"Joan! What does it mean?" asked the bridegroom, white, stern, after
the shock, still seeming to see those awful words, "Vengeance is Mine!"
dancing before his dazed eyes in letters of blood.
"Mean? That I am hunted down--that they are after me, cruel creatures,
for an act you yourself said was only childish folly!" She writhed, and
gave a mad, wild laugh which seemed to freeze him. But her
explanation--her allusion to that which she had told him--that wretched
affair in which she had innocently helped to ally her school friend to
an utterly worthless scamp--brought instantaneous relief from his
sudden, over mastering terror that the label hinted at some unknown
horror.
"That was your poor friend, then, dearest, that you unwittingly helped
to injure!" He detached the label with the Scriptural quotation from
the bunch of flowers, pocketed it, and flung them out of the carriage
window. "But I thought she was quit of him? Why should she persecute
you, now? When all is over?"
She gave him a desperate glance, and shrank away into the corner of the
carriage. White, her eyes ablaze--even in his miserable dread, his
anxiety, she reminded him of a celebrated singer he had seen at the
opera a few weeks ago in "Lucia." Why, why was her agony so intense
about a mere secondary trouble?
"Understand!" she hoarsely said. "If you cannot take me on trust, we
had better part, we had better separate now, this very hour, and go our
different ways----"
"How dare you!" he cried; and almost fiercely, in his anguish to hear
such a suggestion from her lips, he placed his hands on her shoulders,
ruthlessly ignoring the bridal finery, and gazed into her strained eyes.
"You are my wife! It is an insult to me, what you say! I am your
husband."
He took her peremptorily in his arms, and kissed her with mingled
adoration and despair. The despair was involuntary--born of a huge
misgiving that something was seriously wrong with his new-made wife, and
that he had yet to learn what that something was.
"And now, here we are at your home!" he tenderly said. "You must try
and pretend to be the happy bride I hoped you were!"
As he helped her to alight, and acting the part of the delighted, joyous
bridegroom, led her through the little crowd of servants standing about
the hall, acknowledging their murmur of congratulation, those melancholy
words of his--so untrue in regard to her love for him--to her rejoicing
in the midst of her misery that she was his wife--touched her to the
quick.
"My poor love!" she gasped, as soon as they were alone in the
flower-bedecked drawing-room, throwing herself upon his breast, and
gazing adoringly into his face. "I--I had not the courage to tell you
before, but I must--now! I told you my unhappy friend was free, but I
did not tell you how! Her husband was that man that died--that Victor
Mercier! Perhaps she had something to do with his death! That is what
has been eating my heart out--that I had had a hand in killing a
fellow-creature--killing--depriving some one of life--oh, it is awful!
Sometimes I feel that if that man were alive again, I would willingly
die myself--give up all our happiness--leave you for ever! Now perhaps
you can imagine what I have been suffering, and what I suffered at the
theatre listening to that Mr. Hunt talking of the woman with the
brandy-bottle, dreading lest he might be speaking of her--my poor
miserable friend!"
"My darling!" There was a world of compunction, tenderness, sympathy in
his voice as he drew her down by him on a sofa, and lovingly clasped her
cold, trembling hands in his. "But you ought to have told me before! I
quite--see--all--now--and now I am to bear your troubles for
you--troubles indeed, absurd cobwebs--trifles light as air! Your real
trouble, my dearest, is being in possession of an over-sensitive
conscience! Come--there is the first carriage--how quickly they have
followed us up--try and look a little more as a bride ought to look.
Your being pale doesn't matter--brides seem to be given that way--but
unhappy? For my sake, darling, try to look a little less as if you had
just been condemned to death instead of to living your life with me!"
He kissed some colour into her white cheeks and lips; and then the
wedding party began to flock in. Carriage after carriage drove up, and
the bridesmaids and young men, the older relatives and friends, crowded
the drawing-room, and there were embracings and congratulations--not
half over when luncheon was announced. It was a gay, or a seemingly gay
wedding breakfast. Joan went through it all with a curious feeling of
unreality. She heard herself and her loved husband toasted, she heard
his eloquent yet well-balanced little speech. She smiled upon those who
spoke to her with the almost reverential solicitude with which a bride
is addressed on her marriage day, and she muttered some reply, although
she did not seem to gather the meaning of their speeches. She cut the
cake, she rose and adjourned upstairs when the rest went to the
drawing-room. Happily, she had to hurry her "going away" toilette, which
was presided over by her aunt, in the seventh heaven of delight at her
only niece's splendid marriage, and by her aunt's maid--Julie having
already started with Lord Vansittart's valet and the luggage, to be on
board the yacht with everything ready when the bride and bridegroom
arrived. Happily there was not a spare moment to be wasted if they
meant to "catch the train" they had planned to start by. Before she was
quite ready, Vansittart's voice was heard outside the door, hurrying
them. They were obliged to hasten their farewells, and drive rapidly to
the station--the terminus they were starting from no one knew but Sir
Thomas, who was bound to secresy.
But even when the express was rattling across the sunlit country
seawards, Joan feverishly told herself that she was not yet safe. Since
that posy was offered her at the church door, since she had read those
awful words written on the label, and had looked into those menacing
blue eyes, a renewed, augmented fear had seemed to half paralyze her,
body and soul; more than fear, worse than dread--a horrible conviction
of coming doom.
It asserted itself even when she lay on her husband's breast in their
reserved compartment, listening to the passionate utterances of intense
and devoted love with which he hoped to dispel her nervous
terrors--terrors which, although he began to understand that she had
unfortunately been drawn into being one of the actors in an undesirable
life drama, he regarded as mere vapours which could be dispelled by an
equable, peaceful life shared by him and ruled by common sense. Those
clear, threatening blue eyes seemed still gazing into hers, penetrating
to the secrets hidden in her soul. All through Vansittart's endearing
words, the bright pictures he verbally drew of their coming happiness,
those words repeated themselves in her ears--"Vengeance is Mine! I will
repay, saith the Lord!"
But when day succeeded day upon the yacht; when hour after hour she was
calmed by the tender devotion of her husband; when sunlit summer seas
under blue, tranquil skies were her surroundings by day, to give place
to a dusky mystic ocean lit by glittering trails of moonlight, and
reflecting myriads of stars at night--a certain calm, which was more
stolidity than calm, a content which was more relief from dread than
peace--came to her rescue.
They spent some weeks on the high seas, touching only at obscure foreign
ports. At last Joan's latent fears began to reassert themselves. She
urged Vansittart to make for a seaport where they might procure English
papers.
This led to their return from a coasting tour of the Mediterranean
Islands. The heat was intense, only tempered by sea breezes and by the
appliances on board the luxurious craft. Still, Joan would not consent
to go northward, where people would naturally expect them to be.
Vansittart put in at Marseilles, went on shore alone, saw the papers,
ascertained that there was nothing in them anent "the Mercier affair,"
about which his young wife was, in his opinion, so unreasonably
conscientious, and brought them to her with secret triumph.
He hoped that now she would be "more reasonable," and to his content,
his hope was so far realized that when he tentatively suggested a return
home, she readily acquiesced. A week later they arrived at his
favourite country seat--a pretty estate in Oxfordshire, near the most
picturesque part of the Thames.
An old stone house which had seen the birth of generation upon
generation of Vansittart's ancestors, Pierrepoint Court stood in a wide,
undulating park. Rooks nested in the tall elms, shy deer hid among the
bracken under the preserves. An atmosphere of calm, of unworldly peace,
reigned everywhere, and seemed to affect the new mistress of the place,
even as she entered upon her duties as its _chatelaine_.
A day or two passed so delightfully that she frequently told herself
with mute gratitude to Heaven, that trouble was over--happiness had
begun. She strolled through her dominion with her husband at her side,
all his retainers and tenants welcoming and congratulating them. Most
of all she enjoyed driving with him in a dog-cart to outlying farms, and
rusticating among the orchards, visiting the poultry-yards and dairies.
This was before they had written to announce their arrival to Sir Thomas
and Lady Thorne. The morning their letters must have reached, they were
starting for a long drive when a telegraph boy cycled up. Vansittart
read the message, which was from Sir Thomas, and crumpling it up, thrust
it deep in his pocket. "It is nothing," he said, smiling. But his heart
misgave him. The words were ominous of trouble.
"Meet me at my solicitors' as soon after you receive this as possible.
This is urgent."