After that spontaneous, passionate prayer to Heaven for mercy, Joan
seemed to awaken to a stronger, intenser life. A new instinct burst into
a fierce clamouring within her--the primary instinct to
live--live--anywhere, anyhow, at any price--but to live!
"I ought not to die--I did not mean to kill him!" she wailed. Her first
mad notion was to confess everything from first to last. There would be
an inquest. If she were to go to the coroner and tell him the whole
story, would he not see justice done?
"But it would only be my bare word," she thought, as she sat on the edge
of the bed, wringing her cold hands, shuddering so that her teeth
chattered. "Any one who wanted to kill some one that stood in their way
might do it, and say it was an accident!"
No; that Quixotic idea was untenable. Dead silence--absolute
secrecy--these must be her defensive armour. No one knew she had seen
Victor Mercier since his re-appearance in London, and only two persons
were aware of the so-called "love-affair." One was the school-girl
go-between, Jenny Marchant, who on the only occasion they had happened
to meet, at a charity bazaar, had taken her aside and implored her never
to betray her complicity in that terrible escapade--she had read of
Victor Mercier's defalcations in the papers, but had not the remotest
idea the consequence of her folly was that her chum Joan had bound
herself to the "dreadful creature" by a marriage at the registrar's. She
would never say anything! "And Nana would rather die than betray me!"
thought Joan.
No--absolute secrecy--to act as if no such person as the dead man who
had come by his death through her daring to drug him, existed, as far as
she was concerned--that was the best, the only course open to her to
save herself.
"But--but--I must not do anything wild," she told herself. "The plan to
marry my beloved and start in his yacht must not be carried out! That
would never do! Would not people suspect I had some very good reason
for flight--for hiding myself?"
Then the truth suddenly flashed upon her; there was now no necessity for
concealment! The man who had bound her to him in law was dead.
"I am a widow!" she murmured, shivering. "How
impossible--extraordinary--yet, yet--literally true! I never was his
wife--except for a quarter of an hour in the registry office--what a
mockery! And all this--horror--my misery--his wretched, sudden
death--came out of that--those few words of an ordinary man's--the
signing of our names in a book!"
Would the registrar who married them come forward?
At the idea she sickened. Chill sweat came upon her brow.
"Why should he? He has enough to do without making himself more
worrying work," she told herself. "Besides, he may think I went abroad
with Victor and died there, if he thinks at all!"
No. She must find some way of accounting for her change of ideas to
Lord Vansittart, she mused, as, hearing Julie outside, she returned to
bed, and when the girl entered, stretched her arms and yawned.
"Oh, I am much better," she told her, as Julie made anxious inquiries;
and with a violent effort she contrived to act her part pretty
successfully--to dress and seem as usual--even to attempt to eat some
breakfast. But this latter was a hard task. The morning papers had the
"Mysterious Death" among their "sensations," and gave ominous hints as
to "Victor a'Court's" career which threatened her with a return of that
convulsive shivering.
However, when she went downstairs, her aunt and uncle seemed so
cheerfully matter-of-fact--her aunt gave her such very pronounced hints
on the subject of Vansittart--"they would be quite to themselves,
because she was going out, but she hoped Joan would insist upon his
dining with them that evening as he disappointed them last night,"
etc.--that she began to feel as if the tragedy in her young, unfortunate
life were unreal--dream-like.
The sun shone warmly upon the brilliant bloom of the flowers in her
balcony. A canary sang joyously from its cage outside the window of the
next house. The lively rattle of carts, the smooth roll of carriages,
the shrill voices of passing children--all meant life--life! And she was
greedy, thirsty for life--she--who a few hours ago had done a
fellow-creature to death.
"All is not--quite--lost," she mused, as she leant her tired head on her
hands--she had seated herself at her writing-table, and was pretending
to be busy with her correspondence. "I can do nothing--any more--for
poor, cruel Victor--may God be merciful to him! But he has
relatives--this actress sister--he never said a word of her to me, I may
hope he never said a word of me to her. I may be able to make her life
very different--after all this is over and forgotten--hers and any other
relatives of his--and I will! I will not spend one single day without
doing something to tend to some comfort or advantage for them!"
She was still trying to plan her announcement of her changed wishes to
Vansittart, so as not to excite the faintest suspicion in his mind that
anything had occurred to alter her ideas between her last meeting and
this, when she heard voices outside--the groom of the chambers announced
"Lord Vansittart"--and he precipitately entered.
He advanced, a little pale and anxious-looking, but so handsome, such a
tower of strength, such embodied manhood at its noblest, that suddenly
she felt utterly overwhelmed, submerged--she tottered gasping into his
arms, and clung to him as madly as one drowning cleaves to his rescuer.
"Oh--it is you--" she deliriously stammered. "Don't--don't leave
me--oh--what am I saying? Are we both--alive? Is it real?"
In her delirious collapse she would not let him kiss her lips. First
she hid her face in his coat, then she kissed it--wildly, almost
passionately.
"My poor, sweet darling; be calm--it is all right--I will take care of
you!" he said, tenderly, brokenly. To see her thus almost unnerved
him--he was losing command of his voice--two great cold tears stood in
his eyes, then ran down and lay glistening on her golden hair. "Come,
my dearest love! Something has upset you, but never mind; I promise you
it shall not happen again--I will stand between you and trouble."
He stopped short, horrified--for she burst into a wild peal of laughter.
She struggled to subdue it by hiding her head upon his arm. He gazed
down at her pretty golden head, speechless with mingled feelings. Once
more the ugly idea crept up unbidden within him--that Joan was "going
mad."
"No! You are right there!" she cried her laughter subdued, glancing up
almost defiantly into his face. "What--ever--does happen again? Did
you not talk of the past being irrevocable, irrecoverable? It is! The
present is bad enough, is it not? That I should be a hysterical fool
like this--all because of a dream! At least I think my headache made me
delirious all night. I am not good enough for you, dear. You must give
up all idea of marrying me!"
She gazed tenderly at him with those dark eyes soft with the tears
brought by that hysterical outburst.
"Oh, yes, of course!" he ironically said. "I am to give up all chance of
happiness because you are not one of those Amazons I so cordially
detest! Come, darling--I can see that London life is utterly and
entirely disagreeing with you!" He seated himself on a sofa and drew
her gently down beside him. "That fact reconciles me to taking you
away, do you know--so it is the silver lining to the only cloud that is
troubling my horizon!"
"You did not like that plan of mine? I am--thankful!"
As she ejaculated this with evident truth, Vansittart stared at her.
"Not that, darling! I am ready to do anything----" he began, alarmed
lest she had seized upon a loop-hole for escape. But she interrupted.
"I had a dream last night," she began, slowly, striving for
self-possession--the very mention of that awful vision unnerved her.
"You know--what is on my mind--that I helped to ruin the life of a
friend by helping her to marry a bad man. Well! I dreamt--that she
came--to awful--grief! And the dream was so vivid that I take it as a
warning. I do not wish to carry out our plan, dearest. If you care to
marry me, let us be married openly, before the world!"
"Do you really mean it?" He grasped her hands and kissed them. He
gazed at her with a face beaming, transfigured with joy. "Thank God, you
do! Oh, my darling, my darling--I would have married you anywhere,
anyhow, I would even have kept our marriage secret till the crack of
doom if you had wanted to--but I hated doing it. I hated stealing you
like a thief, instead of marrying you proudly, honourably, glorying in
it, before God and all his creatures! You have lifted such a weight
from my heart that I hardly know where I am, or what I am about!"