"You have only to dictate terms--I surrender unconditionally!"
Could she have heard aright? Joan lifted her pale, miserable
face--miserable with the woe of reality after the delirious joy of being
clasped to her lover's heart--and slowly shook her head.
"I have no terms to dictate," she slowly, dismally said. "I cannot go
through a secret engagement! It would be impossible to keep it secret,
either. Uncle will guess! Why, I have hardly been decently civil to any
man who seemed as if he had ideas of marriage--he will know at once--and
then--every one else would know--oh, I could not bear it! It would
drive me mad!"
She spoke vehemently--and there was a wild, dangerous gleam in her eyes
which he did not like. Perhaps the mental trouble it must have been to
the sensitive orphan to accept bounty from the cold-blooded man who had
let her father, his brother, die unsuccoured, had brought about
hysteria. He had read and heard of such cases. It behoved him to come
to his darling's rescue--to cherish and care for her--ward off every
danger from one so beautiful, so helpless, so alone. As he gazed at
her, an extraordinary idea flashed upon him--like lightning it illumined
the darkness--the way he must go seemed to stand out plain before him.
"My dearest, there is a way out of our difficulty so simple, so obvious,
that it seems to me a waste of time to discuss anything else!" he said,
tenderly, gravely. "You are of age--you are entitled to act for
yourself! Let us be married as soon as possible and start in my yacht
for a tour round the world! I can manage everything secretly: you will
only have to walk out of the house one fine morning and be married to
me, and we will take the next train to wherever the yacht will be
waiting for us, and be off and away before your absence has been
remarked and wondered at! I will leave explanations to be sent to your
uncle at the right moment, acknowledging ourselves eccentric, romantic,
blameable, perhaps, but not unforgivable--saying that we knew so long a
honeymoon would be unpalatable, so we took French leave--why do you
shiver dearest?" He bent anxiously over her. "Joan! Won't you trust
me?"
"Trust you!" she gazed up at him with that startling expression of
mingled love and woe into his face--a look he had seen in a great
picture of souls suffering in Hades--an expression too full of agony to
be easily forgotten. "Only it seems too much to expect! It cannot
possibly happen--those good things don't, in this miserable life!"
"You are morbid, dearest, if I may dare to say it," he tenderly said,
drawing her into the arms with which he vowed to shelter and defend her
from all and every adverse circumstance which might ever threaten her
peace and content. And he set himself to comfort, hearten, encourage
her drooping spirits, as he painted the joys of their future life in the
most glowing terms at his command, during the rest of what was to him
their glorious hour together. To a certain extent he thought he had
succeeded. At least, Joan had smiled--had even laughed--although the
tragic look in those beautiful eyes--absent, hunted, terror-stricken,
desperate--was it only one of those things, or all?--had not been
superseded by the expression of calm satisfaction it would be such
relief and joy to him to see there.
"Something is wrong--but what?" he asked himself, after he had stayed
luncheon, and at last succeeded in tearing himself away. "Is it only
that fact--a miserable one to so tender yet passionate a nature--that
while she is loaded with luxuries by her uncle, her parents died almost
in want because he withheld the helping hand? It may be!
Well--anyhow--the best thing for her is absolute change--as soon as
possible--and that she shall have!"
* * * * *
Victor Mercier--it was his real name, his father, a meretricious French
adventurer, had married his mother for a small capital, which he had got
rid of some time before he ran away and left his wife and infant son to
starve--had left Joan the eventful night of their meeting after long
years--in a towering rage.
His was a nature saturated with vanity and self-love. From childhood
upwards he had believed himself entitled to possess whatever he
coveted--the law of _meum and tuum_ was non-existent in his scheme for
getting as much out of life as it was possible to get. Naturally sharp,
and with good looks of the kind that some women admire, he had not only
made a willing slave of his mother, but when, some years after, the news
of his father's death came to her, she married again, a widower with a
charming little daughter, step-father and pseudo-sister also worshipped
at his shrine.
Then he ingratiated himself with an employer so that he was entrusted
with the sole management of the branch business at C----. Here, he
"splurged"; spent money freely, and--when he heard that the pretty
schoolgirl he had succeeded in establishing a flirtation with was the
only surviving member of the weakly family represented by the wealthy
Sir Thomas Thorne--he grew more and more reckless in the expenditure of
his master's money and in his falsifying of the accounts. Like many
others of his kind, he overreached his mark. When he paid a flying visit
to London to marry Joan before she was adopted by her uncle--her mother
had just died--it occurred to the head of his firm to "run over" to
C---- and audit the books. The day of Mercier's secret marriage he
heard that "the game was up," and his only means of escape, instant
flight and lasting absence.
It was quite true that his firm failed a couple of years later. But he
had then just established himself as partner in a drinking-bar in the
unsavoury neighbourhood of a gold mine in South Africa. The lady of the
establishment had fallen in love with him, and there was, in fact, money
to be made all round about by one who was not too particular in his
morals and opinions. Suddenly, the neighbourhood grew too hot for him,
and he found it convenient to remember that the rich Miss Joan Thorne
must now be twenty-one and ready to be claimed as his wife.
So he returned with money enough to make a show, later on, of being
rich, at least for a month or two. The first thing was to find Joan:
the next to meet her.
An acquaintance made in his comparatively innocent boyhood happened to
be now confidential valet to the Duke of Arran. He sought him out,
flattered, and--without confiding his real story to him--made him his
creature by using a certain power of fascination which had helped on his
unworthy career from its beginning.
Paul Naz got him engagements as "extra hand" on state occasions in
noblemen's houses; he had fulfilled three of these before he attained
his end and encountered Joan at the Duke's--Paul consented to pay court
to Julie le Roux, Miss Thorne's maid, so as to keep his old playfellow
informed as to the doings of the family, who, he told him, owed his late
father a considerable sum of money, which he wished to recover privately
to save scandal. That very night Paul was taking Julie to see Mercier's
so-called half-sister act in a transpontine theatre. "Vera Anerley," as
she had stage-named herself, had been on tour with a popular piece--was
absent at the time of Victor's return--and had appealed to his vanity by
her wild emotion when they met. He was to see her on the stage, and to
have a word with Naz, who had had to probe Julie in a certain direction,
after he left his "wife" in the Regent's Park.
When he had watched Joan's hansom speed away in the darkness, Victor
Mercier walked along, then--hailing a passing cab, was driven to the
theatre. As he went he anathematized Joan in the strongest of mining
oaths.
"Like all the rest," he bitterly thought. "Always another man--they must
have a man hanging about them!"
Alighting at the theatre, he met Naz, a fair, innocent-looking
Frenchman, coming out. He joined him, saying "Come and have a drink."
"You have lost much by being late, your half-sister is adorable!" said
Naz, as they stood together at the bar of a neighbouring public-house.
"No doubt!" said Mercier carelessly. "So is your Julie, eh? By the
way, how is Julie's mistress? Any news?"
"As I said," returned Naz, in an undertone. "The beautiful creature is
trapped at last, by a lover who has been out of the country to try and
forget her, shooting big game! They ride--meet--he was with her when I
posted you in the corridor that night. They passed me, you must have
seen him."
"Him--who?" muttered Mercier. There was a gleam in his eyes.
"Lord Vansittart," replied Naz. "The Duchess has been heard to say it
was a settled thing!"