"Here beginneth," laughed Brandon, sliding his arm around her as she sat tense in every nerve gazing at the rain-blurred window.
She did not heed him; it was almost as if she had not heard. Her hands were tightly clasped upon one another, and her face was turned from him. There was no lamp inside the car, the only illumination proceeding from those without, showing them the driver huddled over the wheel, but shedding little light into the interior.
He tightened his arm about her, laying his other hand upon her clasped ones.
"By Jove, little girl, you're cold!" he said.
She was—cold as ice. She parted her fingers stiffly to free them from his grasp.
"I—I'm quite comfortable," she assured him, without turning her head. "Please don't trouble about me."
But he was not to be thus discouraged.
"You can't be comfortable," he argued. "Why, you're shivering. Let me see what I can do to make things better."
He tried to draw her to him, but she resisted almost angrily.
"Oh, do leave me alone! I'm not uncomfortable. I'm only thinking."
"Well, don't be silly!" he urged. "It's no use thinking at this stage. The thing is done now, and well done. We shall be man and wife by this time to-morrow. We'll go to Paris, eh, and have no end of a spree."
"Perhaps," she said, not looking at him or yielding an inch to his persuasion.
It was plain that for some reason she desired to be left in peace, and after a brief struggle with himself, Brandon decided that he would be wise to let her have her way. He leant back and crossed his arms in silence.
The car sped along at a pace which he found highly satisfactory. He had absolute faith in Fricker's driving and knowledge of the roads.
They had been travelling for the greater part of an hour, when Doris at length relaxed from her tense attitude and lay back in her corner, nestling into it with a long shiver.
Brandon was instantly on the alert.
"I'm sure you are cold. Here's a rug here. Let me—"
"Oh, do please leave me alone!" she said, with a sob. "I'm so horribly tired."
Beseechingly almost she laid her hand upon his arm with the words.
The touch fired him. He considered that he had been patient longenough. Abruptly he caught her to him.
"Come, I say," he said, half-laughing, half in savage earnest, "I can't have you crying on what's almost our wedding trip!"
He certainly did not expect the absolutely furious resistance with which she met his action. She thrust him from her with the strength of frenzy.
"How dare you?" she cried passionately. "How dare you touch me, you—you hateful cad?"
For the moment, such was his astonishment, he suffered her to escape from his hold. Then, called into activity byher unreasoning fury, the devil in him leapt suddenly up and took possession. With a snarling laugh he gripped her by the arms, holding her by brutal force.
"You little wild cat!" he said in a voice that shook between anger and amusement. "So this is your gratitude, is it? I am to give all and receive nothing for my pains. Then let me make it quite clear to you here and now that that is not my intention. I will be kind to you, but you must be kind to me, too. The benefit is to be mutual."
It was premature. In his heart he knew it, but she had provoked him to it and there was no turning back now. He resented the provocation, that was all, and it made him the more brutally inclined towards her.
As for Doris, she fought and tore at his grasp like a mad creature; and when he mastered her, when, still laughing between his teeth, he forced her face upwards and kissed it fiercely and violently, she shrieked between his kisses, shrieked and shrieked again.
The sudden grinding of the brake recalled Brandon to his senses. The fool was actually stopping the car. He relinquished his hold upon the girl to dash his hand against the window in front.
"Drive on, curse you, drive on!" he shouted through the glass. "I'll let you know if we want to stop."
But the car stopped in spite of him. The chauffeur, shining from head to foot in his oil-skins, sprang to the ground. A moment and he was at the door, had wrenched it open, and was peering within.
"What are you gaping there for, you fool?" raved Brandon, his hand uponDoris, who was suddenly straining forward. "It's all right, I tell you. Go on."
"I am going on," the chauffeur responded calmly through his mask. "But I am not taking you any farther, Major Brandon. So tumble out at once, you dirty, thieving hound!"
The words, the tone, the attitude, flashed such a revelation upon Doris that she cried out in amazement, and then with a revulsion of feeling so great that it deprived her of all speech she threw herself forward and clung to the masked chauffeur in an agony of tears.
Brandon was staring at him with dropped jaw.
"Who the blazes are you?" he said.
"You know me, I think," the chauffeur responded quietly. He was pressing Doris back into her seat with absolute steadiness. "We have met before. I was present at your first wedding ten years ago, and—as a junior counsel—I helped to divorce you a few months after. My name is Vivian Caryl."
He freed a hand to push up his mask. His pale face with its heavy-lidded eyes stared, supremely contemptuous, into Brandon's suffused countenance. His composure was somehow disconcerting.
"Suppose you get out," he suggested. "I can talk to you then in a language you will understand."
"Curse you!" bawled Brandon. "Where's Fricker?"
Caryl shrugged his shoulders.
"You have seen him since I have. Are you going to get out? Ah, I thought you would."
He stood aside to allow him to do so, and then stepped back to shut the door. He did not utter a word to the girl cowering within, but that action of his was a mute command. She crouched in the dark and listened, but she did not dare to follow or to flee.
When Caryl came back to the motor his handkerchief was bound about the knuckles of his right hand, and his face wore a faint smile that had in it more of grimness than humour.
He paused at the open window and looked in on Doris without opening the door. The sound of the rain pattering heavily upon his shoulders filled in a silence that she found terrible. He spoke at length:
"You had better shut the window, the rain is coming in."
That was all, spoken in his customary drawl without a hint of anger or reproach. They cut her hard, those few words of his. It was as if he deemed her unworthy even of his contempt.
She raised her white face.
"What—are you going to do?" she managed to ask through her quivering lips.
"I am going to take you to the nearest town—to Bramfield to spend the rest of the night. It is getting late, you know—past midnight already."
"Bramfield!" she echoed with a start. "Then—then we have been going north all this time?"
"We have been going north," he said.
She glanced around. Her eyes were hunted.
"No," said Caryl. "I haven't killed him. He is sitting under the hedge about fifty yards up the road, thinking things over."
He opened the door then abruptly, and she held her breath and became still and tense with apprehension. But he only pulled up the window, closed the door again with a sharp click, and left her. When she dared to breathe again the car was in motion.
She took no interest in her surroundings. Her destination had become a matter of such secondary importance that she gave it no considerationwhatever. What mattered, all that mattered, was that she was now in the hands and absolutely at the mercy of the man whom she feared as she feared no one else on earth, the man with whom in her mad coquetry she had dared to trifle.
The car was stopping. It came to a standstill almost imperceptibly, and Caryl stepped into the road. Tensely she watched him; but he did not so much as glance her way. He turned aside to a little gate in a high hedge of laurel, and passed within, leaving her alone in the night.
Soon she heard his deliberate footfalls returning. In a moment he had reached the door, his hand was upon it. She turned stiffly towards him as it opened.
He spoke at once in his calm, unmoved voice:
"A very old friend of mine lives here. She will put you up for the night and see to your comfort. Will you get out?"
Mutely she did so, feeling curiously weak and unstrung. He put his arm around her, and led her into the dim cottage garden.
They went up a tiled path to an open door from which the light of a single candle gleamed fitfully in the draught. She stumbled at the doorstep, but he held her up. He was almost carrying her.
As they entered, an old woman, bent and indescribably wrinkled, rose from her knees before a deep old-fashioned fireplace on the other side of the little kitchen, and came to meet them. She had evidently just coaxed a dying fire back to life.
"Ah, poor dear," she said at sight of the girl's exhausted face. "She looks more dead than alive. Bring her to the fire, Master Vivian. I'll soon have some hot milk for the poor lamb."
Caryl led her to an arm-chair that stood on one side of the blaze, and made her sit down. Then, stooping, he took one of her nerveless hands and held it closely in his own.
He did not speak to her, and she was relieved by his forbearance. As the warmth of his grasp gradually communicated itself to her numbed fingers, she felt her racing pulses grow steadier; but she was glad when he laid her hand down quietly in her lap and turned away.
He bent over her again in a few minutes with a cup of steaming milk. She took it from him, tasted it, and shuddered.
"There is brandy in it."
"Yes," said Caryl.
She turned her head away.
"I don't want it. I hate brandy."
He put his hand on her shoulder.
"You had better drink it all the same," he said.
She glanced at him, caught her breath sharply, then dumbly gave way. He kept his hand upon her while she drank, and only removed it to take the empty cup.
After that, standing gravely before her, he spoke again.
"I am going on into the town now with the motor, and I shall put up there. My old nurse will take care of you. I shall come back in the morning."
Old Mrs. Maynard, sweeping her brick floor with wide-open door through which the April sunlight streamed gloriously, nodded to herself a good many times over the doings of the night. A very discreet creature was Mrs. Maynard, faithful to the very heart of her, but she would not have been mortal had she not been intensely curious to know what were the circumstances that had led Vivian Caryl to bring to her door that shrinking, exhausted girl who still lay sleeping in the room above.
When Doris awoke in response to her deferential knock, only the reticence of the trained servant greeted her. The motherliness of the night before had completely vanished.
Doris was glad of it. She had to steel herself for the coming interview with Caryl; she had to face the result of her headlong actions with as firm a front as she could assume. She needed all her strength, and shecould not have borne sympathy just then.
She thanked Mrs. Maynard for her attentions and saw her withdraw with relief. Then, having nibbled very half-heartedly at the breakfast provided, she arose with a great sigh, and began to prepare for whatever might lie before her.
Dressed at length, she sat down by the open window to wait—and wonder.
The click of the garden gate fell suddenly across her meditations, and she drew back sharply out of sight. He was entering.
She heard his leisurely footfall on the tiles and then his quiet voice below. Her heart began to thump with thick, uncertain beats. She was horribly afraid.
Yet when she heard the old woman ascending the stairs, she had the courage to go to the door and open it.
Mr. Caryl was in the parlour, she was told. He would be glad to see her at her convenience.
"I will go to him," she said, and forthwith descended to meet her fate.
He stood by the window when she entered, but wheeled round at once with his back to the light. She felt that this did not make much difference. She knew exactly how he was looking—cold, self-contained, implacable as granite. She had seldom seen him look otherwise. His face was aperpetual mask to her. It was this very inscrutability of his that had first waked in her the desire to see him among her retinue of slaves.
She went forward slowly, striving to attain at least a semblance of composure. At first it seemed that he would wait for her where he was; then unexpectedly he moved to meet her. He took her hand into his own, and she shrank a little involuntarily. His touch unnerved her.
"You have slept?" he asked. "You are better?"
Something in his tone made her glance upwards, catching her breath. But she decided instantly that she had been mistaken. He would not, he could not, mean to be kind at such a moment.
She made answer with an assumption of pride. She dared not let herself be natural just then.
"I am quite well. There was nothing wrong with me last night. I was only tired."
He suffered her hand to slip from his.
"I wonder what you think of doing," he said quietly. "Have you made any plans?"
The hot blood rushed to her face before she was aware of it. She turned it sharply aside.
"Am I to have a voice in the matter?" she said, her voice very low. "You did not think it worth while to consult me last night."
"You were scarcely in a fit state to be consulted," he answered gravely. "That is why I postponed the discussion. But I was then—as I am now—entirely at your disposal. I will take you back to your people at once if you wish it."
She made a quick, passionate gesture of protest, and moved away from him.
"Have you any alternative in your mind?" he asked.
She remained with her back to him.
"I shall go away," she said, a sudden note of recklessness in her voice. "I shall travel."
"Alone?" he questioned.
"Yes, alone." This time her voice rang defiance. She wheeled round quivering from head to foot. "But for you," she said, "but for yourunwarrantable interference I should never have been placed in this hateful, this impossible, position. I should have been with my friends in London. It would have been my wedding-day."
The attack was plainly unexpected. Even Caryl was taken by surprise. But the next moment he was ready for her.
"Then by all means," he said, "let me take you to your friends in London. Doubtless your chivalrous lover has found his way thither long ere this."
She stamped like a little fury.
"Do you think I would marry him—now? Do you think I would marry any one after—after what happened last night? Oh, I hate you—I hate you all!"
Her voice broke. She covered her face, with tempestuous sobbing, and sank into a chair.
Caryl stood silent, biting his lip as if in irresolution. He did not try to comfort her.
After a while, her weeping still continuing, he leant across the table.
"Doris," he said, "leave off crying and listen to me. I know it is out of the question for you to marry that scoundrel whom I had the pleasure of thrashing last night. It always has been out of the question. That is one reason why I have been keeping such a hold upon you. Now that you admit the impossibility of it, I set you free. But you will be wise to think well before you accept your freedom from me. You are in anintolerable position, and I am quite powerless to help you unless you place yourself unreservedly in my hands and give me the right to protect you. It means a good deal, I know. It means, Doris, the sacrifice of your independence. But it also means a safe haven, peace, comfort, if not happiness. You may not love me. I never seriously thought that you did. But if you will give me your trust—I shall try to be satisfied with that."
Love! She had never heard the word on his lips before. It sent a curious thrill through her to hear it then. She had listened to him with her face hidden, though her tears had ceased. But as he ended, she slowly raised her head and looked at him.
"Are you asking me to marry you?" she said.
"I am," said Caryl.
She lowered her eyes from his, and began to trace a design on the table-cloth with one finger.
"I don't want to marry you," she said at length.
"I know," said Caryl.
She did not look up.
"No, you don't know. That's just it. You think you know everything. But you don't. For instance, you think you know why I ran away with Major Brandon. But you don't. You never will know—unless I tell you, probably not even then."
She broke off with an abrupt sigh, and leant back in her chair.
"One thing I do thank you for," she said irrelevantly. "And that is that you didn't take me back to Rivermead last night. Have they, I wonder, any idea where I am?"
"I left a message for your cousin before I left," Caryl said.
"Oh, then he knew—?"
"He knew that I had you under my protection," Caryl told her grimly. "I did not go into details. It was unnecessary. Only Flicker knew the details. I marked him down in the afternoon, after the incident at luncheon."
She opened her eyes.
"Then you guessed—?"
"I knew he did not find the missing glove under the table," said Caryl quietly. "I did not need any further evidence than that. I knew, moreover, that you had not devoted the whole of the previous afternoon to your correspondence. I was waiting for your cousin in the conservatory when you joined Brandon in the garden."
"And you—you were in the conservatory last night when I went through. I—I felt there was someone there."
"Yes," he answered. "I waited to see you go."
"Why didn't you stop me?"
For an instant her eyes challenged his.
He stood up, straightening himself slowly.
"It would not have answered my purpose," he told her steadily.
She stood up also, her face gone suddenly white.
"You chose this means of—of forcing me to marry you?"
"I chose this means—the only means to my hand—of opening your eyes," he said. "It has not perhaps been over successful. You are still blind to much that you ought to see. But you will understand these things better presently."
"Presently?" she faltered.
"When you are my wife," he said.
She flashed him a swift glance.
"I am to marry you then?"
He held out his hand to her across the table.
"Will you marry me, Doris?"
She hesitated for a single instant, her eyes downcast. Then suddenly, without speaking, she put her hand into his, glad that, notwithstanding the overwhelming strength of his position, he had allowed her the honours of war.
"And so you were obliged to marry yourbête noireafter all! My dear, it has been the talk of the town. Come, sit down, and tell me all about it. I am burning to hear how it came about."
Doris's old friend, Mrs. Lockyard, paused to flick the ash from her cigarette, and to laugh slyly at the girl's face of discomfiture.
Doris also held a cigarette between her fingers, but she was only toying with it restlessly.
"There isn't much to tell," she said. "We were married by special licence. I was not obliged to marry him. I chose to do so."
Mrs. Lockyard laughed again, not very pleasantly.
"And left poor Maurice in the lurch. That was rather cruel of you after all his chivalrous efforts to deliver you from bondage. And he so hard up, too."
A flush of anger rose in the girl's face. She tilted her chin with the old proud gesture.
"I should not have married him in any case," she said. "He made that quite impossible by his own act. He—was not so chivalrous as I thought."
A gleam of malice shone for a moment in Mrs. Lockyard's eyes, and just a hint of it was perceptible in her voice as she made response.
"One has to make allowances sometimes. All men are not made after the pattern of your chosen lord and master. He, I grant you, is hard as granite and about as impassive. Still I mustn't depreciate your prize since it was of your own choosing. Let me wish you instead every happiness."
"He was not impassive that night," said Doris quickly, with a sharp inward sense of injustice.
"No?" questioned Mrs. Lockyard.
"No. At least—Major Brandon did not find him so." Doris's blue eyes took fire at the recollection. "He gave him his deserts," she said, with a certain exultation. "He thrashed him."
"Oh, my dear, he would have done that in any case. That was an old, old score paid off at last. Forgive me for depriving you of this small gratification. But that debt was contracted many years ago when you were scarcely out of your cradle. Your presence was a mere incident. You were the opportunity, not the cause."
"I don't know what you mean," said Doris, looking her straight in the face.
"No? Well, my dear, it isn't my business to enlighten you. If you really want to know, I must refer you to your husband. Surely that is Mrs. Fricker over there. You will not mind if she joins us?"
"I am going!" Doris announced abruptly—"I really only looked in to see if there were any letters."
She dropped her cigarette with determination and turned to the nearest door.
It was true that she had run into the club for her correspondence, but having met Mrs. Lockyard she had been almost compelled to linger, albeit unwillingly. Now from the depths of her soul she regretted the impulse that had borne her thither. She vowed to herself that she would not enter the club again so long as Mrs. Lockyard remained in town.
Three weeks had elapsed since her marriage; three weeks of shopping in Paris with Caryl somewhere in the background,looking on but never advising.
He had been very kind on the whole, she was fain to admit, but she was further from understanding him now than she had ever been. He had retired into his shell so completely that it seemed unlikely that he would ever again emerge, and she did not dare to make the first advance.
Her return to London had been one of the greatest ordeals she had ever faced, but she had endured it unflinchingly, and had found that London had already almost forgotten the eccentricity of her marriage. In the height of the season memories are short.
Caryl had taken a flat overlooking the river, and here they had settled down. He spent the greater part of his day at the Law Courts, and Doris found herself thrown a good deal upon her own resources. In happier days this had been her ideal, but for some reason it did not now content her.
Returning from her encounter with Mrs. Lockyard at the club, she told herself with sudden petulance that life in town had lost all charm for her.
Entering the dainty sitting-room that looked on to the river, she dropped into a chair by the window and stared out with her chin in her hands. The river was a blaze of gold. A line of long black barges was drifting down-stream in the wake of a noisy steam-tug. She watched them absently, sick at heart.
Gradually the shining water grew blurred and dim. Its beauty wholly passed her by, or if she saw it, it was only in vivid contrast to the darkness in her soul. For a little, wide-eyed, she resisted the impulse that tugged at her heart-strings; but at last in sheer weariness she gave in. What did it matter, a tear more or less? There was no one to know or care. And tears were sometimes a relief. She bowed her head upon the sill and wept.
"Why, Doris!" a quiet voice said.
She started, started violently, and sprang upright.
Caryl was standing slightly behind her, his hand on the back of her chair, but as she rose he came forward and stood beside her.
"What is it?" he said. "Why are you crying?"
"I'm not!" she declared vehemently. "I wasn't! You—you startled me—that's all."
She turned her back on him and hastily dabbed her eyes. She was furious with him for coming upon her thus.
He stood at the window, looking out upon the long, black barges in silence.
After a few seconds of desperate effort she controlled herself and turned round.
"I never heard you come in. I—must have been asleep."
He did not look at her, or attempt to refute the statement.
"I thought you were going to be out this afternoon," he said.
"So I was. So I have been. I went to the club to get my letters."
"Didn't you find any one there to talk to?" he asked.
"No one," she answered somewhat hastily; then, moved by some impulse she could not have explained, "That is, no one that counts. I saw Mrs. Lockyard."
"Doesn't she count?" asked Caryl, still with his eyes on the river.
"I hate the woman!" Doris declared passionately.
He turned slowly round.
"What has she been saying to you?"
"Nothing."
Again he made no comment on the obvious lie.
"Look here," he said. "Can't we go out somewhere to-night? There is a new play at the Regency. They say it's good. Shall we go?"
The suggestion was quite unexpected; she looked at him in surprise.
"I have promised Vera to dine there," she said.
"Ring her up and say you can't," said Caryl.
She hesitated.
"I must make some excuse if I do. What shall I say?"
"Say I want you," he said, and suddenly that rare smile of his for which she had wholly ceased to look flashed across his face, "and tell the truth for once."
She did not see him again till she entered the dining-room an hour later. He was waiting for her there, and as she came in he presented her with a spray of lilies.
Again in astonishment she looked up at him.
"Don't you like them?" he said.
"Of course I do. But—but—"
Her answer tailed off in confusion. Her lip quivered uncontrollably, and she turned quickly away.
Caryl was plainly unaware of anything unusual in her demeanour. He talked throughout dinner in his calm, effortless drawl, and gradually under its soothing influence she recovered herself.
She enjoyed the play that followed. It was a simple romance, well staged, and superbly acted. She breathed a sigh of regret when it was over.
Driving home again with Caryl, she thanked him impulsively for taking her.
"You weren't bored?" he asked.
"Of course not," she said.
She would have said more, but something restrained her. A sudden shyness descended upon her that lasted till they reached the flat.
She left Caryl at the outer door and turned into the room overlooking the river. The window was open as she had left it, and the air blew in sweetly upon her over the water. She had dropped her wrap from her shoulders, and she shivered a little as she stood, but a feeling of suspense kept her motionless.
Caryl had entered the room behind her. She wondered if he would pause at the table where a tray of refreshments was standing. He did not, and her nerves tingled and quivered as he passed it by.
He joined her at the window, and they stood together for several seconds looking out upon the great river with its myriad lights.
She had not the faintest idea as to what was passing in his mind, but her heart-beats quickened in his silence to such a tumult that at last she could bear it no longer. She turned back into the room.
He followed her instantly, and she fancied that he sighed.
"Won't you have anything before you go?" he said.
She shook her head.
"Good-night!" she said almost inaudibly.
For a moment—no longer—her hand lay in his. She did not look at him. There was something in his touch that thrilled through her like an electric current.
But his grave "Good-night!" had in it nothing startling, and by the time she reached her own room she had begun to ask herself what cause there had been for her agitation. She was sure he must have thought her very strange, very abrupt, even ungracious.
And at that her heart smote her, for he had been kinder that evening than ever before. The fragrance of the lilies at her breast reminded her how kind.
She bent her head to them, and suddenly, as though the flowers exhaled some potent charm, impulse—blind, domineering impulse—took possession of her.
She turned swiftly to the door, and in a moment her feet were bearing her, almost without her voluntary effort, back to the room she had left.
The door was unlatched. She pushed it open, entering impetuously. And she came upon Caryl suddenly—as he had come upon her that afternoon—sunk in a chair by the window, with his head in his hands.
He rose instantly at her entrance, rose and closed the window; then lowered the blind very quietly, very slowly, and finally turned round to her.
"What is it? You have forgotten something?"
Except that he was paler than usual, his face bore no trace of emotion. He looked at her with his heavy eyes gravely, with unfailing patience.
For an instant she stood irresolute, afraid; then again that urgingimpulse drove her forward. She moved close to him.
"I only came back to say—I only wanted to tell you—Vivian, I—I was horrid to you this afternoon. Forgive me!"
She stretched out her trembling hands to him, and he took them, held them fast, then sharply let them go.
"My dear," he said, "you were in trouble, and I intruded upon you. It was no case for forgiveness."
But she would not accept his indulgence.
"I was horrid," she protested, with a catch in her voice. "Why are you so patient with me? You never used to be."
He did not answer her. He seemed to regard the question as superfluous.
She drew a little nearer. Her fingers fastened quivering upon his coat.
"Don't be too kind to me, Vivian," she said, her voice trembling. "It—it isn't good for me."
He took her by the wrists and drew her hands away.
"You want to tell me something," he said. "What is it?"
She glanced upwards, meeting his look with sudden resolution.
"You asked me this afternoon why I was crying," she said. "And I—I lied to you. You asked me, too, what Mrs. Lockyard said to me. And I lied again. I will tell you now, if—if you will listen to me."
Caryl was still holding her wrists. There was a hint of sternness in hisattitude.
"Well?" he said quietly. "What did she say?"
"She said"—Doris spoke with an effort—"she said, or rather she hinted, that there was an old grudge between you and Major Brandon, a matter with which I was in no way concerned, an affair of many years' standing. She said that was why you followed him up and—thrashed him that night. She implied that I didn't count at all. She made me wonder if—if—"—she was speaking almost inarticulately, with bent head—"if perhaps it was only to satisfy this ancient grudge that you married me."
Her words went into silence. She could not look him in the face. If he had not held her wrists so firmly she would have been tempted to turn and flee. As it was, she could only stand before him in quivering suspense.
He moved at length, moved suddenly and disconcertingly, freeing one hand to turn her face quietly upwards. She did not resist him, but she shrank as she met his eyes. She fancied she had never seen him look so grim.
"And that was why you were crying?" he asked, deliberately searching her reluctant eyes.
"That was—one reason," she acknowledged faintly.
"Then there was something more than that?"
"Yes." She laid her hand pleadingly on his arm, and he released her. "I will tell you," she said tremulously, keeping her face upturned to his. "At least, I will try. But it's very difficult because—"
She began to falter under his look.
"Because," he said slowly, "you have no confidence in me. That I can well understand. You married me more or less under compulsion, and when a wife is no more than a guest in her husband's house, confidence between them, of any description, is almost an impossibility."
He spoke without anger, but with a sadness that pierced her to the heart; and having so spoken he leant his arm upon the mantelpiece, turning slightly from her.
"I will tell you," he said, his voice very quiet and even, "exactly what Mrs. Lockyard was hinting at. Ten years ago I was engaged to a girl—like you in many ways—gay, impulsive, bewitching. I was young in those days, romantic, too. I worshipped her as a goddess. I was utterly blind to her failings. They simply didn't exist for me. She rewarded me by running away with Maurice Brandon. I knew he was a blackguard, but how much of a blackguard I did not realize till later. However, I didn't trust him even then, and I followed them and insisted that they should be married in my presence. Six months later I heard from her. He had treated her abominably, had finally deserted her, and she was trying to get a divorce. I did my best to help her, and eventually she obtained it." He paused a moment, then went on with bent head, "I never saw her after she gained her freedom. She went to her people, and very soon after—she died."
Again he paused, then slowly straightened himself.
"I never cared for any woman after that," he said, "until I met you. As for Brandon, he kept out of my way, and I had no object in seeking him. In fact, I took no interest in his doings till I found that you were in Mrs. Lockyard's set. That, I admit, was something of a shock. And thenwhen I found that you liked the man—"
"Oh, don't!" she broke in. "Don't! I was mad ever to tolerate him. Let me forget it! Please let me forget it!"
She spoke passionately, and as if her emotion drew him he turned fully round to her.
"If you could have forgotten him sooner," he said, with a touch of sternness, "you would not find yourself tied now to a man you never loved."
The effect of his words was utterly unexpected. She started as one stricken, wounded in a vital place, and clasped her hands tightly against her breast, crushing the flowers that drooped there.
"It is a lie!" she cried wildly. "It is a lie!"
"What is a lie?"
He took a step towards her, for she was swaying as she stood; but she flung out her hands, keeping him from her.
Her face was working convulsively. She turned and moved unsteadily away from him, groping out before her as she went. So groping, she reached the door, and blindly sought the handle. But before she found it he spoke in a tone that had subtly altered:
"Doris!"
Her hands fell. She stood suddenly still, listening.
"Come here!" he said.
He crossed the room and reached her.
"Look at me!" he said.
She refused for a little, trembling all over. Then suddenly as he waited she threw back her head and met his eyes. She was sobbing like a child that has been hurt.
He bent towards her, looking closely, closely into her quivering face.
"So," he said, "it was a lie, was it? But, my own girl, how was I to know? Why on earth didn't you say so before?"
She broke into a laugh that had in it the sound of tears.
"How could I? You never asked. How could I?"
"Shall I ask you now?" he said.
She stretched up her arms and clasped his neck.
"No," she whispered back. "Take me—take everything—for granted. It's the only way, if you want to turn a heartless little flirt like me into—into a virtuous and amiable wife!"
And so, clinging to him, her lips met his in the first kiss that had ever passed between them.
A faint draught from the hills found its way through the wide-flung door as the sun went down. It fluttered the papers on the table, and stirred a cartoon upon the wall with a dry rustling as of wind in corn.
The man who sat at the table turned his face as it were mechanically towards that blessed breath from the snows. His chin was propped on his hand. He seemed to be waiting.
The light failed very quickly, and he presently reached out and drew a reading-lamp towards him. The flame he kindled flickered upward, throwing weird shadows upon his lean, brown face, making the sunken hollows of his eyes look cavernous.
He turned the light away so that it streamed upon the open doorway. Then he resumed his former position of sphinx-like waiting, his chin upon his hand.
Half an hour passed. The day was dead. Beyond the radius of the lamp there hung a pall of thick darkness—a fearful, clinging darkness that seemed to wrap the whole earth. The heat was intense, unstirred by any breeze. Only now and then the cartoon on the wall moved as if at the touch of ghostly fingers, and each time there came that mocking whisper that was like wind in corn.
At length there sounded through the night the dull throbbing of a horse's feet, and the man who sat waiting raised his head. A gleam of expectancy shone in his sombre eyes. Some of the rigidity went out of his attitude.
Nearer came the hoofs and nearer yet, and with them, mingling rhythmically, a tenor voice that sang.
As it reached him the man at the table pulled out a drawer with a sharp jerk. His hand sought something within it, but his eyes never left the curtain of darkness that the open doorway framed.
Slowly, very slowly at last, he withdrew his hand empty; but he only partially closed the drawer.
The voice without was nearer now, was close at hand. The horse's hoofs had ceased to sound. There came the ring of spurred heels without, a man's hand tapped upon the doorpost, a man's figure showed suddenly against the darkness.
"Hallo, Conyers! Still in the land of the living? Ye gods, what a fiendish night! Many thanks for the beacon! It's kept me straight for more than half the way."
He entered carelessly, the lamplight full upon him—a handsome, straight-limbed young Hercules—tossed down his riding-whip, and looked round for a drink.
"Here you are!" said Conyers, turning the rays of the lamp full upon some glasses on the table.
"Ah, good! I'm as dry as a smoked herring. You must drink too, though. Yes, I insist. I have a toast to propose, so be sociable for once. What have you got in that drawer?"
Conyers locked the drawer abruptly, and jerked out the key.
"What do you want to know for?"
His visitor grinned boyishly.
"Don't be bashful, old chap! I always guessed you kept her there. We'll drink her health, too, in a minute. But first of all"—he was splashing soda-water impetuously out of a syphon as he spoke—"first of all—quite ready, I say? It's a grand occasion—here's to the best of good fellows, that genius, that inventor of guns, John Conyers! Old chap, your fortune's made. Here's to it! Hip—hip—hooray!"
His shout was like the blare of a bull. Conyers rose, crossed to the door, and closed it.
Returning, he halted by his visitor's side, and shook him by the shoulder.
"Stop rotting, Palliser!" he said rather shortly.
Young Palliser wheeled with a gigantic laugh, and seized him by the arms.
"You old fool, Jack! Can't you see I'm in earnest? Drink, man, drink, and I'll tell you all about it. That gun of yours is going to be an enormous success—stupendous—greater even than I hoped. It's true, by the powers! Don't look so dazed. All comes to those who wait, don't you know. I always told you so."
"To be sure, so you did." The man's words came jerkily. They had an odd, detached sound, almost as though he were speaking in his sleep. He turned away from Palliser, and took up his untouched glass.
But the next instant it slipped through his fingers, and crashed uponthe table edge. The spilt liquid streamed across the floor.
Palliser stared for an instant, then thrust forward his own glass.
"Steady does it, old boy! Try both hands for a change. It's this infernal heat."
He turned with the words, and picked up a paper from the table, frowning over it absently, and whistling below his breath.
When he finally looked round again his face cleared.
"Ah, that's better! Sit down, and we'll talk. By Jove, isn't it colossal? They told me over at the fort that I was a fool to come across to-night. But I simply couldn't keep you waiting another night. Besides, I knew you would expect me."
Conyers' grim face softened a little. He could scarcely have said how he had ever come to be the chosen friend of young Hugh Palliser. The intimacy had been none of his seeking.
They had met at the club on the occasion of one of his rare appearances there, and the younger man, whose sociable habit it was to know everyone, had scraped acquaintance with him.
No one knew much about Conyers. He was not fond of society, and, as a natural consequence, society was not fond of him. He occupied the humble position of a subordinate clerk in an engineer's office. The work was hard, but it did not bring him prosperity. He was one of those men who go silently on week after week, year after year, till their veryexistence comes almost to be overlooked by those about them. He never seemed to suffer as other men suffered from the scorching heat of that tropical corner of the Indian Empire. He was always there, whatever happened to the rest of the world; but he never pushed himself forward. He seemed to lack ambition. There were even some who said he lacked brains as well.
But Palliser was not of these. His quick eyes had detected at a glance something that others had never taken the trouble to discover. From the very beginning he had been aware of a force that contained itself in this silent man. He had become interested, scarcely knowing why; and, having at length overcome the prickly hedge of reserve which was at first opposed to his advances, he had entered the private place which it defended, and found within—what he certainly had not expected to find—a genius.
It was nearly three months now since Conyers, in a moment of unusual expansion, had laid before him the invention at which he had been working for so many silent years. The thing even then, though complete in all essentials, had lacked finish, and this final touch young Palliser, himself a gunner with a positive passion for guns, had been able to supply. He had seen the value of the invention and had given it his ardent support. He had, moreover, friends in high places, and could obtain a fair and thorough investigation of the idea.
This he had accomplished, with a result that had transcended his high hopes, on his friend's behalf; and he now proceeded to pour out his information with an accompanying stream of congratulation, to which Conyers sat and listened with scarcely the movement of an eyelid.
Hugh Palliser found his impassivity by no means disappointing. He was used to it. He had even expected it. That momentary unsteadiness on Conyers' part had astonished him far more.
Concluding his narration he laid the official correspondence before him, and got up to open the door. The night was black and terrible, the heatcame in overwhelming puffs, as though blown from a blast furnace. He leaned against the doorpost and wiped his forehead. The oppression of the atmosphere was like a tangible, crushing weight. Behind him the paper on the wall rustled vaguely, but there was no other sound. After several minutes he turned briskly back again into the room, whistling a sentimental ditty below his breath.
"Well, old chap, it was worth waiting for, eh? And now, I suppose, you'll be making a bee-line for home, you lucky beggar. I shan't be long after you, that's one comfort. Pity we can't go together. I suppose you can't wait till the winter."
"No, my boy. I'm afraid I can't." Conyers spoke with a faint smile, his eyes still fixed upon the blue official paper that held his destiny. "I'm going home forthwith, and be damned to everything and everybody—except you. It's an understood thing, you know, Palliser, that we are partners in this deal."
"Oh, rot!" exclaimed Palliser impetuously. "I don't agree to that. I did nothing but polish the thing up. You'd have done it yourself if I hadn't."
"In the course of a few more years," put in Conyers drily.
"Rot!" said Palliser again. "Besides, I don't want any pelf. I've quite as much as is good for me, more than I want. That's why I'm going to get married. You'll be going the same way yourself now, I suppose?"
"You have no reason whatever for thinking so," responded Conyers.
Palliser laughed lightheartedly and sat down on the table. "Oh, haven'tI? What about that mysterious locked drawer of yours? Don't be shy, I say! You had it open when I came in. Show her to me like a good chap! I won't tell a soul."
"That's not where I keep my love-tokens," said Conyers, with a grim twist of the mouth that was not a smile.
"What then?" asked Palliser eagerly. "Not another invention?"
"No." Conyers inserted the key in the lock again, turned it, and pulled open the drawer. "See for yourself as you are so anxious."
Palliser leaned across the table and looked. The next instant his glance flashed upwards, and their eyes met.
There was a sharply-defined pause. Then, "You'd never be fool enough for that, Jack!" ejaculated Palliser, with vehemence.
"I'm fool enough for anything," said Conyers, with his cynical smile.
"But you wouldn't," the other protested almost incoherently. "A fellow like you—I don't believe it!"
"It's loaded," observed Conyers quietly. "No, leave it alone, Hugh! It can remain so for the present. There is not the smallest danger of itsgoing off—or I shouldn't have shown it to you."
He closed the drawer again, looking steadily into Hugh Palliser's face.
"I've had it by me for years," he said, "just in case the Fates should have one more trick in store for me. But apparently they haven't, though it's never safe to assume anything."
"Oh, don't talk like an idiot!" broke in Palliser heatedly. "I've no patience with that sort of thing. Do you expect me to believe that a fellow like you—a fellow who knows how to wait for his luck—would give way to a cowardly impulse and destroy himself all in a moment because things didn't go quite straight? Man alive! I know you better than that; or if I don't, I've never known you at all."
"Ah! Perhaps not!" said Conyers.
Once more he turned the key and withdrew it. He pushed back his chair so that his face was in shadow.
"You don't know everything, you know, Hugh," he said.
"Have a smoke," said Palliser, "and tell me what you are driving at."
He threw himself into a bamboo chair by the open door, the light streaming full upon him, revealing in every line of him the arrogant splendour of his youth. He looked like a young Greek god with the world at his feet.
Conyers surveyed him with his faint, cynical smile. "No," he said, "you certainly don't know everything, my son. You never have come a cropper in your life."
"Haven't I, though?" Hugh sat up, eager to refute this criticism. "That's all you know about it. I suppose you think you have had the monopoly of hard knocks. Most people do."
"I am not like most people," Conyers asserted deliberately. "But you needn't tell me that you have ever been right under, my boy. For you never have."
"Depends what you call going under," protested Palliser. "I've been down a good many times, Heaven knows. And I've had to wait—as you have—all the best years of my life."
"Your best years are to come," rejoined Conyers. "Mine are over."
"Oh, rot, man! Rot—rot—rot! Why, you are just coming into your own! Have another drink and give me the toast of your heart!" Hugh Palliser sprang impulsively to his feet. "Let me mix it! You can't—you shan't bemelancholy to-night of all nights."
But Conyers stayed his hand.
"Only one more drink to-night, boy!" he said. "And that not yet. Sit down and smoke. I'm not melancholy, but I can't rejoice prematurely. It's not my way."
"Prematurely!" echoed Hugh, pointing to the official envelope.
"Yes, prematurely," Conyers repeated. "I may be as rich as Croesus, and yet not win my heart's desire."
"Oh, I know that," said Hugh quickly. "I've been through it myself. It's infernal to have everything else under the sun and yet to lack the one thing—the one essential—the one woman."
He sat down again, abruptly thoughtful. Conyers smoked silently, with his face in the shadow.
Suddenly Hugh looked across at him.
"You think I'm too much of an infant to understand," he said. "I'm nearly thirty, but that's a detail."
"I'm forty-five," said Conyers.
"Well, well!" Hugh frowned impatiently. "It's a detail, as I said before. Who cares for a year more or less?"
"Which means," observed Conyers, with his dry smile, "that the one woman is older than you are."
"She is," Palliser admitted recklessly. "She is five years older. But what of it? Who cares? We were made for each other. What earthly difference does it make?"
"It's no one's business but your own," remarked Conyers through a haze of smoke.
"Of course it isn't. It never has been." Hugh yet sounded in some fashion indignant. "There never was any other possibility for me after I met her. I waited for her six mortal years. I'd have waited all my life. But she gave in at last. I think she realized that it was sheer waste of time to go on."
"What was she waiting for?" The question came with a certain weariness of intonation, as though the speaker were somewhat bored; but Hugh Palliser was too engrossed to notice.
He stretched his arms wide with a swift and passionate gesture.
"She was waiting for a scamp," he declared.
"It is maddening to think of—the sweetest woman on earth, Conyers, wasting her spring and her summer over a myth, an illusion. It was an affair of fifteen years ago. The fellow came to grief and disappointed her. She told me all about it on the day she promised to marry me. I believe her heart was nearly broken at the time, but she has got over it—thank Heaven!—at last. Poor Damaris! My Damaris!"
He ceased to speak, and a dull roar of thunder came out of the night like the voice of a giant in anguish.
Hugh began to smoke, still busy with his thoughts.
"Yes," he said presently, "I believe she would actually have waited all her life for the fellow if he had asked it of her. Luckily he didn't go so far as that. He was utterly unworthy of her. I think she sees it now. His father was imprisoned for forgery, and no doubt he was in the know, though it couldn't be brought home to him. He was ruined, of course, and he disappeared, just dropped out, when the crash came. He had been on the verge of proposing to her immediately before. And she would have had him too. She cared."
He sent a cloud of smoke upwards with savage vigour.
"It's damnable to think of her suffering for a worthless brute like that!" he exclaimed. "She had such faith in him too. Year after year she was expecting him to go back to her, and she kept me at arm's length, till at last she came to see that both our lives were being sacrificed to a miserable dream. Well, it's my innings now, anyway. And we are going to be superbly happy to make up for it."
Again he flung out his arms with a wide gesture, and again out of the night there came a long roll of thunder that was like the menace of a tortured thing. A flicker of lightning gleamed through the open door for a moment, and Conyers' dark face was made visible. He had ceased to smoke, and was staring with fixed, inscrutable eyes into the darkness. He did not flinch from the lightning; it was as if he did not see it.
"What would she do, I wonder, if the prodigal returned," he said quietly. "Would she be glad—or sorry?"
"He never will," returned Hugh quickly. "He never can—after fifteen years. Think of it! Besides—she wouldn't have him if he did."
"Women are proverbially faithful," remarked Conyers cynically.
"She will stick to me now," Hugh returned with confidence. "The other fellow is probably dead. In any case, he has no shadow of a right over her. He never even asked her to wait for him."
"Possibly he thought that she would wait without being asked," said Conyers, still cynical.
"Well, she has ceased to care for him now," asserted Hugh. "She told me so herself."
The man opposite shifted his position ever so slightly. "And you are satisfied with that?" he said.
"Of course I am. Why not?" There was almost a challenge in Hugh's voice.
"And if he came back?" persisted the other. "You would still be satisfied?"
Hugh sprang to his feet with a movement of fierce impatience. "I believe I should shoot him!" he said vindictively. He looked like a splendid wild animal suddenly awakened. "I tell you, Conyers," he declared passionately, "I could kill him with my hands if he came between us now."
Conyers, his chin on his hand, looked him up and down as though appraising his strength.
Suddenly he sat bolt upright and spoke—spoke briefly, sternly, harshly, as a man speaks in the presence of his enemy. At the same instant a frightful crash of thunder swept the words away as though they had never been uttered.
In the absolute pandemonium of sound that followed, Hugh Palliser, with a face gone suddenly white, went over to his friend and stood behind him, his hands upon his shoulders.
But Conyers sat quite motionless, staring forth at the leaping lightning, rigid, sphinx-like. He did not seem aware of the man behind him, till, as the uproar began to subside, Hugh bent and spoke.
"Do you know, old chap, I'm scared!" he said, with a faint, shamed laugh. "I feel as if there were devils abroad. Speak to me, will you, and tell me I'm a fool!"
"You are," said Conyers, without turning.
"That lightning is too much for my nerves," said Hugh uneasily. "It's almost red. What was it you said just now? I couldn't hear a word."
"It doesn't matter," said Conyers.
"But what was it? I want to know."
The gleam in the fixed eyes leaped to sudden terrible flame, shone hotly for a few seconds, then died utterly away. "I don't remember," said Conyers quietly. "It couldn't have been anything of importance. Have a drink! You will have to be getting back as soon as this is over."
Hugh helped himself with a hand that was not altogether steady. There had come a lull in the tempest. The cartoon on the wall was fluttering like a caged thing. He glanced at it, then looked at it closely. It was a reproduction of Doré's picture of Satan falling from heaven.
"It isn't meant for you surely!" he said.
Conyers laughed and got to his feet. "It isn't much like me, is it?"
Hugh looked at him uncertainly. "I never noticed it before. It might have been you years ago."
"Ah, perhaps," said Conyers. "Why don't you drink? I thought you were going to give me a toast."
Hugh's mood changed magically. He raised his glass high. "Here's to your eternal welfare, dear fellow! I drink to your heart's desire."
Conyers waited till Hugh had drained his glass before he lifted his own.
Then, "I drink to the one woman," he said, and emptied it at a draught.
The storm was over, and a horse's feet clattered away into the darkness, mingling rhythmically with a cheery tenor voice.
In the room with the open door a man's figure stood for a long while motionless.
When he moved at length it was to open the locked drawer of the writing-table. His right hand felt within it, closed upon something that lay there; and then he paused.
Several minutes crawled away.
From afar there came the long rumble of thunder. But it was not this that he heard as he stood wrestling with the fiercest temptation he had ever known.
Stiffly at last he stooped, peered into the drawer, finally closed it with an unfaltering hand. The struggle was over.
"For your sake, Damaris!" he said aloud, and he spoke without cynicism. "I should know how to wait by now—even for death—which is all I have to wait for."
And with that he pulled the fluttering paper from the wall, crushed it in his hand, and went out heavily into the night.