IN THE MIRE
Women, chattering over their tea in the lounge of the Empire Hotel,
followed the tall restless young man with their eyes. He was worth
looking at, so big and fine, and bronzed, and so worried, so
anxious-looking, poor fellow.
Four o’clock, a quarter past, half past. She would not come. Of course
she would not come; he had offended past all forgiveness in taking so
long to reply to her appeal. Hugh Alston cursed the unlucky star that
he must have been born under.
Two middle-aged women, seated at a small table, taking their tea after
strenuous shopping at the sales, watched him and discussed him frankly.
“Evidently here to meet someone!”
“And she hasn’t come!”
“You can see how disappointed he looks, poor fellow.”
“Too bad of her!”
“My dear, what some men can see in some women...”
“And a girl who would keep a man like that waiting deserves to lose
him.”
“I hope she does. See, he’s going now. I hope she comes later and is
disappointed.”
“Oh no, I think that must be she. What a handsome girl, but how cold
and proud looking!”
She had come, even as he was giving up in despair. As he turned to
leave, she came, and they met face to face.
The two amiable busybodies sipped their tea and watched.
“My dear, she didn’t even offer him her hand—such a cold and stately
bow. They can’t be lovers, after all!”
“I don’t think I ever saw a more lovely girl!”
“But icily cold. That pink chiffon I bought at Robinson’s will make up
into a charming evening dress for Irene, don’t you think?”
“I am afraid I am late,” Joan said, and her voice was clear and cold,
expressionless as a voice could be.
“Surely I deserve that at least, after the unforgivable delay in
answering your letter.”
“Yes,” she said, “you—you were a long time answering.” And suddenly she
realised what that delay had meant.
Yesterday, if his answer had come, perhaps she would not have done as
she had done. But it was done now, past recall.
“I was away. I found Hurst Dormer irksome and lonely. Lady Linden came
over; she invited me to stay at Cornbridge,” he explained. “So I went,
and no letters were forwarded. Yours came within a few hours of my
leaving. I hope you understand that if I had had it—”
“You would have answered it before, Mr. Alston? Yes, I am glad to feel
the neglect was not intentional.”
“Intentional!”
“I—I thought, judging from the manner in which we last parted, and what
you then said to me, that you—you preferred not to—see me again.”
“I was hurt then, hurt and bitter. I had no right to say what I said. I
ask you to accept my apologies, Joan.”
She started a little at the sound of her name, but did not look at him.
“Perhaps you were right. I have thought it over since. Yes, I think I
acted meanly; it was a thing a woman would do. That is where a woman
fails—in small things—ideas, mean ideas come to her mind, just like
that one. A man would not think such things. Yes, I am ashamed by the
smallness of it. You said ‘ungenerous.’ I think a better expression
would have been ‘mean-spirited.’”
“Joan!”
“But we need not discuss that. We owe one another apologies. Shall we
take it that they are offered and accepted?”
He nodded. “Tea?” he asked, “or coffee?” For the hotel servant had come
for his orders.
“Tea, please,” she said; “and—and this time I will not ask for the
bill.” The faintest flicker of a smile crossed her lips, and then was
gone, and he thought that in its place a look of weariness and
unhappiness came into the girl’s face.
She had sent for him to ask his help. His letter had only reached her
that morning, and when she had read it, she had asked herself, “Shall I
go? Shall I see him?” And had answered “No! It is over; I do not need
his help now. I have someone else to whom I must turn for help, someone
who will give it readily.”
And yet she had come—that is the way of women. And because she had
come, she would still ask his help, and not ask it of that other. For
surely he who had brought all this trouble on to her should be the one
to clear her path?
The waiter brought the tea, and Hugh leaned back and watched her as she
poured it out. And, watching her, there came to him a vision of the
bright morning room at Hurst Dormer, a vision of all the old familiar
things he had known since boyhood: and in that vision, that day-dream,
he saw her sitting where his mother once had sat, and she was pouring
out tea, even as now.
A clearer, stronger vision this than any he had had in the old days of
Marjorie. He smiled at the thought of those dreams, so utterly broken
and dead and wafted away into the nothingness of which they had been
built.
“You sent for me to help you?”
“Yes!” A tinge of colour rose in her cheeks and waxed till her cheeks
and even her throat were flooded with a brilliant, glorious flush, and
then, suddenly as it had come, it died away again, leaving her whiter
than before.
“I wanted your help. I felt that I had a right to ask it, seeing that
you—you—”
“Have caused you trouble and annoyance? You wrote that,” he said.
She bowed her head.
“What you did, has brought more trouble, more shame, more annoyance to
me than I can ever explain. I do not ask you to tell me why you did
it—it was cruel and mean, unmanly; but you did it. And it can never be
undone, so I ask for no reasons, no explanations. They—they do not
interest me now. You have brought me trouble and—even danger—and so I
turned to you, to ask your help. I have the right, have I not the
right—to demand it?”
“The greatest right on earth,” he said. “Joan, how can I help you?”
But she did not answer immediately, for the answer would be difficult.
“When you played with a woman’s name,” she said, “you played with the
most fragile, the most delicate and easily breakable thing there is. Do
you realise that? A woman’s fair name is her most sacred possession,
and yet you played with mine, used it for your own purpose, and so have
brought me to shame and misery.”
“Joan,” he leaned towards her, “how—how—tell me how?”
“Three days ago,” she said quietly, “I submitted and paid three
thousand pounds blackmail, rather than that your name and mine, linked
together, should be dragged in the mire!”
It was almost as though those white hands of hers had struck him a
heavy blow between the eyes. Hugh sat and stared at her in amaze.
Her words seemed obscure, scarcely possible to understand, yet he had
gathered in the sense of them.
“Three days ago I submitted and paid three thousand pounds blackmail
rather than your name and mine, linked together, should be dragged in
the mire.”
A girl might well shrink to tell a man what she must tell him, to go
into explanations that were an offence to the purity of her mind. Yet,
listening to her, looking at her, at the pale, proud young face, white
as marble, Hugh Alston knew that he had never admired and reverenced
her as he did now.
“The story that you told of our marriage, that lie that I can never
understand, passed from lip to lip. Many have heard it; it has caused
many to wonder. I do not ask why you uttered it. It does not matter
now, nothing matters, save that you did utter it, and it has gone
abroad. Then one day you came to the office where I was employed, and
the man who employed me put his private room at your disposal, knowing
that by means of some spyhole he had contrived he could hear all that
passed between us. And then you offered me marriage—by way of
atonement. Do you remember? You offered to—to atone by marrying me.”
“In my mad, presumptuous folly, Joan!”
“And it was overheard; the man heard all. He did not understand—how
should he? His vile mind grasped at other meanings. He went down to
Marlbury and to Morchester to make enquiries, to look for an entry in a
register that was never made. He went to General Bartholomew and then
Cornbridge, where he saw Lady Linden, and heard from her all that she
had to tell, and then—then he came to me. He told me that he knew the
truth, and that if I would marry him he would forgive—forgive
everything!”
Hugh Alston said nothing. He sat with his big hands gripped hard, and
thinking of Philip Slotman a red fury passed like a mist before his
eyes.
“I told him to go, and then came a letter from him, a friendly letter,
a letter that could not cause him any trouble. He assured me of his
friendship and of his—silence, you understand, his silence—and asked me
as a friend to lend him three thousand pounds. It was blackmail—oh, I
knew that. I hesitated, and did not know what to do. There was none to
whom I could turn—no one. I had no friend. Helen Everard is only a
friend of a few short weeks. I felt that I could not go to her, I felt
somehow that she would never understand. And then—then at last,
because, I suppose, I am a woman and therefore a coward, and because I
was so alone—so helpless—I sent the money.”
“Oh, that I—”
“Remember,” she said, “remember I had written to you, asking your help.
I had waited days, and no answer had come. I had no right to believe
that I could ask your help.”
“Joan, Joan, didn’t you know that you could? Have you forgotten what I
told you once—that stands true to-day as then, will stand true to the
last hour of my life. I have brought shame and misery on you, God
forgive me—yet unintentionally, Joan.” He leaned forward, and grasped
at her hand and held it, though she would have drawn it free of him. “I
told you that I loved you that night. I love you now—my love for you
gives me the right to protect you!”
“You have no rights, no rights,” she said, and drew her hand away.
“Because you will not give me those rights. I asked you to marry me
once. I came to you, thinking in my small soul that I was doing a fine
thing, offering atonement—my—my very words, atonement—for the evil I
had unwittingly done. And you refused to accept the prize!” He laughed
bitterly. “You refused with scorn, just scorn, Joan. You made me
realise that I had but added to my offence. I—I to offer you marriage,
in my lordly way, when I should have sued on my knees to you for
forgiveness, as I would sue now, humbly and contritely, offering love
and love alone—love and worship and service to the end of my days, as
please Heaven I shall sue, Joan.”
“You cannot!” she said quietly. “You cannot, and if you should, the
answer will be the same, as then!”
“Because you can never forgive?”
“Because I have no power to give what you would ask for!”
“Your love?”
She did not answer. She turned her face away, for she knew she could
not in truth say “No” to that, for the knowledge that she had been
trying to stifle was with her now, the knowledge that meant that she
could not love the man whose wife she had promised to be.
“My—my hand—” she said.
And he, not understanding for the moment, looked at her, and then
suddenly understanding came to him.
“You—you mean?”
“You—you did not answer my letter, and I—I waited,” she said, and her
voice was low and muffled. There was no pride in her face now; all its
hardness, all its bitterness and scorn were gone.
“I waited and waited—and thought—hoped,” she said, “and nothing came.
And yesterday a man—a man I like and admire, a fine man, a good man,
honest and noble, a man who—who loves me better than I deserve, came to
me—and—and so to-day it is too late! Though,” she cried, with a touch
of scorn for herself, “it would have made no difference—nothing would
have made any difference. You—you understand that I scarcely know what
I am saying!”
“You have given your promise to another man?” he asked quietly.
“Yes!”
“And you do not love him?”
“He’s a man,” she cried, “a man who would not make a jest of a woman’s
name.”
“And even so, you do not love him, because that would not be possible.”
“You have no right to say that,” and she wrenched her hand free.
“I have the right, the right you gave me.”
“I—I gave you no right.”
“You have. You gave me that right, Joan, when you gave me your heart.
You do not love that man, because you love me!”
Back into the white face came all the hardness and coldness that he so
well knew. She rose; she looked down on him.
“It is—untrue. I do not. I have but one feeling for you
always—always—the same, the one feeling. I despise you. How could I
love a thing that I despise?”
And, knowing that it was a lie, she dared not meet the scrutiny of his
eyes, and turned quickly away.
“Joan!” he said. He would have followed her, but then came the waiter
with his bill, and he was forced to stay, and when he reached the
street she was gone.
“I quite thought that they were going to make it up, and then it seemed
that they quarrelled again,” one of the ladies at the other table said.
The other nodded. “I think that they do not know their own minds, young
people seldom do. I wish I had bought three yards more of that cerise
ninon. It would have made up so well for Violet, don’t you think?”