He was off his horse and striding for the entrance when she encountered
him. The starlight on his face showed it livid and terrible. At sight
of her he stopped short.
"Are you mad?" he said.
They were the identical words that Curtis had used; but his voice,
hoarse, unnatural, told her that he was in a dangerous mood.
She backed away from him. "Don't come near me!" she said quickly.
"He--he is just dead. And I have been with him."
"He?" he flung at her furiously, and she knew by his tone that he
suspected the truth.
She tried to answer him steadily, but her strength was beginning to fail
her. The long strain was telling upon her at last. She was uncertain of
herself.
"It--was Robin Wentworth," she said.
He took a swift stride towards her. His face was convulsed with passion.
"You came here to see that soddened cur?" he said.
She shrank away from him. The tempest of his anger overwhelmed her. She
could not stand against it. For the first time she quailed.
"I have seen him," she said. "And he is dead. Ah, don't--don't touch
me!"
He paid no attention to her cry. He seized her by the shoulders and
almost swung her from his path.
"It would have been better for you," he said between his teeth, "if he
had died before you got here. You have begun to repent already, and
you'll go on repenting for the rest of your life."
"What are you going to do?" she cried, seeing him turn. "Brett, don't go
in there! Don't! Don't! You must not! You shall not!"
In a frenzy of fear she threw herself upon him, struggling with all her
puny strength to hold him back.
"I tell you he is dead!" she gasped. "Why do you want to go in?"
"I am going to see for myself," he said stubbornly, putting her away.
"No!" she cried. "No!"
His eyes gleamed red with a savage fury as she clung to him afresh. He
caught her wrists, forcing her backwards.
"I don't believe he is dead!" he snarled.
"He is! He is! Mr. Curtis told me so."
"If he isn't, I'll murder him!" Brett Mercer vowed, and flung her
fiercely from him.
She fell with violence and lay half-stunned, while he, blinded with
rage, possessed by devils, strode forward into that silent place,
leaving her prone.
She thought later that she must have fainted, for the next thing she
knew--and it must have been after the passage of several minutes--was
Mercer kneeling beside her and lifting her. His touch was perfectly
gentle, but she dared not look into his face. She cowered in his arms in
mortal fear. He had crushed her at last.
"Have I hurt you?" he said.
She did not answer. Her voice was gone. She was as powerless as an
infant. He raised her and bore her steadily away.
When he paused finally, it was to speak to Beelzebub, who was holding
the horses. And then, without a word to her, he lifted her up on to a
saddle, and mounted himself behind her. She lay against his breast as
one dazed, incapable of speech or action. And so, with his arm about
her, moving slowly through a world of shadows, they began the long, long
journey back.
They travelled so for the greater part of the night, and during the
whole of that time Mercer never uttered a word. The horse he rode was
jaded, and he did not press it. Beelzebub, with the other two, rode far
ahead.
It was still dark when at last they turned in to the Home Farm, and,
still in that awful silence, Mercer dismounted and lifted his wife to
the ground.
He set her on her feet, but her limbs trembled so much that she could
scarcely stand. He kept his arm around her, and led her into the house.
He took her to her room and left her there; but in a few minutes he
returned with food on a tray which he set before her without raising his
eyes, and again departed. She did not see him again for many hours.