Produced by David Clarke, Carla Foust and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's note
Minor punctuation errors have been corrected without notice. Several
words were spelled in two different ways and not corrected; they
are listed at the end of this book. A few obvious typographical errors
have been corrected, and they are also listed at the end.
"_To Love_"
"_To love is the great amulet which makes
the world a garden._"
_R. L. STEVENSON_
"_TO LOVE_"
_By Margaret Peterson : Author of_
"_The Lure of the Little Drum," "Tony Bellew," etc._
_LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, LTD.
PATERNOSTER HOUSE, E.C. :: :: 1917_
"TO LOVE"
CHAPTER I
"Oh, but the door that waits a friend
Swings open to the day.
There stood no warder at my gate
To bid love stand or stay."
"You don't believe in marriage, and I can't afford to marry"--Gilbert
Stanning laughed, but the sound was not very mirthful and his eyes, as
he glanced at his companion, were uneasy and not quite honest. "We are
the right sort of people to drift together, aren't we, Joan?" His hands
as he spoke were restless, fidgeting with a piece of string which he
tied and untied repeatedly.
Joan Rutherford sat very straight in her chair, her eyes looking out in
front of her. His words had called just the faintest tinge of colour to
her cheeks. It was not exactly a beautiful face, but it was above
everything else lovable and appealing. Joan was twenty-three, yet she
looked still a child; the lines of her face were all a little
indefinite, except the obstinacy of her chin and the frankness of her
eyes. Her one claim to beauty, indeed, lay in those eyes; wide,
innocent, unfathomable, sometimes green, sometimes brown flecked with
gold. They seemed to hint at tragedy, yet they were far more often
laughter-filled than anything else. For the rest, Joan was an ordinary
independent young lady of the twentieth century who had lived in London
"on her own" for six months.
How her independence had come about is a complicated story. It had not
been with the approval of her people; the only people she possessed
being an old uncle and aunt who lived in the country. All Joan's nearer
relations were dead; had died when she was still a child; Uncle John and
Aunt Janet had seen to her bringing up. But at twenty-two and a-half
Joan had suddenly rebelled against the quiet monotony of their home
life. She had broken it to them gently at first, with an obstinate
resolve to get her own way at the back of her mind; in the end, as is
usually the case when youth pits itself against age, she had won the
day. Uncle John had agreed to a small but adequate allowance, Aunt Janet
had wept a few rather bitter tears in private, and Joan had come to
London to train as a secretary, according to herself. They had taken
rooms for her in the house of a lady Aunt Janet had known in girlhood,
and there Joan had dutifully remained. It was not very lively, but she
had a sense of gratitude in her heart towards Aunt Janet which prevented
her from moving. Joan was not thinking of all this as she sat there, nor
was she exactly seeing the sweep of grass that spread out in front of
them, nor the flowering shrubs on every side. Hyde Park was ablaze with
flowers on this hot summer's day and in addition a whole bed of
heliotrope was in bloom just behind their chairs. The faint sweet scent
of the flowers mixed with Joan's thoughts and brought a quick vision of
Aunt Janet. But more deeply still her mind was struggling with a desire
to know what exactly it was that swayed her when Gilbert Stanning spoke
to her, or when--as more often than not--he in some way or other
contrived to touch her. She had met him first at a dance that she had
been taken to by another girl and she had known him now about four
months. It was strange and a little disturbing the tumult his eyes waked
in her heart. The first time he had kissed her, one evening when they
had been driving home from the theatre in a taxi, she had turned and
clung to him, because suddenly it had seemed as if the whole world was
sweeping away from her. Gilbert had taken the action to mean that she
loved him; he had never wavered from that belief since. He possessed
every spare minute of her days, he kissed her whenever he could, and
Joan never objected. Only oddly, at moments such as this, her mind would
suddenly push forward the terse argument:
"Do you love him, or is it just the little animal in you that likes all
he has to give?"
Joan was often greatly disturbed about what she called the beast side of
her. During her year in London, under the guidance of another girl far
older and wiser than herself, she had plunged recklessly into all sorts
of knowledge, gleaned mostly from books such as Aunt Janet and even
Uncle John had never heard of, far less read. So Joan knew that there is
a beast side to all human nature, and she was for ever pausing to probe
this or that sensation down to its root. Her books had taught her other
theories too, and very young, very impetuous by nature, Joan rushed to a
full acceptance of the facts over which older women were debating. The
sanctity of marriage, for instance, was a myth invented by man because
he wished to keep women enslaved. Free love was the only beautiful
relationship that could exist between the sexes. Frankness and free
speech between men and women was another rule Joan asserted, in
pursuance of which she had long since threshed out the complicated
question of marriage with Gilbert. It was all rather childish and silly,
yet pathetic beyond the scope of tears, if you looked into Joan's sunlit
eyes and caught the play of dimples round her mouth. Rather as if you
were to come suddenly upon a child playing with a live shell.
What Gilbert Stanning thought of it all is another matter; Joan with all
her book-learned wisdom had not fathomed his character. He was a man
about thirty-two, good-looking, indolent and selfish. He had just enough
money to be intensely comfortable, provided he spent it all on himself,
and Gilbert certainly succeeded in being comfortable. There had been a
good many women in Gilbert's life of one kind and another, but he had
never known anyone like Joan before. At times her startling mixture of
knowledge and innocence amazed him, and she had fascinated him from the
first. He was a man easily fascinated by the little feminine things in a
woman. The way Joan's hair grew in curls at the nape of her neck
fascinated him, the soft red of her mouth, the way the lashes lay like a
spread-out fan on her cheeks and the quick changing lights and colours
in those eyes themselves. With Gilbert, when he wanted a thing he
generally got it, by fair means or foul; for the moment he wanted Joan
passionately, almost insanely. But the way in which she made the path
easy for his desire sometimes startled him; he could not make up his
mind whether she was playing some very deep game at his expense or
whether she really loved him to the exclusion of all caution.
It was this problem which he had been more or less trying to solve this
afternoon. At Joan's continued silence he leaned forward and put his
hand over hers where they lay on her lap.
"What are you dreaming of, little girl?" he asked.
The odd flutter which his touch always caused was shaking Joan's heart;
she tried, however, to face him indifferently, summoning up a smile.
"I was thinking," she corrected, "not dreaming."
"Well, the thoughts, then," asked the man, his fingers moved caressingly
up and down her hand, "what were they?"
"I was thinking," began Joan slowly; her eyes fell from his and she
stirred restlessly. "What did you mean just now when you spoke about
drifting together?" she asked.
"Little Miss Pretence," he whispered, "as if you didn't know what I
meant. If I were well off," he said suddenly (perhaps for the moment he
really meant it), "I would make you marry me whether you had new ideas
about it or not."
"Being well off wouldn't have anything to do with it," Joan answered,
"it is more degrading to marry for money than anything else."
"Sometimes I believe you think that we are degrading altogether," the
man said; he watched the colour creep into her face, "God knows we are
not much to boast of, and that is the truth."
Joan struggled with the problem in her mind. "There ought not to be
anything degrading about love," she said finally, and this time it was
his eyes that fell away from hers.
For a little they sat silent, Joan, for some reason known only to
herself, fighting against a strong inclination to cry. Gilbert had taken
away his hands, he sat back in his chair, his feet thrust out, head
down, eyes glooming at the dust. Joan stole a glance at him and felt a
sudden intense admiration for the beauty of his clean-cut profile, his
sleek, well-groomed head. Instinctively she put out a timid hand and
touched him.
"Are you angry with me about something?" she asked.
It may have been that during that pause Gilbert had been forming a good
resolution with all that was best in him to keep from spoiling this
girl's life. Her eyes perhaps had touched on some slumbering chord of
conscience. Her movement though, the little whispered words, drove all
thoughts except the ones which centred round his desire from his mind.
"Joan," he said quickly, his hands caught at hers again, "let us stop
playing this game of make-believe. Let us face the future one way or
another. I love you, I want you. If you love me, come to me, dear, as
you say there can be nothing degrading in love. Let us live our lives
together in the new best way."
It was all clap-trap nonsense and he did not believe a word of it, but
the force of his passion was unmistakable. It frightened and held Joan.
"You mean----" she whispered.
"I mean that I want you to come and live at my place," he answered. "I
have a decent little flat, as you know. That is not living on my money,
O proud and haughty one"--he was so sure of his victory that he could
afford to laugh--"you shall buy your own food if you like. And you shall
be free, as free as you are now, and--I, Joan," his voice thrilled
through her, "I shall love you and love you and love you till you waken
to see the world in quite a new light. Joan!"
His face was very close against hers, the scent of the heliotrope had
grown on the sudden stronger and more piercingly sweet, perhaps because
the sun had vanished behind the distant line of trees and a little
breeze from the oncoming night was blowing across the flower-beds
towards them. The quick-gathering twilight seemed to be shutting them
in; people passed along the path, young sweethearting couples too happy
in each other to notice anyone else. The tumult in Joan's mind died down
and grew very still, a sense of well-being and content invaded her
heart.
"Yes"--she spoke the word so softly he hardly heard--"I'll come,
Gilbert." Then she threw back her head a little and laughed, gay,
confident laughter. "It will be rather fun, won't it?" she said.