The coming of a woman into the affairs of his life seemed to him as incongruous as it was pleasant, and, in the circumstances, justified. It was an element all unconsidered before. His association with women until now had been the simple parrying of the feminine shafts levelled at him in the process of ordinary social intercourse in the position he occupied in life. He was by no means a man who took no delight in women's society. On the contrary. But his purpose in life had always been too big as yet to permit his dwelling upon those pleasures which no real manhood can ever ignore.
Women were to him part of the most exalted side of a man's life. His ideals in that direction were as wholly unworldly as his ideals were practical in every other direction. From his earliest youth, due to the death of his mother at his birth, he had never experienced a woman's influence upon his life, and thus he had been left to the riot of imagination, which, in very truth, had been his safeguarding against the operation of the matrimonial market of social London in the midst of which he had found himself plunged.
Now, under conditions wholly robbed of every convention, he had suddenly been confronted by a wonderful creature, who, to his vivid imagination, appealed as the most beautiful of all her beautiful sex. Furthermore the contact had been brought about through those very ideals and purposes to which he had devoted his life. And, moreover, the wonder of it all was that his purpose was apparently her purpose, and she had sought him because this was so. Herein lay the extraordinary incongruity of a sex attraction brought about by the threatened tragedy overshadowing them all.
Vita Vladimir!
It was a name such as he might have discovered anywhere amongst the foreign colony in Soho. His attraction towards the woman afforded no glamor to the name. None at all. He told himself frankly it did not fit her. Furthermore it left him unconvinced that it truly belonged to her. Yet she said she was a Pole. And somewhere in the back cells of memory there was a sort of hazy recollection that "Vladimir" had some connection with Polish history.
However, the question of her name left him cold. Only the vivid picture of her personality remained in his mind. Her charm, her ardor, her beauty, and that extraordinary suggestion of mystery, conveyed in her costume, and the evasion of the details of her coming and going—these things had caught the imagination and the youth in him, and acted upon them like champagne.
He strove to thrust aside these things and consider her only through the purpose on which she had sought him out. She knew, and had seen, the realities of the threat which he believed to be hanging over his country. She could, and would, show him these things.
Suddenly on the impulse of a reasonable incredulity he asked himself if he were dreaming. The whole thing must be a mere phantasm, the outcome of all the troubled thought which had occupied him for so long. But she had told him he would hear from her again, and then that tiny white-gloved hand. He felt its clasp now, as it had lain in his strong palm. No, it was no dream. She was real—and she was very, very beautiful.
By the time he reached the great colonnade which formed the entrance porch of his home the woman's personality had dominated all his endeavor to regard the incident from any other point of view. The woman had absorbed all that was in him, and a curious, deep, thrilling sensation of delight at the encounter had completely thrust into the background the purpose which had brought it about. All that which we in our consideration of the affairs of life are apt to despise, and even leave out of our reckoning altogether, had asserted itself. It was the sex instinct, which no power of human mentality can resist.
Ruxton had no wish to meet his father again that night. He wanted solitude. He wanted to think and dream, as all youth desires to think and dream, when the floodgates of sex are opened, and it finds itself caught in the first rush of its tide.
Glancing at his watch he discovered it to be close upon midnight. But the hour had no significance in his present mood. His father would have retired, and the library would be empty, so he passed up the oak stairway with the determination to smoke a final cigar, and let his thoughts riot over the delectable banquet the evening had provided for them.
But that particular pleasure was definitely denied him. When he entered the library the lights were still on, and he beheld his father's curly white head still bent over the table at which he was wont to attend to his private correspondence.
The old man looked up as the other walked down the long book-lined room towards him. His deep-set eyes were smiling as they were ever ready to smile upon the companion of his wifeless life.
"Finished your ramble?" he enquired pleasantly.
Ruxton returned the smile and flung himself upon a long old settle before he replied.
"The ramble is finished," he said, preparing to light a cigar.
Their eyes met. The father knew there remained something as yet unspoken behind the reply. He waited. But Ruxton's decision was not yet taken.
"Finished your letters yet?" he enquired from behind a cloud of smoke.
The bright blue eyes surveying him twinkled.
"One more," his father said.
"Go ahead then."
Sir Andrew knew by the tone that ultimately the unspoken word was to come. He glanced down at his papers with a sigh.
"I believe, after all, I shall have to break with some of my old-fashioned habits. It is an awful thing to contemplate at my time of life. I think I must be getting old. The burden of private correspondence begins to weigh. I have always held that a private secretary for such a purpose is waste of money, and the undesirable admission of another into one's private life."
Ruxton stretched out his long legs. His bulk almost completely filled the settle.
"It's hard work for Yorkshire to change its habit. A feature applying pretty generally to the Briton. I only wonder a man of your vast fortune has clung to such habits so long. I, who possess but a twentieth of the fortune you possess, find I cannot do without one."
"But then you are a political man," his father smiled drily.
Ruxton nodded. "And in consequence I am saved much heartburning."
"Yes." Sir Andrew gathered up a sheaf of sealed envelopes and flung them into his post basket. "Twenty-five letters. Answers to cranks. Answers to those philanthropists who love to do good with other folks' money. Answers to beggars, to would-be blackmailers, to public institutions whose chief asset is a carefully compiled list of likely subscribers, and then—those whom we have decided to encourage—the inventors. Here is our friend Charles Smith." He picked up the last letter remaining to be dealt with. "What am I going to say to him?"
The old man scratched one shaggy eyebrow with the point of his penholder—one of his signs of doubt and perplexity.
"This secrecy business adds importance to the reply," he added.
Ruxton held out his hand.
"Let's read it again," he said.
His father passed the letter across, and sat watching the concentrated brows of his son, while the latter re-perused the contents.
The watching man was about to turn back to his desk when his eyes abruptly widened questioningly. Ruxton had suddenly sat bolt upright, and a quick flush of suppressed excitement spread over his strong expressive features.
"Veevee, London!" he exclaimed. "A code address which is obviously a word made out of initial letters. V. V." Then he looked across at his startled parent. "I say, Dad, there's mystery here all right—mystery everywhere to-night. V. V. Those initials fit Vita Vladimir exactly."
"Precisely. Also Vivian Vansittart," smiled his father. "Or any other high-sounding names beginning with V."
Ruxton passed the letter back with a laugh. Then he flung himself back on the settle.
"Wait