“NOT TILL THEN WILL I GIVE UP HOPE”
“There is nothing wrong, nothing the matter with Johnny or Connie?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why—why did not Johnny come?”
“He is busy.”
“But you—”
“I came to see Joan Meredyth,” said Ellice quietly. She and Helen did
not like one another; they were both frank in their dislike. Helen
looked down on Ellice as a person of no importance, who was entirely
unwanted, a mere nuisance, someone for ever in the way.
Ellice looked on Helen as the promoter of this engagement and marriage,
as the woman who was responsible for everything. She did not like her.
She resented her; but for Helen, there would never have been any break
in the old happy life at Buddesby.
“So you wish to see Joan, why?”
“Privately.”
“My dear child, surely—”
“I am not a child, and I wish to see Joan Meredyth privately, and
surely I have the right, Mrs. Everard?”
Helen frowned. “Well, at any rate you cannot see her now. She is
engaged, a friend is with her.”
“I can wait.”
“Very well,” Helen said. “If you insist. Does Johnny know that you are
here?” she asked with sudden suspicion.
“No; Connie knows. I told her, and I am willing to wait.”
Helen looked at her. Helen was honest. “I thought the child pretty,”
she reflected, “and I was wrong; she is beautiful. I don’t understand
it. In some extraordinary way she seems to have changed.” But her
manner towards Ellice was as unfriendly as before.
“I do not in the least know how long Joan will be. You may have to wait
a considerable time.”
“I shall not mind.”
In the room these two stood, Joan had made her confession frankly,
truthfully. She had admitted her love for him, but of hope for the
future she had none. That she loved him now, in spite of all the past,
in spite of the troubles and shame he had brought on her, was something
that had happened in spite of herself, against her will, against her
desire; but because it was so, she admitted it frankly.
“But my love for you, Hugh, matters nothing,” she said. “Because I love
you I shall suffer more—but I shall never break my word to the man I
have given it to.”
“When you stand before the altar with that man’s ring on your finger,
when you have promised before God to be his wife, then and not till
then will I give up hope. And that will be never. It is your pride,
dear, your pride that ever fights against your happiness and mine; but
I shall beat it down and humble it, Joan, and win you in the end. Your
own true, sweet self.”
“I don’t think I have any pride left,” she said. “I was prouder when I
was poor than I am now. My pride was then all I had; it kept me above
the sordid life about me. I cultivated it, I was glad of it, but since
then—Oh, Hugh, I am not proud any more, only very humble, and very
unhappy.”
And because she was still promised to another man, he could not, as he
would, hold out his arms to her and take her to his breast and comfort
her. Instead, he took her hand and held it tightly for a time, then
lifted it to his lips and went, leaving her; yet went with a full hope
for the future in his heart, for he had wrung from her the confession
that she loved him.
In the hall a girl, sitting there waiting patiently, looked at him with
great dark eyes, yet he never saw her. A servant let him out, and then
the servant came back to her. “Tell Miss Meredyth that I am here
waiting to see her,” Ellice said.
And as the man went away she wondered what had brought Hugh Alston here
to-day, why he should be here so long with Joan when she could so
distinctly remember Joan’s lack of recognition of him in the village.
She could also remember the sight of them that night, their dark shapes
against the yellow glow of the lamplight in Mrs. Bonner’s cottage.
How would she find Joan? she wondered. Softened, perhaps even confused,
some of her coldness shaken, some of her self-possession gone? But no,
Joan held out a hand in greeting to her.
“I did not know that you were here, Miss Brand,” she said. “Have you
not seen Mrs. Everard?”
“I have seen her,” Ellice said, “but I didn’t come here to-day to see
her. I came to see you.”
“To see me?” Joan smiled—a conventional smile. “You will sit down,
won’t you? Is it anything that I can do? It is not, I hope, that Mr.
Everard is ill?”
“And—and if he were,” the girl cried, “would you care?”
Joan started, her face grew colder.
“I do not understand.”
“Yes, you—you do. Why are you marrying him? Why are you taking him from
me when—”
“Taking him from—you?” Joan’s voice was like ice water on flames of
fire. Ellice was silent.
“Miss Meredyth, I came here to-day to see you, to speak to you, to—to
open my heart to you.” Her lips trembled. “Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps
I have no right to be here to say what I am going to say. I told
Connie; she—she knows that I have come here, and she knows why.”
“Yes; go on.”
“If—if you loved him it would be different. I would not dare think of
saying anything then. I think I would be glad. I could, at any rate, be
reconciled to it, because it would be for his happiness. If you loved
him—but you don’t—you don’t! He is a man who could not live without
love. It is part of his life. He might think, might believe that he
would be content to take you because you are lovely and—and good and
clever, and all those things that I am not, even though you do not love
him, but the time would come when his heart would ache for the love you
withheld. Oh, Joan—Joan, forgive me—forgive me, but I must speak. I
think you would if you were in my place!”
The cold bitterness was passing slowly from Joan’s face. There came a
tinge of colour into her cheeks; her eyes that watched the girl grew
softer and more tender.
“Go on,” she said; “go on, tell me!”
“I have nothing more to say.”
“Yes, you have—you have much more. You have this to say—you love him
and want him, you wish to take him from me. Is that it, Ellice?”
“If you loved him I would not have dared to come. I would have told
myself that I was content. But you don’t. I have watched you—yes, spied
on you—looking for some sign of tenderness that would prove to me that
you loved him; but it never came. And so I know that you are marrying
Johnny Everard with no love, accepting all the great love that he is
offering to you and giving him nothing in exchange. Oh, it is not
fair!”
“It is not fair,” Joan said; “it is not fair, and yet I thought of
that. I told him just what you have told me, and still he seemed to be
content.”
“Because he loves you so, and because he has hope in the future,
because in spite of everything he still hopes that he might win your
heart, and I know that he never can.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I—I think you have already given your heart away.”
And now Joan’s eyes flamed, the anger came back. “By what right do you
say that? How dared you say that?”
“It is only what I believed. I believed that a woman so sweet, so
beautiful, so good as you, must love. You could not live your life
without love. If it has not come yet, then it will come some day, and
then if you are his—his wife, it will come too late. You are made for
love, Joan, just as he is. You could not live your life without it—you
would feel need for it. Oh yes, you think I am a child, a foolish,
romantic schoolgirl, a stupid little thing, talking, talking, but in
your heart you know that I am right.”
“But if he—loves me,” Joan said softly, “if he loves me, little Ellice,
then how can I break my word to him?”
“I do not ask you to break your word to him, only tell him, tell him
the truth again. Tell him what I have told you, tell him—if there is
someone else, if you have already met someone you care for—tell him
that too, so that he will know how impossible it must ever be that you
will give him the love he hoped to win. Tell him that, be frank and
truthful. Remember, it is for all your lives—all his life and all
yours. When he realises that your heart can never be his, do you think
he will not surfer more, will not his sufferings be longer drawn out
than if you told him so frankly now? If the break was to come now, to
come and be ended for ever—but to live together, to live a mock life,
to live beneath the same roof, to share one another’s lives, and yet
know one another’s souls to be miles and miles apart—oh, Joan, you
would suffer, and he too, he perhaps even more than you.”
“And you love him?” Joan said softly. “You love him, Ellice?”
“With all my heart and soul. I would die for him. It—it sounds foolish,
this sort of thing is foolish, the kind of words a silly girl would
say, yet it is the truth.”
“I think it is,” Joan said. “But then, dear, if he loves me, he could
not love you?”
“I think he might,” Ellice said softly.
She was thinking of the morning, of the look she had seen in his eyes,
the awakening look of a man who sees things he has been blind to.
“I think he might,” her heart echoed. “I think he might, in time, in a
little time.” And did not know, could not guess, that even at this
moment Johnny Everard, sitting alone in his little study with untended
papers strewn about him, was thinking of her—thinking of the look he
had seen in her eyes that very day, out in the sunshine of the fields.
“So you came to me to tell me. It was brave of you?”
“I had to come. I could not have come if you had been different from
what you are.”
“Then, even though I am taking away the man you love from you, you do
not hate me?”
“Hate you? Sometimes I think I wished I could—but I could not. If I had
hated you, if I had thought you cold and hard to all the world, I would
not be here. I have come to plead to you because you are generous and
honest, true and good. I could not have come otherwise.”
“What must I do, little Ellice?”
“Tell him the truth, if there is—”
“There is—yet that could never come to anything.”
“Why not?”
“Because—ah, you can’t understand.”
“Still, your heart is not your own; you could never give it to Johnny
Everard.”
“And I must tell him so, and then—”
“And then you will ask him if he would be content to live all his life
without love, knowing that he will never, never win your heart, because
it would be impossible.”
“But I have given him my promise, Ellice.”
“I know, I know; and you will not break it, because you could not break
a promise. But you will tell him this, and offer him his freedom; it
will be for him to decide.”
Joan stood for many moments in silence, her hand still resting on the
girl’s shoulder. Then she drew Ellice to her; she thrust back the
shining hair, and kissed the girl’s forehead. “I think—yes, I think I
shall do all this, Ellice,” she said.