CHAPTER II. IN WHICH HUGH BREAKS THE NEWS
CHAPTER III. JOAN MEREDYTH, TYPIST
CHAPTER IV. FACE TO FACE
CHAPTER V. “PERHAPS I SHALL GO BACK”
CHAPTER VI. “THE ONLY POSSIBLE THING”
CHAPTER VII. MR. SLOTMAN ARRIVES AT A MISUNDERSTANDING
CHAPTER VIII. THE DREAM GIRL
CHAPTER IX. THE PEACEMAKER
CHAPTER X. “IN SPITE OF EVERYTHING”
CHAPTER XI. THE GENERAL CALLS ON HUGH
CHAPTER XII. “I TAKE NOT ONE WORD BACK”
CHAPTER XIII. THE GENERAL CONFESSES
CHAPTER XIV. THE BEGINNING OF THE TRAIL
CHAPTER XV. “TO THE MANNER BORN”
CHAPTER XVI. ELLICE
CHAPTER XVII. UNREST
CHAPTER XVIII. “UNGENEROUS”
CHAPTER XIX. THE INVESTIGATIONS OF MR. SLOTMAN
CHAPTER XX. “WHEN I AM NOT WITH YOU”
CHAPTER XXI. “I SHALL FORGET HER”
CHAPTER XXII. JEALOUSY
CHAPTER XXIII. “UNCERTAIN—COY”
CHAPTER XXIV. “—TO GAIN, OR LOSE IT ALL”
CHAPTER XXV. IN THE MIRE
CHAPTER XXVI. MR. ALSTON CALLS
CHAPTER XXVII. THE WATCHER
CHAPTER XXVIII. “HE DOES NOT LOVE ME NOW”
CHAPTER XXIX. “WHY DOES SHE TAKE HIM FROM ME?”
CHAPTER XXX. “WAITING”
CHAPTER XXXI. “IF YOU NEED ME”
CHAPTER XXXII. THE SPY
CHAPTER XXXIII. GONE
CHAPTER XXXIV. “FOR HER SAKE”
CHAPTER XXXV. CONNIE DECLARES
CHAPTER XXXVI. “HE HAS COME BACK”
CHAPTER XXXVII. THE DROPPING OF THE SCALES
CHAPTER XXXVIII. “HER CHAMPION”
CHAPTER XXXIX. “THE PAYING”
CHAPTER XL. “IS IT THE END?”
CHAPTER XLI. MR. RUNDLE TAKES A HAND
CHAPTER XLII. “WALLS WE CANNOT BATTER DOWN”
CHAPTER XLIII. “NOT TILL THEN WILL I GIVE UP HOPE”
CHAPTER XLIV. POISON
CHAPTER XLV. THE GUIDING HAND
CHAPTER XLVI. “—SHE HAS GIVEN!”
CHAPTER XLVII. “AS WE FORGIVE—”
CHAPTER XLVIII. HER PRIDE’S LAST FIGHT
CHAPTER I
A MASTERFUL WOMAN
“Don’t talk to me, miss,” said her ladyship. “I don’t want to hear any
nonsense from you!”
The pretty, frightened girl who shared the drawing-room at this moment
with Lady Linden of Cornbridge Manor House had not dared to open her
lips. But that was her ladyship’s way, and “Don’t talk to me!” was a
stock expression of hers. Few people were permitted to talk in her
ladyship’s presence. In Cornbridge they spoke of her with bated breath
as a “rare masterful woman,” and they had good cause.
Masterful and domineering was Lady Linden of Cornbridge, yet she was
kind-hearted, though she tried to disguise the fact.
In Cornbridge she reigned supreme, men and women trembled at her
approach. She penetrated the homes of the cottagers, she tasted of
their foods, she rated them on uncleanliness, drunkenness, and
thriftlessness; she lectured them on cooking.
On many a Saturday night she raided, single-handed, the Plough Inn and
drove forth the sheepish revellers, personally conducting them to their
homes and wives.
They respected her in Cornbridge as the reigning sovereign of her small
estate, and none did she rule more autocratically and completely than
her little nineteen-year-old niece Marjorie.
A pretty, timid, little maid was Marjorie, with soft yellow hair, a
sweet oval face, with large pathetic blue eyes and a timid, uncertain
little rosebud of a mouth.
“A rare sweet maid her be,” they said of her in the village, “but
terribul tim’rous, and I lay her ladyship du give she a rare time of
it....” Which was true.
“Don’t talk to me, miss!” her ladyship said to the silent girl. “I know
what is best for you; and I know, too, what you don’t think I know—ha,
ha!” Her ladyship laughed terribly. “I know that you have been meeting
that worthless young scamp, Tom Arundel!”
“Oh, aunt, he is not worthless—”
“Financially he isn’t worth a sou—and that’s what I mean, and don’t
interrupt. I am your guardian, you are entirely in my charge, and until
you arrive at the age of twenty-five I can withhold your fortune from
you if you marry in opposition to me and my wishes. But you won’t—you
won’t do anything of the kind. You will marry the man I select for you,
the man I have already selected—what did you say, miss?
“And now, not another word. Hugh Alston is the man I have selected for
you. He is in love with you, there isn’t a finer lad living. He has
eight thousand a year, and Hurst Dormer is one of the best old
properties in Sussex. So that’s quite enough, and I don’t want to hear
any more nonsense about Tom Arundel. I say nothing against him
personally. Colonel Arundel is a gentleman, of course, otherwise I
would not permit you to know his son; but the Arundels haven’t a
pennypiece to fly with and—and now—Now I see Hugh coming up the drive.
Leave me. I want to talk to him. Go into the garden, and wait by the
lily-pond. In all probability Hugh will have something to say to you
before long.”
“Oh, aunt, I—”
“Shut up!” said her ladyship briefly.
Marjorie went out, with hanging head and bursting heart. She believed
herself the most unhappy girl in England. She loved; who could help
loving happy-go-lucky, handsome Tom Arundel, who well-nigh worshipped
the ground her little feet trod upon? It was the first love and the
only love of her life, and of nights she lay awake picturing his
bright, young boyish face, hearing again all the things he had said to
her till her heart was well-nigh bursting with love and longing for
him.
But she did not hate Hugh. Who could hate Hugh Alston, with his cheery
smile, his ringing voice, his big generous heart, and his fine
manliness? Not she! But from the depths of her heart she wished Hugh
Alston a great distance away from Cornbridge.
“Hello, Hugh!” said her ladyship. He had come in, a man of
two-and-thirty, big and broad, with suntanned face and eyes as blue as
the tear-dimmed eyes of the girl who had gone miserably down to the
lily-pond.
Fair haired was Hugh, ruddy of cheek, with no particular beauty to
boast of, save the wholesomeness and cleanliness of his young manhood.
He seemed to bring into the room a scent of the open country, of the
good brown earth and of the clean wind of heaven.
“Hello, Hugh!” said Lady Linden.
“Hello, my lady,” said he, and kissed her. It had been his habit from
boyhood, also it had been his lifelong habit to love and respect the
old dame, and to feel not the slightest fear of her. In this he was
singular, and because he was the one person who did not fear her she
preferred him to anyone else.
“Hugh,” she said—she went straight to the point, she always did; as a
hunter goes at a hedge, so her ladyship without prevarication went at
the matter she had in hand—“I have been talking to Marjorie about Tom
Arundel—”
His cheery face grew a little grave.
“Yes?”
“Well, it is absurd—you realise that?”
“I suppose so, but—” He paused.
“It is childish folly!”
“Do you think so? Do you think that she—” Again he paused, with a
nervousness and diffidence usually foreign to him.
“She’s only a gel,” said her ladyship. Her ladyship was Sussex born,
and talked Sussex when she became excited. “She’s only a gel, and gels
have their fancies. I had my own—but bless you, they don’t last. She
don’t know her own mind.”
“He’s a good fellow,” said Hugh generously.
“A nice lad, but he won’t suit me for Marjorie’s husband. Hugh, the
gel’s in the garden, she is sitting by the lily-pond and believes her
heart is broken, but it isn’t! Go and prove it isn’t; go now!”
He met her eyes and flushed red. “I’ll go and have a talk to Marjorie,”
he said. “You haven’t been—too rough with her, have you?”
“Rough! I know how to deal with gels. I told her that I had the command
of her money, her four hundred a year till she was twenty-five, and not
a bob of it should she touch if she married against my wish. Now go and
talk to her—and talk sense—” She paused. “You know what I mean—sense!”
A very pretty picture, the slender white-clad, drooping figure with its
crown of golden hair made, sitting on the bench beside the lily-pond.
Her hands were clasped, her eyes fixed on the stagnant green water over
which the dragon-flies skimmed.
Coming across the soundless turf, he stood for a moment to look at her.
Hurst Dormer was a fine old place, yet of late to him it had grown
singularly dull and cheerless. He had loved it all his life, but
latterly he had realised that there was something missing, something
without which the old house could not be home to him, and in his dreams
waking and sleeping he had seen this same little white-clad figure
seated at the foot of the great table in the dining-hall.
He had seen her in his mind’s eye doing those little housewifely duties
that the mistresses of Hurst Dormer had always loved to do, her slender
fingers busy with the rare and delicate old china, or the
lavender-scented linen, or else in the wonderful old garden, the
gracious little mistress of all and of his heart.
And now she sat drooping like a wilted lily beside the green pond,
because of her love for another man, and his honest heart ached that it
should be so.
“Marjorie!” he said.
She lifted a tear-stained face and held out her hand’ to him silently.
He patted her hand gently, as one pats the hand of a child. “Is—is it
so bad, little girl? Do you care for him so much?”
“Better than my life!” she said. “Oh, if you knew!”
“I see,” he said quietly. He sat staring at the green waters, stirred
now and again by the fin of a lazy carp. He realised that there would
be no sweet girlish, golden-haired little mistress for Hurst Dormer,
and the realisation hurt him badly.
The girl seemed to have crept a little closer to him, as for comfort
and protection.
“She has made up her mind, and nothing will change it. She wants you
to—to marry me. She’s told me so a hundred times. She won’t listen to
anything else; she says you—you care for me, Hugh.”
“Supposing I care so much, little girl, that I want your happiness
above everything in this world. Supposing—I clear out?” he said—“clear
right away, go to Africa, or somewhere or other?”
“She would make me wait till you came back, and you’d have to come
back, Hugh, because there is always Hurst Dormer. There’s no way out
for me, none. If only—only you were married; that is the only thing
that would have saved me!”
“But I’m not!”
She sighed. “If only you were, if only you could say to her, ‘I can’t
ask Marjorie to marry me, because I am already married!’ It sounds
rubbish, doesn’t it, Hugh; but if it were only true!”
“Supposing—I did say it?”
“Oh, Hugh, but—” She looked up at him quickly. “But it would be a lie!”
“I know, but lies aren’t always the awful things they are supposed to
be—if one told a lie to help a friend, for instance, such a lie might
be forgiven, eh?”
“But—” She was trembling; she looked eagerly into his eyes, into her
cheeks had come a flush, into her eyes the brightness of a new, though
as yet vague, hope. “It—it sounds so impossible!”
“Nothing is actually impossible. Listen, little maid. She sent me here
to you to talk sense, as she put it. That meant she sent me here to ask
you to marry me, and I meant to do it. I think perhaps you know why”—he
lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it—“but I shan’t now, I never
shall. Little girl, we’re going to be what we’ve always been, the best
and truest of friends, and I’ve got to find a way to help you and Tom—”
“Hugh, if you told her that you were married, and not free, she
wouldn’t give another thought to opposing Tom and me—it is only because
she wants me to marry you that she opposes Tom! Oh, Hugh, if—if—if you
could, if it were possible!” She was trembling with excitement, and the
sweet colour was coming and going in her cheeks.
“Supposing I did it?” he said, and spoke his thoughts aloud. “Of course
it would be a shock to her, perhaps she wouldn’t believe!”
“She would believe anything you said...”
“It is rather a rotten thing to do,” he thought, “yet....” He looked at
the bright, eager face, it would make her happy; he knew that what she
said was true—Lady Linden would not oppose Tom Arundel if marriage
between Marjorie and himself was out of the question. It would be
making the way clear for her: it would be giving her happiness, doing
her the greatest service that he could. Of his own sacrifice, his own
disappointment he thought not now; realisation of that would come
later.
At first it seemed to him a mad, a nonsensical scheme, yet it was one
that might so easily be carried out. If one doubt was left as to
whether he would do it, it was gone the next moment.
“Hugh, would you do—would you do this for me?”
“There is very little that I wouldn’t do for you, little maid,” he
said, “and if I can help you to your happiness I am going to do it.”
She crept closer to him; she laid her cheek against his shoulder, and
held his hand in hers.
“Tell me just what you will say.”
“I haven’t thought that out yet.”
“But you must.”
“I know. You see, if I say I am married, naturally she will ask me a
few questions.”
“When she gets—gets her breath!” Marjorie said with a laugh; it was the
first time she had laughed, and he liked to hear it.
“The first will probably be, How long have I been married?”
“Do you remember you used to come to Marlbury to see me when I was at
school at Miss Skinner’s?”
“Rather!”
“That was three years ago. Supposing you married about then?”
“Fine,” Hugh said. “I married three years ago. What month?”
“June,” she said; “it’s a lovely month!”
“I was married in June, nineteen hundred and eighteen, my lady,” said
Hugh. “Where at, though?”
“Why, Marlbury, of course!”
“Of course! Splendid place to get married in, delightful romantic old
town!”
“It is a hateful place, but that doesn’t matter,” said Marjorie. She
seemed to snuggle up a little closer to him, her lips were rippling
with smiles, her bright eyes saw freedom and love, her heart was very
warm with gratitude to this man who was helping her. But she could not
guess, how could she, how in spite of the laughter on his lips there
was a great ache and a feeling of emptiness at his heart.
“So now we have it all complete,” he said. “I was married in June,
nineteen eighteen at Marlbury; my wife and I did not get on, we parted.
She had a temper, so had I, a most unhappy affair, and there you are!”
He laughed.
“All save one thing,” Marjorie said.
“Goodness, what have I forgotten?”
“Only the lady’s name.”
“You are right. She must have a name of course, something nice and
romantic—Gladys something, eh?”
Marjorie shook her head.
“Clementine,” suggested Hugh. “No, won’t do, eh? Now you put your
thinking cap on and invent a name, something romantic and pretty. Let’s
hear from you, Marjorie.”
“Do you like—Joan Meredyth?” she said.
“Splendid! What a clever little brain!” He shut his eyes. “I married
Miss Joan Meredyth on the first of June, or was it the second, in the
year nineteen hundred and eighteen? We lived a cat-and-dog existence,
and parted with mutual recriminations, since when I have not seen her!
Marjorie, do you think she will swallow it?”
“If you tell her; but, Hugh, will you—will you?”
“Little girl, is it going to help you?”
“You know it is!” she whispered.
“Then I shall tell her!”
Marjorie lifted a pair of soft arms and put them about his neck.
“Hugh!” she said, “Hugh, if—if I had never known Tom, I—”
“I know,” he said. “I know. God bless you.” He stooped and kissed her
on the cheek, and rose.
It was a mad thing this that he was to do, yet he never considered its
madness, its folly. It would help her, and Hurst Dormer would never
know its golden-haired mistress, after all.