THE WHITE CAT

"Chester," she cried, "take me." Page 313

PART FIRST

THE WHITE CAT

I

I came to myself with a disturbing sense that something was wrong with me. My discomfort, increasing steadily, resolved itself into two distinct factors—a pain in my side at every breath and a throbbing ache in the top of my head. I realized that I was in bed, and the first strangeness of it struck me. I could not account for it. The wild, spicy odor of flowers came to me, adding to my perplexity. Then I opened my eyes.

The place was so dimly lighted that for some seconds my sluggish wits were unable to interpret the blotches of shadow and the vague glimmering spots. These, however, gradually resolved themselves into comprehensible forms. I perceived that I was in a strange room, large and airy; for even in the obscurity I got a feeling of free, clean space, and of that chaste emptiness which is apt to distinguish the guest-chamber of a well-kept house. I heard, now, the steady, deliberate ticking of a clock a little way off, and somewhere below was a small grinding sound, so low as to be almost a mere vibration, like a coffee-mill in operation. Near by, a door closed and latched softly.

I moved and attempted to sit up, but a sharp stab in my side warned me that my hurt was perhaps more serious than I had thought. There was a lump on my head, too, which probably accounted for my lapse of consciousness.

Setting my memory painfully to work, groping back through the darkness of my mind for something to explain the mystery, much as one might descend a dark, unlighted stairway, I came upon the last fact that had been recorded by my brain. I had been putting on speed—the road through the woods was straight, level and deserted—hoping to get up to town early in the afternoon. The steering-gear of my motor-car had given way. I had felt the wheels suddenly veer, then, before I put on my brake, the front of the car went down and the rear was thrown up and over with the momentum, sending me flying through the air.

I wondered, lazily, how much the machine had suffered. Then, I must have dropped off to sleep again, for when I next opened my eyes there was a flickering ray of light in the room. This time I was keenly alert mentally, desirous of some explanation of my situation. Where was I, and who had cared for me?

The light grew brighter, still wavering, slanting across the wall where it rocked and shifted, casting long, distorted shadows that danced up and down. Some one was evidently coming up-stairs with a light. The door was hidden by a projecting angle of the wall, however, and so for a few moments I saw nobody.

In those seconds the room was illuminated gradually more and more, showing a white-painted wainscot with a dull green wall above, where a few Japanese prints hung. Opposite my bed was a window with small, old-fashioned panes; there was another beside me. The rays glinted on the polished sides of several pieces of old mahogany furniture and flared yellow on brass candle-sticks and on the gilded frame of an eagle mirror. Finally the glare stopped its undulating, the shadows grew steadier on the wall, and, as I gazed eagerly for a first glimpse of my visitor, a young woman, bearing a silver candlestick, came into the room. She looked immediately over to where I lay, and then, catching my surprised stare, her expression changed wonderfully from a rather pathetic abstraction to an animated interest. With something not quite a smile on her face she walked nearer my bed, and stood for a moment without speaking, still looking at me. Her attitude hinted that she saw in me something—as if, for instance, it were a sort of picturesqueness which was unexpected enough to appeal to her imagination. She rested for a moment, poised and calm, but intensely attentive, fascinated.

And I, at the same time, was instantly conscious of so curious a sentiment that I must stop to attempt to describe it.

I conceived myself to be a connoisseur in women, and I estimated her at first sight as one unique, even extraordinary. But though to my mind she was indubitably beautiful, it was not her beauty that for the moment thrilled me. It was chiefly her "newness," the very novelty of her visitation. I felt a sudden, compelling desire to prolong the mystery of her presence rather than to have it explained. I tried, mentally, to delay her first word, to hold her back from any definite explanation till my eyes had had their fill of her—till they had, so to speak, solved her equation—till my wonder had spent itself in the vision, exhausting all its possibilities of delight. Her charm was, in its unexpectedness, so alluring, that she was like a pleasant dream which one lingers with and detains.

She was small, but her head was so exquisitely proportioned to her body that one did not notice her size. I have called her young, though she was twenty-seven, for her graceful figure and pose were still girlishly maintained. The shape of her small head was defined by a quaint coiffure, the dark, fine hair being banded in an encircling plait up past her tiny ears and over, like a coronal, showing a sweeping high-bred curve over her low brow. All