The empty drive, the empty hall, the empty, shining windows drew him like wires, and, dropping back across the border of the drive to a far-lying depth of shadow, he crossed it like a ghost; taking advantage of every unclipped shrub and moldering urn, began to mount the terraces.
Thus at last he came to the long windows, and huddling at one side, peered in. He saw a proud interior, brilliant and pale, with panels of latticed glass, after the French fashion, and other panels frescoed with Pierrots and Columbines and with great clusters of wax candles set between the panels. There was a great chandelier with swinging prisms reflected in the floor that was waxed like satin; but this chandelier was not lighted, and indeed everything suggested that they had never dared to use any electricity, for which they would have to work the power-house on the estate. But the clustered candles and the many lamps made the place afloat with liquid gold, and the room trembled and bloomed with the scent and the beauty of hot-house flowers, so that the air seemed to shimmer with their sweetness. There was little enough furniture; a golden grand piano with Cupids painted on it; a few chairs from which Herrick guessed the holland had but lately been removed; and near the huge, rose-filled fireplace, a little table, gleaming with silver and linen, with lilies and crystal and lace. It was set for two; close at hand was a serving-table with silver covers showing on it, and, for a practical and modern touch, a chafing-dish! There was no one in the room.
But the table was hint enough. Here was the center of these preparations. Here two people were to meet, and Herrick thought he knew the hostess. In the departing wagon-load, there had been no beautiful tall figure with red hair. To this little private festivity Fate had led him through the rough magic of his scramble in the night; she pointed at the table with a very sure finger, and now all his vague expectancy was centered in a single question, and his first necessity was to behold the face of the red-haired woman's guest.
Now at the first glance he had taken this room for a sort of music-room which had been used, too, for informal dances. And sure enough, along one wall, just as though put there to tempt him to the final madness, ran a little gallery for the dance-music. It had a balustrade about it and within this balustrade hung short yellow brocaded curtains, in a sort of valance, that seemed to Herrick strangely fresh, as though hung there yesterday. And he determined if it should be his last move on earth to get behind those curtains.
There was no staircase to the balcony from within the room. He crept to the hall-door; the hall opened out square as a courtyard with doorways and arches upon every side. At the rear the great staircase, after perhaps a dozen steps, branched off to either hand, and on its left a little gallery ran along the wall behind that very room and led to a curtained niche. This would be the entrance to the musicians' balcony, and there was nothing for it but that Herrick should traverse the hall and mount the staircase. It was as if the house had turned to one great eye; he thanked heaven for the rugs upon the marble and for the scanty shelter of the palms; while with every step he took and every breath he drew the house-breaker dreaded to hear another footstep in his rear or to see an assailant rise before his eyes. But all remained vacant and was as silent as the tomb. Running up those marble steps, he came at one bound to the curtained niche, and, as he darted in between its hangings, he had a strong inclination to laugh; for, if there were any one within, it would be quaint to see whether he or they were the more startled! But there was no one there. He had now his private box for the coming entertainment. He dropped softly to the floor and, as he did so, some one in the room below struck a match.
It startled him like the crack of doom. He parted the little curtains of the valance, and beheld himself so far right that there stood the red-haired lady lighting the chafing-dish.
Herrick was not more than about nine feet above the flooring of the room, with the main door from the hall to his right hand and the fireplace on his left, so that the little glittering table was before him and to the left of him but a few feet. And there the red-haired woman blew out the flame she had kindled, as if she had but meant to test the wick. It was Herrick's first long clear look at her and he looked hard. The resemblance to Christina lay only in a very striking suggestion of the tall figure, a pose, a poise, an indescribable lightness and sense of life; they had the same gracious, gallant bearing, the same proud carriage of the head, and he suddenly realized that he was looking at one of Christina's gowns. For the rest, she was, of course, six years the elder, and her equal slenderness was much more richly hued and softly curved. Handsome enough, her face at once attracted and repelled by the diverse coloring of the eyes. It was a face at once selfish and fierce and soft, with the softness of a woman who is fashioned from head to foot in one ardent glow; a softness like a panther's. In the flame-white allure of sex she struck straight at you, as undisguised and challenging as lightning, and, to any but a monomaniac, as soon wearied of. It seemed that she could never be satisfied with her preparations. She walked about the room, touching and re-touching the flowers; over and over again she scrutinized the appointments of the table; lifted the silver covers; peered into the chafing-dish, and tested the champagne in its bucket of ice. At last she could find nothing more to do. Through all her coming and going, she had seemed to be mocking and triumphing to herself; humming, singing and even whistling very low with her mouth pursed into a confident and quizzing little smile, or inclining her bright head, in victorious scrutinies, from side to side; so that it seemed the guest must be very welcome and, if she were bent on conquest, the conquest very sure.
She was not yet gowned for a festival, and, remembering the light in the room above, Herrick, grim as the hour was, smiled to imagine that here was to be played a little domestic comedy like thousands that go on in Harlem flats and tame suburban cottages; the servantless hostess satisfied at length about her cooking and her table and flying upstairs at the last moment to dress for company. So indeed she turned to fly, but then her mood changed. She whirled round upon the vacant table, her comedy, her mockery quite fallen from her, and given way to a black hate. All her quick humors swarmed in her, in a threatening storm; she was not so much like a woman as like a great, bad, lovely, furious child that runs its tongue out in defiance. But there was a power in this defiance like the power in that soft panther of her grace. So that it was a sort of curse her swirling movement cast upon the pretty table as she flung one arm up and out above her head; the hand clinched, and then the fingers slowly spreading and stiffening in the air. Then she went out of the room and up the stair and overhead.
Herrick, scarcely knowing what he did, rose to his knees! Just then, he thought he heard a slight noise behind him. As he turned, something struck him on the head; he fell millions of miles through a black horror stabbed with pain and forgot everything.