AT the end of a story which, halting and fragmentary as it was, took some time to tell, Helen felt shattered. Deprived of the power to act or to think consecutively, all the force of a strong will was needed to sustain her. The awful Nemesis which had overtaken a phase of passing weakness in a good and brave man struck at her heart; but in the end it was perhaps as much as anything the sense of Fate’s injustice that roused her fighting spirit.
With all the facts of the case before her, and once the control of her nerves had been regained, Helen soon made up her mind. Be the cost what it might, her husband’s life should not be thrown away. By nature and temperament a woman of action, she was accustomed to reach quick and bold decisions. And in the moment her resolve was taken it was fortified by a sudden recollection of Wygram’s final words. “If, in the course of the next few days, you feel you must have a friend whom you can really trust, please remember your compatriot, George Hierons, who, I believe, is still in London.”
Such words seemed truly prophetic. And as they came back to Helen’s mind, she was upheld by a deep faith that John and she were not to be abandoned in this hour of strife against the powers of darkness. Providence was surely at their side. It was working for them. Counsel and sympathy had come to her mysteriously, but she recognized the source whence it sprang. Behind the phenomena of appearances there was somewhere a Friend. And that Friend, whoever, whatever it might be, she felt was going to help them now.
Luncheon was a miserable and belated meal. For both it was but a hollow pretense. They were in such a febrile state of anxiety that the mere presence of food was almost unbearable. But seated at the table, crumbling bread and sipping water, Helen was able to do a certain amount of thinking. At the end of this Barmecide feast, when she rose and left the dining room, a kind of plan was already taking shape in her mind.
All the facts of the case, which with infinite difficulty she had been able to drag out of John, were now more or less clear. They were marshaled in definite order, they fell into a logical scheme. It now remained for her to act without an instant’s delay upon the data she had so painfully gathered. And yet to move at all in such a matter called for rare courage, high devotion.
At his wife’s entreaty, Endor went down to the House of Commons as soon as luncheon was over. Her clear good sense, upon which he now leaned heavily, saw that for him in so terrible a crisis the paramount need was to keep at work. She divined that the only chance he had of holding on to the will was to occupy himself as much as possible. In such a crisis any form of brooding or inaction would be fatal.
For her, anything of that kind would be fatal, too. She must not look before or after. It was like crossing an abyss on a narrow plank. Her resolve taken, her plan formed, one pang of indecision might paralyze a nerve upon which all chance of safety depended. And she must act without an instant’s delay.
She listened for the click of the front door. And then from the discreet ambush of the charming new curtains of that singularly pleasant room, in which so lately as two days ago, each individual object had been a thing of delight, she watched her husband’s tall and picturesque figure disappear round the corner of the Square into the Brompton Road. Then she went to the telephone at once and rang up Freeman’s Hotel.
It seemed an age before her demand to speak with Mr. Hierons could be met. A voice was not sure whether Mr. Hierons was now staying at the hotel, but it would find out. He had been away some days and the voice rather fancied that he had not yet returned. Minutes passed. And then in the midst of a baffled impotence that was almost a fever now, to Helen’s unspeakable relief, a tone she faintly recognized said, “Are you there?”
George Hierons was speaking. If Mrs. Endor cared to come round at once to the hotel he would be glad to wait in for her.