Joan Thursday: A Novel. Vance Louis Joseph

the car took the wide semicircle of the drive and slid sedately to a dead stop by the carriage-block. Matthias pulled himself together, jumped out, and gave his hand to his aunt. They turned toward the house.

      Tankerville's pretentious marble palace crowned the brow of the headland with an effect as exquisite as a dream of an ancient French château realized in snow. For this its owner had his wife to thank. Helena, unable to curb her husband's desire for the most expensive and ostentatious place obtainable, had at least guided his choice of design. It was too magnificent, it was overpowering, but it was beautiful; and it was more than ever beautiful at this hour, with its walls in part bathed in a rose-pink light of sunset, in part shadowed as with a wash of violet, and with all its admirable proportions stark against the dusky sapphire of the Sound.

      An unwonted stillness clung about the place. Matthias wondered.

      "It might be the palace of the Sleeping Beauty," he said. "Why this deadly and benumbing silence? What – "

      "Oh, simply that Tankerville decided this morning to take everybody down to Huntington for lunch. They got away quite early, in the Enchantress. Come out on the terrace; we'll look for them."

      They passed through a wide, cool, panelled hallway.

      "Why didn't you go?"

      "You know I hate the water. Besides, I had a headache – at least, I had one until the Enchantress got under way; and furthermore I meant to stay at home and meet you and talk it out."

      "Venetia went, of course?"

      "Of course —and Marbridge – and everybody!"

      He grunted thoughtfully. They descended to a terrace which jutted airily out over the edge of a cliff, with a sheer drop of a hundred and fifty feet to the beach.

      Helena, dropping languidly into a wicker chair, motioned Matthias to the broad marble balustrade.

      "Any sign of the Enchantress, O perturbed nephew?"

      He lingered there for an instant, marvelling with an inexhaustible wonder at the magnificent sweep of the view, then remembering, raked the waters until he discovered Tankerville's power-cruiser standing in toward the dock from the bottle-neck mouth of Port Madison harbour.

      Returning, he reported, seated himself near his aunt, lighted a cigarette.

      "Why did you ask him here anyway?" he demanded abruptly.

      "Who?" she parried mischievously.

      "Marbridge, of course," he admitted, sulking in the face of her manifest amusement.

      "Jealous, Jackie?"

      "Oh – if you insist."

      She laughed. "The most encouraging symptom you've yet betrayed!.. I didn't ask him. Tankerville did. He likes him. The man's amusing, after all."

      "But you like him?"

      "He amuses me."

      "He's not precisely a tame cat…"

      "Dear boy!" she laughed again, "I didn't fetch you out here to worry about me. I'm fire-proof. Venetia's quite another pair of shoes. Fret about her as much as you like."

      "When does he go – Marbridge, I mean?"

      "Monday, I think. At least, I believe Tankerville asked him for a week only."

      "And that's why you asked me, this particular week?"

      "I thought you'd be a good counter-irritant; and hoped you'd come to your senses and secure Venetia against all Marbridges for all time to come. You gave me to understand you would."

      "Pardon," he corrected a trifle stiffly: "I admitted to you in strict confidence that I was in love with Venetia. I never promised to ask her to marry me."

      "Well, that's what I understood you to mean. And anyway, you'd better. Neither Tankerville nor I can control the girl; she's her own mistress and headstrong enough to be a good match for any Matthias that ever lived. If Marbridge ever convinces her that she likes him…"

      She concluded with an eloquent ellipsis.

      "Probably," mused Matthias after prolonged deliberation, "I'd have lost my head before this if it hadn't been so full of that play."

      Helena smiled indulgently. "It's not too late … I hope."

      Troubled, he rose, walked to the balustrade, jerked his cigarette into space, and returned.

      "As between one fortune-hunter and another," he said gloomily, "I'm conceited enough to think myself the safer bet."

      His aunt smiled more openly: "See what Venetia thinks."

      "I will!" said Matthias with a fine air of inalterable determination.

      VIII

      Since it was her whim and the winds indulged, Helena had ordered that the rite of the late dinner be celebrated by candlelight alone. Ten shaded candles graced the places. In the centre of the table an ancient candelabrum of gold added the mellow illumination of its seven alabaster arms, whose small flames yearned upward ardently, with scarce a perceptible flicker, though every window was wide to the whispering night.

      One of these that faced Matthias framed a shimmering sky of stars and the still black shield of the Sound, on which the fixed and undeviating glare of a remote light-house was reflected darkly, a long unwavering way of light; he thought of a tall wax candle burning amid the sanctified shadows of some vast and dark and still cathedral…

      They were ten at table: from Helena's right, Pat Atherton (Tankerville's partner), a Mrs. Majendie, Marbridge, a Mrs. Cardrow, Tankerville at the head; on his right, Mrs. Pat Atherton, Matthias, Venetia Tankerville, Majendie. The latter and his wife were almost strangers to Matthias, having arrived only the previous afternoon: but he thought them as pleasant and handsome people as any of those with whom the Tankervilles liked to fill their house. The Athertons were old friends; he had known them well, long before Helena dreamed of marrying Tankerville. Marbridge was an indifferently familiar figure in the ways of his life; they frequented the same clubs, and of late he had begun to encounter the older man more and more frequently in his theatrical divagations. Remained Mrs. Cardrow, a widow, the acquaintance of a week's standing. Cardrow had been in some way connected with the enterprises of Messrs. Tankerville & Atherton; how, Matthias didn't remember; a man of whom rumour said little that was good until it began to say De mortuis… He had killed himself for no accountable reason. His widow seemed to have survived bereavement with amazing grace.

      Matthias admired her greatly. Women, he knew – Helena in their number – mistrusted her for no cause perceptible to him. He liked her, thought her little less than absolutely charming. So, evidently, did Marbridge, whose attitude toward her this evening was a little more noticeably attentive than ever before. He seemed to exert himself to interest and divert. His black eyes snapped. As he talked his heavy body swayed slightly from the hips, lending an accent to his animation. His laugh was frequent and infectious.

      She was a woman who smiled more than she laughed. She smiled now, inscrutably, her beautiful, insolent eyes half veiled with demure lashes, her face turned to Marbridge, her chin a trifle high, bringing out the clear strong lines of her throat and shoulders, which had the texture, the pallor, and the firmness of fine ivory. Her eyes, when she chose to discover them, were brown, her eyebrows almost black, her hair dull gold, the gold of the candelabrum – the gold of artifice, on the word of Helena.

      Perhaps it was to this odd colouring – ivory and brown, black and gold – that Mrs. Cardrow owed most of her strange and provoking quality. But there was something else, something one could not define: at once stimulating and elusive; less charm than allure; nameless; that attracted and repelled…

      These were thoughts set stirring by a dozen semi-curious glances at the woman, in pauses in his conversation with Venetia. Matthias was in fact indifferent to Mrs. Cardrow. But he was tremendously interested in Venetia. It could hardly be otherwise – since his talk with Helena. He was to marry Venetia. Amazing thought!

      She was adorable. Of the other women, none compared with Mrs. Cardrow: even Helena's beauty paled in contrast. But Venetia was to Mrs. Cardrow as dawn to noon. One looked at Venetia