It had all happened in a brief moment of time,--the blow, the rescue, the kiss. But it had changed the face of the world for Vickers. What hitherto had been clouded in dream, a mingling of sentiment, pity, tender yearning, became at once reality. With that blow, that kiss, his soul had opened to a new conception of life....
They drove to the Lanes" house. Isabelle had returned that day from California, and her husband was away on business. Vickers, who had a latch-key, let himself into the house and tapped at his sister"s door. When she saw him, she cried out, frightened by his white face:--
"Vick! What has happened?"
"Mrs. Conry is downstairs, Isabelle. I want her to stay here with you to-night!"
"Vick! What is it?" Isabelle demanded with staring eyes.
"I will tell you to-morrow."
"No--now!" She clutched her wrap about her shiveringly and drew him within the room.
"It"s--I am going away, Isabelle, at once--with Mrs. Conry. There has been trouble--her husband struck her on the street, when she was with me. I took her from him."
"Vick!" Her voice trembled as she cried, "No,--it wasn"t that!"
"No," he said gravely. "There was no cause, none at all. He was drunk. But I don"t know that it would have made any difference. The man is a low brute, and her life is killing her. I love her--well, that is all!"
"Vick!" she cried; "I knew you would do some--" she hesitated before his glittering eyes--"something very risky," she faltered at last.
He waved this aside impatiently.
"What will you do now?" she asked hesitantly.
"I don"t know,--we shall go away," he replied vaguely; "but she is waiting, needs me. Will you help her,--help _us_?" he demanded, turning to the door, "or shall we have to go to-night?"
"Wait," she said, putting her hands on his arms; "you can"t do that! Just think what it will mean to father and mother, to everybody.... Let me dress and take her back!" she suggested half heartedly.
"Isabelle!" he cried. "She shall never go back to that brute."
"You love her so much?"
"Enough for anything," he answered gravely, turning to the door.
In the face of his set look, his short words, all the protesting considerations on the tip of her tongue seemed futile. To a man in a mood like his they would but drive him to further folly. And admiration rose unexpectedly in her heart for the man who could hold his fate in his hands like this and unshakenly cast it on the ground. The very madness of it all awed her. She threw her arms about him, murmuring:--
"Oh, Vick--for you--it seems so horrid, so--"
"It _is_ mean," he admitted through his compressed lips. "For that very reason, don"t you see, I will take her beyond where it can touch her, at once, this very night,--if you will not help us!"
And all that she could do was to kiss him, the tears falling from her eyes.
"I will, Vick, dear.... It makes no difference to me what happens,--if you are only happy!"
As he drove to his father"s house in the damp April night, he tried to think of the steps he must take on the morrow. He had acted irresistibly, out of the depths of his nature, unconcerned that he was about to tear in pieces the fabric of his life. It was not until he had let himself into the silent house and noiselessly pa.s.sed his mother"s door that he realized in sudden pain what it must mean to others.
He lay awake thinking, thinking. First of all she must telegraph for Delia to meet them somewhere,--she must have the child with her at once; and they must leave the city before Conry could find her and make trouble.... And he must tell the Colonel....
The next morning when Vickers entered his sister"s library, Stacia Conry rose from the lounge where she had been lying reading a newspaper, and waited hesitantly while he came forward. She was very pretty this morning, with a faint touch of rose beneath her pale skin, her long lashes falling over fresh, shy eyes. In spite of it all she had slept, while the sleepless hours he had spent showed in his worn, white face. He put out his arms, and she clung to him.
"We must decide what to do," he said.
"You will not leave me?" she whispered, her head lying pa.s.sive against his breast. Suddenly raising her head, she clasped her arms about his neck, drawing him pa.s.sionately to her, crying, "I love you--love you,--you will never leave me?"
And the man looking down into her eyes answered from his heart in all truth:--
"Never, never so long as I live!" The words muttered in his broken voice had all the solemnity of a marriage oath; and he kissed her, sealing the promise, while she lay pa.s.sive in his arms.
Holding her thus to him, her head against his beating heart, he felt the helplessness, the dependence of the woman, and it filled him with a subdued, sad joy. His part was to protect her, to defend her always, and his grip tightened about her yielding form. Their lips met again, and this time the sensuous appeal of the woman entered his senses, clouding for the time his delicate vision, submerging that n.o.bler feeling which hitherto alone she had roused. She was a woman,--his to desire, to have!
"What shall we do?" she asked, sitting down, still holding his hand.
"First we must get Delia. We had better telegraph your mother at once to meet us somewhere."
"Oh!"
"You must have Delia, of course. He will probably make trouble, try to get hold of the child, and so we must leave here as soon as possible, to-day if we can."
"Where shall we go?" she asked, bewildered.
"Somewhere--out of the country," he replied slowly, looking at her significantly. "Of course it would be better to wait and have the divorce; but he might fight that, and make a mess,--try to keep the child, you understand."
She was silent, and he thought she objected to his summary plan. But it was on her lips to say, "Why not leave Delia with him until it can all be arranged?" Something in the young man"s stern face restrained her; she was afraid of outraging instincts, delicacies that were strange to her.
"Should you mind," he asked pleadingly, "going without the divorce? Of course to me it is the same thing. You are mine now, as I look at it,--any marriage would mean little to either of us after--the past! Somehow to hang about here, with the danger of trouble to you, waiting for a divorce, with the row and all,--I can"t see you going through it. I think the--other way--is better."
She did not fully understand his feeling about it, which was that with the soiled experience of her marriage another ceremony with him would be a mere legal farce. To the pure idealism of his nature it seemed cleaner, n.o.bler for them to take this step without any attempt to regularize it in the eyes of Society. To him she was justified in doing what she had done, in leaving her husband for him, and that would have to be enough for them both. He despised half measures, compromises. He was ready to cast all into his defiance of law. Meanwhile she pondered the matter with lowered eyes and presently she asked:--
"How long would it take to get a divorce?"
"If he fought it, a year perhaps, or longer."
"And I should have to stay here in the city?"
"Or go somewhere else to get a residence."
"And we--" she hesitated to complete the thought.
He drew her to him and kissed her.
"I think we shall be enough for each other," he said.
"I will do whatever you wish," she murmured, thus softly putting on his shoulders the burden of the step.
He was the man, the strong protector that had come to her in her distress, to whom she fled as naturally as a hunted animal flies to a hole, as a crippled bird to the deep underbrush. Her beauty, her s.e.x, herself, had somehow attracted to her this male arm, and the right to take it never occurred to her. He loved her, of course, and she would make him love her more, and all would be well. If he had been penniless, unable to give her the full protection that she needed, then they would have been obliged to consider this step more carefully, and doubts might have forced themselves upon her. But as it was she clung to him, trusting to the power of her s.e.x to hold him constant, to shield her....