"But we offer you freedom from that life," said Joan, and her voice began to plead.

"I want my daughter," Challoner retorted implacably.

"But you can't make a home for her," said Robert Daventry.

Challoner chuckled and his voice lost its violence.

"You must take me for a softy," he said with a drawl of amus.e.m.e.nt. "I mean her to make a home for me, where I can do a bit of sitting soft and recover my good looks."

"But she can't make a home for you," said Joan.

"Oh, yes she can."

"How?"

Cynthia outside the door waited in a despairing bewilderment. The changed tones of those whom she had looked upon as her parents a.s.sured her that the reaper had authority and rights, could claim her, could take her away. But how, she asked herself, was she to make a home for him? She had learned no profession, practised no art. The tears rose to her eyes and flowed down her cheeks; and the answer came.

"She's a rare one for looks," said Challoner. His eyes narrowed to slits and his face became mean and despicable to look upon. "You'll not find her equal strolling under the lamps of Buenos Ayres."

Joan flinched and uttered a cry. The movement was that of one who has been slapped in the face. Cynthia felt her heart stand still within her breast. She had lived in Buenos Ayres, where knowledge comes quickly to women. She was neither ignorant nor a fool. She understood, and once more her eyes went to the door. It was all quiet in the hall.

A few quick steps and she would be out of the house. She rose from her chair. For the dark night, which a minute before had so appalled her, now appealed to her as a friend and refuge. But as she turned, she heard Robert Daventry say in a choking voice:

"Go! or I'll have you thrown out;" and the bell rang violently.

"Oh, is that the game?" replied Challoner.

Daventry strode round the room.

"Not a word! Go! I loathe you."

And the door was wrenched violently open. Cynthia had just time to drop into her chair. She heard her father's voice close to her, and no longer through the panels of a door. She cowered down, covering her face with her hands, and drawing in her feet.

"All right, I'll go," said Challoner. "I can afford to go. For I have the law on my side."

"The law! Try it!"

"I will."

Challoner was standing in the doorway now. He was looking back into the study. But he had only to turn his head to see that blur of misty white in the chair, only to bend down and draw the trembling hands from the girl's face to find his daughter in his grasp. Cynthia lay holding her breath, ready at a touch of him to swoon.

"She's my daughter. All your money won't get over that. Just wait and see. I'll come back with the law at my side, and take her away--yes--if I have to tie her hand and foot to take her."

He flung out across the smoking-room, looking neither to the right nor to the left. Joan and Robert Daventry followed quickly behind him, afraid lest he should force his way into the dining-room where they had left Cynthia. Not one of them saw the girl huddled in the great chair in the dark room. Richard Walton came into the hall.

"I'll see you off the premises," he said to Challoner, and a moment afterward the front door slammed.

With the slamming of that door Cynthia seemed to swim back into life; and all at once there came upon her a great longing for comfort and kind words. She was hurt and humiliated as she had never thought to be. It seemed to her that she was tainted, and she was terribly afraid. She took a swift step toward the door, and there Joan's voice speaking in a whisper arrested her.

Joan was standing with her husband by the dining-room, and seeking to compose her agitation before she entered it. Her voice was still shaking from her encounter.

"Not a word to Cynthia," she said. "We sha'n't let her go, Robert,"

and her voice was very wistful, and appealed for confirmation of her words. "So there's no need to trouble her--as this story would trouble her."

"No, we'll not say a word to her," replied Robert. He made an effort to be hearty, but it quite failed to hide his distress. "We shall find a way out somehow when we think it all over. No, we'll not breathe a word, my dear. Cynthia's birthday mustn't be spoilt," and, thoroughly miserable, the old couple went into the dining-room and closed the door behind them.

Cynthia made up her mind. Since they wished her not to know, since it would add so much to their distress if they learned that she did know, she would keep her knowledge to herself. It seemed to her then a small return to make to them for their devotion, but it was to cost her much more than she imagined. She would wait, schooling herself to patience, hiding her fears. But she could not face her friends to-night and keep her secret. For that she had not the strength. She ran swiftly and silently up to her room and flung herself upon her bed and buried her face in the pillows. There she lay trembling until the thought came to her that Joan would not retire without coming to ask why she had gone upstairs so early. She undressed and was hardly in bed before Joan knocked on the door.

"I had a headache," said Cynthia. "It is the heat, no doubt. I shall be myself in the morning."

"You are sure? You wouldn't like the doctor?" Joan asked anxiously.

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Cynthia.

Joan put her hand to the switch of the light, and Cynthia started up in bed with a wild gesture.

"Don't turn the light out, please, mother," she cried; and the next moment feared that Joan would have heard the terror underneath her words. But Joan herself was occupied. She kissed Cynthia and left her alone with the light burning in her room.

CHAPTER VIII

THE FLIGHT

But though the light burned in her room, Cynthia did not sleep till daybreak. For the first few hours there was a strange bustle about the pa.s.sages of the house, for which she did not seek at all to find a cause. She welcomed it for its companionship. Familiar voices informed her that her friends were awake about her, and she was comforted. She tried to fall asleep before the noise should cease, but gradually the estancia sank into silence, and she was still awake. Then began her hours of terror. Her window was open, and every flutter of the night air which shook the curtains was her father's coa.r.s.e, strong hand upon the sill. If she closed her eyes for a moment, his dark and evil face was already bending over her, as she lay helpless in her bed. If she heard a wardrobe crack it was he stepping clumsily about the room.

Half the night she spent crouching up in her bed, her eyes wild with fear, her heart racing and stopping, while she listened for the sound of his footsteps outside the house. And she heard them; did a twig snap on a tree in the garden, she heard them. There was he, prowling about the walls, watching, perhaps, for just her light to be put out before he slipped in through a window to take her away. If she heard no sounds, then he was already in the house, creeping along the corridor toward her door. From the moment when this particular fear seized hold upon her, her eyes were fixed in an agony of suspense upon the long mirror in her room. The door was at her right hand, set in the wall against which the head of her bed was placed. A high screen stood by the side of the bed and hid it from her altogether. But across the room the long mirror faced her, and by looking at its bright surface she could see whether the door opened or not. It was a white door, with a round bra.s.s handle, and, continually, she was very sure that she saw the handle turn. In her frantic imaginings her father's very semblance changed. Gross though he was, still more she distorted him, making his likeness fit with the knowledge which she had of him. He meant to drag her away, and batten on what she had of youth and freshness and good looks; and this, out of malice almost as much as for profit, and to punish her for the happiness of her life.

He swelled into some grotesque and corpulent thing of evil with a fat, loathsome face and gripping hands.

The night was a night of disillusionment for Cynthia. Romance was stunned in her. All her pretty dreams, wherein she shyly walked with the bright ones of the earth, were rent and blown to s.p.a.ce like gossamer. She seemed separated from them by a generation of years. She looked back upon them with derision. A fine heroine she was to be if that door opened. She was to walk--yes--but under the gas-lamps, and not shyly, and with any who would. That was the plan deliberately conceived for her and conceived by her own father. The mere thought of it seemed to sully her, to make her unworthy. She remembered that only that morning she had sent a telegram to Captain Rames, with a thrill of excitement, as though she were doing a remarkable thing. She had actually dared. She sat up, and in the bitterness of her heart laughed at the great significance she had set upon herself. Her father had a different view of her importance, and from head to foot she ached with the pain of her humiliation.

Thus through the long hours she swung between terror and abas.e.m.e.nt, each one mastering her in turn. Once she started up with a despairing cry as she imagined her father driving her out into the street with blows.

Could she make her living honestly if she ran away from him, she wondered miserably, bethinking that at the worst she must kill herself? At another moment she would recall with a pang of contempt her enchanted garden and scorch its flowers with her ridicule. She would walk in that garden no more. It was closed. She had been an impostor in it always. It was a place of falsities. There was but one true, real thing in it all--the turnstile in the wall which gave admission to its precincts. Yes, that was true, and the turnstile, with all it meant of shame and indifference, became to her a new epitome of life.

Gradually the night wore through. A finger of gray light slipped through the curtains, and was laid upon the ceiling of the room. Birds began to sing in the garden. Cynthia turned out her light and fell asleep at last. She slept late and woke to just such another day of heat as yesterday. She lay for a moment, happily convinced that all which had occurred last night had occurred only in a dream. But she looked into the mirror across the room and saw the door, and the truth was made known to her. These things had happened.

Certainly the door was still closed, the night had pa.s.sed. But other nights would follow, and through the closed door, not her father, but fear and shame had pa.s.sed to bear her company. She came down to breakfast pale and heavy-eyed, and found Joan and Robert Daventry already at the table. She was afraid lest they should remark the alteration in her looks, and she set herself to counterfeit an air of gaiety. It was not very successful, but Joan and Robert Daventry were making precisely the same pretence, with still poorer results. They could not meet her eyes any more than she theirs; and they were trying for the sake of her happiness to hide from her a catastrophe, her knowledge of which for the sake of their happiness she was trying to hide from them. Thus they all talked with great speed about things of no importance, and laughed noisily whether laughter was appropriate or not, until Robert Daventry suddenly turned to Cynthia and blurted out with an affected blitheness:

"I hope, my dear, that you haven't made many absolutely unalterable arrangements for the summer." And Cynthia turned as white as the table-cloth and looked suddenly down to hide the terror in her eyes.

They were going to give her up, then! That was her first despairing thought. No doubt it could not be helped. They were compelled to.

"No," she answered faintly. "No arrangements that cannot be altered. I was going to stay for a week with--" and as she compared the summer which she had planned with that which awaited her, she stopped, lest the choking of her voice should betray her.

"That's well," continued Robert, "for you have a journey to make, Cynthia. I have had a telegram this morning from England. I bought some property in Warwickshire a few years ago. We thought you would not, perhaps, want to live all your life in the Argentine after we had gone. So we bought it for you. But it appears there's some sort of lawyer's trouble over the t.i.tle."

"We have known there was some trouble," Joan hastened to explain, "for quite a long time. But until this telegram arrived we did not think it very serious."

"Now we know what it is," continued Robert, "and I am afraid that we must go to England and attend to it. Luckily, we have Walton now to look after the estancia." And since Cynthia made no reply, but still looked upon the cloth, he continued in some perplexity: "I hope, my dear, you won't be disappointed. Joan and I, indeed, were inclined to be confident that you would enjoy the trip."