Laline met very few people in Kensington Gardens that afternoon.
The wind was keen, and every now and then drifting snowflakes told
of the coming storm. The Round Pond was covered with a thin sheet of
ice, and upon the green roof of Kensington Palace the snow was lightly
strewn.
Laline walked fast, with eyes fixed steadfastly in front of her,
absorbed in her own thoughts, holding her cloak together round her, and
bending her supple frame to the wind.
It was her first walk unattended in the Gardens, and her errant
footsteps led her to a long leafless avenue, through which she walked
rapidly, listening to the wind in the branches above her head.
Suddenly mingling with the sound came a voice close behind her, upon
hearing which she stopped with a smothered cry and turned a startled
face towards the speaker.
Some instinct had told her that she would meet him, and it was to her
own astonishment that she realised how glad she was to see him.
"Good-afternoon, Miss Grahame! Isn't it odd? Bad as the day is, I felt
certain I should meet you here!"
"And I knew that I should meet you," she returned, quickly, before
taking thought; then, seeing the gladness in his eyes, she added,
hastily,--
"That is nothing! I have had those presentiments about people ever
since I was a child. And they are not necessarily about people I know
and like well, but also----"
"About people you dislike--such as I?"
"I was not going to say that, Mr. Armstrong," she said, rather coldly.
"'About strangers,' I should have said, although I really think," she
added, thoughtfully, "that there is a sympathy of dislike, if one can
call it so."
"And so by your sympathy of dislike you knew I should be here, and by
my sympathy of like I knew you would be here--and we have met."
This was flirting, of course. Even inexperienced Laline knew that quite
well. There was, of course, no harm in flirting with one's own husband;
but then he did not know he was that, and must be put in his place.
"I am not good at discussing abstract subjects with strangers," she
said; "and, also, I must be getting back home now."
"Just a moment," he pleaded. "I know Mrs. Vandeleur will be at Lady
Northlake's conversazione--so that she can spare you; and this keen
wind is wonderfully invigorating. Don't you feel the benefit of it
after the exotic atmosphere of Mrs. Vandeleur's study? Too much
of that can't be good for any one, either physically or mentally;
and especially," he added, glancing at her thin face and lustrous
eyes--"especially bad for you."
"Why especially bad for me?"
"Because I should think you are exceptionally sensitive, Miss Grahame.
What you said just now proved that--I mean about those presentiments."
"Are you exceptionally sensitive, then?" she asked, forcing a little
laugh. "For, as I understand, you have presentiments, too."
"Perhaps I am," he answered, slowly, "where some people are concerned.
I have an impression about you, Miss Grahame, which is very strong
indeed, and about which I want to speak to you."
For a moment Laline's heart seemed to stand still. Was he going to tell
her that he had recognised her, and to show himself at last in his true
colours?
"Please don't tell me!" she cried, sharply, with an unmistakable tremor
in her voice. "It is late, and I am going home. Good-afternoon, Mr.
Armstrong!"
"Don't go yet! Just walk once more up the avenue."
"I have not been very much about the world," Laline said, icily, "but
I do not think it is customary for young ladies to walk about with
strangers."
"I am not a stranger!" he said, emphatically. "Why do you look so
startled, Miss Grahame? I can't believe that you and I met for the
first time a week ago. If we did, why did you drop that crystal ball
in consternation as soon as I entered the room, and why did I feel, as
soon as I saw the lamplight on your face, that I had beheld it before?
Only my recollection of you is as a child, with long bright hair waving
about your shoulders, and----"
"Fancies--mere fancies!" she interrupted. "Mine is not an unusual type
of face in England."
"A most unusual type, I call it," he rejoined, earnestly, "and one that
I am longing to commit to paper. My body, you must know, Miss Grahame,
sits before a desk in a bank all day, but in my mind I am forever
drawing and painting, committing lovely scenes and lovely faces very
inadequately to canvas."
"I remember," she said, in constrained tones, "that you first met Miss
Cavan in a picture-gallery."
"And I remember," he returned, composedly, "how like I thought her to
a Paris Bordone. Miss Cavan's colouring is very fine, and there is
altogether a Venetian opulence about her appearance. If you are at all
interested in pictures, you will see some very good ones when you
come, as I hope you will, with Mrs. Vandeleur to my uncle's house next
week to tea."
"Thank you," she said, trying vainly to adopt an indifferent 'society'
tone. "I am unfortunately engaged that day."
"But no day was fixed," he cried; "and it must be a day on which you
are not engaged! I am most anxious that you should know my uncle. You
must, I think, be quite his ideal."
"How can you possibly know," she asked, "what my character may be? You
forget, Mr. Armstrong, that you know absolutely nothing about me."
"It seems impossible," he said, thoughtfully, "and yet I suppose it is
true, as facts go, and that I must have seen that face so like yours,
with floating hair, in my dreams. But facts are the least important
things in this world, Miss Grahame. It is only by reading between the
lines of the facts of his life that we really know any man. A bare
summary of events teaches us nothing. We live outside, or, rather,
inside of what happens to us."
"Now you are talking like Mrs. Vandeleur," said Laline, interested in
spite of herself.
"But don't you agree with me? Here are you and I, as far apart as
two fixed stars, each within a little world wherein the other cannot
hope to tread, except, perhaps, sometimes in dreams. To show you how
little value facts have--I met you, as you say, a week ago for the
first time; you just spoke a few words, telling me Mrs. Vandeleur was
out and would soon return. I spoke to you; I don't know what I talked
about, for I was feeling your presence too deeply to be coherent even
before I saw your face; then a light was brought, and I learned your
features by heart, every turn of every line of them, before you left
the room. And, as I went out of the house, fully an hour later, I saw
your face again, pressed against the window, watching me with something
in your eyes that looked like dislike and fear. To-day I meet you for
the second time, and you speak to me with coldness and dislike in every
note of your voice. All that is not much to go upon--is it?"
Although she hated and despised herself for it, her heart went out to
him as her ear caught the ring of deep feeling in his voice.
"I don't know what you mean!" she faltered, lamely.
"I mean that such an acquaintance as ours would seem short and slight
as mere facts go. And yet the thought of you has never once left my
mind since I parted from you, and the moment I close my eyes in sleep
you dominate my dreams. You come to me, and in just the voice you speak
in now, only less hard and cold, you tell me that something stands
between us and prevents you from liking me; and just as I am urging you
to tell me what the barrier is, I awake, with my question unanswered."
"I am really not responsible for your dreams, Mr. Armstrong."
"Yet it is your influence which suggests them. Do you never dream
yourself?"
"Yes; but I attach no importance to such disconnected nonsense as
dreams always are!" she said, hastily, realising, to her intense
discomfiture, that she was suddenly growing crimson.
"But tell me," he said, earnestly, "just for curiosity, as I know that
you are interested in all psychic studies, whether you ever dream of
strangers whom you dislike--of me, for instance?"
"It is beginning to snow," said Laline, staring up in the sky and
ignoring his question, "and I have no umbrella."
"But I have. You must let me hold it over you."
And, almost before she guessed his intention, he had opened his
umbrella and drawn her hand through his arm.
"You can't get wet now," he said.
"Would you like really to know what I think of you?" Laline asked, in a
low and rather unsteady voice.
"Yes--even though I am sure it will hurt me!"
"I think," she said, with much deliberation, "that, in a very cruel
and cowardly manner, you are taking advantage of the fact that I am a
friendless dependant to treat me with a flirting familiarity which you
would not dare to show towards a lady whom you considered your equal!"
He could feel that the hand on his arm was quivering, as was her whole
frame, with excitement and anger.
"Is that what you think of me?" he asked, quietly.
"It is. And, if you wish me to retain any respect for you, or ever to
speak to you when I am forced to meet you in my employer's house, you
will leave me at once, Mr. Armstrong."
"Surely not in the snow, without an umbrella?" he suggested, still
unmoved.
She withdrew her hand sharply from his arm, biting her lips with
vexation.
"I cannot run away from you," she began.
"I should certainly run after you, and that would look absurd!" he put
in.
"I shall be compelled to speak about you to Mrs. Vandeleur," Laline
said, beginning to walk rapidly homewards.
"I hope and intend to speak of you to Mrs. Vandeleur very shortly,"
said Wallace Armstrong.
She turned and stared at him in surprise.
"You mean to speak to Mrs. Vandeleur about me? I don't understand you!"
"No; you don't in the least understand me, or you would never have
spoken to me as you did just now! If you will only be good and come
under the umbrella again and take my arm, I will explain. Miss Grahame,
I force my attentions and my society upon you, and behave with what you
call flirting familiarity, because I am not much used to courting, and
it's the only method I know. Finding you here alone was far too good
a chance to miss, so you must forgive me if I have hurried the pace a
little. It may be a very long time before I have such an opportunity
again."
"I have not the least notion of what you mean," she said, haughtily.
"Then I will speak more plainly. I have fallen in love with you, Miss
Grahame. It seems to me that I have been in love with you for years;
but, as you say that is impossible, I will only date it from last week.
It was not only that I saw and spoke to you, but I heard your character
described in a few words by Mrs. Vandeleur, who, for all her touch
of charlatanism, understands the natures of those about her. Shall I
tell you her words? She said you were 'a creature of perfect purity
and truth, unsullied by thoughts of love or money.' Thoughts of love
would only sweeten, and not sully, such a character; but let that pass.
I love you, Miss Grahame, and I want in time to persuade you to love
me. That is the explanation of what you call my cowardly and offensive
conduct."
Laline stopped short in her walk and looked at him intently. It was
past five o'clock, but the sky was lighter since the snowfall and she
could see his face clearly, the broad forehead and straight nose,
the square outline, firm jaw, and handsome mouth softened now into
tenderness, the clear olive skin and crisply curling black hair. Every
feature seemed refined and idealised from what she remembered of the
man a few years before, at which time his mouth was hidden under a
heavy moustache and his brow darkened by loosely-falling hair. Only
the eyes were the same in shape and colour, a clear blue, under the
unusual setting of jet-black lashes and eyebrows; but in Wallace
Armstrong's eyes, as they now met those of Laline's, a soft light
was shining, making them unlike any she had ever yet beheld. And, as
she gazed, this proud and self-reliant maiden, who so much wished to
convince herself that she could never forgive this man, experienced the
most unaccountable desire to creep into his arms under the protecting
umbrella and whisper in his ear that she was not in the least angry
with him and was really his wife all the time.
This sudden impulse Laline strongly combated. What right had this man,
who knew himself to be married, to go about making love to unsuspecting
girls? she asked herself, steeling her heart against him and reminding
herself that to Clare also he had in all probability made similar
overtures.
"I will try to forget all the absurd things you have said, Mr.
Armstrong," she was beginning very gravely, when again he interrupted
her.
"That is just what I don't want you to do! I want you, on the contrary,
to remember every word, and to think of me when you get home, and try
to get used to the idea of me. Then when you come to tea next week at
my uncle's house----"
"I cannot come, as I told you, Mr. Armstrong. Dependants are not in the
habit of making social calls with their employers."
"If you so greatly resent being in a position of what you call
dependance, surely you will not be unwilling to change it?" he
suggested.
They were close to the gates at the corner of the Gardens now, and
Laline held out her hand.
"Good-bye!" she said. "I prefer to walk to the Crescent alone."
"Good-bye!" he said, and held her hand close in his. "But I can't quite
let you go like this," he added, deprecatingly, still retaining her
hand. "You haven't even told me whether you mean to leave off disliking
me."
"I have told you before that I much object to that flirting manner!"
she said, severely.
"And I have told you," he retorted, "that it's the only manner I
know--or that I dare employ!" he added, in a lower voice.
"If you wish to be a friend of mine----"
"I wish to be more than a friend."
"Really, Mr. Armstrong, this is absurd! Please let my hand go at once.
I cannot stand here with you like----"
"Like lovers?"
"Like two people in a Christmas number."
"I can't let you go until you promise to try and like me."
"You tell me of your dreams and presentiments and fancies," she said,
with sudden fire; "perhaps I, too, have fanciful ideas about people,
and in my mind may have just as much reason for disliking you as you
have for liking me!"
"Not liking--loving."
"Well, and not disliking--hating!" she cried, drawing her hand sharply
away from his.
"I would rather you hated me than that you were indifferent--extremes
meet. You will come to my uncle's, will you not, Miss Grahame?"
"Extremes meet, but we need not!" she returned, with a sudden
school-girl pertness, which made him burst out laughing. Before he had
recovered his gravity she had dashed past him through the park gate,
and in a few minutes' time had arrived, breathless, before the doors of
21, Queen Mary Crescent.
Up to her own room she ran as soon as Susan opened the front door.
"I declare," she exclaimed, as she saw her blushing face in the glass,
"I look like a jubilant nursemaid who has just parted from her 'young
man'! And so I have, I suppose; but the odd part of it is that I don't
seem to feel afraid of him now. I even have a sort of sneaking regard
for him--almost a liking, it might be called, if I didn't know what
a fearfully bad man he is. He must be a marvellously clever actor,
for he doesn't look in the least cruel or callous, or like a forger
or drunkard or bully. I remember I always thought that he was very
handsome, and that he had the most beautiful blue eyes. I suppose he
must have come right over to England when I disappeared, and persuaded
his uncle to forgive him, and reformed. He half-recognised me as soon
as he saw me; but he doesn't realise that growing up and putting my
hair up have altered me just as shaving his moustache and having his
hair out have altered him. He must know the truth sooner or later, I
suppose, and then--will he be glad or sorry, I wonder? Now, of course,
he makes love to any girl he pleases, knowing quite well that he is
safely married, though nobody suspects it. But if I were to turn
upon him in a majestic way and say, 'Sir, I am your wife already!'
he wouldn't perhaps be quite so pleased. And, by-the-bye, in all his
talk he never committed himself by mentioning marriage, which was very
artful of him!"