CHAPTER XII
Joan shuddered. To hear that fiat of her lover's-that only death or the divorce court could free a girl in her position from that slight yet deadly tie-and to hear it uttered with such seemingly heartless barbarity-was almost too ghastly to be borne.
She hardly understood his last impassioned appeal to her to confide in him-all-all that was troubling her. She stared miserably out upon the river. A steam launch went puffing up stream. Some one on deck was singing an apparently comic song to the strumming of a banjo; for shrill feminine laughter, mingled with ironic "bravos" was borne upon the breeze as the verse came to an end. Then the band engaged for the afternoon struck up a bright little march on the lawn the other side of the shrubbery. The mockery of the careless gaiety of ordinary life jarred her beyond endurance.
"Let us go away from here," she exclaimed, starting up, and glancing wildly at Vansittart.
His heart misgave him. This meant-he felt-that she was concealing something from him. Well! he must have patience, and bide his time.
"Presently," he said, in tender, but authoritative tones-and he drew her gently, but firmly, back on the seat by his side. "You must recover yourself first, darling-telling me of this wretched affair of your friend's has upset you! And really a girl who would be so reckless and foolish as to damn her whole life in advance by linking it legally with that of the first adventurer who came across her, is hardly worth your sympathy, by the way! Come, cheer up, or people may, will think-well, they will make a shrewd guess that there is something going on between us, and you don't want that, do you?"
"Just now, I don't seem to care!" she replied-and her glance was one of slight defiance. "You are too hard upon my poor friend-she was a dupe rather than-what was it? 'reckless, foolish'!"
"I am afraid I must plead guilty to having scant sympathy with dupes," he said, somewhat slightingly. Her manner had hurt him unconscionably.
"I suppose that is why you fell in with my idea of making dupes of my aunt and uncle!" She gave a shrill laugh, so unlike her ordinary sweet, pleasant laugh-the laugh that had haunted him those lonely nights and days in strange foreign lands, when he had striven to forget her-that his temporary annoyance gave way to concern.
"That is hardly kind!" he exclaimed, reproachfully. "Remember, it was not I who wished for this extraordinary secrecy! However, let that pass. One of the things I brought you here to tell you, dearest, is that I have hinted broadly to your uncle that I mean to make a dead set at you, and conquer all your various objections to marriage-and that I have his entire concurrence and sympathy! Is not that comforting?"
"It may be, to you," she said. "Honestly-dear" – she suddenly softened, and gave him a pathetic, beseeching glance-"I am good for nothing to-day-the past seems to have its clutch upon me, and I cannot feel with the present, or believe in a future! You must have patience with me-"
"You shall believe in a future, my angel!" he said emphatically-that look had swept away the cobwebs of doubt and vague suspicion, and he was once again the lover alone, as he drew her towards him and seemed to devour her with his eyes. "Listen, dearest-you have only to fix any day after a week is at an end, for our marriage, and the yacht will be ready. It is looking delightful-and I have already stocked it with a lot of things I think you will like. All I want now is one of your old frocks-to have some made by the pattern-and just one little shoe and glove" – he spoke hurriedly, somehow he shrank from such husband-like allusions as irreverent until she was actually and irrevocably Lady Vansittart-"may I, can I, have them, do you think? You see, I want you to be thoroughly, completely comfortable! And I do not mean the yacht to touch any port until we are absolutely compelled to-and then I shall choose some little station where one could not get ladies' dresses and things."
"How long shall we be able to wander without people knowing anything about us?" she asked eagerly. He was pleased-reassured-to see how the idea of a lengthy, secret honeymoon revivified her. She must love him! How else should she wish to sail the oceans of the globe with him, alone, as her companion?
"Dearest, that will be for you to say," he fondly returned, gazing rapturously at the exquisite profile, waxen and delicate against the drooping black feathers of her picture hat. If only the lines under those beautiful eyes were less sharply defined, and the droop in those soft, sweet lips less ominous of secret sorrow!
But, as he himself termed it, at that juncture in their tête-à-tête Joan seemed to "take a favourable turn." First, seemingly roused from her melancholy mood by talk of their approaching flight and consequent life on the high seas, she became steadily brighter as the afternoon progressed. Returning to the augmented crowd of Lady C-'s fashionable guests, they mingled with the rest, Lord Vansittart behaving with a decorous respect, and comporting himself admirably as a rejected suitor returned to the fray. Only when, by Sir Thomas' special invitation, he made one of the party on the coach, and throughout the home-going sat as close into Joan's pocket as he dared, did he permit himself to drop the carefully-assumed manner it had cost him such pains to maintain.
But, later, he was rewarded. After dining with Joan and a few guests of Sir Thomas', he spent a delightful half-hour with her on the balcony, among the flowers under the awning. No one could see them from below-opposite, the trees in the enclosure were dusky masses in the starlight. The summer night seemed charged with love-murmurs-the glittering heavens to twinkle joyously of the great emotion which brought forth the Universe.
"Only a few days-and you will belong to me for ever!" he said, rapturously. Almost as alone in their sought-for seclusion as if they were already riding the waves of the southern seas in the ship that was to see their first matrimonial bliss, he held her in his arms, and tenderly, reverently-with almost the passionate devotion of an anchorite kissing cherished relics-kissed her pale cheeks, her sweet mouth, her beautiful, thoughtful brows. "Darling-I will make you forget all your troubles-your self-reproach-everything that can possibly detract from your happiness! I promise you I will! Do, do say that you believe that I am capable of doing it!"
"If any one is, you are!" she murmured, clinging to him. "Somehow, to-night, I feel happier than usual-as if life had something in it, after all! And it is you who have made me cheer up-a few hours with you has given me a certain confidence-or rather, I should say, a hope-that perhaps the day may come when I shall be able to forget-everything-but my life with you!"
"God grant it!" he piously exclaimed; and for that night at least his prayer seemed answered-for after he and the other guests had departed, Joan retired to her room and seeking her couch, slept more tranquilly and dreamlessly than she had done since those evil days when Victor Mercier cajoled her into marrying him-and when almost on the morrow, she had learnt that her husband was an absconding criminal.
She awoke, too, with a new sense of safety-and of the very present refuge in her trouble-Vansittart.
"Even if he got to know-he would not turn against me, I am sure he would not!" she told herself, as she lay and thought of him, smiling. For once she looked at peace and happy. "I feel it! How strange it would be if it turned out that he would have to fight my battles with uncle? But such things do happen-in real life as well as in fiction."
She lay and mused happily on the delightful subject-Vansittart, and the coming days when they would be all in all to each other-until Julie came with the hot water and the letters.
Then-it was as if death itself laid a cold hand on her heart-for there was one in the detested writing of Victor Mercier. He had dared-risked-writing to her openly in her own home, under her uncle's roof!
What did it mean?
CHAPTER XIII
The latent sense of being arbiter of a beautiful young woman's fate-which had been perhaps Victor Mercier's only sentiment in Joan's regard during their separation-developed, on that evening they met in the Regent's Park, into a certain passionate exultation in possessing her for his own, evidently against her wish. But when he felt convinced, from Paul Naz' innocent betrayal of society talk, that the girl who was legally his wife had a lover, and that already their names were coupled together, the smouldering resentment that her girlish passion for him was dead, burst into a fierce flame of absolute hatred.
He had enjoyed abandoning himself to the enjoyment of Vera's love with a double zest-because it was a secret revenge upon Joan. He had gone about after he had received Joan's letter postponing their next meeting, making subtle and refined plans for the long-drawn-out punishment of his "faithless wife," as he termed her. He told himself he was glad of a week's interlude. If he had seen her then, he might have betrayed his wrath and desire for revenge. His tactics were quite the opposite of that.
"First, I must compromise her," he decided. "I must have her actions now, at the actual moment, in my power-she must have been alone with me in such a way as to turn this noble lord who wants her against her, should he know of it! Yes-if she had refused to see me, she might have gone in for a divorce! But if I have her condonation for the past on my side, she will have no case-even if she would not have entirely damned herself with this cur of a lover!"
This accomplished-something tangible in the present to hold over her head-he would take her away and make constant and passionate love to her. He told himself grimly that there would be a fantastic delight in this uxorious enjoyment of a wife whose heart was given to another man, which fell to the lot of few. The secret ecstasy would be the knowledge that he had left the loving arms of a devoted girl who was ready to die for him, and could return to them at any moment-for he well knew that Vera's infatuation for him included wholesale acceptance of any lie he chose to invent to account for his absence, or any detail of his life.
"Then-I can play upon them all in turn, as upon a set of musical instruments," he promised himself. "The uncle will do what I ask-snob as he is, parvenu, beggar on horseback! – to hide what he will think disgrace! The lover-well, he shall be neatly disposed of by-and-bye. He shall see me with her in my arms, somehow, somewhere, somewhen! Upon my word, that will be almost as much torture to them both as the old-fashioned, out-of-date revenges. It is a poor revenge upon people to kill them! Let them live-and thwart them, make them writhe in their impotence to do what they want!"
And during this week Vera must be plunged more hopelessly and abjectly in love, so that she would become such a mere echo of himself that she would do, or not do, whatever he suggested, without so much as a second thought.
So he devoted himself to her, and spent his money freely in the process. He bought her pretty trinkets, and some ready-made costumes and becoming hats-and almost every day took her some excursion. They had a day at Brighton, one at Windsor, one in Richmond Park, one up river. That was the day before the one in which the crucial interview with Joan was to occur; and he chose to assume a portentous gravity, and to tell her that he must go away for a time.
"My sweetest pet, this being with you is pretty well driving me mad with impatience to get rid of that cat of a woman who keeps us apart," he told her, as, after they had had a little fête champêtre of cold chicken and champagne, he lounged at her side in a boat drawn up under the willows of a little creek. "So I have made up my mind to set about it at once! What do you say?"
"Dearest!" was all she could reply. Her beautiful blue eyes gazed at him through a mist of emotion. How deliriously dainty she looked-flickering shadows cast by the willow branches on her petite, white-clad figure-the heat of a mid-summer noon bringing a rich rose glow to her rounded cheeks, so much more delicately pretty without war-paint.
"It will necessitate my being absent for a little while, but that you must not mind," he went on, judicially, resting his head on her shoulder and thinking what a wonderful provision of Nature it was-this unbounded credulity of enamoured women. Did they really believe in their men, he wondered, a little contemptuously-or did their frantic desire for their love to be returned swallow up everything that stood in its way? "When one wants a good thing, one must be content to make a little sacrifice for it, eh, darling? I don't think you are as selfish as most of your sex, I will say that for you!"
She glanced at him gratefully. One word of praise from his lips recompensed her for all the drudgery, hard work, and mental suffering of the past years-when, not knowing where he was or what had become of him-whether he was dead or in prison, or fallen among thieves in some unreachable country-she had slaved and toiled nearly the four-and-twenty hours through to keep a home together in which, some day, to welcome back the wanderer, or even the total wreck of him.
"And now you must help me in something," he went on, sliding his arm about her slender waist and looking up into her face with those sinister, penetrating black eyes, which were, perhaps, the deterrent when dogs growled and snarled at, and children fled from, him. "I am not one of those silly men who talk about their business-who chatter, prate, prattle, and do nothing! – I say little-but act! (The secret of successful life, my dear!) I have not been idle since I returned with the hope of winning you for my wife. Already I have found out much of the woman who was my ruin for a time with her unscrupulous devilry, which will help me immensely to free myself from that obnoxious tie. But I have still to see a very important witness against her, and I can only see the man at my leisure at home. Do you think that if I appoint to-morrow night, you can persuade mother to go to the theatre with you?"
"Don't you know? She is going to the entertainment given for the patients at the Hospital," returned Vera, eagerly. "That will be the very thing for you! You will have the house to yourself. Mr. Dobson is going, of course!" (Mr. Dobson was a student lodger).
"Everything smiles upon us, my love," he said, tenderly, grimly congratulating himself on his good luck. And he gave himself up to love-making for the remainder of the summer afternoon-returning earlier than he had intended, though, to write that letter to Joan: the letter which Julie brought among others to her bedside, and which she read with blanched cheeks and sinking heart: -
"You must not go to the old place, but come to me here, to-morrow night, Wednesday, at nine. If you fail, I intend to call upon you without demur, and at all risk. Take a cab to the corner of Westminster Bridge, the other side of the river, and then inquire for Haythorn Street.
a'COURT."
CHAPTER XIV
The tone of the missive seemed to half paralyse poor Joan. For a little while she lay prone on her bed, unable to think, answering Julie mechanically as she hovered about, pulling up the blinds, getting the bath ready, placing the dainty garments ready to hand.
Then, with the first returning pang of despair-for that letter told her that she need not imagine she was in the least secure-a sword of Damocles hung over her unhappy head-she cast about what she must do.
Go, of course! that was certain. And make terms-or, rather, accede in toto to anything he might propose for that flight of theirs which was never to take place.
"I had better take money with me," she told herself. "And-to a certain extent I must take Julie into my confidence." "Julie, I have no money by me, do you know," she said, irrelevantly, as Julie was dressing her golden hair, and wondering why her young mistress' beautiful face was so pale and triste. Julie usually cashed her young lady's cheques drawn to "Self" for pocket-money.
"Shall I go for madamoiselle-after breakfast?" asked Julie, sweetly, as she vigorously combed the glistening hairs from the jewelled hair brush, one of Sir Thomas' frequent gifts to his niece. She had always liked her beautiful young mistress, but since Joan had sympathized with her love affair with Paul Naz, she had been ready and willing to fly to the ends of the earth to do her bidding, if need be.
"No. I am going shopping in the carriage, and you shall come with me. I don't like your taking much money into omnibuses, Julie, so I think I shall draw a large sum at once. It is perfectly safe locked up in this room."
Julie readily acquiesced-and during the morning drove with Joan to several shops, and to the Bank, where she cashed a cheque for a hundred and fifty pounds in rouleaux of gold, which she carried in a bag to the carriage. As they were driving home Joan told her she wanted her to help her in an errand of charity that very evening.
"Mais certainement, mademoiselle!" the girl readily exclaimed. "To-night? I can easily go out another evening."
"I don't want you to do that," returned Joan. "What I want is this. My uncle knows nothing of this poor person I am helping, and I do not want him to know. I thought that I might take a sudden fancy to go-say, to Madame Tussauds', which I have not seen for years-that we might start together in a cab-my uncle and aunt are going out to dinner, and have the landau-and then I will drop you at a certain spot, and meet you there again when you are returning home."
Julie acquiesced with acclamation-and flushed with pleasure at being admitted to share a secret with the sweet, proud girl who would, she was certain, very soon be a great lady. If she had her doubts about the "poor person," and imagined, from what she knew by experience of Joan's eccentricity-as she considered her mistress' coldness hitherto in regard to the opposite sex-that the nocturnal escapade meant an assignation with the charming milord who intended to make a great lady of Miss Thorne-she kept it to herself.
Mistress and maid carried out their plan without hindrance. Sir Thomas teased his niece a little slily about the sudden fancy for waxworks-he had, like Julie, some arrière-pensée not unconnected with Vansittart-but he made no objection to the expedition. Nor did Lady Thorne, to whom, after his talk with Vansittart, he had said, after giving her some broad hints-"my dear, understand this once and for all-if we give Joan her head, and don't interfere in the least, she will be the Viscountess Vansittart before we know where we are!" Shortly after Joan had had a solitary tea-dinner in her sitting-room upstairs-a meal she affected when she preferred not to accompany Sir Thomas and Lady Thorne to a long, dreary, dinner-party of old fogies-mistress and maid started off in a four-wheeled cab to which a man-servant pompously gave the address-"Madame Tussord's."
Julie had admired, with a French girl's admiration, her young lady's savoir faire, when she had suggested that they should actually make a tour of the exhibition and take an opportunity of slipping quietly out when others likely to absorb the door-keeper's attention were coming in, and had readily acquiesced in the idea.
They alighted at the entrance, paid their money, walked leisurely in, strolled about, apparently examining the effigies with interest then steering unostentatiously towards the door by which they had entered; they waited until a number of lively children were flocking obstreperously upstairs and had to be held in check at the turnstile, when they issued forth, and walked along the Marylebone Road.
When they came to a church, Joan stopped. "Will you remember this place?" she asked. "You are sure? Then I will leave you here, and meet you again at the exact spot at eleven o'clock. If you are here first, wait until I come. On no account are you to go home alone-without me! Do you understand?"
Julie's protestations that she understood were sincere and hearty. Joan said no more, but took the bag from her-Julie had mentally commented upon its weight, and wondered who was the lucky person to be benefited by its contents-and with an easy "au revoir, then," was gone.
She sped along the street as much in the shadow as she could, lest a glance of recognition might by any possibility be cast upon her from any of the carriages which drove by almost in numbers, for it was the climax of an unusually gay London season. Then, when she began to meet crawling cabs and hansoms, she hailed one, gave the order, "Westminster Bridge-the Southwark end," and sank back in the corner a little spent and exhausted by the first part of her escapade.
"So far, so good," she told herself, drawing a long breath of mingled anxiety and disgust. Although she had steadily pulled herself together, willed resolutely to go through the tragic farce with Victor Mercier, as her only alternative-her loathing of the part she had to play was so intense that at times she felt tempted to take a leap into the black waters of the great river instead of submitting to his endearments. As the cab drove briskly towards Westminster, and her eyes rested miserably on the familiar landmarks of the great city, so beautiful in its nightly robe of the mingled light and darkness which is so typical of its very soul-she said to herself in a wild moment-"death or Vansittart-which?" and the memory of her beloved one's fine frank face, glorified into absolute beauty by the strong tenderness of his deep love-won.
"Even Victor's touch-his kiss," she grimly told herself, "are not too much to pay for a lifetime with him!"
A clock informed her that it was considerably past nine o'clock. So much the better! The shorter that hated tête-à-tête with Mercier would be, the more thankful she would feel.
The air blowing freshly down stream as they crossed the bridge, revived her. She alighted, paid the cabman, and taking her bag tightly in her hand, passed some roughs who were shouting noisily as they came along, by stepping into the road; then seeing the helmet and tunic of a policeman silhouetted against the sky-still dully red after the sunset-she went across the road to him.
"Can you direct me to Haythorn Street?" she asked.
"Haythorn Street? Yes, miss. Straight along that road, and first to the left."
Evidently the street where her bugbear at present lived was an ordinary one, and respectable. The policeman's tone of voice suggested that! She went along the road, which was rather dark, until she came to a neat-looking street of small, uniformly built houses. Yes, this was Haythorn Street-she read the name by the light of the gas lamp close by. Now to find the number! The corner was number one, so she went on at once, and then her heart gave a dull, leaden thud against her chest. She saw a dark figure on a little balcony a few houses up, which disappeared as she advanced. When she came up to number twelve, the street door stood open-Victor came out, took her hand, and led her in.
"Welcome, my dearest wife!" he exclaimed, embracing her. Then he closed the door. She saw an odious, triumphant smile on his sharp, handsome features, and in his bright dark eyes. He was carefully dressed. Although only half a Frenchman, he had the southern taste for fantasy in costume. A diamond stud shone in his embroidered shirt-front, a button-hole of some white, strongly-scented blossom was in his coat.
"You are frightened, my own!" he caressingly said, with a suggestion of proprietorship which made her inwardly shudder.
"Don't be! We are quite alone in the house, you and I! And I will take precautions to keep us so," he added, returning to the door and putting up the chain.