"Ah, sweet, and we too, can we bring
One sigh back, bid one smile revive?
Can God restore one ruined thing,
Or he who slays our souls alive
Make dead things thrive?"
A. C. SWINBURNE.
Early morning brought Joan a letter from Dick. She had hardly slept all
night. Once she had got up, determined to write him; the truth would
look more cold and formal in a letter, but her courage had failed her,
and instead she had sat crouched over the table, her body shaken with a
storm of tears. Then Fanny had come in, an after-supper Fanny, noisy and
sentimental, and she had had to be helped to bed, coughing and
explaining that "life was good if you only knew how to live it." Joan
had crept back to her own bed once the other girl had fallen asleep, and
she had lain with wide eyes watching the night turn from blackness to
soft grey, from grey to clear, bright yellow. There were dark shadows
round her eyes in the morning, and her face was white and
strained-looking.
"DEAR HEART," Dick had written:
"Is it cheek to begin a letter like that to you? Only after
last night I seem to know that you love me and that is all
that really matters. I am coming to 6, Montague Square, on
Tuesday afternoon at five o'clock to get my answer. Doesn't
that sound precise? I would like to come to-day, but I won't
because I don't want to hurry you. Oh, dear heart, I love
you!--I have loved you for longer than you know of just at
present. That is one of the things I am going to explain to
you on Tuesday,
"Yours ever,
"DICK GRANT."
Fanny was much perturbed by Joan's appearance when she was sufficiently
awake to notice it.
"My, honey, you do look bad," she gasped. "Daddy Brown will see I was
talking the truth last night, which is a good thing in one way. He was
most particularly anxious to see you last night, was very fussed when he
found you hadn't come." She paused and studied Joan's face from under
her lashes. "Did you meet him?" she inquired finally.
"Yes," Joan admitted; she turned away from the other's inquisitive eyes.
"He walked home with me."
"I told him you had a headache and were not coming to supper with us,"
Fanny confessed. "It is no use being annoyed with me, honey. I thought
it over and it seemed to me that by saying 'No' to him because of
something that happened before he knew you, you were cutting off your
nose to spite your face. Not that I personally should tell him," she
added reflectively; "he is too straight himself to understand a woman
doing wrong; but that is for you to decide. One thing I do know: it
won't make a pin's worth of difference to his wanting to marry you; he
is too much in love for that."
She was saying aloud the fear which had knocked at Joan's heart all
night. It might be true that Dick was too much in love to let what she
had to tell him stand between them. But afterwards, when love had had
time to cool, when trust and good-fellowship would be called on to take
the place of passion, when he saw her, perhaps, with his child in her
arms, how would he look at her then? Would he not remember and regret,
would not a shadow stand between them, a shadow from the one sin which
no man can forgive in a woman? She was like a creature brought to bay;
he had guessed that she loved him; what arguments could she use, how
stand firm in her denial against that knowledge?
For a little she had thought of the possibility of his taking her just
as Gilbert had done. She was not worthy to be his wife, but she would be
content, she knew, to follow him to the end of the world. Not because
she viewed the matter now in the same light as she had done in those
days. She had never loved Gilbert; if she had, shame and disgrace would
have been powerless to drive her from his side, and she would have
wanted him to marry her, just as now she wanted marriage with Dick. It
seemed to her that, despite pioneers and rebels and the need for greater
freedom, which she and girls like her had been fighting for, the initial
fact remained and would always remain the same. When you loved you
wanted to belong to the man absolutely and entirely; freedom counted for
very little, you wanted to give him your life, you wanted to have the
right to bear his children. That was what it all came down to in the
end; Love was bigger and stronger than any ideas, and marriage had been
built upon the law of Love.
* * * * *
Daddy Brown came round in the course of the morning to talk over his new
idea for Joan's future. It appeared that if she was willing to think it
over, he would pay for her to have singing and dancing lessons during
the winter. That was, of course, provided the War did not come off. If
it did, as he had said once before to Fanny, there would not be any
Spring tours for the Brown Company.
"But war isn't likely," he spoke heavily. "England has too much to lose
to go running into it if she can steer clear, and there's my offer, my
girl. I think, from what I saw last night, that if you like to put your
heart into it you ought to make something of an actress. You have
distinct ability, and you have charm, which is on the good side too."
Joan was hardly in the mood to pay much attention to her future
prospects; the present loomed too forbiddingly ahead of her. She would
let him know, she told him finally; she was most awfully grateful to him
for his suggestion, but she must have at least a fortnight to think
things out and decide what she was going to do.
"Very well," Brown agreed, he rose to take his leave; "but mind you, it
is worth considering, young lady; you don't get such an offer every
day."
Fanny was staying behind for another day; she had some amusement in
store with Swetenham which she did not want to miss, but the rest of the
company, Joan included, caught the three o'clock train back to town.
Joan could not refuse to go with them, but the journey was one long
torture to her; she wanted to get right away by herself; there was only
one day left in which to plan and make ready for Dick's visit. Some of
Brown's ponderous remarks as to the probable effect of a war on the
theatrical profession had filtered down to the junior members of the
company. They talked together rather mournfully as to what the winter
might be going to mean for them. "If it knocks pantomimes, we are done,"
Grace Binning summed up the situation. But Grace Binning was inclined to
be mournful; as Mrs. O'Malley said, her sprained ankle would keep her
out of work in any case for six weeks.
At Victoria Station Strachan ferreted out Joan's luggage and hailed a
taxi for her.
"Good-bye," he said to her at the last--they had always been very good
friends, with a little encouragement he might have considered himself in
love with her--"and good luck. Also, if you will excuse me saying so,
Miss Rutherford, I should marry that faithful young man. You are not a
bit suited or happy in our life."
Then he drew back his head quickly and smiled at her as the taxi started
off.
Joan had written to Mrs. Carew, asking her to see about a room, and
found to her relief that her old attic was still at her disposal.
"Thought you would find it homelike," Mrs. Carew panted up the stairs in
front of her, "and for that matter it has been shut up since you left.
Bad year for letting this has been."
Obviously the room had been shut up since she left. Joan struggled with
the fast-closed window and threw it open, but even so the place retained
an atmosphere of overpowering stuffiness, and presently, not staying to
unpack or open the letter which had been waiting for her on the hall
table, she sallied out again in search of fresh air.
She would walk to Knightsbridge, she decided, and so on through the
Park. If she tired herself out perhaps she would be able to sleep when
she went to bed, and sleep was what she needed almost more than anything
else.
The Park was deserted and sun-swept; it had been an exceptionally hot
summer, the trees and bushes seemed smothered under a weight of dust.
Joan found a seat in sight of one of the stretches of water and opened
her letter. It was from Miss Abercrombie, that she had known from the
envelope, and written from the Rutherford home at Wrotham.
"DEAR JOAN," the letter ran:
"Your people are home, they have just come back from abroad
and had a very tiresome journey over because of the
mobilization on the Continent. Janet wrote, or rather your
uncle wrote for her, asking me to be here to meet them. Janet
is very ill, she will never be able to walk or stand up again
in her life. They have tried all sorts of things for her
abroad, now it has come to the last. All day, and most of the
night, for she sleeps very badly, she lies flat on her back,
and all the time her eyes seem to be watching for something.
She speaks very little, everything seems to be shut away in
her heart, but yesterday--after having first talked the matter
over with your uncle--I went up to her room and asked her
point blank: 'Janet, aren't you eating out your heart for
Joan?' and she nodded stiffly, the tears in her eyes. So I sat
right down and told her all about you: about your accident,
about the hard (child, I know it has been hard) fight you have
had, and at the end I said: 'Shall I send for her, Janet?'
This time when she nodded the tears were streaming down her
face. So I am sending for you. Don't let pride or anger stand
between you, enough anguish has been caused already on both
sides, and she is practically dying. Come, child, show a
charity which your struggle will have taught you, and help to
make her going a little easier, for she has always loved you,
and her heart breaks for the need of you."
It was a very sentimental letter for Miss Abercrombie to have written.
And Aunt Janet was dying; quite long ago Joan had forgiven the hardness
from her, there was no bitterness in her heart now, only a great sense
of pity. She would go, of course she would go. Like a flash it came to
her that she might just slip away and leave no address, no message to
Dick. But even with the thought came the knowledge that she would only
be shelving the difficulty for a little; he would wait, he would search
till he found her. She did not think he would be very easy to put off.
With Miss Abercrombie's letter open on her lap, she sat and watched the
people passing by her. She was thinking of all her life since she had
first come to London; Gilbert, their time together--strange how that
memory had no more power to hurt--the black days that had followed, Rose
and Fanny. Of them all perhaps she had loved Fanny the best; Fanny's
philosophy of life was so delightfully simple, she was like some little
animal that followed every fresh impulse. And she never seemed to regret
or pay for her misdeeds. Apparently when you sinned calmly in the full
knowledge that it was sin, you paid no penalty; it was only when you
sinned attempting to make new laws for yourself and calling it no sin
that the burden of retribution was so heavy to bear.
A man was coming down the path towards her; she did not notice him,
although he was staring at her rather intently. Opposite to her he came
to a pause and took off his hat.
"Hallo," he said, "I am not mistaken, am I, it is Pierrette."
She lifted startled eyes to his and Landon laughed at her. He had
forgotten all about her till this moment, but just for the time being he
was at a loose end in London when all his friends were out of town, and
with no new passion on to entertain him. Pierrette, were she willing,
would fill in the gap pleasantly; they had not parted the best of
friends, but he had forgotten just enough for that memory not to rankle.
He sat down on the chair beside her and took one of her hands in his.
"Where have you been, Pierrette? And what have you been doing? Also,
are you not glad to see me, and whose love letter were you reading?"
"It is not a love letter." Joan took her hand away and folding up Miss
Abercrombie's letter, slipped it into her purse. "It is from my people,
asking me to come home, and I am going."
"Going, when I have only just found you again!"
His tone, his whole manner was unbearably familiar. Joan turned with
quick words of resentment on her lips, but they were never said. A
sudden thought came across her brain. Here was something with which she
could fight down and kill Dick's purpose. Better, far better than any
confession of hers, better than any stating of the truth, however
bluntly put, would be this man's easy familiarity, his almost air of
ownership. She found herself staring at Landon. What had she ever seen
in him that was either pleasant or attractive? She hated his eyes, and
the way they looked at her, the too evident care which had been expended
on his appearance, his long, shapely hands.
"Well, Pierrette, when you have finished studying my personal
appearance," Landon broke in, "perhaps you will explain yourself more
explicitly. Why are you flying from me just when I have found you? And,
Pierrette, what about supper to-night at Les Gobelins?"
"I can't do that," Joan spoke quickly. She had clenched her hands in her
lap; he did not notice that, but he could see that the colour had fled
from her face. "And I have got to go away the day after to-morrow. But
couldn't you come and have tea with me to-morrow at 6, Montague Square?
Do, please do."
What was she driving at? Landon caught his breath on a laugh. Was it the
last final flutter before she had to go back to home life and having her
wings cut? Or was she throwing herself into his arms after having fought
so furiously--he remembered that she had fought the last time, perhaps
she had learned her lesson; perhaps the poor little devil had really
fallen in love with him, and had been eating her heart out all this
time. That was almost amusing. She had never, even in their days of
greatest friendship, asked him into her room before, though he had often
suggested coming.
"Why, Pierrette, of course," he said. Then he laughed out loud. "And
I'll bring some red roses, afterwards we will go out to supper, and it
shall be like old times."
"Afterwards," Joan repeated. The excitement had left her, she sounded on
the instant very tired, "I don't know about afterwards, but bring the
red roses and come at half-past four, will you?" She stood up, "I must
go home," she said, "I have got to pack and get everything ready before
to-morrow."
He could not understand her mood in the least, but he could draw his own
conclusions from her invitation. It set him whistling softly on his way
home. The tune he selected was one that was being played everywhere in
London at the time. It fitted into his thoughts excellently:
"Just a little love, a little kiss,
I will give my life for this."
Poor, silly little Pierrette! Why had she fought with him before and
wasted so much precious time? As a matter of fact, he broke off his
whistle as the startling truth flashed on him, he might quite easily
have forgotten all about her in the interval, and then where would she
have been?