That terror-stricken gaze of Joan's chilled Vansittart with a vague new
dread--a fear impalpable, indefinite--still deadly in its effect upon
him.
He laughed as he said, encouragingly, "I can assure you you need not
trouble yourself that I have bad news--everything is going most
swimmingly!" But as they threaded their way through the groups of
brightly dressed girls and young men in all kinds of costumes, from
whites to the severest frock-coat permissible at such _al fresco_
gatherings, he gave a name to his misgivings in his own mind.
"I do not believe it is her brain--she is keeping something from me--she
has a secret," he thought, as he talked gaily to her, the current small
talk of the hour, while they traversed the rich, smooth green turf to
reach the path which ran along a terrace by the river and led to the
pleasance--"Lady Betty's pleasance" it had been called since the days
when a Lady Betty walked there in hoops and pannier, a little King
Charles spaniel waddling in her rear. "I must get it out of her!
However much we may deceive our fellow creatures, we must not deceive
each other."
"Where am I taking you?" he repeated brightly, in answer to her inquiry,
although to him it seemed as if a sudden darkness had chased all summer
brilliance from the day. "Oh, to a favourite spot of mine--a bench
overlooking the river under some tree--a hawthorn, I fancy! We can talk
there without any fear of being overheard. My darling--are you quite
well? Are you sure you are?"
As they left the open, and were under the trees--a belt of well-grown
shrubbery divided the spreading lawns from the pleasance--he stopped,
and placing his hands lightly on her shoulders, gazed with such honest
worship into her eyes, that she flinched and glanced away. Her lips
paled and trembled.
"May I kiss you, dearest?" he almost pathetically asked--his voice
faltered. In return she flung herself into his arms, and lifted her lips
to his. It was a great moment to him, that abandonment of passion in
his beloved--but even as their lips met, and he felt her heart beat
against his own, a horrible sensation of despair mingled with the relief
her spontaneous outburst had been to him.
She still clung to him after the embrace--her cheek against his
shoulder--and he heard her groan.
"My love, this won't do!" he cheerily exclaimed. "You make me feel as
if I had injured you somehow--that I must be a tyrant--a monster--if you
repent of your bargain there is time yet, you know! Although I have the
licence, and we could be married to-morrow if you chose, you can draw
back. If you repent of your promise to marry me--I do not hold you to
it! And remember, no one knows----"
She stirred--and rose. "No one knows?" she feverishly asked. "You
managed it all--without--telling _anybody_?"
"Except the people I was obliged to tell to procure the special
licence," he answered lightly, as he walked along at her side. "And
they--well, one would as soon suspect one's lawyer, or doctor, or
banker, of betraying one's confidence as the Doctor's Commons fellows!
It would be absurd."
The bench he remembered was there, under the hawthorn, which was still a
mass of bloom. Below a stone balustrade the river ran, wide, flowing,
hastening seaward. They seated themselves. He took her hand, drew off
her glove, and kissed the pink, soft palm of her delightful, delicately
slender hand.
"How soft it is, dear little hand!" he said tenderly. "Do you know what
the supposed experts say of a soft palm, or skin? That the possessor is
morbidly sensitive and sympathetic! I have thought that of you,
darling! I have wondered, sometimes, whether you are not indulging in
melancholy retrospect--thoughts of your dead parents' troubles, or
something! If so, nothing could be more foolish and useless! Can we
recall the past? No! it is dead--there is nothing in this world so
dead! Are we not taught that our great Creator Himself will not meddle
with it? Darling, you make me cruelly anxious, and that is a fact, by
your gloom! Do you think I do not know--feel--share your secret
suffering? While I cannot guess what it is, I can hardly endure your
evident unhappiness--I could bear it, if I only knew! Joan, Joan--I am
almost your husband; as we are to be married so soon, you might confide
in me! Child! My dearest--my almost wife--tell me! I can help you, I
must be able to help you, and I will! Don't you, won't you, believe
me?"
His words--his passion--pattered harmlessly upon her preoccupied being.
She had an idea--by a subterfuge to place her awful position before him,
and hear what he would say to it.
"Of course I believe you!" she dreamily said. "I know you would help me
if you could! But how can you? It is a foolish and stupid, rather than
a wrong, action of mine, in the past! You yourself say that God Himself
does not meddle with the past! No! He does not! We have to suffer the
consequences."
"But--one may deal with the consequences, darling," he tenderly said.
"Tell me--all--exactly as it is! Won't you? I knew there was something
rankling in your mind. I can assure you we shall both be the happier
for trusting each other. Come, out with it!"
"How can I put it to you without betraying--_her_?" she mournfully
began, her strained eyes fixed on a beautiful clump of lilies, which
seemed to mock her with their modest stateliness, their spotless
purity--she, in her own idea, irrevocably defiled by her tie to Victor
Mercier--her body smirched by his embrace, her poor cold lips fouled by
his detested kiss. "It was--a dear, intimate friend, at school. I
loved her so, that I believed in her feelings. I helped her in a secret
love affair--with--a young man."
"Well, that was quite natural--there was no great harm in that, I am
sure!" he exclaimed, heartily, beginning to be half ashamed of his
secret doubts, and telling himself he ought to have remembered with what
difficulty a girl brought up in a boarding-school learns life and its
meaning, how a school-girl is handicapped when she starts real existence
in the world.
"There was harm in it, although I did not think so at the time!" she
went on, bitterly. "For she married him secretly--and no sooner had she
done so, than he was taken up by the police for something or
another--and ran away. She never heard anything of him until the other
day, when he turned up. Oh, poor, unhappy girl! What is to be done for
her? Cannot you understand that I, who helped to her undoing, am
miserable?"
"My dearest child, we cannot go about the world bearing the consequences
of other people's folly. It is not common sense, we have plenty of
troubles of our own!" he said, almost chidingly. He felt just a little
hurt that his love had not been strong enough to balance her vicarious
suffering. The terrible truth that she was speaking of herself never
once occurred to him. "Your friend married this man, not you! She must
suffer for it. She had better make the best of her bad bargain--and
really must not worry you! It is positively inhuman to do so!" He spoke
with slight indignation. She shuddered.
"But surely--there must be some way to rid her of him?" she asked,
striving with all her might to still her inward anguish, and speak
collectedly.
"Oh yes, if she does not shrink from a public scandal," he said,
somewhat dryly. "The young lady can apply for a divorce. How long since
his desertion? Four years?" He shrugged his shoulders. "She had
better employ detectives to find out his doings during those years. But
she ought to consult lawyers!--What? She would not do that? Why not?"
"She will kill herself rather than do that--and her death will be on
my--soul!" said Joan, solemnly. She looked her lover full in the face.
Why was it that at that moment in imagination he seemed to hear a bell
tolling and to see a churchyard with a yawning grave--towards which a
funeral procession was making its way? He gave a short laugh, which was
more a sob. What a grip this girl had upon his emotions!
"What power you have over me, you girlie!" he said, chokingly. "You
seemed to make me see all sorts of things ... Darling, if money is of
any good to your friend--I should only feel too thankful to be of any
help----What? It is of no use?"
"It is of no use!" cried she, in a helpless tone. "None! ... And you
mean to tell me--that that few minutes in a registrar's office--can only
be undone--publicly--in the divorce court?"
"There is only one other thing that can free her, my dear child--death!"
he said, seriously. "People seem to forget that when they rush into
matrimony. But--my darling--" he looked anxiously into her half-averted
face--"do you mean to say that this entanglement of your friend's is all
you have on your mind--all? Joan"--he grasped her hands--"trust
me--your husband--almost your husband--anything you may tell me--will be
sacred!"