"All right, then. We've got forty-five minutes. I must put Polly into the cart myself. Five for that; forty to get to the station."
She strode off to the stables, followed by the footman and Durant. Among them they forced Polly into the trap, and led her dancing to the porch, where Miss Chatterton stood, prepared for all weathers.
"I say," cried she, "this is all very well; but who's going to drive Polly there and back again?"
"I am," said Durant calmly. He had caught a furtive flash from Frida's eyes that lighted upon, glanced off him and fell to the ground. The woman in her had appealed to his chivalry. At the same instant there was a swish, as if the skirts of heaven were trailing across the earth, and the rain came down. He hastily thrust Miss Tancred's arms into the sleeves of her mackintosh and wriggled into his own. The final speeches were short and to the point.
"Mr. Durant," said Miss Chatterton, "you are a hero."
"Frida," said the Colonel, "you are a fool." And for once Durant was inclined to agree with him. The more so as Miss Tancred took advantage of his engagement with his mackintosh to enthrone herself on the driver's high seat. She said good-by to the Colonel, and gathered up the reins; Miss Chatterton climbed up beside her; Polly gave a frantic plunge and a dash forward; and the hero was obliged to enter the dogcart after the deft fashion of a footman, with a run and a flying leap into the back seat.
Miss Chatterton was unkind enough to laugh. "Well done!" said she. "Sit tight, and try to look as chivalrous as I'm sure you feel."
But it is hard to look or feel chivalrous sitting on a back seat in a wet mackintosh with a thunderstorm pouring down your neck and into your ears, and a woman, possessed by all the devils, driving furiously to an express train that she can never catch. In that lunatic escape from Coton Manor she had not looked back once; she left Durant to contemplate a certain absurd little figure that stood under an immense Doris portico, regarding the face of the sky.
The main thoroughfare of Whithorn-in-Arden was scored like the bed of a torrent, and fringed with an ochreish scum tossed up from the churning loam. The church clock struck three as they dashed through.
"You'll never do it," said Durant; "it's a good twenty minutes from here."