Dank and gruesome dawned the day, with the smell of rot in the air and the sense of death hovering over all. And there came to Merryon a sudden, overwhelming desire to go back to his bungalow beyond the fetid town and see how his wife was faring. She was the only white woman in the place, and the thought of her isolation came upon him now like a fiery torture.
It was the fiercest temptation he had ever known. Till that day his regimental duties had always been placed first with rigorous determination. Now for the first time he found himself torn by conflicting ties. The craving for news of her possessed him like a burning thirst. Yet he knew that some hours must elapse before he could honestly consider himself free to go.
He called an orderly at last, finding the suspense unendurable, and gave him a scribbled line to carry to his wife.
"Is all well, sweetheart? Send back word by bearer," he wrote, and told the man not to return without an answer.
The orderly departed, and for a while Merryon devoted himself to the matter in hand, and crushed his anxiety into the background. But at the end of an hour he was chafing in a fever of impatience. What delayed the fellow? In Heaven's name, why was he so long?
Ghastly possibilities arose in his mind, fears unspeakable that he dared not face. He forced himself to attend to business, but the suspense was becoming intolerable. He began to realize that he could not stand it much longer.
He was nearing desperation when the colonel came unexpectedly upon the scene, unshaven and haggard as he was himself, but firm as a rock in the face of adversity.
He joined Merryon, and received the latter's report, grimly taciturn.They talked together for a space of needs and expediencies. The fell disease had got to be checked somehow. He spoke of recalling the officers on leave. There had been such a huge sick list that summer that they were reduced to less than half their normal strength.
"You're worth a good many," he said to Merryon, half-grudgingly, "but you can't work miracles. Besides, you've got—" He broke off abruptly. "How's your wife?"
"That's what I don't know, sir." Feverishly Merryon made answer. "I left her last night. She was well then. But since—I sent down an orderly over an hour ago. He's not come back."
"Confound it!" said the colonel, testily. "You'd better go yourself."
Merryon glanced swiftly round.
"Yes, go, go!" the colonel reiterated, irritably. "I'll relieve you for a spell. Go and satisfy yourself—and me! None but an infernal fool would have kept her here," he added, in a growling undertone, as Merryon lifted a hand in brief salute and started away through the sodden mists.
He went as he had never gone in his life before, and as he went the mists parted before him and a blinding ray of sunshine came smiting through the gap like the sword of the destroyer. The simile rushed through his mind and out again, even as the grey mist-curtain closed once more.
He reached the bungalow. It stood like a shrouded ghost, and the drip, drip, drip of the rain on the veranda came to him like a death-knell.
A gaunt figure met him almost on the threshold, and he recognized his messenger with a sharp sense of coming disaster. The man stood mutely at the salute.
"Well? Well? Speak!" he ordered, nearly beside himself with anxiety. "Why didn't you come back with an answer?"
The man spoke with deep submission. "Sahib, there was no answer."
"What do you mean by that? What the—Here, let me pass!" cried Merryon, in a ferment. "There must have been—some sort of answer."
"No,sahib. No answer." The man spoke with inscrutable composure. "Themem-sahibhas not come back," he said. "Let thesahibsee for himself."
But Merryon had already burst into the bungalow; so he resumed his patient watch on the veranda, wholly undisturbed, supremely patient.
Thekhitmutgarcame forward at his master's noisy entrance. There was a trace—just the shadow of a suggestion—of anxiety on his dignified face under the snow-white turban. He presented him with a note on a salver with a few murmured words and a deep salaam.
"For thesahib'shands alone," he said.
Merryon snatched up the note and opened it with shaking hands.
It was very brief, pathetically so, and as he read a great emptiness seemed to spread and spread around him in an ever-widening desolation.
"Good-bye, my Billikins!" Ah, the pitiful, childish scrawl she had made of it! "I've come to my senses, and I've gone back to him. I'm not worthy of any sacrifice of yours, dear. And it would have been a big sacrifice. You wouldn't like being dragged through the mud, but I'm used to it. It came to me just that moment that you said, 'Yes, of course,' when Mr. Harley came to call you back to duty. Duty is better than a worthless woman, my Billikins, and I was never fit to be anything more than a toy to you—a toy to play with and toss aside. And so good-bye, good-bye!"
The scrawl ended with a little cross at the bottom of the page. He looked up from it with eyes gone blind with pain and a stunned and awful sense of loss.
"When did themem-sahibgo?" he questioned, dully.
Thekhitmutgarbent his stately person. "Themem-sahibwent in haste," he said, "an hour before midnight. Your servant followed her to thedâk-bungalowto protect her frombudmashes, but she dismissed me ere she entered in.Sahib, I could do no more."
The man's eyes appealed for one instant, but fell the next before thedumb despair that looked out of his master's.
There fell a terrible silence—a pause, as it were, of suspended vitality, while the iron bit deeper and deeper into tissues too numbed to feel.
Then, "Fetch me a drink!" said Merryon, curtly. "I must be getting back to duty."
And with soundless promptitude the man withdrew, thankful to make his escape.
"Well? Is she all right?" Almost angrily the colonel flung the question as his second-in-command came back heavy-footed through the rain. He had been through a nasty period of suspense himself during Merryon's absence.
Merryon nodded. His face was very pale and his lips seemed stiff.
"She has—gone, sir," he managed to say, after a moment.
"Gone, has she?" The colonel raised his brows in astonished interrogation. "What! Taken fright at last? Well, best thing she could do, all things considered. You ought to be very thankful."
He dismissed the subject for more pressing matters, and he never noticed the awful whiteness of Merryon's face or the deadly fixity of his look.
Macfarlane noticed both, coming up two hours later to report the death of one of the officers at the bungalow.
"For Heaven's sake, man, have some brandy!" he said, proffering a flask of his own. "You're looking pretty unhealthy. What is it? Feeling a bit off, eh?"
He held Merryon's wrist while he drank the brandy, regarding him with a troubled frown the while.
"What is the matter with you, man?" he said. "You're not frightening yourself? You wouldn't be such a fool!"
Merryon did not answer. He was never voluble. To-day he seemed tongue-tied.
Macfarlane continued with an uneasy effort to hide a certain doubt stirring in his mind. "I hear there was a European died at thedâk-bungalowearly this morning. I wanted to go round and see, but I haven't been able. It's fairly widespread, but there's no sense in getting scared. Halloa, Merryon!"
He broke off, staring. Merryon had given a great start. He looked like a man stabbed suddenly from a dream to full consciousness.
"A European—at thedâk-bungalow—dead, did you say?"
His words tumbled over each other; he gripped Macfarlane's shoulder and shook it with fierce impatience.
"So I heard. I don't know any details. How should I? Merryon, are you mad?" Macfarlane put up a quick hand to free himself, for the grip was painful. "He wasn't a friend of yours, I suppose? He wouldn't have been putting up there if he had been."
"No, no; not—a friend." The words came jerkily. Merryon was breathing in great spasms that shook him from head to foot. "Not—a friend!" he said again, and stopped, gazing before him with eyes curiously contracted as the eyes of one striving to discern something a long way off.
Macfarlane slipped a hand under his elbow. "Look here," he said, "you must have a rest. You can be spared for a bit now. Walk back with me to the hospital, and we will see how things are going there."
His hand closed urgently. He began to draw him away.
Merryon's eyes came back as it were out of space, and gave him a quick side-glance that was like the turn of a rapier. "I must go down to thedâk-bungalow," he said, with decision.
Swift protest rose to the doctor's lips, but it died there. He tightened his hold instead, and went with him.
The colonel looked round sharply at their approach, looked—and swore under his breath. "Yes, all right, major, you'd better go," he said. "Good-bye."
Merryon essayed a grim smile, but his ashen face only twisted convulsively, showing his set teeth. He hung on Macfarlane's shoulder while the first black cloud of agony possessed him and slowly passed.
Then, white and shaking, he stood up. "I'll get round to thedâknow, before I'm any worse. Don't come with me, Macfarlane! I'll take an orderly."
"I'm coming," said Macfarlane, stoutly.
But they did not get to thedâk-bungalow, or anywhere near it. Before they had covered twenty yards another frightful spasm of pain came upon Merryon, racking his whole being, depriving him of all his powers, wresting from him every faculty save that of suffering. He went down into a darkness that swallowed him, soul and body, blotting out all finite things, loosening his frantic clutch on life, sucking him down as it were into a frightful emptiness, where his only certainty of existence lay in the excruciating agonies that tore and convulsed him like devils in some inferno under the earth.
Of time and place and circumstance thereafter he became as completelyunconscious as though they had ceased to be, though once or twice he was aware of a merciful hand that gave him opium to deaden—or was it only to prolong?—his suffering. And æons and eternities passed over him while he lay in the rigour of perpetual torments, not trying to escape, only writhing in futile anguish in the bitter dark of the prison-house.
Later, very much later, there came a time when the torture gradually ceased or became merged in a deathly coldness. During that stage his understanding began to come back to him like the light of a dying day. A vague and dreadful sense of loss began to oppress him, a feeling of nakedness as though the soul of him were already slipping free, passing into an appalling void, leaving an appalling void behind. He lay quite helpless and sinking, sinking—slowly, terribly sinking into an overwhelming sea of annihilation.
With all that was left of his failing strength he strove to cling to that dim light which he knew for his own individuality. The silence and the darkness broke over him in long, soundless waves; but each time he emerged again, cold, cold as death, but still aware of self, aware of existence, albeit the world he knew had dwindled to an infinitesimal smallness, as an object very far away, and floating ever farther and farther from his ken.
Vague paroxysms of pain still seized him from time to time, but they no longer affected him in the same way. The body alone agonized. The soul stood apart on the edge of that dreadful sea, shrinking afraid from the black, black depths and the cruel cold of the eternal night. He was terribly, crushingly alone.
Someone had once, twice, asked him a vital question about his belief in God. Then he had been warmly alive. He had held his wife close in his arms, and nothing else had mattered. But now—but now—he was very far from warmth and life. He was dying in loneliness. He was perishing in the outer dark, where no hand might reach and no voice console. He had believed—or thought he believed—in God. But now his faith was wearing very thin. Very soon it would crumble quite away, just as he himself was crumbling into the dreadful silence of the ages. His life—the brief passion called life—was over. Out of the dark it had come; into the dark it went. And no one to care—no one to cry farewell to him across that desolation of emptiness that was death! No one to kneel beside him and pray for light in that awful, all-encompassing dark!
Stay! Something had touched him even then. Or was it but his dying fancy? Red lips he had kissed and that had kissed him in return, eager arms that had clung and clung, eyes of burning adoration! Did they truly belong all to the past? Or were they here beside him even now—even now? Had he wandered backwards perchance into that strange, sweet heaven of love from which he had been so suddenly and terribly cast out? Ah, how he had loved her! How he had loved her! Very faintly there began to stir within him the old fiery longing that she, and she alone, had ever waked within him. He would worship her to the last flicker of his dying soul. But the darkness was spreading, spreading, like a yawning of a great gulf at his feet. Already he was slipping over the edge. The light was fading out of his sky.
It was the last dim instinct of nature that made him reach out a groping hand, and with lips that would scarcely move to whisper, "Puck!"
He did not expect an answer. The things of earth were done with. Hislife was passing swiftly, swiftly, like the sands running out of a glass. He had lost her already, and the world had sunk away, away, with all warmth and light and love.
Yet out of the darkness all suddenly there came a voice, eager, passionate, persistent. "I am here, Billikins! I am here! Come back to me, darling! Come back!"
He started at that voice, started and paused, holding back as it were on the very verge of the precipice. So she was there indeed! He could hear her sobbing breath. There came to him the consciousness of her hands clasping his, and the faintest, vaguest glow went through his ice-cold body. He tried, piteously weak as he was, to bend his fingers about hers.
And then there came the warmth of her lips upon them, kissing them with a fierce passion of tenderness, drawing them close as if to breathe her own vitality into his failing pulses.
"Open your eyes to me, darling!" she besought him. "See how I love you! And see how I want your love! I can't do without it, Billikins. It's my only safeguard. What! He is dead? I say he is not—he is not! Or if he is, he shall rise again. He shall come back. See! He is looking at me! How dare you say he is dead?"
The wild anguish of her voice reached him, pierced him, rousing him as no other power on earth could have roused him. Out of that deathly inertia he drew himself, inch by inch, as out of some clinging swamp. His hand found strength to tighten upon hers. He opened his eyes, leaden-lidded as they were, and saw her face all white and drawn, gazing into his own with such an agony of love, such a consuming fire of worship, that it seemed as if his whole being were drawn by it, warmed, comforted, revived.
She hung above him, fierce in her devotion, driving back the destroyer by the sheer burning intensity of her love. "You shan't die, Billikins!" she told him, passionately. "You can't die—now I am here!"
She stooped her face to his. He turned his lips instinctively to meet it, and suddenly it was as though a flame had kindled between them—hot, ardent, compelling. His dying pulses thrilled to it, his blood ran warmer.
"You—have—come—back!" he said, with slow articulation.
"My darling—my darling!" she made quivering answer. "Say I've come—in time!"
He tried to speak again, but could not. Yet the deathly cold was givingway like ice before the sun. He could feel his heart beating where before he had felt nothing. A hand that was not Puck's came out of the void beyond her and held a spoonful of spirit to his mouth. He swallowed it with difficulty, and was conscious of a greater warmth.
"There, my own boy, my own boy!" she murmured over him. "You're coming back to me. Say you're coming back!"
His lips quivered like a child's. He forced them to answer her. "If you—will—stay," he said.
"I will never leave you again, darling," she made swift answer. "Never, never again! You shall have all that you want—all—all!"
Her arms closed about him. He felt the warmth of her body, the passionate nearness of her soul; and therewith the flame that had kindled between them leaped to a great and burning glow, encompassing them both—the Sacred Fire.
A wonderful sense of comfort came upon him. He turned to her as a man turns to only one woman in all the world, and laid his head upon her breast.
"I only want—my wife," he said.
It took him many days to climb back up that slope down which he had slipped so swiftly in those few awful hours. Very slowly, with painful effort, but with unfailing purpose, he made his arduous way. And through it all Puck never left his side.
Alert and vigilant, very full of courage, very quick of understanding, she drew him, leaning on her, back to a life that had become strangely new to them both. They talked very little, for Merryon's strength was terribly low, and Macfarlane, still scarcely believing in the miracle that had been wrought under his eyes, forbade all but the simplest and briefest speech—a prohibition which Puck strenuously observed; for Puck, though she knew the miracle for an accomplished fact, was not taking any chances.
"Presently, darling; when you're stronger," was her invariable answer to any attempt on his part to elicit information as to the events that hadimmediately preceded his seizure. "There's nothing left to fret about. You're here—and I'm here. And that's all that matters."
If her lips quivered a little over the last assertion, she turned her head away that he might not see. For she was persistently cheery in his presence, full of tender humour, always undismayed.
He leaned upon her instinctively. She propped him so sturdily, with a strength so amazing and so steadfast. Sometimes she laughed softly at his weakness, as a mother might laugh at the first puny efforts of her baby to stand alone. And he knew that she loved his dependence upon her, even in a sense dreaded the time when his own strength should reassert itself, making hers weak by comparison.
But that time was coming, slowly yet very surely. The rains were lessening at last, and the cholera-fiend had been driven forth. Merryon was to go to the Hills on sick leave for several weeks. Colonel Davenant had awaked to the fact that his life was a valuable one, and his admiration for Mrs. Merryon was undisguised. He did not altogether understand her behaviour, but he was discreet enough not to seek that enlightenment which only one man in the world was ever to receive.
To that man on the night before their departure came Puck, very pale and resolute, with shining, unwavering eyes. She knelt down before him with small hands tightly clasped.
"I'm going to say something dreadful, Billikins," she said.
He looked at her for a moment or two in silence.
Then, "I know what you are going to say," he said.
She shook her head. "Oh, no, you don't, darling. It's something that'll make you frightfully angry."
The faintest gleam of a smile crossed Merryon's face. "With you?" he said.
She nodded, and suddenly her eyes were brimming with tears. "Yes, with me."
He put his hand on her shoulder. "I tell you, I know what it is," he said, with a certain stubbornness.
She turned her cheek for a moment to caress the hand; then suddenly all her strength went from her. She sank down on the floor at his feet, huddled together in a woeful heap, just as she had been on that first night when the safety-curtain had dropped behind her.
"You'll never forgive me!" she sobbed. "But I knew—I knew—I always knew!"
"Knew what, child?" He was stooping over her. His hand, trembling still with weakness, was on her head. "But, no, don't tell me!" he said, and his voice was deeply tender. "The fellow is dead, isn't he?"
"Oh, yes, he's dead." Quiveringly, between piteous sobs, she answered him. "He—was dying before I reached him—that dreadful night. He just—had strength left—to curse me! And I am cursed! I am cursed!"
She flung out her arms wildly, clasping his feet.
He stooped lower over her. "Hush—hush!" he said.
She did not seem to hear. "I let you take me—I stained your honour—I wasn't a free woman. I tried to think I was; but in my heart—I always knew—I always knew! I wouldn't have your love at first—because I knew. And I came to you—that monsoon night—chiefly because—I wanted—when he came after me—as I knew he would come—to force him—to set me—free."
Through bitter sobbing the confession came; in bitter sobbing it ended.
But still Merryon's hand was on her head, still his face was bent above her, grave and sad and pitiful, the face of a strong man enduring grief.
After a little, haltingly, she spoke again. "And I wasn't coming back to you—ever. Only—someone—asyce—told me you had been stricken down. And then I had to come. I couldn't leave you to die. That's all—that'sall! I'm going now. And I shan't come back. I'm not—your wife. You're quite, quite free. And I'll never—bring shame on you—again."
Her straining hands tightened. She kissed, the feet she clasped. "I'm a wicked, wicked woman," she said. "I was born—on the wrong side—of the safety-curtain. That's no—excuse; only—to make you understand."
She would have withdrawn herself then, but his hands held her. She covered her face, kneeling between them.
"Why do you want me to understand?" he said, his voice very low.
She quivered at the question, making no attempt to answer, just weeping silently there in his hold.
He leaned towards her, albeit he was trembling with weakness. "Puck, listen!" he said. "I do understand."
She caught her breath and became quite still.
"Listen again!" he said. "What is done—is done; and nothing can alter it. But—your future is mine. You have forfeited the right to leave me."
She uncovered her face in a flash to gaze at him as one confounded.
He met the look with eyes that held her own. "I say it," he said. "You have forfeited the right. You say I am free. Am I free?"
She nodded, still with her eyes on his. "I have—no claim on you," she whispered, brokenly.
His hands tightened; he brought her nearer to him. "And when that dream of yours comes true," he said, "what then? What then?"
Her face quivered painfully at the question. She swallowed once or twice spasmodically, like a hurt child trying not to cry.
"That's—nobody's business but mine," she said.
A very curious smile drew Merryon's mouth. "I thought I had had something to do with it," he said. "I think I am entitled to part-ownership, anyway."
She shook her head, albeit she was very close to his breast. "You're not, Billikins!" she declared, with vehemence. "You only say that—out of pity. And I don't want pity. I—I'd rather you hated me than that! Miles rather!"
His arms went round her. He uttered a queer, passionate laugh and drew her to his heart. "And what if I offer you—love?" he said. "Have you no use for that either, my wife—my wife?"
She turned and clung to him, clung fast and desperately, as a drowning person clings to a spar. "But I'm not, Billikins! I'm not!" she whispered, with her face hidden.
"You shall be," he made steadfast answer. "Before God you shall be."
"Ah, do you believe in God?" she murmured.
"I do," he said, firmly.
She gave a little sob. "Oh, Billikins, so do I. At least, I think I do; but I'm half afraid, even now, though I did try to do—the right thing. I shall only know for certain—when the dream comes true." Her face came upwards, her lips moved softly against his neck. "Darling," she whispered, "don't you hope—it'll be—a boy?"
He bent his head mutely. Somehow speech was difficult.
But Puck was not wanting speech of him just then. She turned her red lips to his. "But even if it's a girl, darling, it won't matter, for she'll be born on the right side of the safety-curtain now, thanks to your goodness, your generosity."
He stopped her sharply. "Puck! Puck!"
Their lips met. Puck was sobbing a little and smiling at the same time.
"Your love is the safety-curtain, Billikins darling," she whispered, softly. "And I'm going to thank God for it—every day of my life."
"My darling!" he said. "My wife!"
Her eyes shone up to his through tears. "Oh, do you realize," she said, "that we have risen from the dead?"
"I really don't know why I accepted him. But somehow it was done before I knew. He waltzes so divinely that it intoxicates me, and then I naturally cease to be responsible for my actions."
Doris Fielding leant back luxuriously, her hands clasped behind her head.
"I can't think what he wants to marry me for," she said reflectively. "I am quite sure I don't want to marry him."
"Then, my dear child, what possessed you to accept him?" remonstrated her friend, Vera Abingdon, from behind the tea-table.
"That's just what I don't know," said Doris, a little smile twitching the corner of her mouth. "However, it doesn't signify greatly. I don't mind being engaged for a little while if he is good, but I certainly shan't go on if I don't like it. It's in the nature of an experiment, you see; and it really is necessary, for there is absolutely no other way of testing the situation."
She glanced at her friend and burst into a gay peal of laughter. No one knew how utterly charming this girl could be till she laughed.
"Oh, don't look so shocked, please!" she begged. "I know I'm flippant, flighty, and foolish, but really I'm not a bit wicked. Ask Phil if I am. He has known me all my life."
"I do not need to ask him, Dot." Vera spoke with some gravity notwithstanding. "I have never for a moment thought you wicked. But I do sometimes think you are rather heartless."
Doris opened her blue eyes wide.
"Oh, why? I am sure I am not. It really isn't my fault that I have been engaged two or three times before. Directly I begin to get pleasantly intimate with any one he proposes, and how can I possibly know, unless I am on terms of intimacy, whether I should like to marry him or not? I am sure I don't want to be engaged to any one for any length of time. It's as bad as being cast up on a desert island with only one wretched man to speak to. As a matter of fact, what you call heartlessness is sheer broad-mindedness on my part. I admit that I do occasionally sail near the wind. It's fun, and I like it. But I never do any harm—any real harm I mean. I always put my helm over in time. And I must protect myself somehow against fortune-hunters."
Vera was silent. This high-spirited young cousin of her husband's was often a sore anxiety to her. She had had sole charge of the girl for the past three years and had found it no light responsibility.
"Cheer up, darling!" besought Doris. "There is not the smallest cause for a wrinkled brow. Perhaps the experiment will turn out a success thistime. Who knows? And even if it doesn't, no one will be any the worse. I am sure Vivian Caryl will never break his heart for me."
But Vera Abingdon shook her head.
"I don't like you to be so wild, Dot. It makes people think lightly of you. And you know how angry Phil was last time."
Dot snapped her fingers airily and rose.
"Who cares for Phil? Besides, it really was not my fault last time, whatever any one may say. Are you going to ask myfiancédown to Rivermead for Easter? Because if so, I do beg you won't tell everybody we are engaged. It is quite an informal arrangement, and perhaps, considering all the circumstances, the less said about it the better."
She stopped and kissed Vera's grave face, laughed again as though she could not help it, and flitted like a butterfly from the room.
"Where is Doris?" asked Phil Abingdon, looking round upon the guests assembled in his drawing-room at Rivermead. "We are all waiting for her."
"I think we had better go in without her," said his wife, with her nervous smile. "She arranged to motor down with Mrs. Lockyard and her party this afternoon. Possibly they have persuaded her to dine with them."
"She would never do that surely," said Phil, with an involuntary glance at Vivian Caryl who had just entered.
"If you are talking about myfiancé, I think it more than probable that she would," the latter remarked. "Mrs. Lockyard's place is justacross the river, I understand? Shall I punt over and fetch Doris?"
"No, no!" broke in his hostess anxiously. "I am sure she wouldn't come if you did. Besides—"
"Oh, as to that," said Vivian Caryl, with a grim smile, "I think, with all deference to your opinion, that the odds would be in my favour. However, let us dine first, if you prefer it."
Mrs. Abingdon did prefer it, and said so hastily. She seemed to have a morbid dread of a rupture between Doris Fielding and herfiancé, a feeling with which Caryl quite obviously had no sympathy. There was nothing very remarkable about the man save this somewhat supercilious demeanour which had caused Vera to marvel many times at Doris's choice.
They went in to dinner without further discussion. Caryl sat on Vera's left, and amazed her by his utter unconcern regarding the absentee. He seemed to be in excellent spirits, and his dry humour provoked a good deal of merriment.
She led the way back to the drawing-room as soon as possible. There was a billiard-room beyond to which the members of her party speedily betook themselves, and here most of the men joined them soon after. Neither Caryl nor Abingdon was with them, and Vera counted the minutes of their absence with a sinking heart while her guests buzzed all unheeding around her.
It was close upon ten o'clock when she saw her husband's face for a moment in the doorway. He made a rapid sign to her, and with a murmuredexcuse she went to him, closing the door behind her.
Caryl was standing with him, calm as ever, though she fancied that his eyes were a little wider than usual and his bearing less supercilious.
Her husband, she saw at a glance, was both angry and agitated.
"She has gone off somewhere with that bounder Brandon," he said. "They got down to tea, and went off again in the motor afterwards, Mrs. Lockyard doesn't seem to know for certain where."
"Phil!" she exclaimed in consternation, and added with her eyes on Caryl, "What is to be done? What can be done?"
Caryl made quiet reply:
"There was some talk of Wynhampton. I am going there now on your husband's motor-bicycle. If I do not find her there——"
He paused, and on the instant a girl's high peal of laughter rang through the house. The drawing-room door was flung back, and Doris herself stood on the threshold.
"Goodness!" she cried. "What a solemn conclave! You can't think how funny you all look! Do tell me what it is all about!"
She stood before them, the motor-veil thrown back from her dainty face, her slight figure quivering with merriment.
Vera hastened to meet her with outstretched hands.
"Oh, my dear, you can't think how anxious we have been about you."
Doris took her by the shoulders and lightly kissed her.
"Silly! Why? You know I always come up smiling. Why, Phil, you are looking positively green! Have you been anxious, too? I am indeed honoured."
She swept him a curtsey, her face all dimples and laughter.
"We've had the jolliest time," she declared. "We motored to Wynhampton and saw the last of the races. After that, we dined at a dear little place with a duckpond at the bottom of the garden. And finally we returned—it ought to have been by moonlight, only there was no moon. Where is everyone? In the billiard-room? I want some milk and soda frightfully. Vivian, you might, like the good sort you are, go and get me some."
She bestowed a dazzling smile upon herfiancéand offered him one finger by way of salutation.
Abingdon, who had been waiting to get in a word, here exploded with someviolence and told his young cousin in no measured terms what he thought of her conduct.
She listened with her head on one side, her eyes brimful of mischief, and finally with an airy gesture turned to Caryl.
"Don't you want to scold me, too? I am sure you do. You had better be quick or there will be nothing left to say."
Abingdon turned on his heel and walked away. He was thoroughly angry and made no attempt to hide it. His wife lingered a moment irresolute, then softly followed him. And as the door closed, Caryl looked very steadily into the girl's flushed face and spoke:
"All I have to say is this. Maurice Brandon is no fit escort for any woman who values her reputation. And I here and now forbid you most strictly, most emphatically, ever to go out with him alone again."
He paused. She was looking straight back at him with her chin in the air.
"Dear me!" she said. "Do you really? And who gave you the right to dictate to me?"
"You yourself," he answered quietly.
"Indeed! May I ask when?"
He stiffened a little, but his face did not alter.
"When you promised to be my wife," he said.
Her eyes blazed instant defiance.
"An engagement can be broken off!" she declared recklessly.
"By mutual consent," said Caryl drily.
"That is absurd," she rejoined. "You couldn't possibly hold me to it against my will."
"I am quite capable of doing so," he told her coolly, "if I think it worth my while."
"Worth your while!" she exclaimed, staring at him as if she doubted his sanity.
"Even so," he said. "When I have fully satisfied myself that a heartless little flirt like you can be transformed into a virtuous and amiable wife. It may prove a difficult process, I admit, and perhaps not altogether a pleasant one. But I shall not shirk it on that account."
He leant back against the mantelpiece with a gesture that plainly said that so far as he was concerned the matter was ended.
But it was not so with Doris. She stood before him for several seconds absolutely motionless, all the vivid colour gone from her face, her blue eyes blazing with speechless fury. At length, with a sudden, fierce movement, she tore the ring he had given her from her finger and held itout to him.
"Take it!" she said, her voice high-pitched and tremulous. "This is the end!"
He did not stir a muscle.
"Not yet, I think," he said.
She flashed a single glance at him in which pride and uncertainty were strangely mingled, then made a sudden swoop towards the fire. He read her intention in a second, and stooping swiftly caught her hand. The ring shot from her hold, gleamed in a shining curve in the firelight, and fell with a tinkle among the ashes of the fender.
Caryl did not utter a word, but his face was fixed and grim as, still tightly gripping the hand he had caught, he knelt and groped among the half-dead embers for the ring it had wantonly flung there. When he found it he rose.
"Before you do anything of that sort again," he said, "let me advise you to stop and think. It will do you no harm, and may save trouble."
He took her left hand, paused a moment, and then deliberately fitted the ring back upon her finger. She made no resistance, for she was instinctively aware that he would brook no morefrom her just then. She was in fact horribly scared, though his voice was still perfectly quiet and even. Something in his touch had set her heart beating, something electric, something terrifying. She dared not meet his eyes.
He dropped her hand almost contemptuously. There was nothing lover-likeabout him at that moment.
"And remember," he said, "that no experiment can ever prove a success unless it is given a fair trial. You will continue to be engaged to me until I set you free. Is that understood?"
She did not answer him. She was pulling at the loose ends of her veil with restless fingers, her face downcast and very pale.
"Doris!" he said.
She glanced up at him sharply.
"I am rather tired," she said, and her voice quivered a little. "Do you mind if I say good-night?"
"Answer me first," he said.
She shook her head.
"I forget what you asked me. It doesn't matter, does it? There's someone coming, and I don't want to be caught. Good-night!"
She whisked round with the words before he could realize her intention, and in a moment was at the door. She waved a hand to him airily as she disappeared. And Caryl was left to wonder if her somewhat precipitate departure could be regarded as a sign of defeat or merely a postponement of the struggle.
It was the afternoon of Easter Day, and a marvellous peace lay upon allthings.
Maurice Brandon, a look of supreme boredom on his handsome face, had just sauntered down to the river bank. A belt of daffodils nodded to him from the shrubbery on the farther shore. He stood and stared at them absently while he idly smoked a cigarette.
Finally, after a long and quite unprofitable inspection, he turned aside to investigate a boathouse under the willows on Mrs. Lockyard's side of the stream. He found the door unlocked, and discovered within a somewhat dilapidated punt. This, after considerable exertion, he managed to drag forth and finally to run into the water. The craft seemed seaworthy, and he proceeded to forage for a punt-pole.
Fully equipped at length, he stepped on board and poled himself out from the shore. Arrived at the farther bank, he calmly disembarked and tied up under the willows. He paused a few seconds to light another cigarette, then turned from the river and sauntered up the path between the high box hedges.
The garden was deserted, and he pursued his way unmolested till he came within sight of the house. Here for the first time he stopped to take deliberate stock of his surroundings. Standing in the shelter of a giant rhododendron, he saw two figures emerge and walk along the narrow gravelled terrace before the house. As he watched, they reached the farther end and turned. He recognized them both. They were Caryl and his host Abingdon.
For a few moments they stood talking, then went away together round an angle of the house.
Scarcely had they disappeared before a girl's light figure appeared atan upstairs window. Doris's mischievous face peeped forth, wearing her gayest, most impudent grimace.
There was no one else in sight, and with instant decision Brandon stepped into full view, and without the faintest suggestion of concealment began to stroll up the winding path.
She heard his footsteps on the gravel, and turned her eyes upon him with a swift start of recognition.
He raised his hand in airy salute, and he heard her low murmur of laughter as she waved him a hasty sign to await her in the shrubbery from which he had just emerged.
"Did you actually come across the river?" said Doris. "Whatever made you do that?"
"I said I should come and fetch you, you know, if you didn't turn up," he said.
She laughed.
"Do you always keep your word?"
"To you—always," he assured her.
Her merry face coloured a little, but she met his eyes with absolute candour.
"And now that you have come what can we do? Are you going to take me on the river? It looks rather dangerous."
"It is dangerous," Brandon said coolly, "but I think I can get you over in safety if you will allow me to try. In any case, I won't let you drown."
"I shall be furious if anything happens," she told him—"if you splash me even. So beware!"
He pushed out from the bank with a laugh. It was evident that her threat did not greatly impress him.
As for Doris, she was evidently enjoying the adventure, and the risks that attended it only added to its charm. There was something about this man that fascinated her, a freedom and a daring to which her own reckless spirit could not fail to respond. He was the most interesting plaything she had had for a long time. She had no fear that he would ever make the mistake of taking her seriously.
They reached the opposite bank in safety, and he handed her ashore with considerableempressement.
"I have a confession to make," he said, as they walked up to the house.
"Oh, I know what it is," she returned carelessly. "Mrs. Lockyard did not expect me and has gone out."
He nodded.
"You are taking it awfully well. One would almost think you didn't mind."
She laughed.
"I never mind anything so long as I am not bored."
"Nor do I," said Brandon. "We seem to have a good deal in common. But what puzzles me—"
He broke off. They had reached the open French window that led into Mrs. Lockyard's drawing-room. He stood aside for her to enter.
"Well?" she said, as she passed him. "What is this weighty problem?"
He followed her in.
"What puzzles me," he said, "is how a girl with your natural independence and love of freedom can endure to remain unmarried."
She opened her eyes wide in astonishment.
"My good sir, you have expressed the exact reason in words which could not have been better chosen. Independence, love of freedom, and a very strong preference for going my own way."
He laughed a little.
"Yes, but you would have all these things a thousand times multiplied if you were married.Look at all the restraints and restrictions to which girls are subjected where married women simply please themselves. Why, you are absolutely hedged round with conventions. You can scarcely go for a ride with a man of your acquaintance in broad daylight without endangering your reputation. What would they say—your cousin and Mrs. Abingdon—if they knew that you were here with me now? They would hold up their hands in horror."
The girl's thoughts flashed suddenly to Caryl. How much freedom might she expect from him?
"It's all very well," she said, with a touch of petulance, "but easy-going husbands don't grow on every gooseberry-bush. I have never yet met the man who wouldn't want to arrange my life in every detail if I married him."
"Yes, you have," said Brandon.
He spoke with deliberate emphasis, and she knew that as he spoke he looked at her in a manner that there could be no mistaking. Her heart quickened a little, and she felt the colour rise in her face.
"Do you know that I am engaged to Vivian Caryl?" she said.
"Perfectly," he answered. "I also know that you have not the smallest intention of marrying him."
She frowned, but did not contradict him.
He continued with considerable assurance:
"He is not the man to make you happy, and I think you know it. My only wonder is that you didn't realize it earlier—before you became engaged to him."
"My engagement was only an experiment," she said quickly.
"And therefore easily broken," he rejoined. "Why don't you put a stop toit?"
She hesitated.
He bent towards her.
"Do you mean to say that he is cad enough to hold you against your will?"
Still she hesitated, half-afraid to speak openly.
He leant nearer; he took her hand.
"My dear child," he said, "don't for Heaven's sake give in to such tyranny as that, and be made miserable for the rest of your life. Oh, I grant you he is the sort of fellow who would make what is called a good husband, but not the sort of husband you want. He would keep you in order, shackle you at every turn. Marry him, and it will be good-bye to liberty—even such liberty as you have now—forever."
Her face had changed. She was very pale.
"I know all that," she said, speaking rapidly, with headlong impulse. "But, don't you see how difficult it is for me? They are all on his side, and he is so horribly strong. Oh, I was a fool I know to accept him. But we were waltzing and it came so suddenly. I never stopped to think. I wish I could get away now, but I can't."
"I can tell you of a way," said Brandon.
She glanced at him.
"Oh, yes, I know. But I can't be engaged to two people at once. I couldn't face it. I detest scenes."
"There need be no scene," he said. "You have only to come to me and give me the right to defend you. I ask for nothing better. Even Caryl would scarcely have the impertinence to dispute it. As my wife you will beabsolutely secure from any interference."
She was gazing at him wide-eyed.
"Do you mean a runaway marriage?" she questioned slowly.
He drew nearer still, and possessed himself of her hands.
"Yes, just that," he said. "It would take a little courage, but you have plenty of that. And the rest I would see to. It wouldn't be so very difficult, you know. Mrs. Lockyard would help us, and you would be absolutely safe with me. I haven't much to offer you, I admit. I'm as poor as a church mouse. But at least you would find me"—he smiled into her startled eyes—"a very easy-going husband, I assure you."
"Oh, I don't know!" Doris said. "I don't know!"
Yet still she left her hands in his and still she listened to him. That airy reference of his to his poverty affected her favourably. He would scarcely have made it, she told herself, with an unconscious effort to silence unacknowledged misgivings, if her fortune had been the sole attraction.
"Look here," he said, breaking in upon these hasty meditations, "I don't want you to do anything in a hurry. Take a little while to think it over. Let me know to-morrow. I am not leaving till the evening. You shall do nothing, so far as I am concerned, against your will. I want you, now and always, to do exactly as you like. You believe that?"
"I quite believe you mean it at the present moment," she said with a decidedly doubtful smile.
"It will be so always," said Brandon, "whether you believe it or not."
And with considerable ceremony he raised her hands to his lips and deliberately kissed them. It seemed to Doris at that moment that even so headlong a scheme as this was not without its very material advantages. There were so many drawbacks to being betrothed.
When Doris descended to breakfast on the following morning she found an animated party in the dining-room discussing the best means of spending the day. Abingdon himself and most of his guests were in favour of attending an aviation meeting at Wynhampton a few miles away.
Caryl was not present, but as she passed through the hall a little later, he came in at the front door.
"I was just coming to you," he remarked, pausing to flick the ash from his cigarette before closing the door. "I have been making arrangements for you to drive to Wynhampton with me."
Doris made a stiff movement that seemed almost mechanical. But the next moment she recovered her self-control. Why was she afraid of this man, she asked herself desperately? No man had ever managed to frighten her before.
"I think I should prefer to go in the motor," she said, and smiled with quivering lips. "Get Phil to drive with you. He likes the dog-cart better than I do."
"I have talked it over with him," Caryl responded gravely. "He agrees with me that this is the best arrangement."
There was to be no escape then. Once more the stronger will prevailed. Without another word she turned from him and went upstairs. She might have defied him, but she knew in her heart that he could compass his ends in spite of her. And she was afraid.
She had a moment of absolute panic as she mounted into the high cart. He handed her up, and his grasp, close and firm, seemed to her eloquent of that deadly resolution with which he mastered her.
For the first half-mile he said nothing whatever, being fully occupied with the animal he was driving—a skittish young mare impatient of restraint.
Doris on her side sat in unbroken silence, enduring the strain with a set face, dreading the moment when he should have leisure to speak.
He was evidently in no hurry to do so. Or was it possible that he found some difficulty in choosing his words?
At length he turned his head and spoke.
"I secured this interview," he said, "because there is an important point which I want to discuss with you."
"What is it?"
She nerved herself to meet his look, but her eyes fell before its steady mastery almost instantly.
"About our wedding," he said in his calm, deliberate voice. "I should like to have the day fixed."
Her heart gave a great thump of dismay.
"Do you really mean to hunt me down then and—and marry me against my will?" she said, almost panting out the words.
Caryl turned his eyes back to the mare.
"I mean to marry you—yes," he said. "I think you forget that you accepted me of your own accord."
"I was mad!" she broke in passionately.
"People in love are never wholly sane," he remarked cynically.
"I was never in love with you!" she cried. "Never, never!"
He raised his eyebrows.
"Nevertheless you will marry me," he said.
"Why?" she gasped back furiously. "Why should I marry you? You know I hate you, and you—you—surely you must hate me?"
"No," he said with extreme deliberation, "strange as it may seem, I don't."
Something in the words quelled her anger. Abruptly she abandoned the struggle and fell silent, her face averted.
"And so," he proceeded, "we may as well decide upon the wedding-day without further argument."
"And, if—if I refuse?" she murmured rather incoherently.
"You will not refuse," he said with a finality so absolute that her last hope went out like an extinguished candle.
She seized her courage with both hands and turned to him.
"You will give me a little while to think it over?"
"Why?" said Caryl.
"Because I—I can't possibly decide upon the spur of the moment," she said confusedly.
Was he going to refuse her even this small request? It almost seemed that he was.
"How long will it take you?" he asked. "Will you give me an answer to-night?"
Her heart leapt to a sudden hope called to life by his words.
"To-morrow!" she said quickly.
"I said to-night."
"Very well," she rejoined, yielding. "To-night, if you prefer it."
"Thanks. I do."
They were his last words on the subject. He seemed to think it ended there, and there was nothing more to be said.
As for Doris, she sat by his side, outwardly calm but inwardly shaken to the depths. To be thus firmly caught in the meshes of her own net was an experience so new and so terrifying that she was utterly at a loss as to how to cope with it. Yet there was a chance, one ray of hope to help her. There was Major Brandon, the man who had offered her freedom. He was to have his answer to-day. For the first time she began seriously to ponder what that answer should be.
So far as Doris was concerned the aviation meeting was not a success. There were some wonderful exhibitions of flying, but she was too preoccupied to pay more than a very superficial attention to what she saw.
They lunched at a great hotel overlooking the aviation ground. The place was crowded, and they experienced some difficulty in finding places. Eventually Doris found herself seated at a square table with Caryl and two others in the middle of the great room.
She was studying a menu as a pretext for avoiding conversation with herfiancé, when a man's voice murmured hurriedly in her ear:
"Will you allow me for a moment please? The lady who has just left this table thinks she must have dropped one of her gloves under it."
Doris pushed back her chair and would have risen, but the speaker was already on his knees and laid a hasty, restraining hand upon her. It found hers and, under cover of the table-cloth, pressed a screw of paper into her fingers.
The next instant he emerged, very red in the face, but triumphant, a lady's gauntlet glove in his hand.
"Awfully obliged!" he declared. "Sorry to have disturbed you. Thought I should find it here."
He smiled, bowed, and departed, leaving Doris amazed at his audacity. She had met this young man often at Mrs. Lockyard's house, where he wasinvariably referred to as "the little Fricker boy."
She threw a furtive glance at Caryl, but he had plainly noticed nothing. With an uneasy sense of shame she slipped the note into her glove.
She perused it on the earliest opportunity. It contained but one sentence:
"If you still wish for freedom, you can find it down by the river at any hour to-night."
There was no signature of any sort; none was needed, She hid the message away again, and for the rest of the afternoon she was almost feverishly gay to hide the turmoil of indecision at her heart.
She saw little of Caryl after luncheon, but he re-appeared again in time to drive her back in the dog-cart as they had come. She found him very quiet and preoccupied, on the return journey, but his presence no longer dismayed her. It was the consciousness that a way of escape was open to her that emboldened her.
They were nearing the end of the drive, when he at length laid aside his preoccupation and spoke:
"Have you made up your mind yet?"
That query of his was the turning point with her. Had he shown the smallest sign of relenting from his grim purpose, had he so much as couched his question in terms of kindness, he might have melted her even then; for she was impulsive ever and quick to respond to any warmth. But the coldness of his question, the unyielding mastery of his manner, impelled her to final rebellion. In the moment that intervened between his question and her reply her decision was made.
"You shall have my answer to-night," she said.
He turned from her without a word, and a little wonder quivered through her as to the meaning of his silence. She was glad when they reached Rivermead and she could take refuge in her own room.
Here once more she read Brandon's message; read it with a thumping heart, but no thought of drawing back. It was the only way out for her.
She dressed for dinner, and then made a few hasty preparations for her flight. She laid no elaborate plans for effecting it, for she anticipated no difficulty. The night would be dark, and she could rely upon her ingenuity for the rest. Failure was unthinkable.
When they rose from the table she waited for Vera and slipped a hand into her arm.
"Do make an excuse for me," she whispered. "I have had a dreadful day, and I can't stand any more. I am going upstairs."
"My dear!" murmured back Vera, by way of protest.
Nevertheless she made the excuse almost as soon as they entered the drawing-room, and Doris fled upstairs on winged feet. At the head she met Caryl about to descend; almost collided with him. He had evidently been up to his room to fetch something.
He stood aside for her at once.
"You are not retiring yet?" he asked.
She scarcely glanced at him. She would not give herself time to be disconcerted.
"I am coming down again," she said, and ran on.
Barely a quarter of an hour after the encounter with Caryl, dressed in a long dark motoring coat and closely veiled, she slipped down the back stairs that led to the servants' quarters, stood listening against a baize door that led into the front hall, then whisked it open and fled across to open the conservatory door, noiseless as a shadow.
The conservatory was in semi-darkness. She expected to see no one; looked for no one. A moment she paused by the door that led into the garden, and in that pause she heard a slight sound. It might have been anything. It probably was a creak from one of the wicker chairs that stood in a corner. Whatever its origin, it startled her to greater haste. She fumbled at the door and pulled it open.
A gust of wind and rain blew in upon her, but she was scarcely aware of it. In another moment she had softly closed the door again and was scudding across the terrace to the steps that led towards the river path.
As she reached it a light shone out in front of her, wavered, and was gone.
"This way to freedom, lady mine," said Brandon's voice close to her, and she heard in it the laugh he did not utter. "Mind you don't tumble in."
His hand touched her arm, closed upon it, drew her to his side. In another instant it encircled her, but she pushed him vehemently away.
"Let us go!" she said feverishly. "Let us go!"
"Come along then," he said gaily. "The boat is just here. You'll have tohold the lantern. Mind how you get on board."
As he pushed out from the bank, he told her something of his arrangements.
"There's a motor waiting—not the one Polly usually hires, but it's quite a decent little car. By the way, she has gone straight up to Town from Wynhampton; said we should do our eloping best alone. We shan't be quite alone, though, for Fricker is going to drive us. But he's a negligible quantity, eh? His only virtue is that he isn't afraid of driving in the dark."
"You will take me to Mrs. Lockyard?" said Doris quickly.
"Of course. She is at her flat, she and Mrs. Fricker. We shall be there soon after midnight, all being well. Confound this stream! It swirls like a mill-race."
He fell silent, and devoted all his attention to reaching the farther bank.
Doris sat with the lantern in her hands, striving desperately to control her nervous excitement. Her absence could not have been discovered yet, she was sure, but she was in a fever of anxiety notwithstanding. She would not feel safe until she was actually on the road.
The boat bumped at last against the bank, and she drew a breath of relief. The journey had seemed interminable.
Suddenly through the windy darkness there came to them the hoot of amotor-horn.
"That's all right," said Brandon cheerily. "That's Fricker, wanting to know if all's well."
He hurried her over the wet grass, skirted the house by a side-path that ran between dripping laurels, and brought her out finally into the little front garden.
A glare of acetylene lamps met them abruptly as they emerged, dazzling them for the moment. The buzz of a motor engine also greeted them, and a smell of petrol hung in the wet air.
As her eyes accustomed themselves to the brightness, Doris made out a small closed motor-car, with a masked chauffeur seated at the wheel.
"Good little Fricker!" said Brandon, slapping the chauffeur's shoulder as he passed. "So you've got your steam up! Straight ahead then, and as fast as you like. Don't get run in, that's all."
He handed Doris into the car, followed her, and slammed the door.
The next moment they passed swiftly out on to the road, and Doris knew that the die was cast. She stood finally committed to this, the wildest, most desperate venture of her life.