Part 50 (1/2)

Prince von Hertzwohl gazed about him. His tall figure was bowed. He was no longer clad in the working costume which had been his disguise for so many days in Dorby. His lean face was shaded beneath a wide, soft-brimmed hat which entirely concealed that wonderful forehead which had so impressed Ruxton. But the shaven cheeks added years to his age.

Beneath his chin were displayed those fleshy cords which do not belong to anything up to the middle life. He certainly looked older than ever in the foreign-designed clothes which he was now wearing.

The cold breath of the moor swept by him, it penetrated the lightish overcoat he was wearing. Once or twice he s.h.i.+vered as he gazed this way and that, searching the already hazy sky-line for a sign of any movement.

For some time he seemed in doubt. Then at last he drew in towards the black shelter of the old mill, which stood out in the grey light, keeping its ancient watch over the cove below. He glanced within its shadowed interior. It was inhospitable. But it was as he had always known it. Everything was undisturbed. He drew his coat about him and b.u.t.toned it up. The air was so keen, and he had little relish for it.

Presently he sat down upon a fallen timber under the shelter of the wall. He must wait. Nothing could be done until the arrival he was expecting.

It was a desolate spot, and the influence of it was not unfelt. But the solitude was not altogether unappreciated. If there were eyes watching they failed to make their presence felt, and he was glad. He lit a cigar and sought comfort in it from the bleak northern air. His thoughtful eyes wandered in every direction his shelter permitted. To the east, across the sea. To the south, over the rolling moor. To the west, where the dying light of day was melting steadily before the grey obscurity of coming night.

The minutes pa.s.sed slowly, slowly, as they ever pa.s.s to the anxious mind. But the dark of evening gathered with all the rapidity of early winter.

The long journey was drawing to its close. Long since, the great North Road had been left behind. Now the powerful car swept along, with its monotonous purr, over the winding coast road, which split the wide-spreading moorland, and headed on in the teeth of the bitter northeasterly breeze.

The chill penetrated to the snug interior of the car. Vita was forced to draw the heavy overcoat more closely about her. She s.h.i.+vered, but it was not with the actual cold. Her thoughts were a-riot. They were full of an intense and painful dread.

She had made the journey north in the company of the man whom she knew she was now condemned to marry--condemned beyond reprieve. The only gleam of light which had struggled through the darkness of her despair was that he had spared her his company in the car. He had dismissed the driver of the car at Bath, and taken upon himself that duty. Thus Vita had been spared an added torture to the desperate feelings a.s.sailing her.

She had no thought of revolt. She felt that destiny loomed before her in overwhelming force. Escape had no place in her thought. She had entered into a contract. A sordid contract, she felt. A contract which had perhaps been forced upon her, but which had been accepted by her through an invincible desire to be permitted to drag out the weary years of life, rather than face bravely the harsh consequences and penalties of truth and loyalty to the demands of honor. She admitted the dreadful cowardice which had driven her, and a wave of loathing for herself left her crushed under a burden of bitter contempt.

But during the journey, in communion with her own wretched thoughts, she had searched the future as only vivid imagination permitted, and the picture she had discovered was perhaps a thousandfold more dreadful than her earlier antic.i.p.ations. Panic had urged her in the first place.

But now the original panic which had driven her into her contract had pa.s.sed, leaving her only the skeleton, which, in the first place, had been clothed in the brilliant flesh and raiment inspired by the yearning for life. To think of the right she had given that square, fleshy figure sitting before her beyond the gla.s.s part.i.tion of the car!

The right to control her destiny; to be always near her, to--caress her. And all the while another image lay treasured in her heart, another voice was always in her ears, another hand lay in hers, and other lips---- It was beyond endurance--the thought. To think that way lay madness. Her eyes grew haggard with dry tears. She was left beyond ordinary emotion. She could only stir restlessly, with brain heated almost to fever by the pressure of dreadful thought.

So the miles had been devoured by the senseless, softly droning wheels.

Merciless wheels they became. Nothing could stop them, nothing could deter the progress towards that maelstrom of horror in the direction of which she was gliding.

Then came the familiar breath of the Yorks.h.i.+re moorlands. She remembered it. She remembered every aspect of the scene about her. It was not possible for it to be otherwise. She writhed under the lash of memory. Was it not here she had first looked down upon the p.r.o.ne figure and upward-glancing dark eyes of Ruxton Farlow? Was it not here she had poured out to him the vaunting story of her desires to serve humanity?

Had she not witnessed the light of sympathy leap into his eyes here--here, at the pa.s.sionate profession she had made to him? And now--oh, the pity of it!--the miserable, cowardly sequel to all her protestations.

The grey of evening filled the car, and somehow Vita was glad of it.

She felt she could hide her worthless self beneath it. The moorland scene faded, and the great dark gorse banks merged into one blackening world. Then, directly ahead, the aged landmark of the skeleton mill rose sharply out of the dusk.

Her pulses quickened. The journey was at its end. Her father would be there awaiting her, and she must face those wide, understanding eyes as she told him the story of her cowardly yielding. She shrank further into the corner. She knew the fearless spirit of the man, and she dreaded his contempt. The secret of her contract with the man driving the car was still her own, but, in a few minutes, it must be revealed to one whose contempt would deal the final crus.h.i.+ng blow.

She nerved herself as the car drew up. Then, with ashen lips and frightened eyes, she became aware of a tall, lean figure standing out against the sky-line.

She waited for no a.s.sistance. She flung the door wide, and, in a moment, she was enfolded in her father's embrace.

But she dared not yield to the joy of reunion. She freed herself, and began to talk. Not a moment must be lost in telling him her story, the story of all the dread and horror she had lived through. She knew she dared not risk delay, or her last vestige of courage would vanish into thin air.

She poured out the story of the machinations, in the toils of which they had been caught. She told him the story of the jeopardy in which he stood; of the power which had been transferred from Berlin to bring about his final destruction. She told him of the death sentence which had been pa.s.sed upon her by the terrible Von Berger, and how, in the last moment of her despair, succor had been proffered in the last quarter from which it could have reasonably been expected. And then came the story of her pledge.

To the long story the old man listened with the closest attention. He gave no sign, he offered no interruption. At its conclusion Vita paused, breathlessly awaiting the verdict in the man's luminous eyes.

She watched them. She searched them, seeking that faint spark which might hold out the smallest hope. She was living for that alone--now.

The Prince stood for a moment, his eyes gazing past her at the sides of the travel-stained car. Then one long thin hand went up to his forehead, and his soft hat was thrust back on his head. The hand pressed down upon his brows and moved across them, as though brus.h.i.+ng aside some sense of weariness. His eyes s.h.i.+fted their gaze towards the man standing near the car. They took in the square, burly figure from the crown of its hat to the soles of its feet. Then they came back to Vita, and the smile in them suggested a final sympathetic decision overriding the natural antagonistic feelings towards the man whom he looked upon as his enemy.