And now Laurence Vanderlyn and Margaret Pargeter were speeding through
the night, completely and physically alone as they had never been during
the years of their long acquaintanceship; and, as he sat there, with the
woman he had loved so long and so faithfully wholly in his power, there
came over Vanderlyn a sense of fierce triumph and conquest.
The train had not started to time. There had come a sound of eager
talking on the platform, and Vanderlyn, filled with a vague
apprehension, had leaned out of the window and with some difficulty
ascertained the cause of the delay. The guard in charge of the train,
the man, that is, whom he had feed so well in order to secure privacy,
had strained his hand in lifting a weight, and another employé had had
to take his place.
But at last the few moments of waiting--to Vanderlyn they had seemed an
hour--had come to an end. At last the train began to move, that slow and
yet relentless movement which is one of the few things in our modern
world which spell finality. To the man and the woman it was the starting
of the train which indicated to them both that the die was indeed cast.
Vanderlyn looked at his companion. She was gazing up at him with a
strange expression of gladness, of relief, on her face. The long years
of restraint and measured coldness seemed to have vanished, receded into
nothingness.
She held out her ringless hand and clasped his, and a moment later they
were sitting hand in hand, like two children, side by side. With a
rather awkward movement he slipped on her finger a thin gold ring--his
dead mother's wedding-ring,--but still she said nothing. Her head was
turned away, and she was staring out of the window, as if fascinated by
the flying lights. He knew rather than saw that her eyes were shining,
her cheeks pink with excitement; then she took off her hat, and he told
himself that her fair hair gleaming against the grey-brown furnishings
of the railway carriage looked like a golden aureole.
Suddenly Laurence Vanderlyn pressed the hand he was holding to his lips,
dropped it, and then stood up. He pulled the blue silk shade over the
electric light globe which hung in the centre of the carriage; glanced
through one of the two tiny glazed apertures giving a view of the next
compartment; then he sat down by her, and in the half darkness gathered
her into his arms.
"Dear," he said, in a voice that sounded strange and muffled even to
himself, "do you remember the passage at Bonnington?"
As he held her, she had been looking up into his face, but now, hearing
his question, she flushed deeply, and her head fell forward on his
breast. Their minds, their hearts, were travelling back to the moment,
to the trifling episode, which had revealed to each the other's love.
It had happened ten years ago, at a time when Tom Pargeter, desiring to
play the rôle of country gentleman, had taken for awhile a certain
historic country house. There, he and his young wife had brought
together a great Christmas house-party composed of the odd, ill-assorted
social elements which gather at the call of the wealthy host who has
exchanged old friends for new acquaintances. Peggy's own people,
old-fashioned country gentry, were regarded by Pargeter as hopelessly
dowdy and "out of it," so none of them had been invited. With Laurence
Vanderlyn alone had the young mistress of the house had any link of
mutual interests or sympathies; but of flirtation, as that protean word
was understood by those about them, there had been none.
Then, on Christmas Eve, had come the playing of childish games, though
no children were present, for the two-year-old child of the host and
hostess was safe in bed. It was in the chances of one of these games
that Laurence Vanderlyn had for a moment caught Margaret Pargeter in his
arms----
He had released her almost at once, but not before they had exchanged
the long probing look which had told to each their own as well as the
other's secret. Till that moment they had been strangers--from that
moment they were lovers, but lovers allowing themselves none of love's
license, and very soon Vanderlyn had taught himself to be content with
all that Peggy's conscience allowed her to think possible.
She had never known--how could she have known?--what his acquiescence
had cost him. Now and again, during the long years, they had been
compelled to discuss the abnormal relation which Peggy called their
friendship; together they had trembled at the fragile basis on which
what most human beings would have considered their meagre happiness was
founded.
More than once she had touched him to the heart by asserting that she
felt sure that the inscrutable Providence in which she had retained an
almost childish faith, could never be so cruel as to deprive her of the
only source of happiness, apart from her little son, which had come her
way; and so, although their intimacy had become closer, the links which
bound them not only remained platonic, but, as is the way with such
links, tended to become more platonic as the time went on.
Even now, as he sat there with the woman he loved wholly in his power,
lying in his arms with her face pressed to his breast, Vanderlyn's mind
was in a maze of doubt as to what was to be their relationship during
the coming days. Even now he was not sure as to what Peggy had meant
when she had seemed to plead, more with herself than with him, for a
short space of such happiness as during their long intimacy they had
never enjoyed.
All his acquaintances, including his official chief, would have told you
that Laurence Vanderlyn was an accomplished man of the world, and an
acute student of human nature, but now, to-night, he owned himself at
fault. Only one thing was quite clear; he told himself that the thought
of again taking up the thread of what had been so unnatural an existence
was hateful--impossible.
Perhaps the woman felt the man's obscure moment of recoil; she gently
withdrew herself from his arms. "I'm tired," she said, rather
plaintively, "the train sways so, Laurence. I wonder if I could lie
down----"
He heaped up the cushions, spread out the large rug, which he had
purchased that day, and which formed their only luggage, for everything
else, by her wish, had been sent on the day before.
Very tenderly he wrapped the folds of the rug round her. Then he knelt
by her side; and at once she put out her arms, and pulled his head down
close to hers; a moment later her soft lips were laid against his cheek.
He remembered, with a retrospective pang, the ache at his heart with
which the sight of her caresses to her child had always filled him.
"Peggy," he whispered, "tell me, my beloved, why are you being so good
to me--now?"
She made no direct answer to the question. Instead, she moved away a
little, and raised herself on her elbow; her blue eyes, filled with a
strange solemnity, rested on his moved face.
"Listen," she said, "I want to tell you something, Laurence. I want you
to know that I understand how--how angelic you have been to me all these
years. Ever since we first knew one another, you have given me
everything--everything in exchange for nothing."
And as he shook his head, she continued, "Yes, for nothing! For a long
time I tried to persuade myself that this was not so--I tried to believe
that you were as contented as I had taught myself to be. I first
realised what a hindrance"--she hesitated for a moment, and then said
the two words--"our friendship--must have proved to you four years
ago,--when you might have gone to St. Petersburg."
As Vanderlyn allowed an exclamation of surprise to escape him, she went
on, "Yes, Laurence, you have never known that I knew of that chance--of
that offer. Adèle de Léra heard of it, and told me; she begged me then,
oh! so earnestly, to give you up--to let you go."
"It was no business of hers," he muttered, "I never thought for a moment
of accepting----"
"--But you would have done so if you had never known me, if we had not
been friends?" She looked up at him, hoping, longing, for a quick word
of denial.
But Vanderlyn said no such word. Instead, he fell manlike into the trap
she had perhaps unwittingly laid for him.
"If I had never known you?" he repeated, "why, Peggy--dearest--my whole
life would have been different if I had never known you! Do you really
think that I should have been here in Paris, doing what I am now
doing--or rather doing nothing--if we had never met?"
The honest, unmeditated answer made her wince, but she went on, as if
she had not heard it--
"As you know, I did not take Adèle's advice, but I have never forgotten,
Laurence, some of the things she said."
A look which crossed his face caused her to redden, and add hastily,
"She's not given to speaking of you--of us; indeed she's not! She never
again alluded to the matter; but the other day when I was persuading
her,--she required a good deal of persuasion, Laurence--to consent to my
plan, I reminded her of all she had said four years ago."
"And what was it that she did say four years ago?" asked Vanderlyn with
a touch of angry curiosity; "as Madame de Léra is a Frenchwoman, and a
pious Catholic, I presume she tried to make you believe that our
friendship was wrong, and could only lead to one thing----" he stopped
abruptly.
"No," said Peggy, quietly, "she did not think then that our friendship
would lead to--to this; she thought in some ways better of me than I
deserve. But she did tell me that I was taking a great responsibility
on myself, and that if anything happened--for instance, if I
died----" Vanderlyn again made a restless, almost a contemptuous
movement--"I should have been the cause of your wasting the best years of
your life; I should have broken and spoilt your career, and all--all for
nothing."
"Nothing?" exclaimed Vanderlyn passionately. "Ah! Peggy, do not say
that. You know, you must know, that our love--I will not call it
friendship," he went on resolutely, "for this one week let no such false
word be uttered between us--you must know, I say, that our love has been
everything to me! Till I met you, my life was empty, miserable; since I
met you it has been filled, satisfied, and that even if I have received
what Madame de Léra dares to call--nothing!"
He spoke with a fervour, a conviction, which to the woman over whom he
was now leaning brought exquisite solace. At last he was speaking as she
had longed to hear him speak.
"You don't know," she whispered brokenly, "how happy you make me by
saying this to-night, Laurence. I have sometimes wondered lately if you
cared for me as much as you used to care?"
Vanderlyn's dark face contracted with pain; he was no Don Juan, learned
in the byways of a woman's heart. Then, almost roughly, he caught her to
him, and she, looking up, saw a strange glowing look come over his
face--a look which was, even to her, an all-sufficing answer, for it
told of the baffled longing, of the abnegation, and, even now, of the
restraint and selflessness, of the man who loved her.
"Did you really think that, Peggy?" was all he said; then, more slowly,
as the arms about her relaxed their hold, "Why, my dear, you've always
been--you are--my life."
A sudden sob, a cry of joy broke from her. She sat up, and with a quick
passionate movement flung herself on his breast; slowly she raised her
face to his: "I love you," she whispered, "Laurence, I love you!"
His lips trembled for a moment on her closed eyelids, then sought and
found her soft, quivering mouth. But even then Vanderlyn's love was
reverent, restrained in its expression, yet none the less, perhaps the
more, a binding sacrament.
At last, "Why did you subject us," he said, huskily, "to such an ordeal?
What has made you give way--now? How can you dream of going back, after
a week, to our old life?" But even as he asked the searching questions,
he laid her back gently on her improvised couch.
Woman-like she did not give him a direct response, then, quite suddenly,
she yielded him the key to the mystery.
"Because, Laurence, the last time I was in England, something happened
which altered my outlook on life."
She uttered the words with strange solemnity, but Vanderlyn's ears were
holden; true, he heard her answer to his question, but the word conveyed
little or nothing to him.
He was still riding the whirlwind of his own poignant emotion; he was
telling himself, with voiceless and yet most binding oaths, that never,
never should the woman whose heart had just beaten against his heart,
whose lips had just trembled beneath his lips, go back to act the part
of even the nominal wife to Tom Pargeter. He would consent to any
condition imposed by her, as long as they could be together; surely even
she would understand, if not now, then later, that there are certain
moments which can never be obliterated or treated as if they have not
been....
It was with difficulty--with a feeling that he was falling from high
heaven to earth--that he forced himself to listen to her next words.
"As you know, I stayed, when in England, with Sophy Pargeter----"
Again she looked up at him, as if hesitating what she should say.
"Sophy Pargeter?" he repeated the name mechanically, but with a sudden
wincing.
Vanderlyn had always disliked, with a rather absurd, unreasoning
dislike, Peggy's plain-featured, rough-tongued sister-in-law. To him
Sophy Pargeter had ever been a grotesque example of the deep--they
almost appear racial--differences which may, and so often do, exist
between different members of a family whose material prosperity is due
to successful commerce.
The vast inherited wealth which had made of Tom Pargeter a selfish,
pleasure-loving, unmoral human being, had transformed his sister Sophy
into a woman oppressed by the belief that it was her duty to spend the
greater part of her considerable income in what she believed to be good
works. She regarded with grim disapproval her brother's way of life, and
she condemned even his innocent pleasures; she had, however, always been
fond of Peggy. Laurence Vanderlyn, himself the outcome and product of an
old Puritan New England and Dutch stock, was well aware of the horror
and amazement with which Miss Pargeter would regard Peggy's present
action.
"Well, Laurence, the day that I arrived there, I mean at Sophy's
house, I felt very ill. I suppose the journey had tired me, for I
fainted----" Again she hesitated, as if not knowing how to frame her
next sentence.
"Sophy was horribly frightened. She would send for her doctor, and
though he said there was nothing much the matter with me, he insisted
that I ought to see another man--a specialist."
Peggy looked up with an anxious expression in her blue eyes--but again
Vanderlyn's ears and eyes were holden. He habitually felt for the
medical profession the unreasoning dislike, almost the contempt, your
perfectly healthy human being, living in an ailing world, often--in fact
almost always--does feel for those who play the rôle of the old augurs
in our modern life. Mrs. Pargeter had never been a strong woman; she was
often ill, often in the doctor's hands. So it was that Vanderlyn did not
realise the deep import of her next words----
"Sophy went with me to London--she was really very kind about it all,
and you would have liked her better, Laurence, if you had seen her that
day. The specialist did all the usual things, then he told me to go on
much as I had been doing, and to avoid any sudden shock or
excitement--in fact he said almost exactly what that dear old French
doctor said to me a year ago----"
She waited a moment: "Then, Laurence, the next day, when Sophy thought I
had got over the journey to London," Peggy smiled at him a little
whimsical smile, "she told me that she thought I ought to know--it was
her duty to tell me--that I had heart disease, and that, though I should
probably live a long time, it was possible I might die at any
moment----"
A sudden wrath filled the dark, sensitive face of the man bending over
her.
"What nonsense!" he exclaimed with angry decision. "What will the
doctors say next, I wonder! I wish to God you would make up your mind,
Peggy, once and for all, never to see a doctor again! I beg of you, if
only for my sake, to promise me that you will not go again to any doctor
till I give you permission to do so. You don't know what I went through
five years ago when one of those charlatans declared that he would not
answer for the consequences if you didn't winter South, and--and Tom
would not let you go!"
He paused, and then added more gently, "And yet nothing happened--you
were none the worse for spending that winter in cold Leicestershire!"
"Yes, that's true," she answered submissively, "I will make you the
promise you ask, Laurence. I daresay I have been foolish in going so
often to doctors; I don't know that they have ever done me much good."
His eyes, having now become quite accustomed to the dim light, suddenly
seemed to see in her face a slight change; a look of fatigue and
depression had crept over her mouth. He told himself with a pang that
after all she was a delicate, fragile human being--or was it the blue
shade which threw a strange pallor on the face he was scrutinising with
such deep, wistful tenderness?
He bent over her and tucked the rug round her feet.
"Turn round and try to go to sleep," he whispered. "It's a long, long
journey by this train. I'll wake you in good time before we get to
Dorgival."
She turned, as he told her, obediently, and then, acting on a sudden
impulse, she pulled him down once more to her, and kissed him as a child
might have done. "Good night," he said, "good night, my
love--'enchanting, noble little Peggy!'"
A smile lit up her face radiantly. It was a long, long time since
Vanderlyn had last uttered the charming lines first quoted by him very
early in their acquaintance, when he had seen her among her own people,
one of a band of joyous English boys and girls celebrating a family
festival--the golden wedding of her grandparents. Peggy had been
delicately, deliciously kind to the shy, proud American youth, whom an
introduction from valued friends had suddenly made free of an English
family clan.
That had been a year before her marriage to Tom Pargeter, the inheritor
of a patent dye process which had made him master of one of those
fantastic fortunes which impress the imagination of even the
unimaginative. That the young millionaire should deign to throw the
matrimonial handkerchief at their little Peggy had seemed to her family
a piece of magic good fortune. She could bring him good old blood, and
certain great social connections, in exchange for limitless wealth; it
had been regarded as an ideal marriage.
More than four years went by before Vanderlyn again saw Peggy, and then
he had found her changed--transformed from a merry, light-hearted girl
into a pensive, reserved woman. During the interval he had often thought
of her as one thinks of a delightful playfellow, but he only came to
love her after their second meeting--when he had seen, at first with
honest dismay, and then with shame-faced gladness, how utterly ill-mated
she and Tom Pargeter were the one to the other.
* * * * *
Vanderlyn made his way over to the other side of the railway carriage;
there he sat down, and, crossing his arms on his breast, after a very
few moments he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.