White Magic: A Novel

by David Graham Phillips

On Tuesdays and Thursdays her father brought from town a bundle of papers which he usually sat up with until midnight or even one o’clock. Then he and Pinney often walked up and down the terrace before the main entrance and smoked for twenty minutes. Peter went away on a Monday. On Tuesday night there were no guests. At dinner were only the family—her mother, her father and herself, her mother’s secretary, Miss Cleets, Mrs. Lambert, the housekeeper, and Pinney. As they sat at table Beatrice revolved her project, decided she would risk a slight change in it that would spare her a night outdoors and the danger of being seen as she entered in the early morning. After dinner she and her mother and the housekeeper and Pinney played bridge until half past ten. By eleven o’clock everyone was gone from downstairs but her father, Pinney, and two servants. In her room in the dark she waited until half past eleven, then changed to outing dress, descended and slipped into the gray salon. Its windows had been locked for the night. She unlocked one, opened it, went out upon the broad, stone veranda, closed the window behind her. The sky was fortunately overcast, or she would have been in full view, as the moon was on that side of the house.

She crept along in the shadow of wall and shrubbery until she was in the woods. There she struck into a path and fled down the hill toward the boathouse. When she was about half way she remembered the outside watchmen—remembered that the boathouse was one of their stations. It would be folly to risk running into them; she must make the trip to the studio on foot by rounding the end of the lake—full five miles instead of less than three. At the shortest she would be gone, not about two hours, but more than three. So, it was useless to think of getting in before her father went to bed and the alarms were switched on. Instead of hurry there was time to waste—all the time before five in the morning. She strolled along, taking the longest way and keeping entirely clear of the watchmen’s routes among the several groups of widely separated outbuildings—the stables and garage, the water, lighting and laundry plants, the kennels, the hothouses, the farm and dairy buildings.

A fine, soft rain fell, but it did not trouble her as the foliage was now—early May—so thick that it was almost a roof. When she came out of the woods near the studio the rain had ceased and the moon, never so thickly veiled that it did not give her light, sailed in a clear path among the separating clouds. She looked at the watch on her wrist; it was nearly one o’clock. “I came too quickly,” she said. “I must do better going back.”

She found the studio door open, as she expected; there were no tramps in that region, and Red Hill was guarded only because New York thieves might plan an expedition expressly to plunder it. She dropped the hasp from the staple, pushed the big door open.

The room within was in the full pour of the moon now straight above the huge skylight. She looked round, her heart beating wildly—not with fear, not with expectation, but with memory. From that bench there she had first seen him. There she had watched him making chocolate. There they had sat drinking it, she admiring the swift, vivid play of emotion upon his handsome face—and what interesting emotion!—so free—so simple—so strong—so genuine! She went to the bench, seated herself, stretched herself at full length—and sobbed. “Oh, if you only knew!” she cried. “I’m so different now! I’ve learned so much—and I love you—love you, Chang!” It thrilled and comforted her to speak out her heart without reserve in that place.

She searched the room for some memento of him. In one of the wide chinks in the masonry of the chimney she found a pipe—an old, evil-smelling thing, its mouthpiece almost bitten through. She laughed and cried over it, touching it caressingly, making a face at its really fearful odor, but loving it none the less. She tore up an old newspaper, wrapped the pipe carefully to shut in that odor if possible.

She sat on one of the rough, uncomfortable chairs and proceeded to live over every moment of her acquaintance with him—to recall all he had said and done and looked, all his little peculiarities of gesture and accent; to analyze his fascination for her—why she loved him—the thousand and one reasons in addition to the real reason—which, of course, was that he was Chang, the biggest and straightest and honestest man she had ever known, not even self-conscious enough to be modest. The moon crossed the skylight; the room faded into half darkness; the moon reappeared at the west window, high up in the wall. She dreamed on and on—the dreams with which she filled most of her waking moments when she was alone. When she remembered to look at her watch it was five minutes after three!

She sprang up, took the note from her bosom, thrust it three quarters through the crack between the closet door and its frame, just above the lock. Would he get it that morning? Or, would it be several days before he came there? “I’ll go to the cascade two nights,” said she. “Then, if he doesn’t come, I’ll try some other way.”

When she reached the top of Red Hill it was day, though the sun was not yet above the horizon. She circled round until she was opposite the main entrance, but well concealed. She had come down early so often that she knew the routine through which the servants would go. Just as the first rays of the sun lit upon the topmost of the pointed roofs, Tom, the indoors watchman, appeared in the main entrance. The alarms were off. She circled back to the west and, by way of the dense shrubbery that would hide her from any chance gazer from windows, she gained the veranda—the unlocked window of the gray salon. Her heart stood still while she was raising that window. When no sound of bells banging and clanging came she drew a long breath, stepped weakly through, lowered and locked the window. The rest of the journey was comparatively free from danger.

When her maid came in at nine o’clock she was sleeping soundly; and all traces of her expedition had been removed by her own unaccustomed hands from skirt and leggings and shoes. The old pipe in its newspaper wrappings was hidden deep in a drawer of lingerie odorous of delicate sachet—a drawer of which she had the only key.