The danger that in some inadvertent way he had not quite covered all the tracks that might lead to him.
And if he had not!
Exposure!
Arrest!
Perhaps a hasty and unjust conviction — punishment, even! Unless he was able to explain about that accidental blow.
The end of all his dreams in connection with Sondra — Lycurgus — the great life that he had hoped for himself.
But could he explain as to that?
Could he?
God! ? Chapter 7
F rom Friday morning until the following Tuesday noon, moving amid such scenes as previously had so exhilarated and enthralled him, Clyde was now compelled to suffer the most frightful fears and dreads.
For, although met by Sondra, as well as Bertine, at the door of the Cranston lodge, and shown by them to the room he was to occupy, he could not help but contrast every present delight here with the danger of his immediate and complete destruction.
As he had entered, Sondra had poutingly whispered, so that Bertine might not hear:
“Baddie!
Staying down there a whole week when you might have been up here.
And Sondra planning everything for you!
You ought to have a good spanking.
I was going to call up to-day to see where you were.”
Yet at the same time her eyes conveying the infatuation that now dominated her.
And he, in spite of his troubled thoughts achieving a gay smile — for once in her presence even the terror of Roberta’s death, his own present danger appeared to dwindle.
If only all went well, now — nothing were traced to him!
A clear path!
A marvelous future!
Her beauty!
Her love!
Her wealth.
And yet, after being ushered to his room, his bag having been carried in before him, at once becoming nervous as to the suit.
It was damp and wrinkled. He must hide it on one of the upper shelves of a closet, maybe.
And the moment he was alone and the door locked, taking it out, wet and wrinkled, the mud of the shores of Big Bittern still about the legs — yet deciding perhaps not — perhaps he had better keep it locked in his bag until night when he could better decide what to do.
Yet tying up in a single bundle, in order to have them laundered, other odds and ends he had worn that day.
And, as he did so, terribly, sickeningly conscious of the mystery and drama as well as the pathos of his life — all he had contacted since his arrival in the east, how little he had in his youth.
How little he had now, really.
The spaciousness and grandeur of this room as contrasted with the one he occupied in Lycurgus.
The strangeness of his being here at all after yesterday.
The blue waters of this bright lake without as contrasted with the darker ones of Big Bittern.
And on the green-sward that reached from this bright, strong, rambling house, with its wide veranda and striped awnings to the shore of the lake itself, Stuart Finchley and Violet Taylor, together with Frank Harriet and Wynette Phant, in the smartest of sport clothes, playing tennis, while Bertine and Harley Baggott tolled in the shade of a striped marquee swing.
And, he himself, after bathing and dressing, assuming a jocular air although his nerves remained tense and his mood apprehensive. And then descending to where Sondra and Burchard Taylor and Jill Trumbull were laughing over some amusing experiences in connection with motor-boating the day before.
Jill Trumbull called to him as he came out:
“Hello, Clyde!
Been playing hookey or what?
I haven’t seen you in I don’t know when.”
And he, after smiling wistfully at Sondra, craving as never before her sympathy as well as her affection, drawing himself up on the railing of the veranda and replying, as smoothly as he could:
“Been working over at Albany since Tuesday.
Hot down there.
It’s certainly fine to be up here to-day.
Who’s all up?”
And Jill Trumbull, smiling: “Oh, nearly every one, I guess.
I saw Vanda over at the Randalls’ yesterday.
And Scott wrote Bertine he was coming to the Point next Tuesday.
It looks to me as though no one was going over to Greenwood much this year.”
And then a long and intense discussion as to why Greenwood was no longer what it had been.