Angelica had started an avalanche. She was deeply impressed and
interested. She had no desire to go now; she wished to see the
tremendous end.
Events moved with satisfactory speed. Polly went at once to Mrs.
Russell’s room, to find her just arrived at home from a Stricken
Belgium card-party. They closed the door; they were shut in there a long
time together. They must, of course, have summoned by telephone the two
unhappy and disturbed gentlemen who came in a motor-car later in the
afternoon.
When these came, they all went into the library, where Vincent still
sat. There was a dreadful scene. The newcomers were Polly’s lawyer and
the trustee of her first husband’s estate, and they at once attacked
Vincent. The trustee was non-legal and devoid of wise caution; he
shouted threats at Vincent, and Vincent cursed him in the voice of a
bull. He was beside himself with fury. The lawyer tried to frighten them
both into silence, but he was himself so appalled and outraged by their
ignorance of what was and what wasn’t libelous that his arguments were
weak.
Polly was distressed, but resolute.
"No!" she implored the raging trustee. "No, Frank, _don’t_, please! Only
find out just what has happened and see what you can save for me. Don’t
trouble to quarrel with him."
Vincent turned on her.
"Yes!" he screamed in a high, hysterical voice. "Yes! You’ll fight to
defend your _money_, at least! You don’t care about anything else. It
never pierced your damned self-satisfaction when I was off with other
women----”
"Vincent!" said his mother in a low, shocked voice.
"Very well! Very well!" he cried. "I don’t mind them knowing. I did take
her miserable little income and spend it on other women. For God’s sake,
who wouldn’t? Look at her! Do you think _she_----”
"Just tell him, please," said Polly to the lawyer, "that I intend to
leave him immediately and to obtain a divorce, and that he must give up
any authority he ever got from me."
"That will be arranged, Mrs. Geraldine," said the lawyer.
Suddenly Mrs. Russell began to cry.
"Oh, Polly!" she said. "Don’t give the poor boy up! Give him another
chance! Oh, do, do, do!"
She stopped suddenly. Vincent, too, stopped his violence and his curses.
Eddie had come in.
Eddie’s peculiar power had never before been so unmistakably
demonstrated. He had never before had such an opportunity for showing
how much of a man he was. He was master of the situation, master of
every one. He brushed aside the clamour, the furious arguments; he
wished only for information, and he knew how to get it.
He addressed himself chiefly to the lawyer, with now and then a question
to Polly. He listened carefully, and one could almost read in his face
the functioning of his just and clear mind.
Angelica watched him through the keyhole. This wasn’t _her_ Eddie, who
stammered in her presence, who could be roused by a single look from her
black eyes. Here was a man quite beyond her influence, immeasurably
superior to her, a man undeniably fine.
She listened to him speaking. He addressed Vincent with a quiet,
dispassionate sort of contempt; he told him that he would return to
Polly what Vincent had stolen from her.
"And I will apologize to you, too," he said to Angelica, when he came
out of the library, "for all this that you’ve had to go through here in
my house. I think you’re quite right to leave. If you’ll go up-stairs
now, I’ll talk the matter over with these gentlemen. You and I can
discuss it later."