a superst.i.tion that refused to yield to reason. The ruby was Helene's birthstone and she was pa.s.sionately fond of it. She had begged and coaxed to wear this jewel, and upon one occasion had stamped her little foot and sulked throughout the evening. He had given her a ruby bar, had the clasp of her pearl necklace set with rabies, and last Christmas had presented her with a small but fine "pigeon blood"
encircled with diamonds. These had enraptured her for the moment, but she had always circled back to the historic stone, over which her indulgent husband was so unaccountably obstinate.
Until lately. He recalled that for several months she had not mentioned it. Could she have been indulging in a prolonged attack of interior sulks, which affected her spirits, dimmed her radiant personality? He abominated the idea but admitted the possibility. She would not be the first person to be the victim of a secret but furious pa.s.sion for jewels.
He recalled a novel of Hichens; not the matter but the central idea.
Authors of other races had used the same motive. Well, if his wife had an abnormal streak in her the sooner he found out the truth the better.
He closed the door of the safe, swung the bookcase into place, slipped the ruby with its curious gold chain that looked ma.s.sive but hardly weighed an ounce, into his pocket, rang for a servant and told him to ask Mrs. Ruyler to come down to the library as soon as she was dressed.
CHAPTER II
I
Ruyler sighed as he heard his wife walk down the hall. There had been a time when she came running like a child at his summons, but in these days she walked with a leisurely dignity which to his possibly morbid ear betrayed a certain crab-like disposition in her little high heels to slip backward along the polished floor.
She came in smiling, however, and kissed him quickly and warmly. Her extraordinary hair hung down in two long braids, their blue blackness undulating among the soft folds of her thin pink negligee. For the first time Ruyler realized that pink was Helene's favorite color; she seldom wore anything else except white or black, and then always relieved with pink. And why not, with that deep pink blush in her white cheeks, and the velvet blackness of her eyes? People still raved over Helene Ruyler's "coloring," and Price told himself once more as she stood before him, her little head dragged back by the weight of her plaits, her slender throat crossed by a narrow line of black velvet, that he had married one of the most beautiful girls he had ever seen.
He was seized with a sudden sharp pang of jealousy and caught her in his arms roughly, his gray eyes almost as black as hers.
"Tell me," he exclaimed, and the new fear almost choked him, "does any other man interest you--the least little bit?"
She stared at him and then burst into the most natural laugh he had heard from her for months. "That is simply too funny to talk about."
"But I am able to give you so little of my time. Working or tired out at night--letting you go out so much alone--but I haven't the heart to insist that you yawn over a book, while I am shut up here, or too f.a.gged to talk even to you. Life is becoming a tragedy for business men--if they've got it in them to care for anything else."
"Well, don't add to the tragedy by cultivating jealousy. I've told you that I am perfectly willing to give up Society and sit like Dora holding your pens--or filling your fountain pen--no, you dictate. What chance has a woman in a business man's life?"
"None, alas, except to look beautiful and be happy. Are you that?--the last I mean, of course!"
She nestled closer to him and laughed again. "More so than ever. To be frank you have completed my happiness by being jealous. I have wondered sometimes if it were a compliment--your being so sure of me."
"That's my idea of love."
"Well, it's mine, too. But if you want me to stay home--"
"Oh, no! You are fond of society? Really, I mean? Why shouldn't you be?--a young thing--"
"What else is there? Of course, I should enjoy it much more if you were always with me. Shall we never have that year in Europe together?"
"G.o.d knows. Something is wrong with the world. It needs reorganizing--from the top down. It is inhuman, the way even rich men have to work--to remain rich! But sit down."
He led her over to a chair before the window. The storm was decreasing in violence, the heavy curtain of rain was no longer tossed, but falling in straight intermittent lines, and the islands were coming to life. Even the high and heavy crest of Mount Tamalpais was dimly visible.
"It is the last of the storms, I fancy. Spring is overdue," said Price, who, however, was covertly watching his wife's face. Her color had faded a little, her lids drooped over eyes that stared out at the still turbulent waters.
"I love these San Francisco storms," she said abruptly. "I am so glad we have these few wild months. But Mrs. Thornton has worried and so have we.
Her fete at San Mateo comes off on the fourteenth, the first entertainment she has given since her return, and it would be ghastly if it rained. It should be a wonderful sight--those grounds--everybody in fancy dress with little black velvet masks. Don't you think you can go?"
"The fourteenth? I'll try to make it. Who are you to be?"
"Beatrice d'Este--in a court gown of black tissue instead of velvet, with just a touch of pink--oh, but a wonderful creation! I designed it myself.
We are not bothering too much about historical accuracy."
"How would you like this for the touch of pink!" He took the immense ruby from his pocket and tossed it into her lap.
For a moment she stared at it with expanding eyes, then gave a little shriek of rapture and flung herself into his arms, the child he had married.
"Is it true? But true? Shall I wear this wonderful thing? The women will die of jealousy. I shall feel like an empress--but more, more, I shall wear this lovely thing--I, I, Helene Ruyler, born Perrin, who never had a franc in her pocket in Rouen! Price! Have you changed your mind--but no!
I cannot believe it."
That was it then! He watched her mobile face sharply. It expressed nothing but the excited rapture of a very young woman over a magnificent toy. There was none of the morbid feverish pa.s.sion he had dreadfully antic.i.p.ated. His spirits felt lighter, although he sighed that a bauble, even if it were one of the finest of its kind in the world, should have projected its sinister shadow between them. It had a wicked history. But Helene saw no shadows. She held it up to the light, peered into it as it lay half concealed in the cup of her slender white hands, fondled it against her cheek, hung the chain about her neck.
"How I have dreamed of it," she murmured. "How did you come to change your mind?"
"I thought it a pity such a fine jewel should live forever in a safe; and it will become you above all women. Nature must have had you in her eye when she designed the ruby. I had a sudden vision ... and made up my mind that you should wear it the first time I was able to take you to a party.
I must keep the letter of my promise."
"And I can only wear it when you are with me?"
"I am afraid so."
"I'm you, if there is anything in the marriage ceremony." Then she kissed him impulsively. "But I won't be a little pig. And I can tell everybody between now and the Thornton fete that I am going to wear it, and I can think and dream of my triumph meanwhile. But why didn't you let me know you were down? It is Sunday, our only day. I overslept shockingly. I didn't get home till two."
"Two? Do you dance until two every night?"
"What else? They lead such a purposeless life out here. We sometimes have cla.s.ses--but they don't last long. I have almost forgotten that I once had a serious mind. But what would you? It is either society or suffrage.
I won't be as serious as that yet. I mean to be young--but young! for five more years. Then I shall become a 'leader,' or vote for the President, or ride on a float in a suffrage parade dressed as the G.o.ddess of Liberty, with my hair down."
He laughed, more and more relieved. "Yes, please remain young until you are twenty-five. By that time I hope the world will have adjusted itself and I shall have the leisure to companion you. Meanwhile, be a child. It is very refreshing to me. Come. I must lock this thing up. I have an interview here with Spaulding in about ten minutes."