Mary Burton's usually colorful cheeks were now as pale as ivory. Her
attitude and expression declared a total dedication to one idea: war
upon the brother who could see in her entire future only a house of
cards to be swept down because it had not been reared in harmony with
his requirements. As she took a step toward the door Hamilton stepped
between, barring her way. His outburst of infuriated words had left him
breathing fast, and he drew a handkerchief from his pocket and passed it
across his brow.
"Mary!" he exclaimed. "Are you mad?"
"I am so sane," she assured him, "that to your demented eyes I must seem
a very maniac. You turned me from a woman into a doll and this man
turned me from a doll into a woman again. I am his woman. He is my man,
and my place is with him."
"That man," her brother pointed an outstretched finger to her fiancé,
"is going to have no place for you to share. My hand holds the power to
make and crush and I have stamped him for obliteration. He is doomed.
You are my sister, and you must hold loyalty above infatuation. You must
not give countenance to my enemies in time of war, Mary. That spells
treason."
It was as though the three persons standing there had all passed, at a
single step, through the explosive phases of wrath to the colder,
steadier and deadlier zone of feeling where all their words came level,
and with an almost monotonous quiet.
"Loyalty!" Into her eyes came so splendid and serene a light that she
seemed transfigured. "I am ready to hold loyalty above life itself. If
Jefferson Edwardes goes to his execution, I shall go with him and I
shall be prouder to share his ruin than any other man's victory. I have
just promised to marry him...." Slowly she raised her hand and gazed at
the engagement ring. The ghost of a smile trembled about her lips,
though a sudden moisture dimmed her eyes. It was a mist of tenderness,
not fear. "That promise was not given lightly," she added. "It outweighs
even a Monte Cristo's arrogance."
Edwardes shook his head.
"I release you from that promise, dear," he told her. "It is to be war
now, and bitter war. Before he can hurt me he must ruin hundreds of
innocent noncombatants; must trample down scores of honorable
institutions; and because I am responsible to them I must fight their
fight to the end, asking no quarter." For just a moment his chin came up
and he spoke with pride. "Our concern is no weak one. It has foundations
in a nation's faith. Now it must meet the assaults of a Colossus running
amuck. Your brother or I must go down. If it is I, you mustn't go down
with me, dearest."
Very gravely she shook her head, and, turning her back on Hamilton,
clasped her hands about her lover's neck.
"That, dear," she told him, "isn't exactly my idea of loving. Whoever
fights you fights me as well. I am your mate. My brother has revealed
his monstrous malignity of nature today and to sleep one night more
under his roof would shrivel my soul. I'd rather walk the streets. I
accepted you without terms. Now I impose one condition. You must marry
me tonight. Take me away--make me anything but a Burton."
Edwardes pressed her close and neither of them for the moment spoke to
Hamilton or looked at him. "It can't be too soon," fervently declared
the lover.
"Do you suppose," inquired Hamilton Burton, his eyes narrowing until
they held a homicidal gleam, "that I shall permit you to leave my
house--with _him_?"
Mary laughed, then suddenly her voice rose fiercely, ignoring his
question. "You say, Hamilton, it is to be war. I shall start the
war--now. Jefferson, please find Len Haswell's telephone number. I'm
going to give him warning."
With an exclamation of incoherent fury Hamilton Burton leaped for the
telephone and tore it loose from its wires. He hurled the broken
instrument clattering to the floor and the directory into the flames.
Then he stood above the wreckage with his feet apart and his hands
clenching and unclenching in a panting picture of demoniac rage.
Mary laughed as one might laugh at the passion of a child. "After all
there are other telephones," she said, then added quietly: "You will
find in my rooms all the gifts you have loaded upon me. Unfortunately I
should have to go out of your house naked if I left behind me everything
that has come from you. Will you ring for my maid?"
For a moment the financier stood glaring and silent; then with a
powerful struggle for self-mastery he went over and touched a bell. "I
can't use physical force against my sister," he said. "You are of age,
and your own mistress, but if you make common cause with my enemies, you
become my enemy yourself."
When Harrow responded to the call, only the broken telephone bore
evidence of the violence of the past few minutes.
"Please ask Julie," instructed the girl quietly, "to pack a bag for me
and one for herself. I shall only need enough things for a day or two.
Ask her to hurry."
For several minutes the three stood without further speech, and when the
brother broke the silence it was in an altered tone.
"Mary," he said seriously, "your happiness is very dear to me. For
nothing else would I let any differences between us amount to an issue.
For God's sake, forego this mad idea. You are disrupting a family for
whose upbuilding I have fought with a very fierce singleness of
purpose."
"And to what end?" she demanded, with blazing eyes. "Of my father you
have made an artificial gentleman--and once he was a real man. To my
mother you have given luxuries instead of life. Paul you have turned
into a society lap-dog, and now by adding your strength to his weakness
you are trying to make him a beast of prey."
"Those are very bitter accusations," he answered gravely. His face was
set, but shame for his recent outburst safeguarded him for the moment
against a second.
Harrow appeared after a short time to announce that the maid was ready,
and Mary rose from her seat. "Good-by, Hamilton," she said.
"Will you at least go to my mother's house?" he questioned.
"Mother's house is as much your house as this one. No, I shall go where
Jefferson Edwardes chooses to take me."
"Then, by God Almighty, you will not go at all!"
Hamilton Burton took his place at the door, and stood barring their way
while a dangerous gleam came into Edwardes' eyes. Mary spoke very
coldly.
"Hamilton, please let us pass. It would be a pity to edify your servants
with a physical collision."
Over the taut whiteness of the brother's face went a wave of doubt. He
recognized confronting him a spirit as indomitable as his own. Somehow
his arrogance, under her gaze, withered and shrunk into a cheap bravado,
and he realized it as such. He spoke once more and his words came
slowly.
"I shall not use force. It is, of course, for you to decide. I have
perhaps loved you better than any other member of my family. My pride in
you has been triumphant. That man who stands at your side came into my
house and poisoned your heart against me. He is a traitor and I have
marked him for ruin. Decide between us calmly, Mary, because when I
resolve I do not deviate."
"I have already decided," she answered. "Please let us pass."
He drew aside and stood there motionless as the street-door opened and
closed. Afterward he walked slowly back into the room and stood
restlessly on the great bear pelt, gazing into the cavernous hearth.
Then he dropped down into the tall Moorish chair where a little while
before his sister had been sitting, her eyes brimming with joy. He
leaned forward and his hands fell limp from the wrists that rested limp
on his knees. Something had gone suddenly out of Hamilton Burton. The
eyes that stared into the blaze wore, for the first time, a trace of
that fatigue and distress which portraits show in the eyes looking out
from St. Helena. Mary was gone; gone with his enemy to fight under his
enemy's colors! Her motive bewildered him. What was this love that so
powerfully impelled her to desert her own blood? Suddenly his mind
flashed back to a kitchen tableau of a small girl breaking into a sudden
tempest of tears, and a boy saying, "I mean to see that Mary gets
whatever she wants out of life." Then quite irrelevantly a fragment of
verse leaped into his memory and prickled it with irritation.
"The Emperor there in his box of state, looked grave
as though he had just then seen,
The red flags fly from the city gates, where his eagles
of bronze had been."
His gaze dropped to the white fur of the rug and abstractedly he picked
up his sister's riding-crop and one glove. She had dropped them when
Jefferson Edwardes placed the ring on her finger. Hamilton turned the
things over in his hand and a groan escaped him. Then suddenly that mood
vanished. He rose and paced the floor like a lion lashing itself into
fury, and his eyes were fiercely tawny as he paced.
Well, she had chosen. One thing remained possible. The man responsible
for this greatest sorrow and humiliation with which he had ever been
visited should pay in full the score of reprisal.
With an abrupt impulse he sent for Paul and he was still pacing the room
with quick, nervous strides when his brother arrived. The younger man's
face was haggard and he cast a quick glance of trepidation about the
room.
"Where's Mary?" he demanded, and Hamilton wheeled on him with eyes that
were scarcely sane.
"Gone!" he barked out. "Gone with that rat, Edwardes. That's one of the
things your whim has cost so far--your baby-doll--your toy-woman!"
With a sudden cry that came from his heart, Paul dropped into a chair
and covered his face with his hands. His shoulders shook to his
convulsive sobbing, and after a moment Hamilton went over and laid a
hand on his shoulder.
"Forgive me, little brother," he said softly. "After all, Edwardes was
the real reason. Edwardes with his damned self-righteousness! Mary flew
virtuously to his standards. She is no longer my sister, Paul."
But Paul rose with his face full of pleading. He talked rapidly,
excitedly, like a frightened child.
"Hamilton, she _is_ our sister. She loves him.... You promised her
happiness years ago.... You can't let her go like this. It will kill us
all."
His elder brother thrust him back at arm's length and gazed into his
grief-stricken face. "It's not a question of letting her go. She went in
spite of me. She went to the enemy." The words came very bitterly and
for the first time in his life Paul saw tears in Hamilton's eyes.
The musician rose and passed an unsteady hand over his brow. "I'm
thinking about mother," he said brokenly. "I must go up and be with her
when she learns."
Hamilton wheeled, speaking quickly. "Yes, do. I shall follow you
shortly. Tell mother that I withheld my approval to this marriage, and
they took the bit in their teeth."
Within the half-hour Carl Bristoll, Ruferton and Tarring were with their
chief and between them lay sheafs of memoranda and financial data, which
littered the table.
"I want to know in exact detail," Hamilton Burton told them as his
glance burned into their faces, "everything that it is possible to learn
concerning the firm of Edwardes and Edwardes. Most particularly I want
to learn their points of greatest vulnerability. I must have lists of
those securities in which, directly or indirectly, they are most vitally
interested and the exact nature and extent of all their liabilities."
* * * * *
Outside, Jefferson Edwardes found his car waiting, and the realization
came ironically to his mind that it was precisely the hour he had
expected to leave Hamilton Burton's house--though his intention had been
to leave only long enough to change into evening-clothes and return for
dinner. To his chauffeur he said in a low voice, "Drive in the park
until I tell you to stop." Then as he took his seat beside the girl he
turned upon her very serious eyes and said resolutely, "I couldn't
debate it with you in his presence, Mary, but I can't marry you
tonight."
She turned her face to him and the color left her cheeks.
"Not marry me?" she questioned in a dazed voice.
"Not yet, dearest. Under other circumstances no time could be too soon,
but now--" He raised his hands in a gesture of weariness and sat looking
at her with a hunger of the heart.
"Now what?" she prompted.
"Now I am pledged to a life-and-death duel with your brother. Now I must
fight not only my fight, but that of many others. It is foolish to treat
lightly the threats of Hamilton Burton. His power is incalculable and
his implacability is absolute. I can't tear away every family tie that
is rooted in your life merely to make you my comrade in ruin. That is
not my idea of loving, dearest."
"And if not that--what?" Her chin was raised and her lips parted. Her
voice was very soft, almost faint. Never, Edwardes thought, had she been
so beautiful. "I have left my brother's house to go with you. I shall
not return. Am I, then, to find myself like a beggar woman, with no
place to go except the streets of New York?"
With a gasping exclamation of pain in his throat he bent forward and
seized her in his arms. The car was now in the park and between the
light globes were spaces of darkness.
"For God's sake," he cried, "don't. It is because I love you so!"
"I think, Jefferson," she answered as he held her close with his kisses
on her cheeks, "you need me as much as I need you."
"Need you! Because I need you so much, I can't let you do this now."
"You spoke just now," she said, "as though you had no hope of victory in
this warfare. If that is true you need me to help you fight. I have no
intention of tame submission. You must have a Burton to fight this
Burton."
"If I spoke so," he declared, and his voice was far from submissive, "it
was because any chance of ruin is too great a chance to subject you to.
It is because I mean to defend myself and my clients and my honor to the
last breath that I say I can't marry you now. Certainly not until you
have gravely considered these new occurrences. I shall take small
pleasure in his overthrow, if I overthrow him, because he is your
brother."
"I think," her eyes flashed into a fierce animosity, "I shall glory in
it. I know that I shall not go back to his support. I offer myself to
you. I cannot compel you."
For a long while they talked, she resolved to fight his fight with him
or take off his ring; and he, in a torture of soul, refusing so great a
gift at so ruinous a cost to herself. At last it was arranged that she
should go to her mother's until she had made up her mind, and that they
should both accept an invitation for a week at the hunting-lodge of
friends in the Adirondacks. There, except for their host and hostess,
they would be alone and Edwardes might have a breathing space before his
battle.
There they tramped together on snowshoes over white-mantled hills and
forgot that any shadow threatened their happiness. They drank deep of
air that was spicy with the fragrance of pines and because to them the
present seemed so perfect they refused to borrow fears from the future.
Sometimes the man would see a vagrant shadow of foreboding steal into
the mismated eyes, but when Mary became aware of its recognition in his
own, it was always swiftly banished for one of serene happiness and
confidence.
"Dearest," he told her at such a moment--it was the moment of
candle-lighting, when dusk brings shadows of fear, "why 'heed the rumble
of the distant drum'? We love each other, and when my fight is over no
one shall part us."
And she in the circle of his arms looked up and laughed and they both
banished from their hearts all thought of Hamilton Burton.
At her mother's house before she came away, Mary had talked to Paul,
and had won his weak promise that he would permit his brother to take no
dishonorable step toward freeing Loraine Haswell. So she had not kept
her threat of warning the husband, and after she had returned to town,
her mother fell ill, and in the first call of loyalty there Mary
remained with her. About this time she read that Loraine had gone to
Europe, and had gone alone.
Days had passed into weeks and Hamilton Burton had struck no blow. Mary
had begun to believe that he meant to strike none, and her lover
encouraged that view, but he himself knew that it was a phantom hope. He
knew that the arch master of financial strategy was building and
strengthening every sinew of war, and that the crushing impact of his
attack would be only the more terrific because he had curbed his
impatience and held his hand until the exact fraction of the
psychological moment.