The big mansion of which she was the pampered, cherished darling, lay
solemn, pompous, solid, dark, behind her. Before her, the pavement, wet
after a summer shower, shone in the lamplight. Dark, waving shadows
against the driving clouds, with their fitful patches of moonlit sky,
were the trees in the enclosure, dangled by the wind. She hurried
along--turning down the first by-street she came to--and emerging at its
end into one of the principal thoroughfares, she hailed a crawling
hansom.
"Regent's Park, Clarence Gate," she said, in a muffled voice, as she
sprang lightly in.
To be dashing along the lighted streets to meet the absconded swindler
who had dared to take advantage of her girlish folly to make her his
wife by law, was delirious work. Cowering back in the corner of the
hansom, she gazed with sickened misery at the gay shop-windows, at the
crowded omnibuses, at the cheery passengers who carelessly stepped along
the pavement, looking as if all life were matter-of-fact, plain sailing,
"above-board." A hundred shrill voices seemed clamouring in her
ears--"turn back--turn back! Face the worst, but be honest!" She had
almost flung up her arm and, opening the trap, bid the driver return,
when the memory of Vansittart--of his love--of his kiss--came surging
upon her with redoubled force.
"If I am a coward, I shall lose him!" cried her whole nature, fiercely.
No! She must battle through: she must circumvent her enemy--the enemy
to her love, and Vansittart's.
But how?
"I will dare him," was her instinct. "I will tell him to claim me if he
can!" But that was the madness of passion. Reason bade her use other
means.
"One must fight a man with his own weapons," she told herself, as the
hansom dashed along Gloucester Place, and she knew her time was short.
It was now nearer nine than eight--she had seen that by an illuminated
clock over a shop. _He_ was to be at their trysting-place of old, when
she had lodged with her old nurse in a street in Camden Town, at eight.
"He lied to me from the first moment to the last. I must lie to him. I
will pretend I have cared for him! It will put him off his guard," she
thought, as, with a double fee to the cabman, who said "thank-ye, miss,"
with odious familiarity, she scurried away in the darkness, and crossing
the wet road, turned up that which led to the Inner Circle.
There was no chance of forgetting the spot where they two had last met!
As she neared it, a slim, dark figure stepped out from the shadow.
"My wife," he exclaimed, in emotional tones. He would have embraced
her, but she slipped away and leant up against the paling.
"You can call me that--after leaving me all these years--not knowing
whether you were alive or dead," she panted hoarsely. Under any
circumstances emotion was natural, so she made no effort to conceal it.
"I? It was you who would not reply to my letters!" he exclaimed
bitterly. "I wrote again and again, under cover to your miserable old
nurse--and don't say you never had them! The last came back to me--'not
known.' But the others did not--they would have if they had not
reached!"
"If she had them, she never gave them to me!" she said truthfully. "And
I don't wonder! I was so utterly wretched when I read of
your--your--flight--that I told her--all! I had to--I should have gone
raving mad if I had kept it to myself!"
"Well, all that is over and done with, thank goodness!" he exclaimed,
cheerfully, after a brief pause. "I will not scold you for misjudging
me--you were but a child! But you are a woman now, of age, your own
mistress! I have been fortunate of late, or I should not be here.
Speculations of mine have turned up trumps--and not only that, but I
have friends in the City who will introduce me to your uncle, and if you
only play your cards well, our real wedding shall be followed by a sham
one, and Mrs. Victor a'Court will take a very nice place in society. My
dear, cash opens all doors, and I have it!"
"Some one is coming," she said feebly. His speech had called forth all
her powers of endurance, and, while bracing herself to bear up as she
did, Nature determinedly asserted itself. She felt cold and giddy--her
limbs seemed as if they did not belong to her.
"Only a Bobby," he said, with a light vulgarity which seemed the last
straw. As she turned to walk along by his side, she tottered.
"Don't do that, or the Bobby will think you are drunk," he said,
coarsely, holding her up by the arm. His detested touch achieved what
her slackening courage had failed to do. She felt suddenly strong with
a new, fierce emotion--was it hate?
"I cannot understand how you can be well off--or, indeed, how you can be
here at all," she softly began, as the policeman marched solemnly on
before them, the light of one of the occasional lamps gleaming on his
wet weather cape. "I thought----"
"You mean, your old nurse thought!" he went on angrily. "You--you were
not capable of suspecting me, if that old wretch had not put it into
your head! My love, I was a victim of circumstances. The people I was
with were a rotten lot. They accused me to protect themselves. They
were bankrupt three years ago! Mercier was not my real name. My father
was Victor Mercier a'Court. It suited me to use it, that's all!
What--you don't believe me?"
"You told me lies then--why should I believe you?" she boldly said.
"Because you are my wife! It will not pay me to tell you untruths--nor
will it pay you to doubt me!" he savagely retorted. "I had expected a
welcome! Instead, I am treated like this! It is enough to exasperate a
saint--and I don't profess to be that! Come, let us talk business, as
you don't feel inclined for love. You are mine, and I mean to have you.
You understand? I have waited for you all these years, and precious hard
work it has been, I can tell you, for plenty of girls as good-looking as
you made a dead set at me--and girls with loads of oof, too! If I don't
get you by fair means, I will have you by foul--it is for you to select.
By Jingo, it would serve you right if I went to that wretched uncle of
yours to-morrow, and claimed you!"
She stopped short and confronted him. The moon, breaking through the
driving clouds, shone full on her face. Beautiful, corpse-like in its
sombre, set expression, there was that in her great, shining eyes which
gave him, hardened worldling though he was, a slight shock. He felt he
had gone too far.
"Drop the tragedy queen, do, and be my own little darling once more!" he
wheedled, and would have embraced her, but she slid away as he
approached.
"Listen!" she began, in clear, determined tones, in which there was
neither fear nor hesitation, "unless you treat me with consideration,
decency, respect--unless you can give me time to arrange matters so that
to avow myself your--wife--will not ruin me, body and soul, I swear
before God that I will put a barrier between myself and you which will
separate us for ever."
"Pah, pah, pah, spitfire!" he sarcastically said, swinging his umbrella
and beginning to walk onward. "I know what you mean! You have some
romantic idea of suicide. You are not the kind of girl who kills
herself, I can tell you that--so that threat won't hold water with me.
Come now, don't let us waste time quarrelling. What do you propose to
do? Before I tell you my ideas, let's hear yours. _Place aux dames_
was always my motto."
During her long vigil, scheme after scheme of escaping him and of
belonging irrevocably to Vansittart, one plan wilder than another, had
agitated her mind. She had at last arrived at one set
conclusion--Victor Mercier must be cajoled into giving her time. Events
would decide the rest.
"All I ask of you is to wait," she pleaded earnestly, vehemently. "Give
me time to find some way of introducing you to friends, and through them
to uncle and aunt--then I can begin seeming to encourage you, and feel
my way----"
He burst into a derisive laugh.
"Rats!" he cried brutally. "That sort of thing won't do for me, my dear
wife, I can tell you! I see you are as big a baby as ever--you need
some one badly to teach you your way about! No, no! I want you at
once--who and what's to prevent me from taking possession of my lawful
property? There is only one thing for us to do: to bolt together--and to
leave them completely in the dark as to your fate. I hear that those
two old prigs who wouldn't give bite or sup to your father when he was a
dying man are dead nuts on you. We must make 'em suffer, my darling!
We must madden them till they are ready to do anything and everything if
they can only find you alive. And we must talk it over--so that your
disappearance may be a regular thunderbolt! Can you come to my lodgings
to-morrow evening? I want you to myself--it's natural, isn't it? This
road, quiet as it is, is hardly the place for husband and wife to meet,
is it? What? You can't come?" His voice hoarsened--he clutched her
arm so fiercely that she gave a faint cry. "You don't want me?" he
exclaimed, in tones which to her strained ears seemed those of deadly
menace. "If you don't--I know you, you see! I have not forgotten your
kisses, if you have mine--it means another man! And if it does, I will
have no mercy on you, do you understand? None!"
"How dare you?" Once more she faced him, this time in an access of
desperation. "How dare you accuse me of crime? My coldness, my absolute
refusal to listen to any man is so well known that it has been common
talk in society! More than once I have felt that uncle has suspected
me--and, indeed, he has sounded me----"
In her earnestness she was off guard, and drawing her to him, he
suddenly threw his arms about her neck and kissed her lips--a long,
violent, almost savage kiss.
"There--go home and think of that!" he said, with a triumphant chuckle,
as she staggered away and almost fell against the fence. "And take this
address. I shall be here every evening at the same hour. And if you
don't come--well, you had better come, that's all! I am not in a very
patient humour."
She made her way out of the Park at his side, dazed, trembling. When at
last he consented to leave her, and hailing a hansom, she clambered in,
she leant back, and for a few minutes was barely conscious. She came to
herself with a sob.
"Will God have mercy on me?" she wailed. "I was so--so--very young!"