At first Joan had been almost fearful in her new-born hope. The
prospect of flight with her lover, the idea of marrying him secretly,
and starting for a tour round the world, about which no one would know
anything definite, seemed too splendid a prospect to be true! Then, as
the days passed, and after writing an enigmatical letter to Victor at
12, Haythorn Street, the address given her by him--a letter promising to
meet him in a week's time "with all prepared according to his
wishes"--she had no tormenting reply, she took heart. Vansittart, in
their constant, but seemingly accidental, meetings--riding, driving, at
parties, and at the opera--encouraged her by promising that in one
fortnight from the day they had "settled matters" their plan should be
carried out. All seemed to promise to her the dawn of emancipation from
the consequences of her past folly; when, awakening somewhat suddenly
from sleep one morning, a terrible idea flashed upon her--she was
unexpectedly confronted with a truth she had overlooked in her
unreasoning passion for deliverance from Victor Mercier and freedom to
belong to Vansittart.
_Her marriage with Vansittart would be a bigamous one_.
"Oh! Surely that was not a real marriage--that short ceremony at the
registrar's," she told herself in anguish. "At all events, my uncle
will make it worth Victor's while to undo it--never to take any steps to
assert that he has any claim upon us. Uncle will manage it. He will
have had his will--I shall be Lady Vansittart--he will be ready to do
anything, proud man that he is, to prevent a family disgrace!"
It was a mean way of emancipating herself--to run away with Vansittart,
deceiving him as to the reason of her strange desire for what was
practically an elopement--to leave Sir Thomas Thorne recipient of her
confession that Victor Mercier was legally her husband, and must be
bribed to ignore the fact!
"But--if I cannot extricate myself in one way, I am driven to use
whatever means remain," she sadly told herself. "I wish I had not got
to tell lies all round! But if I must, I must!"
Every day she proposed to herself some plan of "managing" Victor
Mercier, so as to keep him quiet. She hardly liked that silence of his.
Although she had no idea that he had instituted inquiries, and was
enlightened as to her intimacy with Vansittart, she felt as if that
cessation of hostilities on his part was the calm before the storm.
Her brief encouragement was past and gone. She spent hours of silent
anguish, pacing her room, cold drops upon her brow, her nervous hands
wringing her gossamer handkerchiefs to shreds. Julie, finding them in
wisps when she sorted the linen, wondered.
Then came the day before the date upon which she was to meet Victor,
"with all prepared according to his wishes." There was an afternoon
fete at the riverside residence of the Marchioness of C----. Sir Thomas
was to drive her down, together with Lady Thorne and some friends. Joan
had expected that her uncle would propose that Vansittart should make
one of the party. She knew nothing of a brief but crucial interview
which had taken place between her uncle and her lover, almost
immediately after their mutual understanding.
Lord Vansittart's honour demanded that, while respecting the confidence
of his future wife, and acceding with entire self-abandonment to her
wishes in regard to their matrimonial affairs, he should at least defer
in some way to her guardian _in loco parentis_. So he sought a
_tete-a-tete_ with his future uncle-in-law--he contrived to put himself
in his way at the club.
It was the ordinary luncheon hour, and, after beguiling him into the
empty reading-room, he began without much preface.
"I think you know--at least, I mean, I know you are aware, that I love
your niece," he said. "You also know she rejected me--more than once."
"Yes, my boy--and I think you know I was deuced disappointed that she
was such a silly little idiot!" warmly returned Sir Thomas.
"Well, I have some reason to flatter myself that if every one will only
let everything alone, and will not interfere, I have a very good chance
of making her Lady Vansittart!" He looked boldly at Joan's uncle.
"My dear boy, no one has the slightest wish to interfere! What do you
mean?" asked Sir Thomas briskly.
Vansittart sighed, and shrugged his shoulders. "My dear Sir Thomas,
your niece is a very extraordinary girl," he slowly said. "Once
married, she will, I believe, settle down to be more like other people
in her ideas, which at present are extravagance itself! But I will tell
you this much--the man who refuses to fall in with them will never call
her wife! Now, what am I to do? Am I to appear to outrage you by not
deferring to your opinions and feelings in regard to our engagement and
consequent marriage, or am I not? Dearly, passionately as I love her, I
would rather give her up than behave dishonourably to you and Lady
Thorne!"
"Good Lord, what nonsense!" cried Sir Thomas with a short laugh. "D'ye
think I don't know that Joan is so soaked in romantic folly that she
isn't capable of one single, reasonable, common-sense idea? Go on and
prosper, old boy! You have my blessing upon whatever method of
courtship you think best to adopt, even if it is to roll her in the mud
and kick her, or climb up to her window in the middle of the night and
carry her off down a rope-ladder! Upon my word, I am jolly glad that I
am not the fool that every one thinks me, when I stick to it that Joan
has read that Shelley and Swinburne rot until she can't tell black from
white! Make her your wife your own way, Vansittart, and it shan't make
any difference in her dowry, here's my hand on it!"
After such trust on the part of the man who had the giving of his
beautiful niece, Vansittart continued his arrangements for the
fulfilment of Joan's wishes, feeling as if treading on air.
The day of Lady C----'s garden party was showery at first. But at noon
out had come a brilliant June sun, and the rain had only succeeded in
freshening the rich foliage and luxuriant flowers of Wrottesley Lodge,
on the Thames--a somewhat older house than the usual run of riverside
dwellings can lay claim to be.
The party on the top of the coach were extremely lively. But Joan sat
silent. The beauty of the day was not for her. The summer breeze
stirred the chestnut blossoms and diffused their perfume until the air
was honeyed with it--the suburban gardens were gay with their beds of
summer bloom. As they drove into the road where the gables of
Wrottesley Lodge peeped up among the sombre pines and firs which
screened the house from the vulgar gaze, the Thames came in sight, its
wavelets dancing in the sunlight. All seemed careless happiness--even a
boy with a white apron and basket on his arm stood whistling gaily as he
watched the four-in-hand tool into the drive. Only Joan's heart seemed
like a stone in her breast, and all around was to her a ghastly
mockery--with that wretched hopelessness flooding her young soul.
Vansittart had arrived early, been welcomed, fussed with, and introduced
to specially charming girls by his amiable hostess. But their society
talk was to him like the chatter of the apes he had seen in the
jungles--he gazed at their pretty patrician features and wondered where
the beauty was which, with other things, had gone to make them successes
of the season. When he caught sight of Sir Thomas' well-known team of
roans, he muttered an excuse to the girl he was talking to, and hurried
off to help his beloved to alight.
There was a bustle--Joan was almost the last to descend the ladder. How
exquisite was that high-bred little foot, he thought, in the white shoe
and delicate silk-lace stocking--already he was giving lavish secret
orders for a whole trousseau to be on board the yacht for her use--there
must be still more costly stockings and slippers to clad those dear,
pretty feet! How lovely she looked altogether--her slight, beautifully
curved form draped in a thin muslin robe dotted with purple heartsease,
with silken sheen showing beneath--a big black hat with feathers and
pansies crowning her proud little golden head! But when he met the
startled, awe-stricken, "lost" look of those great eyes, it was as if
some one had given him an ugly blow on the chest.
She smiled, as he welcomed her with a passionate ecstatic gaze in his
kind, devoted eyes--but the smile was a miserable imitation--and he felt
it.
"Come away--from the crowd--I have something important to tell you," he
whispered. She gave him a glance of horror, and turned pale. "What?"
she stammered.