“HE DOES NOT LOVE ME NOW”
“Tom,” said Lady Linden, “is by no means a fool, Marjorie.”
“No, aunt.”
“He has ideas. I don’t say that they are brilliant, but he gets the
germ of a plan into his brain. And now I will tell you what he suggests
about Partridge’s cottage and land when the lease falls in.”
Lady Linden proceeded to explain Tom Arundel’s idea, and Marjorie sat
and stared out into the garden and thought of Hugh.
Was he at Hurst Dormer now? If not, where was he? What was he doing?
What was he thinking about? Did he still love her, or had he fallen in
love with Joan? And, if he had, would he marry Joan? and if not.
“So there you see, and what do you think of that?” asked Lady Linden,
coming to the end of her remarks.
“I think it would be very nice!”
“Very nice!” Lady Linden snorted. “Very nice! What a feeble remark. My
good Marjorie, do you take no intelligent interest in anything? Upon my
word, now I come to look back I wonder at myself, I do indeed. I wonder
at myself to think that a man like Hugh Alston, an intellectual,
deep-thinking man, a man with common-sense and plenty of it—what was I
saying? Oh yes, I wonder at myself for ever hoping or believing that a
man like Hugh could fall in love with a silly little donkey like you.
And yet men do, even clever men—I’ve known several quite clever men
fall in love with perfect fools of women. But I was wrong, and you are
right. I see it now. Tom Arundel is the man for you; you are fitted for
one another. He is not quite a fool, but you are. He’s not clever
enough to be annoyed by your folly. Hugh, on the other hand, would
positively dislike you after a month. There! don’t howl, for goodness’
sake—don’t snivel, child! Run away and play with your doll”
“Patience!” said Lady Linden, when her niece went out—“I have the
patience of ten Jobs rolled into one. She’s a good little soul, but an
awful idiot! And bless my wig!” added her ladyship, who did not wear
one, but her own luxuriant hair, “what’s that hopeless idiot of a
Perkins doing with those standard roses?” She sallied out, battle in
her eyes, to tell Perkins, the under-gardener, something about the
culture of roses, and incidentally to point out what her opinion of
himself was in plain and straightforward language.
Meanwhile, Marjorie had hurried out. It was not true! She was not so
stupid and so silly that Hugh could never have fallen in love with her.
Why, he had fallen in love with her! He had wanted her for his wife,
and she—she in her blindness and her folly, in her stupidity, which her
aunt had but now been flinging in her teeth, had not realised that he
was the one man in her world, the only man, and that she loved him as
never, never could she love Tom Arundel or anyone else.
The little ancient disreputable car had been repaired by Rodding, the
village handyman, who by some conjuring trick had made it run again.
Marjorie started it.
She had made up her mind. She would go to Hurst Dormer, she would see
Hugh and—and quite what she would do she did not know. Everything was
on the knees of the gods, only she knew that she was very unhappy, a
very miserable, unhappy, foolish girl, who had got what she had asked
for, and found that she did not want it now she had it.
Piff, piff, paff, paff went the car, and Marjorie rolled off with a
succession of jerks, leaving behind an odoriferous cloud of smoke and
exhaust gases that lay like a blue mist along the drive, and presently
made Lady Linden cough and speak in uncomplimentary terms of motoring
and motorists generally.
On to Hurst Dormer Marjorie plugged, sad at heart, realising her folly.
“It is my fault,” she felt miserably; “it is all my fault, and I am not
fair to Tom. He doesn’t understand me. I see him look at me sometimes,
and I don’t wonder at it. He doesn’t understand me a bit; he has every
right to—to think—I love him, and I don’t—I don’t. I love Hugh!”
It was an hour later that Marjorie put in an appearance at Hurst
Dormer.
Hugh was there, and Hugh was in. It brought relief. She wanted to cry
with the relief she felt.
Over the tea-table, where she poured out the tea from the old silver
Anne teapot, she looked at him, and saw many changes that one not
loving him, as she knew she did now, might have missed. The cheery
frank smile was there yet, but it had lost much of its happiness. His
eyes were no less kind, but they had a tired look about them, a wistful
look. Oh, that she might cheat herself into believing that their
wistfulness was for her! But Marjorie was not the little fool her aunt
called her. She was a woman, and was gifted with a woman’s
understanding.
“He does not love me now, not as he did. I had my chance, and I said
no, and now—now it is gone for ever.”
And he, leaning back in his chair, watched her pouring out the tea as
he had a few days ago watched another pouring out tea in a London
hotel. The sight of Joan performing that domestic duty had brought to
him then a vision of this same old room, this very old teapot, that his
mother had used. And now, seeing Marjorie here, pouring out the tea,
the only vision, the only remembrance that it brought to him was the
memory of another girl pouring out tea in a London hotel.
“Hugh, have you seen her—Joan?”
He started—started at the sound of the name that was forever in his
thoughts.
“Yes, dear,” he said simply, for why should he lie to this child?
“Oh!” she said. “Oh, and—and Hugh, she and you—” She paused, she held
her face down that he might not see it.
“Joan Meredyth,” he said slowly, “and I met in Town a few days ago. She
told me then, that she is engaged to be married.”
“Oh!” Marjorie said, and her heart leaped with a new-born hope.
“And I,” Hugh went on, “am worried and anxious about her.”
“Hugh!”
“I can’t worry you, little girl. It is nothing in which you could help;
it is my fault, my folly!”
“Mine!” she said.
“No, it is mine. The whole idea was mine; I shoulder the blame of it
all. It has succeeded in what we attempted. You are all right, you and
Tom. I’ve made a lovely mess of everything else. But that does not
matter so much. What we wanted, we won, eh?” He smiled at her, little
dreaming that she had only won dead-sea fruit.
“Why are you worried and anxious about Joan?”
“I am not going to tell you, dear. I can’t very well. Besides, you
couldn’t help. You are happy, you are all right. Tom is in high favour
with her ladyship, so that’s good, and you—you and Tom are happy, eh?”
“Yes,” she said miserably.
“He’s a good fellow, Marjorie. Make allowances for him. He’ll need ’em,
he’s no angel; but he means well, and he’s a good clean, honest man, is
Tom Arundel, and you’ll be a happy girl when you are his wife; please
God!” he added, and put his hand on her shoulder, and did not notice
that she was weeping silently.
He drove her back to Cornbridge in the moonlight, and left her at the
gates of the Manor House. “Little girl,” he said, “in this life there’s
a good deal of give and take. Don’t expect too much, and don’t be hurt
if you don’t get everything that you ask for. Remember this—I—I cared
for you very much.” “Cared!” she thought. “Cared?” He spoke in the
past—Cared!”
“But I gave you up because you loved another man; you loved a man more
worthy than I am. I wouldn’t have stood aside if I had felt that the
other man was not good enough, that he was a waster and would not make
you happy; but I knew Tom better than that. Stick to him, don’t ask for
too much. Believe always that he loves you, and that he is built of the
stuff that keeps straight and true, and so, God bless you, dear!”
He kissed her frankly as a brother might, and sat there watching her up
the drive to the house. He did not guess that when she gained the house
she slipped in by a garden door and ran up to her own room to indulge
in that relief that a woman may ever find when the grief is not too
black and too bitter, the relief of tears.
“I am worried about her,” Hugh thought to himself; but “her” to him
meant Joan, not Marjorie.
When he said, “I am worried about her,” he meant that he was worried
about Joan. If he said, “She would have liked this,” “She” would mean
Joan.
“I am worried about her and that blackguard Slotman,” he thought.
“There is something about that man—snake—toad—something uncanny. She’s
there; she has money and he’s out for money. If I can sit here and tell
myself that I have scared Slotman from offending and annoying her
again, I am an idiot. When there’s money to be gained, a man like
Slotman will want a lot of scaring off it.”
A week had passed since Marjorie’s visit.
Hugh sent for his housekeeper, Mrs. Morrisey.
“Mrs. Morrisey, I am going to London.”
“Oh, Mr. Alston, when the men are—”
“The men are all right. I have to go to London on business.”
“Very queer and restless he’s been,” Mrs. Morrisey thought. “I never
known him like it before. When I thought he was in love with that
pretty little Miss Linden and wanting to marry her, he was not a bit
like he is now. He kept cheerful and smiling, and now; forever on the
move. No sooner does he get here than back to London he wants to go.”
“Shall you be away for long, sir?”
“I don’t know,” said Hugh. “Perhaps; perhaps not, I can’t say.”
“I see. Very good, sir. I’ll see to things, of course. And about
letters, perhaps you won’t want them forwarded as you didn’t last time,
and—”
“I shall want every letter forwarded, the very hour it arrives,” said
Hugh quickly.
“Very good, sir. Where shall I send them to?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll wire you an address.”
Yes, he must go to London. He could not go and watch Joan at Starden,
but he could go to London and watch Mr. Philip Slotman.
“What I’ll do is this—I’ll have a watch kept on that man. There are
private detective chaps who’ll do it for me. If he goes down to
Starden, I’ll be after him hot-foot. And if he does go there to annoy
and insult Joan—I’ll break his neck!” he added, with cheerful decision.
“And she—she is going to marry another man, a man she doesn’t love—she
can’t love. I know she cannot love.” He added aloud: “Joan, you don’t
love him, my darling, you know you don’t. You dared not stay and face
me that day. Your words meant nothing. You may think you despise me,
but you don’t: you want to, my dear, but you can’t; and you can’t
because, thank God, you love me! Oh, fool! Cheer yourself up, slap
yourself on the back. It doesn’t help you. She may love you as you
boast, but she’ll never marry you. She wants to hate you, and she’ll
keep on wanting to hate, and I believe—Heaven help me—that her will is
stronger than her heart. But—but anyhow, that brute Slotman shan’t
worry her while I can crawl about.”
He was driven to the station the following morning. And now he was in
the train for London.
“I’ll find out a firm of detectives and put ’em on Slotman,” he
thought, “but first I’ll go and have a look round. What’s the name of
the place?—Gracebury.”
At the entrance to Gracebury, which as everyone knows is a cul-de-sac
of no considerable extent, Hugh stopped his taxi and got out. He walked
down the wide pavement till he came to the familiar door.
“I’ll see him,” he thought. “I’ll go in and have a few words with him,
just to remind him that his neck is in jeopardy.”
He went up the stone steps and paused.
The door of Mr. Philip Slotman’s office was closed. On the door was
pasted a paper, stating that a suite of three offices was to let.