HER PRIDE’S LAST FIGHT
“... I came to Starden because I believed you might need me. You did,
and the help that you wanted I gave gladly and willingly. Now your
enemy is removed; he can do you no more harm. You will hear, or perhaps
have heard why, and so I am no longer necessary to you, Joan, and
because I seem to be wanted in my own place I am going back. Yet should
you need me, you have but to call, and I will come. You know that. You
know that I who love you am ever at your service. From now onward your
own heart shall be your counsellor. You will act as it dictates, if you
are true to yourself. Yet, perhaps in the future as in the past, your
pride may prove the stronger. It is for you and only you to decide.
Good-bye,
“HUGH.”
She had found this letter on her return from Little Langbourne. She had
gone hurrying, as a young girl in her eagerness might, down to Mrs.
Bonner’s little cottage, to learn that she was too late. He had gone.
Mrs. Bonner, with almost tears in her eyes, told her.
“Yes, miss. He hev gone, and rare sorry I be, a better gentleman I
never had in these rooms.”
Gone! With only this letter, no parting word, without seeking to see
her, to say good-bye. The chill of her cold pride fell on Joan. Send
for him! Never! never! He had gone when he might have stayed—when, had
he been here now, she would have told him that she was free.
Very slowly she walked back to the house, to meet Helen’s questioning
eyes.
“I am glad, dear, that there seems to be a better understanding between
you and Johnny,” Helen said.
“There is a perfect understanding between us. Johnny is not going to
marry me. He is choosing someone who will love him more and understand
him better than I could.”
“Then—then, after all, it is over? You and he are to part?”
“Have parted—as lovers, but not as friends.”
“And after all I have done,” Helen said miserably.
Hugh had gone home. He had had a letter from Lady Linden telling about
the accident to Tom Arundel, about his serious illness, and Marjorie’s
devoted nursing. And now he was shaping his course for Hurst Dormer. He
had debated in his mind whether he should wait and see her, and then
had decided against it.
“She knows that I love her, and she loves me. She is letting her pride
stand between us. Everard is too good and too fine a fellow to keep her
bound by a promise if he thought it would hurt her to keep it. Her
future and Everard’s and mine must lay in her own hands.” And so, doing
violence to his feelings and his desires, he had left Starden, and now
was back in Hurst Dormer, wandering about, looking at the progress the
workmen had made during his absence. He had come home, and though he
loved the place, its loneliness weighed heavily on him. The rooms
seemed empty. He wanted someone to talk things over with, to discuss
this and that. He was not built to be self-centred.
For two days and two nights he bore with Hurst Dormer and its shadows
and its solitude, and then he called out the car and motored over to
Cornbridge.
“Oh, it’s you,” said her ladyship. “I suppose you got my letter?”
“Yes; I had it sent on to me.”
“It’s a pity you don’t stay at home now and again.”
“Perhaps I shall in future.”
She looked at him. He was unlike himself, careworn and weary, and a
little ill.
“Tom is mending rapidly, a wonderful constitution; but it was touch and
go. Marjorie was simply wonderful, I’ll do her that credit. Between
ourselves, Hugh, I always regarded Marjorie as rather weak,
namby-pamby, early Victorian—you know what I mean; but she’s a woman,
and it has touched her. She wouldn’t leave him. Honestly, I believe she
did more for him than all the doctors.”
“I am sure she did.”
Marjorie was changed; her face was thinner, some of its colour gone.
Yet the little she had lost was more than atoned for in the much that
she had gained. She held his hand, she looked him frankly in the eyes.
“So it is all right, little girl, all right now?”
She nodded. “It is all right. I am happier than I deserve to be. Oh,
Hugh, I have been weak and foolish, wavering and uncertain. I can see
it all now, but now at last I know—I do know my own mind.”
“And your own heart?”
“And my own heart.”
She wondered as she looked at him if ever he could have guessed what
had been in her mind that day when she had gone to Hurst Dormer to see
him. How full of love for him her heart had been then! And then she
remembered what he had said, those four words that had ended her dream
for ever—“Better than my life.” So he loved Joan, and now she knew that
she too loved with her whole heart.
Death had been very close, and perhaps it had been pity for that fine
young life that seemed to be so near its end that had awakened love.
Yet, whatever the cause, she knew now that her love for Tom had come to
stay.
“And Joan?” Marjorie asked.
“Joan?” he said. “Joan, she is in her own home.”
“And her heart is still hard against you, Hugh?”
“Her pride is still between us, Marjorie,” he said, and quickly turned
the conversation, and a few minutes later was up in the bedroom talking
cheerily enough to Tom.
“It’s all right, Alston, everything is all right. Lady Linden wanted to
shoot the horse; but I wouldn’t have it. I owe him too much—you
understand, Alston, don’t you? Everything is all right between Marjorie
and me.”
And then Hugh went back to Hurst Dormer—thank, Heaven there was some
happiness in this world! There was happiness at Cornbridge, and after
Cornbridge Hurst Dormer seemed darker and more solitary than ever.
It was while she had been talking to Hugh that Marjorie had made up her
mind.
“I am going to tell Joan the whole truth, the whole truth,” she
thought. And Hugh was scarcely out of the house before Marjorie sat
down to write her letter to Joan.
“... I know that you have always blamed him for what was never his
fault. He did it because he is generous and unselfish. He loved me in
those days. I know that it could not have been the great abiding love;
it was only liking that turned to fondness. Yet he wanted to marry me,
Joan, and when he knew that there was someone else, and that he stood
in the way of our happiness, the whole plan was arranged, and we had to
find a name, you understand. And he asked me to suggest one, and I
thought of yours, because it is the prettiest name I know; and he,
Hugh, never dreamed that it belonged to a living woman. And so it was
used, dear, and all this trouble and all this misunderstanding came
about. I always wanted to tell you the truth, but he wouldn’t let me,
because he was afraid that if Aunt got to hear of it, she might be
angry and send Tom away. But now I know she would not, and so I am
telling you everything. The fault was mine. And yet, you know, dear, I
had no thought of angering or of offending you. Write to me and tell me
you forgive me. And oh, Joan, don’t let pride come between you and the
man you love, for I think he is one of the finest men I know, the best
and straightest.
“MARJORIE.”
Marjorie felt that she had lifted a weight from her mind when she put
this letter in the post.
Long, long ago Joan had acquitted Hugh of any intention to offend or
annoy her by the use of her name. Yet why had he never told her the
truth, told her that it had never been his doing at all? She read
Marjorie’s letter, and then thrust it away from her. Why had he not
written this? Did he care less now than he had? Had she tired him out
with her coldness and her pride? Perhaps that was it.
Yesterday Ellice had come over on the old bicycle—Ellice with shining
eyes and pink cheeks, glowing with happiness and joy, and Ellice had
hugged her tightly, and tried to whisper thanks that would not come.
She was happy now. Marjorie was happy. Only she seemed to be cut off
from happiness. Why had he gone without a word, just those few written
lines? He had not cared so much, after all.
And so the days went by. Joan wrote a loving, sympathetic letter to
Marjorie. She quite understood, and she did not blame Hugh; she blamed
no one.
It was a long letter, dealing mainly with her life, with the village,
with the things she was doing and going to do. But of the
future—nothing; of the past, in so far as Hugh Alston was
concerned—nothing.
And when Marjorie read the letter she read of an unsatisfied, unhappy
spirit, of a girl whose whole heart yearned and longed for love, and
whose pride held her in check and condemned her to unhappiness.
Scarcely a day passed but Joan drove over to Little Langbourne. Philip
Slotman came to look for her, and counted it a long unhappy day if she
failed him; but it was not often.
She had discovered that he was well-nigh penniless, and that it would
be months before he would be fit to work again. And so she had quietly
supplied all his needs.
“When you are well and strong again, you shall go back. You shall have
the capital you want, and you will do well. I know that. I shall lend
you the money to start afresh, and you will pay me back when you can.”
“Joan, I wonder if there are many women like you?”
“Many better than I,” she said—“many happier.”
At Buddesby she was welcomed by a radiant girl with happy eyes, a girl
who could not make enough of her, and there Joan saw a home life and
happiness she had never known—a happiness that set her hungry heart
yearning and longing with a longing that was intolerable and
unbearable.
“Send for me, and I will come,” he had written; and she had not sent.
She would not, pride forbade it, and yet—yet to be happy as Ellice was
happy, to feel his arms about her, to rest her head against his breast,
to know that during all the years to come he would be here by her side,
that loneliness would never touch her again.
“I won’t!” she said. “I won’t! If he needs me, it is he who must come
to me. I will not send for him.”
It was her pride’s last fight, a fine fight it made. For days she
struggled against the yearning of her heart, against the wealth of
love, pent-up and stored within; valiantly and bravely pride fought.
To-day she had been to the hospital. She had stopped, as she often did,
at Buddesby. There was talk of a marriage there. Many catalogues and
price-lists had come through the post, and Con and Ellice were busy
with them. For they were not very rich, and money must be made to go a
long way; and into their conclave they drew Joan, who for a time forgot
everything in this new interest.
They had all been very busy when the door had opened and Johnny Everard
had come in, and, looking up, Joan caught a look that passed between
Johnny and Ellice—just a look, yet it spoke volumes. It laid bare the
secret of both hearts.
Later, when she said good-bye, he walked to the gate where her car was
waiting. They had said but little, for Johnny seemed shy and
constrained in her presence.
“Joan, I have much to be very, very grateful to you for,” he said, as
he held her hand. “You were right. Life without love would be
impossible, and you have made life very possible for me.”
She was thinking of this during the lonely drive back to Starden;
always his words came back to her. Life without love would be
impossible, and then it was that the battle ended, that pride retired
vanquished from the field.
“I want you to come back to me because I am so lonely. Please come back
and forgive.
“JOAN.”
The message that, in the end, she must write was written and sent.
And now that pride had broken down, was gone for ever, so far as this
man was concerned, it was a very loving anxious-eyed, trembling woman
who watched for the coming of the man that she loved and needed, the
man who meant all the happiness this world could give her.
She had called to him, and this must be his answer. No slow-going
trains, no tedious broken journeys, no wasted hours of delay—the
fastest car, driven at reckless speed, yet with all due care that none
should suffer because of his eagerness and his happiness.
It seemed to him such a very pitiful, humble little appeal, an appeal
that went straight to his heart—so short an appeal that he could
remember every word of it, and found himself repeating it as his car
swallowed the miles that lay between them.
He asked no questions of himself. She would not have sent for him had
she not been free to do so. He knew that.
And now the landscape was growing familiar, a little while, and they
were running through Starden village. Villagers who had come to know
him touched their hats. They passed Mrs. Bonner’s little cottage, and
now through the gateway, the gates standing wide as in welcome and
expectation of his coming.
And she, watching for him, saw his coming, and her heart leaped with
the joy of it. Helen Everard saw, too, and guessed what it meant.
“Go into the morning-room, Joan. I will send him to you there.”
And so it was in the morning-room he found her. Flushed and
bright-eyed, trembling with happiness and the joy of seeing him, gone
for ever the pride and the scorn, she was only a girl who loved him
dearly, who needed him much. She had fought the giant pride, and had
beaten it for ever for his sake, and now he was here smiling at her,
his arms stretched out to her.
“You wanted me at last, Joan,” he said. “You called me, darling, and I
have come.”
“I want you. I always want you. Never, never leave me again, Hugh—never
leave me again. I love you so, and need you so.”
And then his arms were about her and hers about his neck, and she who
had been so cold, so proud, so scornful, was remembering Johnny
Everard’s words, “Life without love would be impossible.”
And now life was very, very possible to her.
THE END