That was the beginning. In the end the devil’s promise was kept after a fashion, inasmuch as Antrim stumbled up the steps of Mrs. Seeley’s boarding house some two hours later in a frame of mind which, whatever may have been its lacks or its havings, was at least bullet-proof on the side of sorrow.
CHAPTER XIII
“THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY”
In her own way—which was the quietest and least obtrusive of ways—Dorothy was quite as intolerant of mysteries as was her father, and after the evening when Brant had gone forth to seek and to save that which was lost, small mysteries seemed to lie in wait for her at every turn.
They began the following day with Brant’s brief visit and abrupt departure. She had heard his voice in the hall, and, a little later, the rustle of skirts as some one—her mother, she thought it was at the time—had gone in to meet him. Of what took place in the drawing-room she knew nothing, but a few minutes afterward, when she was going down to join them, he had stumbled out into the hall, snatched his coat and hat from the rack, and left the house without once looking behind him. So much Dorothy saw from the stair, and she also saw that he was excited and preoccupied, and that his face was the face of one upon whom trouble sharp and serious has come suddenly.
When she heard the gate clang behind him she went to the drawing-room and found it empty; whereupon that which had been merely singular became unaccountable. Was it possible that he had taken offense because he had been kept waiting? Dorothy thought she knew him better than that. He was a grown man, and not a foolish boy with a brand new dignity to battle for.
Failing to account for the unaccountable, Dorothy waited. He would doubtless come again, and with his coming the apparent mystery would vanish. But when the days passed and he came no more, she grew curious and asked guarded questions of her mother—and received ambiguous answers, since Mrs. Langford, with maternal self-sufficiency, had deemed it unnecessary to take either of her daughters into her confidence in Brant’s affair.
So Dorothy wondered, and laid innocent little snares to entrap her father, who had also grown singularly reticent. And when these traps sprung harmless, she tried Antrim, with no better results. No, Brant was still in town, and the chief clerk was not aware of any impending change in his plans. Thus Henry Antrim, vaguely; but Dorothy’s attempt fell upon an inauspicious moment, since it was made on the evening of Antrim’s off day, and her questions were put while he was waiting for Isabel to make ready for the jaunt à l’opéra.
After this failure Dorothy tried Will, and it was a measure of her concern that she should appeal to him. She had no news of him; had nothing save that which an affectionate sister usually gets in an attempt to fathom the unplumbed depths of a younger brother’s churlishness. Knowing Will’s weakness, she ventured carefully, but she was quite unprepared for his sudden outburst of petulant brutality.
“You wonder where Mr. Brant is, do you?” he sneered, mimicking her. “Well, you’ve no business to wonder; that’s all there is about that.”
“Why, Will——”