The Men Who Wrought

by Ridgwell Cullum

On his return to Smith Square he spent the long evening alone. He would see nobody. He would transact no business, and the faithful Heathcote was distressed, he even protested. But for once the usual amenability of his friend and employer was lost amidst a jarring irritability, and the secretary was forced to leave him to his ungracious solitude.

During that long evening alone Ruxton endured a series of mental tortures such as only the imaginative can ever be called upon to endure. Every conceivable aspect of the situation arose before his mind's eye, clad in the drab of hopelessness, until it seemed there could be no possible place for one single gleam of promise. Many of these pictures were based upon the insidious doubts which never fail to attack those in the throes of a consuming passion such as his.

At one moment he saw, in the disaster which had befallen him, the duplicity of a woman whose love has no depth, whose love is the mere superficial attraction of the moment, and which, under given conditions, can be flung aside as a thing of no consequence, no value. Following upon each such accusation came denial—simple, swift, emphatic denial, as he remembered the treasured moments in the little flat in Kensington; as he remembered the woman of the Yorkshire cliffs; the woman whose shining eyes had revealed the mother soul within her as she appealed for the great world of humanity with passionate denial of self. Doubts of her could not remain behind such memories. It was like doubting the rise of the morrow's sun.

Then, too, the simplicity of his own loyalty, apart from all reason, denied for him. It was the simple psychology of the devoted Slav in him battling and defeating the more acrimonious and fault-finding nature of his insular forebears.

There was reason enough for his doubts. He knew that. The steady balance of reason was markedly his, and once, after a feverish struggle, he allowed himself to give it play, and sought to review the case as might a prosecuting counsel.

The salient points of the situation were so marked that they could not be missed. Vita had gone to Redwithy in a fever of anticipation, with assurances of devotion to him upon her beautiful lips, to await a message from him of her father's safety. That message is duly dispatched. It reaches its destination. It is opened by some one and carefully re-sealed. Vita sends no acknowledgment. Later it is discovered that Vita has left Redwithy, almost on the moment of her arrival at her home, since when she has not returned. Apparently her going is voluntary.

On the face of it, it would appear that she has not received the message. But subsequently she proves, by writing to her father, that she is aware of his safe arrival, which is the news contained in his message. Furthermore, she addresses her letter from Redwithy, as though she desires him to communicate with her at that place. All these facts are so definite that the reasonable conclusion is that Vita has wilfully endeavored to hide herself from him—Ruxton.

That, he told himself, was the cold logic of it.

Then, even as he arrived at the conclusion, a hot passion of denial leapt. It was wrong, wrong. He could stake his soul on it it was wrong. Logic? Argument? Reason? They were all fallible; fallible as—as hell. Anyway, they were in this case, he moodily assured himself. Vita was above all such petty trickery. So contemptible a conclusion was an insult to a pure, brave, beautiful soul. It belonged to the gutter in which, he told himself, he was floundering.

There must be another reply to every question which the evidence opened up. What was the other view of it? He leapt back at once to his first inspiration. Treachery—treachery of the enemy. His first prompting had been that Vita had fallen into their hands. How, then, could this be made to fit in with the letter Prince von Hertzwohl had received from his daughter? At the first consideration it seemed that such fitment became impossible.