The Safety Curten by Ethel May Dell (ebook e reader .txt) 📖

side, outwardly calm but inwardly shaken to the depths. To be thus firmly caught in the meshes of her own net was an experience so new and so terrifying that she was utterly at a loss as to how to cope with it. Yet there was a chance, one ray of hope to help her. There was Major Brandon, the man who had offered her freedom. He was to have his answer to-day. For the first time she began seriously to ponder what that answer should be.


CHAPTER V
THE WAY TO FREEDOM

So far as Doris was concerned the aviation meeting was not a success. There were some wonderful exhibitions of flying, but she was too preoccupied to pay more than a very superficial attention to what she saw.
They lunched at a great hotel overlooking the aviation ground. The place was crowded, and they experienced some difficulty in finding places. Eventually Doris found herself seated at a square table with Caryl and two others in the middle of the great room.
She was studying a menu as a pretext for avoiding conversation with her _fiance_, when a man's voice murmured hurriedly in her ear:
"Will you allow me for a moment please? The lady who has just left this table thinks she must have dropped one of her gloves under it."
Doris pushed back her chair and would have risen, but the speaker was already on his knees and laid a hasty, restraining hand upon her. It found hers and, under cover of the table-cloth, pressed a screw of paper into her fingers.
The next instant he emerged, very red in the face, but triumphant, a lady's gauntlet glove in his hand.
"Awfully obliged!" he declared. "Sorry to have disturbed you. Thought I should find it here."
He smiled, bowed, and departed, leaving Doris amazed at his audacity. She had met this young man often at Mrs. Lockyard's house, where he was invariably referred to as "the little Fricker boy."
She threw a furtive glance at Caryl, but he had plainly noticed nothing. With an uneasy sense of shame she slipped the note into her glove.
She perused it on the earliest opportunity. It contained but one sentence:
"If you still wish for freedom, you can find it down by the river at any hour to-night."
There was no signature of any sort; none was needed, she hid the message away again, and for the rest of the afternoon she was almost feverishly gay to hide the turmoil of indecision at her heart.
She saw little of Caryl after luncheon, but he re-appeared again in time to drive her back in the dog-cart as they had come. She found him very quiet and preoccupied, on the return journey, but his presence no longer dismayed her. It was the consciousness that a way of escape was open to her that emboldened her.
They were nearing the end of the drive, when he at length laid aside his preoccupation and spoke:
"Have you made up your mind yet?"
That query of his was the turning point with her. Had he shown the smallest sign of relenting from his grim purpose, had he so much as couched his question in terms of kindness, he might have melted her even then; for she was impulsive ever and quick to respond to any warmth. But the coldness of his question, the unyielding mastery of his manner, impelled her to final rebellion. In the moment that intervened between his question and her reply her decision was made.
"You shall have my answer to-night," she said.
He turned from her without a word, and a little wonder quivered through her as to the meaning of his silence. She was glad when they reached Rivermead and she could take refuge in her own room.
Here once more she read Brandon's message; read it with a thumping heart, but no thought of drawing back. It was the only way out for her.
She dressed for dinner, and then made a few hasty preparations for her flight. She laid no elaborate plans for effecting it, for she anticipated no difficulty. The night would be dark, and she could rely upon her ingenuity for the rest. Failure was unthinkable.
When they rose from the table she waited for Vera and slipped a hand into her arm.
"Do make an excuse for me," she whispered. "I have had a dreadful day, and I can't stand any more. I am going upstairs."
"My dear!" murmured back Vera, by way of protest.
Nevertheless she made the excuse almost as soon as they entered the drawing-room, and Doris fled upstairs on winged feet. At the head she met Caryl about to descend; almost collided with him. He had evidently been up to his room to fetch something.
He stood aside for her at once.
"You are not retiring yet?" he asked.
She scarcely glanced at him. She would not give herself time to be disconcerted.
"I am coming down again," she said, and ran on.
Barely a quarter of an hour after the encounter with Caryl, dressed in a long dark motoring coat and closely veiled, she slipped down the back stairs that led to the servants' quarters, stood listening against a baize door that led into the front hall, then whisked it open and fled across to open the conservatory door, noiseless as a shadow.
The conservatory was in semi-darkness. She expected to see no one; looked for no one. A moment she paused by the door that led into the garden, and in that pause she heard a slight sound. It might have been anything. It probably was a creak from one of the wicker chairs that stood in a corner. Whatever its origin, it startled her to greater haste. She fumbled at the door and pulled it open.
A gust of wind and rain blew in upon her, but she was scarcely aware of it. In another moment she had softly closed the door again and was scudding across the terrace to the steps that led towards the river path.
As she reached it a light shone out in front of her, wavered, and was gone.
"This way to freedom, lady mine," said Brandon's voice close to her, and she heard in it the laugh he did not utter. "Mind you don't tumble in."
His hand touched her arm, closed upon it, drew her to his side. In another instant it encircled her, but she pushed him vehemently away.
"Let us go!" she said feverishly. "Let us go!"
"Come along then," he said gaily. "The boat is just here. You'll have to hold the lantern. Mind how you get on board."
As he pushed out from the bank, he told her something of his arrangements.
"There's a motor waiting--not the one Polly usually hires, but it's quite a decent little car. By the way, she has gone straight up to Town from Wynhampton; said we should do our eloping best alone. We shan't be quite alone, though, for Fricker is going to drive us. But he's a negligible quantity, eh? His only virtue is that he isn't afraid of driving in the dark."
"You will take me to Mrs. Lockyard?" said Doris quickly.
"Of course. She is at her flat, she and Mrs. Fricker. We shall be there soon after midnight, all being well. Confound this stream! It swirls like a mill-race."
He fell silent, and devoted all his attention to reaching the farther bank.
Doris sat with the lantern in her hands, striving desperately to control her nervous excitement. Her absence could not have been discovered yet, she was sure, but she was in a fever of anxiety notwithstanding. She would not feel safe until she was actually on the road.
The boat bumped at last against the bank, and she drew a breath of relief. The journey had seemed interminable.
Suddenly through the windy darkness there came to them the hoot of a motor-horn.
"That's all right," said Brandon cheerily. "That's Fricker, wanting to know if all's well."
He hurried her over the wet grass, skirted the house by a side-path that ran between dripping laurels, and brought her out finally into the little front garden.
A glare of acetylene lamps met them abruptly as they emerged, dazzling them for the moment. The buzz of a motor engine also greeted them, and a smell of petrol hung in the wet air.
As her eyes accustomed themselves to the brightness, Doris made out a small closed motor-car, with a masked chauffeur seated at the wheel.
"Good little Fricker!" said Brandon, slapping the chauffeur's shoulder as he passed. "So you've got your steam up! Straight ahead then, and as fast as you like. Don't get run in, that's all."
He handed Doris into the car, followed her, and slammed the door.
The next moment they passed swiftly out on to the road, and Doris knew that the die was cast. She stood finally committed to this, the wildest, most desperate venture of her life.


CHAPTER VI
A MASTER STROKE

"Here beginneth," laughed Brandon, sliding his arm around her as she sat tense in every nerve gazing at the rain-blurred window.
She did not heed him; it was almost as if she had not heard. Her hands were tightly clasped upon one another, and her face was turned from him. There was no lamp inside the car, the only illumination proceeding from those without, showing them the driver huddled over the wheel, but shedding little light into the interior.
He tightened his arm about her, laying his other hand upon her clasped ones.
"By Jove, little girl, you're cold!" he said.
She was--cold as ice. She parted her fingers stiffly to free them from his grasp.
"I--I'm quite comfortable," she assured him, without turning her head. "Please don't trouble about me."
But he was not to be thus discouraged.
"You can't be comfortable," he argued. "Why, you're shivering. Let me see what I can do to make things better."
He tried to draw her to him, but she resisted almost angrily.
"Oh, do leave me alone! I'm not uncomfortable. I'm only thinking."
"Well, don't be silly!" he urged. "It's no use thinking at this stage. The thing is done now, and well done. We shall be man and wife by this time to-morrow. We'll go to Paris, eh, and have no end of a spree."
"Perhaps," she said, not looking at him or yielding an inch to his persuasion.
It was plain that for some reason she desired to be left in peace, and after a brief struggle with himself, Brandon decided that he would be wise to let her have her way. He leant back and crossed his arms in silence.
The car sped along at a pace which he found highly satisfactory. He had absolute faith in Fricker's driving and knowledge of the roads.
They had been travelling for the greater part of an hour, when Doris at length relaxed from her tense attitude and lay back in her corner, nestling into it with a long shiver.
Brandon was instantly on the alert.
"I'm sure you are cold. Here's a rug here. Let me--"
"Oh, do please leave me alone!" she said, with a sob. "I'm so horribly tired."
Beseechingly almost she laid her hand upon his arm with the words.
The touch fired him. He considered that he had been patient long enough. Abruptly he caught her to him.
"Come, I say," he said, half-laughing, half in savage earnest, "I can't have you crying on what's almost our wedding trip!"
He certainly did not expect the absolutely furious resistance with which she met his action. She thrust him from her with the strength of frenzy.
"How dare you?" she cried passionately. "How dare you touch me, you--you hateful cad?"
For the moment, such was his astonishment, he suffered her to escape from