Years passed, fourteen happy and uneventful years, during most of which the Bonairs lived quietly on their English estate, among their friends in England and from America. Charles’ sisters, Lucile and Marie, with their families, spent alternate summers at Thetford Towers, or traveling on the Continent, while during the winters the Bonairs fled to California.
One day, in early summer, Berry intended to drive over to Crumplesea, in her motor car, to say good-by to her old friends, the Westons, who were leaving the next morning. Willis Weston had married a charming American heiress years ago, and had become one of the leading dramatists and managers of America.
Charles was absent from England, at this time, having gone to New York on business which would detain him there.
It was a perfect summer day, warm and sunny, and Berry could not help feeling happy and secure from trouble or harm. But as in every life, clouds sometimes gather on the horizon and overshadow it for a while; so now, had she only known it, another storm was impending.
The first sign thereof was a slight mishap which brought the motor car to a standstill halfway on the road to Crumplesea.
Berry, who was somewhat of a fatalist in her way, always declared that the thing was foreordained. Mellish, chauffeur, simply said—sotto voce, of course—that it was “cursed bad luck, though no more than he had expected when Mrs. Bonair would have the car out to-day, after she’d been told that it ought to be sent to the garage yesterday, and she might just as well have used the victoria as not.”
The facts of the case may be related in a few words: The motor car had come up over the brow of the hill on its way back from Thetford Towers, and was rolling sedately through the drowsy stillness of Crumplesea, when a sharp metallic “zing-g-g!” sounded, and off came the tire of the left forewheel. Crumplesea boasted of three hotels and no end of “apartments,” but it could only lay claim to one garage, at the other end of the town, close to where the new hall—dignified by the name of opera house—had recently been erected. Mellish, who had learned this fact from the small gathering of idlers which the accident had collected—and to whom Berry was known, by sight and by name, about as well as the town clock itself—imparted the knowledge to his mistress, and was rather surprised that she took it with such equanimity.
“Very well, send for the man and have the thing set right at once,” she said. “It is only a step to the Crumplesea Hotel, and I dare say that Mercy Blint can manage to make me comfortable and get me a cup of tea while I am waiting. You can come back there for me when the tire has been put on again. But don’t be any longer than is absolutely necessary; I want to get home before dark, if possible!”
And then with the utmost serenity she alighted and walked straightway to the Crumplesea Hotel, which establishment was run by a woman who had once been her maid, and who, on the occasion of her marriage with the under butler, had been pensioned off some years ago.
Inquiry brought forth the intelligence that Mercy herself was absent for the day, but Mercy’s husband was there, and himself showed her ladyship into what was known as the coffee room—every other room in the house being engaged at the time—and rushed away in person to get tea for her.