The conservatory door flew open with a rattle of shattered glass,
admitting Lady Rossland and Mercia fleeing from the gardens amid the
spattering raindrops.
"Oh!" they exclaimed simultaneously, on catching sight of the tableau
where the silken tent had stood. "Oh!" Mercia's voice was low and
hurt. Lady Rossland's rose up, pitched higher in an outraged tone.
Britton dropped the wrists he had grasped and turned toward the two
women, humiliation written on his grave face, but the pride of Mercia
would not allow her to wait for a forthcoming apology.
"I fancy we intrude," she said coldly. "Come, Lady Rossland, we can
probably reach the house." Her ladyship wheeled across the doorstep,
flashing back scornful eyes, and took Mercia's arm as they hurried out.
Rex gave an eager, pleading cry and darted forward.
"Wait," he cried entreatingly. "You are misjudging-"
But they were gone in the darkness, having raced up the gravel walk to
the great illuminated house! The big, round drops wetted Britton's
cheeks and dashed on his head. A moment he stood on the flags at the
door, yearning to follow and explain, but a more vital and immediate
necessity lay behind him in the conservatory.
He turned back, keeping himself forcibly in hand, determined on a
summary and decisive dealing with the pregnant issue thrust upon him by
Maud Morris.
"That," he said to her, "was the most humiliating thing any wife could
see, yet it meant nothing at all!"
A change had come over her since the sudden apparition of the two women
in the doorway. The fear of failure, inspired by the sweet, pure beauty
of Mercia, seemed to hold her in its grip, and she called to her aid the
old resource of alluring appeal.
"Don't say that, Rex," she pleaded, with a touch of pathos. "Have you
altogether forgotten the old days? There must be memories sometimes!"
"No," said Britton, doggedly, "I could not remember them if I would."
"You are very trying," she murmured, petulant as a crossed child. "Can
you not listen to reason?"
"There is only one way of reasoning soundly and in accordance with
universal law," Rex answered with conviction. "That reasoning is along
the line of right. I am prepared to follow it to the bitter end."
She looked up in amazement during a short interval.
"Do you realize all that your words imply?" she questioned
incredulously. "I cannot think you do!"
"Yes, everything they imply," he answered, filled with the weary languor
attendant upon nervous strain.
She was not left to surmise. Britton's meaning was plain. Her
confidence began to shake.
"The alternative!" she began plaintively, "-surely you have understood
me!"
"Too well," laughed Britton, harshly, "and I would rather go to
prison-which I shall certainly not do, since, as you say, there is no
proof!"
The woman's cheeks and brow went crimson with annoyance coupled with
shame; she felt the demoralizing force of man's scorn.
"Rather than take that alternative, you will suffer me to tell Mercia?"
she asked uncertainly.
"No," Rex answered in a ringing voice, "for I am going to tell her!"
She gasped. "You!" she exclaimed precipitately. "It is suicide! Are
you entirely mad?"
There was in the woman's manner the recognition of an impending
catastrophe, the knowledge of immeasurable possibilities. Britton
instinctively felt her disappointment, and it helped to bring back to
him, in a fair degree, his original assurance, confidence, and reliance.
"It will be the sanest thing I ever did," he declared.
Then the mask of the woman's plotting and machination fell, and she
stood revealed in her uncertain status of life, fighting for what she
loved in her own contemptible way.
"Rex, Rex," she cried incoherently, "I can't let you do that. My God,
you know what it would mean!"
She grasped his hands in her intolerable fear, but he rescued them with
a calm gesture. The action saved them from a second surprise.
The greenhouse door burst open more violently than before, and Guy
Rossland stamped up and down in a pair of rain-soaked pumps, sending the
wet flying in all directions.
"Ruined," he said woefully, regarding his pulpy patent leathers. "By
Jove, but it's a beastly night. Hello! tent blown down?"
"A gust through that open window," explained the theosophist, who had
resumed her veil. "Please close it and help me with the curtain. I am
afraid the rain has frightened all my subjects."
"Couldn't find Kinmair," lamented Guy, climbing on the sill to fasten
the casement. "The bally idiot! He's next after Britton. Hunted him
through all the gardens, and then they told me he'd gone punting. Went
on the river and got caught-worse luck! Jove, my feet feel as if I were
barefoot in the marsh."
"Kinmair can postpone his visit," Rex said. "Indeed, the storm will
cause a general postponement. No one can come through this rain. I
think I'll make a run for it!"
But he walked, seeming not to notice the violence and the downpour. The
coolness was pleasing on his face, and the damp lowered the feverish
temperature of his heated blood, though it proved disastrous to his
immaculate dress clothes.
He could see neither Mercia nor Lady Rossland when he entered, but he
encountered Trascott elaborating on philanthropies to a penniless
dowager. The curate did not note Britton's personal appearance, so deep
was he in a cherished plan of building orphan homes and reading rooms
for the poor of London, a plan involving the expenditure of something
like two millions of money.
"It's admirable," murmured the dowager, who herself had to scrape to
keep up appearances. "It's a most beautiful scheme, Mr. Trascott. You
have every technicality well within your grasp. What is to prevent the
carrying out of those details?"
"The money," Britton heard Trascott answer sadly. "It exists as yet
only in my dreams. I have advanced my theories and worked for their
realization, but the unthinking rich have not responded. Sometimes I
feel as if I shall never live long enough to see my project undertaken
either by my own hand or by that of a more competent man."
"Still, it is ideal," the dowager returned, as Rex moved on past them.
"And it is something to cherish an ideal to the end of one's life, even
if one never enjoys its realization."
Britton took the thought as applied to his own existence, especially in
its present crisis, and turned it over and over in his mind while he
searched the different rooms for Ainsworth.
Within Rossland's great country mansion the gaiety of the occasion was
undiminished. The games, the talk, the dancing, all went on as merrily
as if no tempest raged outside. The decorated chambers were illuminated
with such a blaze of light that the flashes of the sky's electric
current were scarcely in evidence through drawn blinds. Only the
spaced, resounding roll of thunder and the crash of giant trees in the
woodland groves told that a terrific storm was in progress.
In the centre of the music salon he saw the Rosslands with a crowd of
guests, lamenting the disagreeable night that had driven them from the
river. Mercia was not with them, and Rex felt that after the incident
of the conservatory he must avoid Lady Rossland for the moment.
He crossed the hall and ran into young Guy, who, looking very flushed
and disturbed, appeared to have emerged from some more or less
inglorious conflict. Guy had on dry shoes, but they had not sufficed to
smooth his apparently ruffled feelings.
"What's wrong?" asked Britton, remembering the youth's capacity for
getting into trouble. "Been quarreling with someone in the house?"
"Quarreling? Not much-worse luck!" the boy blurted out ingenuously.
"But, by Jove, aunt has the beastliest temper in Sussex! She's down on
the theosophist she hired about something or other. Packed her off in
the rain!"
"What?" Rex asked, interestedly. "Lady Rossland packed off the hired
Mahatma woman?"
"Just that," Guy answered. "In a cab with James, through all the
beastly rain-to the Crystal Hotel. That's the best in New Shoreham, and
aunt told James to pay the bill."
Rex was thinking retrospectively. If his own concerns had not compelled
the deepest gravity, he would have been inclined to laugh. As it was,
he gave Guy a speculative look.
"Beastly temper aunt has," the youth continued. "Jove, didn't she rate
me! Gave me fits for not holding down my position-guess it must have
been on account of the tent. How'd I know the stuffy thing would blow?
And Kinmair, the bally idiot, on the river with Dora! drat him!"
The nephew rattled on with the frank tongue of youth, and a smile grew
by degrees around Britton's mouth and eyes. It was like the smile of a
soldier in the firing line when he gets an unexpected respite and
forgets for a brief moment the lurking danger and the strain.
"I wouldn't take it to heart," Rex said while the smile lasted. "It
wasn't your fault, Guy, and, now I come to think of it, perhaps-I-I
should have closed that conservatory window."
In the smoking-room Britton found Ainsworth whom he had been seeking.
"Stay with the pole instead of the punt?" asked Ainsworth, lightly,
surveying his friend's wet clothes.
"Never in my life," replied Britton, very seriously.
"Jump into the river or one of the fountains to rescue somebody?" the
lawyer continued in the same bantering way, but Rex had not the heart to
match his flippancy.
"Can you get Trascott away and follow us home?" he asked instead,
speaking what was on his mind. "I would like you both to give me an
hour after we reach the Hall. I want to get some advice and some
opinions."
Ainsworth looked at him with awakened interest.
"Something on the political side, eh?" he questioned smilingly.
"Yes, partly," Rex responded. "This convention affair is involved."
"Ah!" laughed Ainsworth, "I recognize in you the true politician's
trait, namely the utter inability to draw a hard and fast line between
business and pleasure. But go on with your wife! Trascott and I will
not be far behind if Rossland will send us in one of his carriages, and
of course he will. I am indefatigable in your interests, my dear
fellow, and we can talk for three hours if you like."
The lawyer went out to break Trascott's conversation with the stout
dowager. Britton remained in the smoking-room a moment, writing two
short letters, one to Lord Rossland and one to Kinmair. It seemed a
very odd proceeding when he was inside one man's house and within reach
of the other man, but it was in keeping with Britton's secret resolve.
Crossing the drawing-room in search of Mercia, he met her alone. She
greeted him with the same cold, reserved smile that she habitually gave
him. Her beauty forced its way to his heart and left an aching pang.
"Your view of that incident to-night was entirely wrong," he said
gravely. "In an hour or two you will have the right of it. This is
hardly the place for explanations."
She inclined her head with a regal air which became her well, but which
few women could assume because they had not the royal cast of loveliness
to support it.
"Explanations are quite unnecessary," she quietly returned. "I do not
ask for any."
"Yet I proffer them-at the right time," Britton said. "Please do not
misunderstand me." There was courteous pleading in his voice, and it
did not escape Mercia.
When they bade Lady Rossland good-night, with their own carriage and
that supplied the other men standing in wait, Britton spoke to the
hostess of the same thing.
"Lady Rossland," he said, "there is an explanation due you. My wife
will ease your mind when I have explained to her. You will have no
cause for resentment."
"I am glad of that," her ladyship observed with a bright smile, pressing
his hand more warmly. "Indeed, I am very pleased to hear it. I was sure
there must be some mistake."
Britton gave her the two letters. "Another favor!" he begged. "Kindly
hand these to Lord Rossland and Kinmair in the morning. My request is a
little strange, but I would like to have these delivered as I say."
"Certainly," laughed her ladyship. "You do not amaze me. You
politicians are always involved in some intricate or uncommon scheme.
These shall be handed to my husband and to Kinmair in the morning as you
have requested. Good-night to you all. Take good care of your wife,
sir!"
The rain thrummed on the canopy covering the walk like a hundred small
drums beating tattoos as they hastened to the carriages.
Britton's stood first, the horses frantic with the roar of the sky's
heavy artillery. Rex took advantage of a lull in their plunging and
handed Mercia in.
They dashed away into the oppressive darkness, thick as a North Sea fog,
seeing but little beyond the pale circle cast by their carriage lamps.
Intermittent wicked blue flashes revealed the surrounding country at
intervals of a second's duration, and a fleeting, dreary panorama was
unrolled. These momentary glimpses showed the winding black road
running in murky rivulets; they uncovered copses and groves with foliage
bedraggled and rent, with branches torn from the trunks, so that their
white scars flickered ghost-like beneath the lightning's glare; they
photographed a flooded stretch of down lashed by the descending
cloud-torrents and vanishing mysteriously into the ungauged distance.
Mercia leaned back upon the carriage cushions without speaking. Her
diamonds quivered when the lightning came, and Britton could mark her
wonderful profile.
A startling sense of the unreality of his married life lay upon him; the
impassableness of the secret gulf separating him from his wife was most
poignantly impressed.
"Mercia," he began, "I-I wonder-" and paused hesitatingly.
"What?" she asked, gravely meeting his eyes in a spasmodic flash of
electricity.
"I wonder if you remember that evening we came over the trail by Indian
River," Britton continued, "the night you saved my life!"
"Yes, I remember," she answered, studiously calm. "That was the
beginning." Her voice showed that she did not wish to continue in that
train of thought. Rex sighed and pressed as close to his side of the
vehicle as he could till they swept through the curved drive of Britton
Hall.
Rossland's borrowed carriage bowled up behind, bearing the lawyer and
the curate.
Ainsworth bounced upon the lighted porch beside the husband and wife.
"Awful night!" he shivered. "Must be a pack of fiends abroad! Say-what
was in those letters, Britton? Anything new turned up?"
"Yes," Rex answered, "they contained my refusal of the candidature."
"The devil!" said Ainsworth.