When Joan woke the next morning it was with the consciousness that
something had happened. And then the events of the last night flashed
over her mind, and for a while she lay very still. The details seemed
all hazy and blurred; only the main fact stood out clear and dominant,
the fact that she had gone to his room.
After that things got a bit confused. She had a recollection of being
carried in his arms, of his bending over her and whispering "Little
Joan," of his kissing her--but it all seemed merged in an exquisite
dream.
"Oh! my dear," she whispered, while the love-light shone in her grey
eyes; "but what a dear you are. . . ."
By the very nature of things she was incapable of realising the
tremendous strain to which she had subjected him; it only seemed to her
that there was a new and wonderful secret to share with him. And to
the girl, still under the influence of her mood of the night before,
the secret forged the final link in the chain. She wondered how she
could ever have hesitated; it all seemed so very easy and obvious now.
Baxter, Blandford--what did anything matter? She had gone to Derek;
the matter was decided. . . .
Her maid came into the room, and advanced cautiously to the bed.
"Ah! but Mam'selle es awake," she said. "And ze tea, mon Dieu, but it
es quite cold."
"What time is it, Celeste?" asked Joan.
"Nine o'clock, Mam'selle. I have ze dejeuner outside. And a note from
M'sieur le Capitaine." She held out an envelope to Joan, and busied
herself about the room. "Ah! but he is gentil--M'sieur le Capitaine;
young and of a great air." Celeste, it may be stated, viewed Baxter
rather like a noisome insect.
"Bring me my breakfast, please."
Joan waited till the maid had left the room before opening the
envelope. There was just a line inside, and her eyes grew very tender
as she read the words.
"I've got something to say to you, little Joan, which has got to be
said in the big spaces. Will you come out with me this morning on to
the Downs?"
She read it through half a dozen times and then she turned to Celeste.
"Tell Captain Vane that I will be ready in an hour," she said.
* * * * * *
Vane was standing in the hall when Joan appeared. A faintly tremulous
smile was on her lips, but she came steadily up to him and held out
both her hands.
"Good morning, my lady," he said gently. "Would you to be liking to
know how wonderful you look?"
"Oh! Derek," she whispered. "My dear!"
"Ostensibly you are going into Lewes to shop," he remarked with a grin.
"I am dealing with Boche prisoners. . . . At least that's what I told
our worthy host over the kidneys at breakfast. . . ."
She gave a little happy laugh. "And in reality?"
"We're both going to be dropped somewhere, and we're going to tell the
car to run away and play, while we walk home over the Downs."
"And my shopping?"
"You couldn't find anything you wanted."
"And your prisoners?"
"Well the only thing about my prisoners that is likely to give the show
away is if I turn up at the prison," smiled Vane. "Let us hope Mr.
Sutton doesn't know the governor."
And suddenly he added irrelevantly. "Our host was a little surprised
that you failed to appear at breakfast, seeing how early he packed you
off to bed." He watched the slight quickening of her breath, the faint
colour dyeing her cheeks, and suddenly the resolution he had made
seemed singularly futile. Then with a big effort he took hold of
himself, and for greater safety put both his hands in his pockets. "I
think," he remarked quietly, "you'd better go and get ready. The car
will be round in a moment. . . ."
Without a word she left him and went upstairs to her room, while Vane
strolled to the front door. The car was just coming out of the garage,
and he nodded to the chauffeur.
"Glorious day, isn't it?"
"Pity you've got to waste it, sir, over them prisoners," said the man.
"Yes," agreed Vane thoughtfully. "I'll want you to drop me in the
town, and then I'll walk back over the Downs. . . . Splendid day for a
walk. . . ." He turned and found Joan beside him. "And lightning
performance," he smiled at her. "I won't be a moment."
He slipped on his coat and handed her into the car. "Drop me in the
High Street, will you--opposite to the Post Office?" he said to the
chauffeur. "I'm expecting a letter."
"I'm afraid," she said, as the car rolled down the drive, "that like
most men you're rather prone to overact." With a little, happy laugh
she snuggled up to him and slid her hand into his under the rug.
"I shall be walking home, thank you, Thomas," said Joan as she got out
of the car, and the man stood waiting for orders.
He touched his cap, and they stood watching the car go down the High
Street. Then she turned to Vane.
"You'd better see about your letters," she said demurely. "And then we
might go over the Castle. There is a most wonderful collection of
oleographic paleographs brought over by the Americans when they
discovered England. . . ."
"In one second," threatened Vane, "I shall kiss you. And I don't know
that they'd understand it here. . . ."
"They'd think we were movie actors," she gurgled, falling into step
beside him. "Do you know the way?"
"In the days of my unregenerate youth I went to the races here," he
answered. "One passes a prison or something. Anyway, does it matter?"
She gave a sigh of utter contentment. "Nothing matters, my
man--nothing at all--except that I'm with you. Only I want to get out
into the open, with the fresh wind blowing on my face--and I want to
sing for the joy of it. . . . Do you think if we sang up the town here
they'd give me pennies?"
"More probably lock us up as undesirable vagrants," laughed Vane.
"It's a county town and they're rather particular. I'm not certain
that happiness isn't an offence under the Defence of the Realm Act.
Incidentally, I don't think there would be many convictions these
days. . . ."
She stopped for a moment and faced him. "That's not allowed, Derek;
it's simply not allowed."
"Your servant craves pardon," he answered gravely, and for a while they
walked on in silence.
They passed two ragged children who had collected on their faces more
dirt than seemed humanly possible, and nothing would content Joan but
that she should present each with a sixpence.
"Poor little devils," and her voice was very soft. "What a life to
look forward to, Derek--what a hideous existence. . . ."
"It's all they've ever been brought up to." He put sixpence into each
little grubby paw, and smiled down at the awestruck faces. "Go and
spend it all on sweets," he told them, "and be really, wonderfully,
happily sick for once in your lives. . . ."
And then at last they turned a corner, and in front of them stretched
the Downs. On their left the grim, frowning prison stood sombre and
apparently lifeless, and as Joan passed it she gave a little shudder.
"Oh! Boy," she cried, "isn't it impossible to get away from the
suffering and the rottenness--even for a moment?" She shook herself as
if to cast off the mood, and stretched out her arms to the open hills.
"I'm sorry," she said briefly. "Come into the big spaces and tell me
what you want to say. . . ."
For a while they walked on over the clean-cut turf and the wind from
the sea swept through the gorse and the rustling grasses, and kissed
them, and passed on.
"There is a hayrick, I see, girl o' mine," said Vane. "Let's go and
sit under it. And in defiance of all laws and regulations we will
there smoke a cigarette."
They reached the sheltered side of it, and Vane threw down his coat on
the ground for her to sit on.
"Aren't you forgetting something?" she whispered, and he drew her into
his arms and kissed her. Then he made her sit down, and arranged the
coat around her shoulders.
"You come in too," she ordered. "There's plenty of room for
both. . . ."
And so with his arm around her waist, and his cheek touching hers they
sat for awhile in silence.
Then suddenly Vane spoke. "Grey girl--I'm going away to-day."
"Going away?" She echoed the words and stared at him incredulously.
"But . . . but . . . I thought. . . ."
"So did I," he returned quietly. "When I came down here yesterday I
had only one thought in my mind--and that was to make you give up
Baxter. I wanted it from purely selfish reasons; I wanted it because I
wanted you myself. . . ."
"And don't you now?" Her voice was wondering.
"More--infinitely more--than I did before. But there's one thing I
want even more than that--your happiness." He was staring steadily
over the great stretch of open country to where Crowborough lay in the
purple distance. "When you came to me last night, little Joan, I
thought I should suffocate with the happiness of it. It seemed so
gloriously trustful of you . . . though, I must admit that idea did not
come at first. You see I'm only a man; and you're a lovely
girl. . . ." He laughed a little shortly. "I'd made up my mind to
drift these next two or three days, and then when you came it seemed to
be a direct answer to the problem. I didn't realise just to begin with
that you weren't quite capable of thinking things out for
yourself. . . . I didn't care, either. It was you and I--a woman and
a man; it was the answer. And then you started to cry--in my arms.
The strain had been too much. Gradually as you cried and clung to me,
all the tearing overmastering passion went--and just a much bigger love
for you came instead of it. . . . You see, it seemed to me that you,
in your weakness last night, had placed the settlement on my
shoulders. . . ."
"It's there now, dear man," she whispered. "I'd just got tired, tired,
tired of fighting---- And last night it all seemed so clear." With
her breast rising and falling quickly she stared over the hills, and
Vane watched her with eyes full of love.
"I know it did--last night," he answered.
"Don't you understand," she went on after a moment, "that a woman wants
to have her mind made up for her? She doesn't want arguments and
points of view--she wants to be taken into a man's arms, and kissed,
and beaten if necessary. . . . I don't know what was the matter with
me last night; I only know that I was lying in bed feeling all dazed
and bruised--and then suddenly I saw the way out. To come to you--and
get things settled." She turned on him and her face was very tense.
"You weren't--you weren't shocked," her voice was very low. "Not
disgusted with me."
Vane threw back his head and laughed. "My lady," he said after a
moment, "forgive my laughing. But if you could even, in your wildest
dreams, imagine the absurdity of such an idea, you'd laugh too. . . ."
Then he grew serious again, and stabbed at the ground with the point of
his stick. "Do you suppose, dear, that I wouldn't sooner have taken
that way out myself? Do you suppose that the temptation to take that
way out isn't beating and hammering at me now? . . . That's why I've
got to go. . . ."
"What do you mean?" Her face was half-averted.
"I mean," he answered grimly, "that if I stopped at Melton to-night, I
should come to your room. As I think I said before, I'm just a man,
and you're a lovely girl--and I adore you. But I adore you
sufficiently to run away from a temptation that I know would defeat
me. . . ."
She turned and faced him. "And supposing I want it to defeat you?"
"Ah! don't--don't. . . . For the love of God--don't!" he cried,
getting up and striding away. He stood with his back towards her,
while a large variety of separate imps in his brain assured him that he
was an unmitigated fool.
"For Heaven's sake!--take what the gods offer you," they sang. "Here
in the cold light of day, where there's no question of her being
overwrought, she's asking you to settle things for her. Take it, you
fool, take it. . . ."
And the god who concerned himself with that particular jig-saw among a
hundred others paused for a moment and gave no heed to the ninety-nine.
Then he turned over two or three pages to see what was coming, and
forthwith lost interest. It is a bad thing to skip--even for a god.
Suddenly Vane felt Joan's hand on his arm, and looking down he found
her at his side.
"Don't you understand, dear man?" she said. "I'm frightened of being
left to decide . . . just frightened to death."
"And don't you understand, dear girl," he answered, "that I'm
frightened of deciding for you? If one decides wrong for
oneself--well, it's one's own funeral. But if it's for somebody
else--and it's their funeral. . .."
"Even if the other person begs you to do it?"
"Even if the other person begs one to do it," he repeated gravely.
"Except that the sexes are reversed, little Joan--something much like
this happened not long ago. And the woman told the man to go and make
sure. . . . I guess she was frightened of staking everything on a
sudden rush of sex. She was right." He turned to her and caught both
her hands in his with a groan. "Oh! my dear--you know what you said to
me last night before dinner. Sex--sex--sex; the most powerful weapon
in the world--and the most transitory. And I daren't use it--I just
daren't any more."
He caught her in his arms and kissed her. "I can't forget that when
you decided before--you decided against me. Something has happened
since then, Joan. . . . Last night. . . . It's another factor in the
situation, and I don't quite know how powerful it will prove. It's too
near, just at present. . . . It's out of focus. But clear through
everything I know it wouldn't be playing the game to rush you with
another--last night. . . ."
He stared over her head, and the wind blew the tendrils of her hair
against his cheek. "We've got to get last night into its proper place,
grey girl," he went on after a while. "And only you can do it. . . .
As far as I'm concerned--why there's never been any doubt. . . . It's
just for you to decide. . . ."
"But I don't want to decide." Her voice, a little muffled, came from
his shoulder. "I want you to decide for me." Then, leaning away from
him, she put both her hands on his shoulders. "Take me away,
Derek--take me away with you now. Let's go and get married--just you
and I and Binks--and go right away from everyone, and be alone." Once
again the imps knocked tauntingly, but Vane only smiled gravely and
shook his head.
"Where would the difference be, darling?" he asked. "Where would the
difference be? I guess it's not a question of with or without benefit
of clergy between you and me."
Her hands fell to her side wearily, and she turned away. "I suppose
you're doing what you think is right, dear," she said at length. "And
I can't take you and drag you to the altar, can I?"
"I'll want no dragging, little Joan, if you're of the same mind in a
fortnight's time." Then suddenly he caught both her hands in his. "My
dear, my dear!" he cried hoarsely; "don't you see I must give you time
to make sure? I must. . . ."
She shook her head. "I've had too much time already, Derek. I'm
frightened of time; I don't want to think. . . . Oh! boy, boy, don't
let me think; just take me, and think for me. . . ."
But once again Vane smiled gravely, and shook his head. "We can't
dodge it like that, my darling--we just can't. . . ." He bent down to
pick up his coat, and the god in charge sent a casual glance in their
direction, to see that matters were progressing favourably. And when
he saw the little hopeless smile on the girl's face he turned to one of
his pals.
"It's too easy," he remarked in a bored voice, and turned his attention
to a struggling curate with four children who had married for
love. . . .
And so that afternoon Vane acted according to his lights. Maybe it was
wisdom, maybe it was folly, but the point is immaterial, for it was
written in the Book of the Things that Happen.
He went, telling his host that he had found fresh orders at the Post
Office that morning: and the girl waved her handkerchief at him from
her bedroom window as the car went down the drive.
For one brief moment after lunch they had been alone--but she had made
no further attempt to keep him. She had just kissed him once, and
listened to his words of passionate love with a grave little smile.
"Only a fortnight, my darling," he had told her. "But we must give it
that. You must be sure." And he had been too much taken up with his
own thoughts to notice the weariness in her eyes.
She said nothing to him of the unread letter lying on her
dressing-table upstairs, and not till long after he had gone did she
pick up the envelope and turn it over and over in her fingers. Then,
at last, she opened it.
It was just in the same vein as all the letters her father was writing
her at this period. Brimming over with hope and confidence and joy and
pleasure; planning fresh beauties for their beloved Blandford--he
always associated Joan with himself in the possession of it; scheming
how she was to come and stay with him for long visits each year after
she was married. It was the letter of a man who had come out of the
darkness of worry into the light of safety; and as in all the others,
there was the inevitable reference to the black times that were over.
Slowly the dusk came down, the shadows deepened in the great trees
outside. The Downs faded into a misty blur, and at length she turned
from the window. In the flickering light of the fire she threw herself
face downwards on her bed. For an hour she lay there motionless, while
the shadows danced merrily around her, and darkness came down outside.
Just every now and then a little pitiful moan came from her lips,
muffled and inarticulate from the depths of the pillow; and once a
great storm of sobs shook her--sobs which drenched the old scented
linen with tears. But for the most part she lay in silence with her
hands clenched and rigid, and thus did she pass along the way of Pain
to her Calvary. . . .
At six o'clock she rose and bathed her face, and powdered her nose as
all normal women must do before facing an unsympathetic world, even if
the torments of Hell have got them on the rack. Then with firm steps
she went downstairs to the drawing-room, and found it empty. Without
faltering she crossed to the piano, and took from the top of a pile of
music "The Garden of Kama." She turned to the seventh song of the
cycle--
"Ah! when Love comes, his wings are swift,
His ways are full of quick surprise;
'Tis well for those who have the gift
To seize him even as he flies. . . ."
Her eyes ran over the well-known lines, and she sat down at the piano
and sang it through. She sang it as she had never sung before; she
sang it as she would never sing it again. For the last note had barely
died away, throbbing into silence, when Joan took the score in her
hands and tore it across. She tore the pages again, and then she
carried the pieces across and threw them into the fire. It was while
she was pressing down the remnants with a poker that Mrs. Sutton came
into the room and glanced at her in mild surprise.
"It's an old song," said Joan with a clear, ringing laugh. "One I
shall never sing again. I'm tired of it. . . ."
And the god in charge paused for a moment, and wondered if it was worth
while. . . .