White Magic: A Novel

by David Graham Phillips

Beatrice had not shown the faintest sign that she was conscious of imprisonment. So far as Richmond observed, not once had she made any attempt to break through or even to explore the limits assigned her. Had it not been for the discontent plain to see upon Peter’s florid, vigorously healthy countenance throughout the four days he lingered at Red Hill, Richmond would have assumed that his daughter had regained her reason as he had felt confident she would. Beatrice did make an effort in public to treat Peter as her fiancé; but she had to give it up. Her nerves refused to assist her in her game of hypocrisy beyond a certain point—and Peter had become physically repulsive to her. She did not regard this defect in her otherwise perfect pose as serious. She knew that her father was not one to relax vigilance because he had won. So, what advantage would there be in striving, and probably failing, to remove his last suspicion?

Without betraying herself she had thoroughly examined all the metes and bounds of her prison. She found it everywhere worthy of her father’s minute ingenuity. By means of his pretext of alarm about cranks and kidnapers she was being thoroughly spied upon without the spies suspecting what they were really about. By day there were the personal guards, to inform him if she tried to communicate with Roger either personally or by message. By night there were the watchman within and the three patrolmen without, and a system of burglar alarms that made it impossible for anyone either to leave or to enter without flooding the whole house with light and starting up a clamor of bells from attics to cellars.

Apparently she was as free as air—free to roam anywhere in the vast wilderness surrounding the gardens and terraces and lawns from the midst of which the big chateau rose. Really, she could not move a step in secret—and to give Roger the warning she must see him face to face without her father’s knowledge. For, if her father purposed to keep faith with her, it would be folly to give him reason to feel he would do well to ruin Roger anyhow; and, if he did not purpose to keep the agreement under which she had returned and had accepted Peter, it would be madness to provoke him to attack Roger immediately. She must see Roger secretly.

But how?

If chance there was, that chance must be under cover of night—night, when she was at least free from the espionage of human eyes. How could she get out of the house undetected and get back into it unsuspected? And if she could accomplish this well-nigh impossible feat, how arrange to meet Roger—when she could not communicate with him, when she did not even know where he lived?

Every system of human devising has its weak point. By observing and thinking Beatrice discovered the weak point in this system of her father’s. As soon as she formed her plan she got ready this note:

Chang:

It is absolutely necessary that I see you for a few minutes. My only chance is at night. So, come down to the cascade at one o’clock the morning after you get this. Don’t fail me. Don’t think me hysterical or sentimental. I might almost say this is a matter of life and death.

Rix.

The burglar alarms were switched on every night by Conrad Pinney, the superintendent, just after the house was closed. They were switched off at five in the morning by Tom, the indoors watchman, when the lowest rank of menials in the service of the establishment descended from their little rooms under the eaves of the west wing to make ready the first-floor rooms for the day. The house was closed as soon as the last member of the family went up to his or her rooms. To escape, she must choose the moment or so between the ascending of the last member of the family and the switching on of the alarms—and it must be on a night when some one member of the family stayed down long enough after the going of the rest to make it certain there would be no accidental glancing into her rooms to see that all was well. To get back into the house she must wait until it was opened at five o’clock and slip in unseen by the menial sweepers and cleaners and polishers.