Morris mumbled something of repeated apology and made a movement to
leave the room.
Ainsworth stopped him.
"I'll find Britton," he said. "This mess has to be straightened out,
and it wouldn't do for you to wander round till you meet him and raise
Cain before a lot of women. I'll bring him here in a minute."
"You're kind," grunted the other, sarcastically, "but I'll wait for
you."
The lawyer hastened out, peering into the different rooms in search of
the man he wanted. He suspected that he would find the woman with
Britton, and as he sought, unheeding acquaintances or greetings, he came
upon the couple in the dining-room.
They were standing at the buffet, chatting and laughing and partaking of
the six-franc supper which Britton had mentioned to his friends. The
dining-hall was full, and Ainsworth hesitated at the door. He had a
peculiar and intense hatred of scenes, and he knew that this company,
consisting partly of bored aristocracy and partly of different gradings
of the vulgar rich, was ready to stare and laugh at an unconventional
act, as, for instance, the interruption of someone's luncheon.
Britton espied him at the door, and cut short his vacillation by
beckoning him over, making room for him at the same time. Ainsworth
approached them grimly.
"Have you not had lunch?" Britton inquired cheerily. "Come, there's
room here. We'll wait for you."
"I couldn't eat a bite," said the lawyer, truthfully. "I wanted to
speak to you for a moment, if you're through. That's all."
He avoided the eyes of Maud Morris and did not attempt to address her
directly.
"There's the after-lunch dance, you know," objected Britton. "It's a
matter of etiquette with these people."
"Can't you let it go?" asked the lawyer, sharply.
His tone awakened his friend's scrutiny. "What's the matter?" he asked.
"How long do you want me?"
"It may be some time," answered Ainsworth. "I wish you would come
immediately."
Maud Morris smiled full upon the lawyer and forced him to meet her
glorious eyes.
"Just one round," she pleaded prettily, with a nod towards the ballroom.
At that moment Ainsworth was transformed, in his own mind, into the grim
master of life. The other two were the trifling, wayward children to
whom chastisement would presently come. It did not matter if, in their
ignorance, they coveted those few turns together; they could have their
gambols just on the eve of disillusionment! It might help the cure of
Britton's malady when Ainsworth would afterwards remind him of the
incident.
"By all means," he said sarcastically. "It will satisfy these
sticklers."
They swept merrily into the adjacent ballroom, and Ainsworth followed as
far as the entrance. The occasion struck him with a certain grim humor,
and he chuckled silently as he stood in the alcove watching the couple
circling to the orchestra's music.
They floated slowly, as in a delightful dream, round the immense and
gorgeously-decorated salon, the woman looking upward ecstatically, with
her face aquiver with light, and whispering with both lips and eyes.
Britton, oblivious to the irony of the situation, had forgotten even
Ainsworth. He was plunged in the joy of the moment, and the watching
lawyer could imagine what words he was murmuring in the meshes of her
hair.
Then, in the midst of his ironical judgment, a pang of something nearly
akin to pity moved Ainsworth. For an instant he debated with himself
the issue if this amour should prove genuine on both sides, but the
thought was immediately dismissed by his cynical reasoning as
improbable. The man was in earnest, but the woman was a siren, in
Ainsworth's critical view.
One round of the ballroom floor was all the enjoyment they allowed
themselves, for the lawyer significantly stepped out when they reached
the entrance curtains. Britton looked at him vaguely and contracted his
brows in a half-frown when he remembered.
He led the lady to a settee and bent over her for a moment.
"You will come back soon?" she whispered with a shade of wistfulness.
Britton pressed her fingers on her fan under pretence of examining it.
"Yes," he promised, glorying in the depths of her eyes, "I'll come back,
not soon, but at once. Our dance isn't finished, you know."
He strode across the room, tall and elegant, and smiling over his
shoulder so that the woman's heart leaped oddly as she watched him.
"Now, Ainsworth," he said, laying a hand on his comrade's arm, "what do
you want with me? You'll please hurry, won't you?"
The lawyer drew Britton's arm tightly through his own and turned across
the main promenade.
"That woman's married," he said with brutal directness, "and I'm taking
you to her husband."
Britton whipped out his arm from Ainsworth's grasp and held it upraised,
as if to deliver a blow, while a red wave of denunciation flamed over
his fine features.
"You-" he began, and halted, for the grim, set look in his companion's
eyes carried undeniable conviction.
"Strike me if you like," Ainsworth observed harshly, "but come this way
with me."
Britton's fist fell to his side, and he drew his whole frame rigidly
erect in a sort of convulsive movement. In spite of his great strength
he staggered a little, and his face was ashy-white.
He turned irresolutely back towards the entrance of the dancing salon,
but Ainsworth took his arm again.
"No, this way," he urged, and led him as he would a boy.
People marked his rigid muscles and pallid skin, and murmured
compassionately at the apparent stroke of illness.
"Hello, old chap!" cried one of his numerous acquaintances, shouldering
up, "what's wrong? Heat too much for you? By Jove, you're in a beastly
funk, and I don't wonder, for it's deuced close in here."
The lawyer waved him aside, and they went on, while all the guests began
to complain of heat, and the assiduous concierge ran to open wider the
French casements on the lawns.
Once or twice Ainsworth looked up at his companion. Britton's pallor
and tremendous calm, so suggestive of the latent volcanic powers,
alarmed the lawyer.
"How do you feel?" he whispered sympathetically.
"I feel nothing-absolutely nothing," responded Britton, in a dull,
passionless tone, and Ainsworth did not doubt him for a moment.
"Where is your man?" he asked after a second, in the same listless and
unimpassioned voice.
"Here, in this room," Ainsworth answered, entering the billiard parlors.
They skirted the tables and came where Morris stood with Trascott.
"Here is the man Morris," he announced in a measured manner. "Morris,
this is Britton."
As Ainsworth spoke, he braced himself to guard against a hundred ugly
possibilities which this meeting presented. He scanned the lineaments
of the two men, alert to catch the nerve purpose dependent upon each
one's expression, and in thus studying the features of Morris he lost
sight of the latter's hands, which were thrust loosely in the pockets of
his coat.
The husband's narrow eyes glittered; his lips were drawn back over his
teeth in a wolfish snarl; all his capability for extreme hate seemed to
be given free scope as he centred ferocious glances on the stony
countenance of Rex Britton.
The other occupants of the room instinctively felt that the atmosphere
held some vital and dramatic portent. They stopped their play and gazed
wonderingly on the group over by the corner table.
There the two principal figures glared at each other without uttering a
word, the one standing upright with set face and folded arms, the other
crouching like a beast ready to spring in rage.
Ainsworth had never felt such a tense moment, even in his pleadings
before tightly-packed courts of law. He was involuntarily forced to
hold his breath in suspense, and a band of steel seemed to rim his
chest. Trascott, with his habitual, comforting sanity, offered no
speech. He recognized arbitration to be as futile as it was
inconceivable. Things must run their course. Only he was ready, like
Ainsworth, to guard against deadly violence following the outbreak.
For some moments Morris crouched and glared, a malicious quiver running
through him. Then if any of the men had watched where his right hand
was hidden they might have seen the cloth of the pocket poked forward by
something cylindrical inside.
A stunning report, coming apparently from nowhere, shook the windows.
Britton reeled, as a tuft of hair floated off from above his temple, and
jumped like the recoil of a spring upon his would-be murderer. He dealt
two sharp, quick blows before the weapon could be pulled again, and the
thing was all over.
Morris lay in a quiet heap, with threads of white smoke drifting up from
the powder-blackened hole in his pocket.
Britton rubbed the red welt along his scalp and nodded gravely to
Ainsworth.
"You're my counsel in this matter, of course," he said. "Attend to
whatever explanations are needed! Trascott, will you come with me?"
They elbowed out through the motley, clamorous, ever-increasing crowd
that the pistol-shot had gathered.
"What do you mean to do?" asked the curate, anxiously.
"The hardest thing I ever did," Britton answered pitifully. "I want
you, because I doubt if I can do it alone. I'm afraid of myself,
Trascott!"