"Aye, thought and brain were there, some kind
Of faculty that men mistake
For talent, when their wits are blind,--
An aptitude to mar and break
What others diligently make."
A. L. GORDON.
Impulse had always been a guiding factor in Robert Landon's life. If he
saw a thing and wanted it, impulse would prompt him to reach out his
hand and snatch it; if the thing were beyond his reach, he would
climb--if necessary--over the heart of his best friend to obtain it;
should it prove of very fragile substance and break in his hands, he
would throw it away, but its loss, or the possible harm he had inflicted
in his efforts to obtain it, brought no regrets. He made love
deliriously, on fire himself for the moment, but never once had he so
far forgot himself as to come from the flame in any way singed. Many
tragedies lay behind the man, for impulse is hardly a safe guide through
life; but he himself was essentially too level-headed, too selfish, to
be the one who suffered.
He had spoken and danced and made love to Joan on an impulse. Beyond
that, he set himself down seriously and painstakingly to win her. Most
women, he knew, like to be carried forward on the wings of a
swift-rushing desire, but there was some strange force of reserve behind
this girl's constant disregard of his real meaning in the game they
played. She was willing, almost anxious to be friends; it did not take
him long to find out how lonely and dreary had been the life she was
leading. She went out with him daily; it became a recognized thing for
him to fetch her in his small car every evening at office. Sometimes
they would dine together at one of the many little French restaurants in
Soho, and go to a theatre afterwards; sometimes they would just drive
about the crowded lighted streets, or slip into the Park for a stroll,
leaving the car in charge of some urchin for a couple of pennies. Since
he was out on the trail, as his friends would have said, every other
interest in his life was given up to his impulse to beat down this
girl's reserve, but all his attempts at passionate love-making left her
unresponsive. She would draw back, as it were, into her shell, and for
days she would avoid meeting him. Going out some back way at the office
and never being at home when he called at Montague Square. Then he would
write little notes to her and bribe the office-boy to deliver them,
begging her pardon most humbly--he played his cards, it may be noticed,
very seriously--imploring her to be friends again. And Joan would
forgive him and for a little they would be the best of companions.
But through it all, and though she shut her eyes more or less to the
trend of events, Joan's mind refused to be satisfied. She was restless
and at times unhappy; she had her hours of wondering where it would all
end, her spells of imagination when she saw Landon asking her to marry
him. When she thought about it at all it always ended like that, for she
could not blind her eyes to the fact of the man's love for her. Then she
would shun his society, and endeavour to build up a wall of reserve
between them, for it was her answer to his question that she could not
bring herself to face.
It was on one of these occasions that she made up her mind definitely to
break with him altogether. She wrote him a short note, saying that she
was going to be dreadfully busy at office and that as she had another
girl coming to stay with her--both statements equally untrue--she was
afraid it would be no use his calling to fetch her.
Landon accepted this attitude in silence, though one may believe it did
something to fan the flame of his passion, and for ten whole days he
left her entirely alone. Then he wrote.
Joan found the letter waiting for her on the hall table when she came
home one evening after a peculiarly dull and colourless day. It had been
delivered by hand and was addressed simply to "Pierrette, In the Attic."
Mrs. Carew must have been a little surprised at such a designation. Joan
took it upstairs to read, lingering over the opening of it with a
pleasurable thrill. The days had been very grey lacking his
companionship.
"Dear Pierrette," Landon had written, "is our romance finished, and why?
The only thing I have left to comfort me is a crushed red rose. You wore
it the first evening we ever met. Pierrette, you are forgetting that it
is summer. How can you wake each morning to blue skies and be
conventional? Summer is nearly over, and you do not know what you are
missing. Come out and play with me, Pierrette; I will not kiss even your
hands if you object. I can take you down next Sunday to a garden that I
know of on the river, and you shall pick red roses. Will you not come,
Pierrette?"
Joan sat on in the dark of her little attic (for if the lamp was not
required before supper Mrs. Carew had a way of not bringing it up until
it was quite dark) with the letter on her lap. She was making up her
mind to tell Landon about Gilbert, about her principles which had been
rather roughly shaken, about her ideas, which still held obstinate root
in her mind. If he loved her enough not to mind what was past, why
should she not marry him? She had proved once how bitter it was to stand
against the convictions of the world alone. His fortnight's absence had
shown her how unbearable the dullness of her days had become; she could
not struggle on much longer. Her mind played with the prospect of
consenting, of how it would open up new worlds to her, of what a change
it would bring into her life.
It was with a conviction anyway that great things might be in the
balance that she stepped into Landon's car on Sunday afternoon and
settled herself back against the cushions. They disregarded the
fortnight's lapse in their friendship; neither referred to it in any
way, and Landon was exceptionally cheerful and full of conversation on
the drive out. Joan was content to sit quiet and listen and to let her
eyes, tired of dusty files and hours of typewriting, feast on the
country as they flashed past.
The garden that he had promised her proved all that his descriptions had
claimed. It lay at the back of an old stone house, off the high road and
away from the haunts of the ordinary holiday makers. Landon had chanced
on it once and the place had taken a great hold on his imagination. One
could be so alone at the foot of the garden, where it sloped down to the
water's edge, that one could fancy oneself in a world of one's own.
The house itself was a quaint, old-fashioned building with small rooms
and tiny windows, but the walled-in garden where the roses grew, and the
river garden, which stretched right down to the brim of the river with
its fruit trees and tall scented grasses, were both beautiful. They had
tea out there, and they picnicked on the grass, watching the sun's
reflections playing hide and seek in the river.
After tea, Landon insisted on strolling round and collecting all the
roses he could lay his hands on for Joan. He threw them finally, a heavy
heap of scented blossoms, on to her lap. He said their colour was
reflected in her cheeks, their beauty in her eyes.
"It is a shame to have picked them so early," Joan remonstrated; "they
will die now before we get home."
"Let them," he answered, "at least they have had their day and done well
in it." He threw himself down on the grass beside her. "Aren't they
glorious, Pierrette?" he said; but his eyes were not on the flowers.
Joan stirred uneasily. The great moment was drawing closer and closer,
she was growing afraid, as are all women when the sound of Love's wings
comes too near them.
"I wish you wouldn't call me by that name any more," she said,
"because----"
"Well, why because?" Landon asked as she hesitated. "One of the things
that do not seem quite right to you, like kissing, or holding hands?" He
took up one of the roses from her lap and pulled it to pieces with
ruthless hands. "What a puritan you are!" he went on abruptly. "Do you
know we can only love once, isn't your heart hungry for life, Pierrette?
Sometimes your eyes are."
"Don't!" said Joan quickly, "that is another thing I wish you would not
do, make personal remarks; it makes me feel uncomfortable."
"Why don't you tell the truth?" he asked fiercely. "Why don't you say
afraid?"
"Because it does not," she answered; her eyes, however, would not meet
his. "I think uncomfortable describes it better."
Landon stared at her with sombre eyes. He was beginning to tire of their
pretty game of make believe; perhaps impulse was waning within him.
Anyway he felt he had wasted enough time on the chase. But to-day Joan
seemed very charming, and her fear, for he could see plainly enough that
she was afraid, was fanning the flame of his desire into a new spurt of
life.
"I am going to make love to you, Pierrette," he said; "I am going to
wake up that cold heart of yours. Does the thought frighten you,
Pierrette? because even that won't prevent me doing it."
He had drawn her close to him, she could feel his arms round her like
strong bands of iron. Joan lifted a face from which all the colour had
fled to his.
"Don't, please don't!" Her bewildered mind struggled with all the
carefully thought-out things she was going to have said to him. But the
crisis was too overwhelming for her; she could only remember the one
final thought that had been with her. "You may not want to marry me when
you know about me," she whispered, and ended her words with a sob.
The man laughed triumphantly. "I don't want to marry you," he answered,
"I want to love you and make you for a little love me, and this is how I
begin the lesson." He bent his face to hers quickly, kissing her
passionately, fiercely, on the lips.
For a second such a tumult of passionate amazement shook Joan that she
stayed quiet in his arms. Then everything that was strong, all the
inherited purity in her nature, came to her aid and summoned her
fighting forces to resist. She struggled in his arms furiously, she had
not known she held such stores of strength; then she wrenched herself
free and stood up. Fear, if fear had been the cause of her early
discomfort, had certainly left her; it was blind, passionate rage that
held her silent before him.
The man rose to his feet and essayed a laugh, but it was rather a
strained effort. "That was a most undignified proceeding, Pierrette," he
said; "what on earth made you do it?"
"How dared you?" flamed Joan. "How dared you speak to me, touch me like
that?"
"Dared?" the man answered; he was watching her with mocking eyes and
something evil had come to life on his face. Cold anger that she should
have made a fool of him and a baulked passion which could very easily
turn to hate. "This outburst is surely a little ridiculous. What did
you think I wanted out of the game? Did it really occur to you that I
was going to ask you to marry me? My dear girl!" He shrugged his
shoulders, conveying by that movement a vast amount of contempt for her
dreams. "And as for the rest, I have never yet met a woman who objected
to being kissed, though some of them may pretend they do."
Joan stared at him; he had stooped and was gathering up the roses that
lay between them. Rage was creeping away from her and leaving her with a
dull sense of undignified defeat. Once again she had pitted the ideal of
a dream against a man's harsh reality, and lost. Love! She had dreamed
that this man loved her, she had held herself unworthy of the honour he
paid her. This was what his honour amounted to--"I have never yet met a
woman who objected to being kissed."
She turned away and walked blindly towards the house.
Landon caught her up before she reached the gate of the garden. His arms
were full of the roses and apparently he had won back to his usual good
nature.
"Having made ourselves thoroughly disagreeable to each other," he said,
"let us make it up again for the time being. It is all rather absurd,
and you have got to get back to town somehow or other."
He helped her into the car with just his usual solicitude, tucking the
rug round her and laying the pile of roses on her lap; but on the way
home he was very silent and from the moment they started till the time
came for saying good-bye he did not speak a word to her.
As they stood together, while Joan was opening the door with her latch
key, he put his hand for a moment over hers.
"Good-bye, Pierrette," he said, "I am sorry you won't have anything to
do with me. I should have made you happy and given you a good time.
Sometimes it is a pity to aim too high; you are apt to miss things
altogether."
Fanny was waiting in Joan's room when she got back, tucked up in her
favourite position in the arm-chair. She had been away for the last ten
days on one of her periodical trips. "My!" she gasped, disentangling
herself to greet the other; "what roses, honey! Straight from the
country, aren't they, and a car--I can hear it buzzing outside. Is it
your young man?" She paused on the thought tip-toe with excitement, her
eyes studying Joan across the flowers she had seized. "And is he
straight? the other sort won't do for you; you would hate yourself in a
week."
Joan subsided on to the bed, taking off her hat with hands that shook
over the task.
"No," she answered, "he is not straight, Fanny; but it doesn't matter,
because I have finished with him. Take away the flowers with you, will
you? they seem to have given me a headache."
Fanny dropped the roses in a shower and trod them under foot as she ran
to Joan. "He has hurt you;" she spoke fiercely, flinging her arms round
the other girl. "God, how I hate men at times! He has hurt you, honey."
"Only my pride," Joan admitted; but the tears so long held back came in
a flood now; she laid her head down on Fanny's shoulder and sobbed and
sobbed.
The other girl waited till the storm had passed; then she rose to her
feet and bundling the roses together with an aggressive movement opened
the door and flung them out into the passage.
"I have got an idea," she said; "you have been about fed up with office
for months past. Well, why not chuck it? Come with me. I have got a job
in a show that is going on tour next week. There is room in the chorus,
I know; come with me, won't you?"
Her earnestness made Joan laugh. "What shall I come as, Fanny? I cannot
sing, and I have never acted in my life."
"That is nothing," Fanny went on impatiently. "You are young, you are
pretty; you can dance, I suppose, and look nice. I can get you taken on
to-morrow, for old Daddy Brown, that is the manager, is a friend of
mine, and while he is a friend he will do anything for me. Oh, come, do
come." She caught hold of Joan's hands. "It will be great, we shall be
together, and I will show you that there is fun in life; fun, and love,
and laughter."
She was laughing herself hysterically, her figure seemed poised as if
for an instant outbreak into the dance she spoke of. Joan watched her
with envious eyes. Fanny's philosophy in life was so plain to see. She
took things that came her way with eager hands; she seemed to pass
unscathed, unsullied, through the dregs of life and find mirth in the
dreariest surroundings. And to-day Landon had broken down one more
barrier of the pride which kept Joan's feet upon the pathway of
self-respect. Of what use were her ideals since they could not bring her
even one half hour's happiness? The road stretched out in front of her
empty and sunless.
These thoughts swept through her mind almost in the space of a second.
Then she rose quickly to her feet.
"I'll come, Fanny," she said; "it really amounts to turning my back on a
battle; still I will come."