To Laline's great relief, no one spoke to her or interferred with her
in any way on her return; and she was able to retire with her ecstatic
thoughts to her own room.
To say that she had never been so happy in her life would be to
understate the case. Until this day she had not known what happiness
was. Sleep was out of the question for a long time; Laline was too
happy to sleep. She laid her flushed cheek upon her pillow, and
proceeded slowly and lingeringly to recall every word, every look, and
every caress she had received from Wallace Armstrong.
Her vivid imagination being excited to its utmost, she thrilled again
at her lover's touch, saw again the love-light in his eyes, turned her
face to meet his kisses, and murmured into her pillow answering vows of
unalterable love.
No scruples restrained her from giving herself up heart and soul to
thoughts of him. He was her husband, and she had a right to love
him, to glow with delight at the memory of his caresses, and to long
ardently for the moment when she should see him again. In a very few
days she would be doubly married to him--for Laline was resolved that
the blessing of the Church should cement that hurried and unimpressive
civil ceremony at Boulogne.
It occurred to her more than once that Wallace, in his impatience to
claim her as his wife, might wish, when once he learned her identity,
to dispense with the delay of a second wedding; and for this reason
alone she debated whether it might not be better to defer telling him
the truth until after the ceremony had been performed.
Yet again she told herself that before the altar she must speak
the truth. Laline Armstrong and not Lina Grahame was her name, and
as Laline Armstrong she must be married--Laline Armstrong, neither
spinster, widow, nor wife. The definitions confused her, and she
laughed aloud in the dark from sheer light-heartedness to think that a
man should be unknowingly wooing and wedding his own wife.
She would never feel that she was really his wife until they had been
married in a church. So utterly different was the man she now knew and
loved from the reckless, defiant, capriciously kind Wallace Armstrong
of the old Boulogne days, that it seemed as though another soul had
entered into the man, and that another ceremony was necessary to make
him truly her husband.
The marked dislike, amounting almost to abhorrence, with which he
alluded to his past experiences was characteristic of his complete
reformation; but it was just this quality which made Laline dread
breaking the truth to him. At least for a few days she decided that she
must still be Lina Grahame. Their relations were so perfect that the
introduction of any new element might mar their complete harmony; and
having once arrived at this determination, Laline let her brain slip
back again to the congenial employment of living again through every
incident of her second courtship until at length her waking dreams of
passionate delight were merged in sleep.
At this precise moment all happiness fled. No sooner was she asleep
than terrible dreams afflicted her soul--dreams in which she was
always endeavouring to reach her lover until some terrible catastrophe
occurred to prevent their union, and she was hurled away into space
with the sound of a man's mocking laughter in her ears.
Sometimes she thought she was wandering in a flower-bedecked meadow
under a cloudless sky while numberless birds sang sweetly overhead. At
a little distance she perceived Wallace approaching her, with gladness
in his eyes and arms outstretched to embrace her. Through all her joy
at sight of him a sense of foreboding hung over her which was too soon
justified; for as, advancing rapidly to her side, he had almost seized
her hands in his, the solid earth cleft open beneath their feet and
they were irrevocably parted.
"You are mine--mine!" another voice seemed to mutter in her ear.
Invisible hands imprisoned her, holding her back whenever she strove
through the long hours of hideous dreaming to reach her lover; and,
when at length the morning dawned and she awoke, it was with a terrible
sense of impending trouble weighing upon her mind.
Just such a night of horrors had she experienced on a previous
occasion not many days before. The night preceding Wallace Armstrong's
appearance at Mrs. Vandeleur's house had been marked by exactly similar
dreams; and Laline, as she dressed and contemplated her pale face
and startled eyes in the looking-glass, tried to reassure herself by
recalling that no untoward event had followed her dreams on the former
occasion.
"They say dreams are always fulfilled in just the reverse way," she
told herself. "Meeting my husband again was the happiest thing that
ever happened to me; so why should not last night's horrible fancies,
which were exactly similar in character, portend some unexpected
blessing? Oh, I am growing too sillily superstitious! Wallace is
quite right; this house isn't good for me. But I shall leave it soon;
and this month my husband's home will be mine. Nothing can part us
now--nothing!"
In spite of her assumed brave front, Laline could not get rid of the
unpleasant impression produced by her night fancies; and when she
joined Clare Cavan at the breakfast-table, that young lady commented at
once upon her altered appearance.
"My dearest Lina, you look so pale and so upset! What is it? Did you
overtire yourself yesterday? You were out with some friends from your
old school, were you not?"
Looking up suddenly, Laline perceived the lurking malice in the
speaker's eyes and boldly took up the challenge Clare had thrown down.
"I was with Mr. Armstrong," she answered, in clear, firm tones,
"skating in the grounds of his uncle's house at Hampstead."
"With Mr. Wallace Armstrong?" Clare inquired, in tones of assumed
surprise and anxiety.
"Yes. I thought I saw you at the window watching us drive up to the
house," Laline observed, calmly.
"Well, I certainly thought it was you and he," the ingenuous Clare
returned, "but in the dark I couldn't be sure. I am so sorry!"
"Why should you be sorry?"
"Well, I hardly like to tell you; and yet perhaps I ought to. Of course
you know that Mr. Armstrong admired me very much and paid me a great
deal of attention? Well, I liked him too, as you know; but certain
facts about him came into my possession yesterday which made me
resolve to ask Aunt Cecilia to drop him for the future."
"What are those facts?"
"It's a most shocking affair, dear, and I am afraid will distress you.
I was dreadfully grieved about it; for you know I thought Mr. Armstrong
so nice at first. It appears that old Mr. Farquharson the clerk was
right, and that, though Mr. Armstrong appears so pleasant and well-bred
and charming, he indulges periodically in fits of heavy drinking,
during which he is really like a wild beast and not responsible for his
actions."
"Who told you all this?"
"Mrs. Fitzroy Cleaver was talking about it yesterday. She had to forbid
him her house because he got frightfully tipsy and tried to make
love to the servants. That happened last year; but he is never to be
trusted, she declared, and may break out at any moment."
"I simply don't believe it!"
"Will you believe your eyes?" asked Clare, lowering her white lids to
hide the triumph in her gaze. "Read this; it is from the _Daily Leader_
of last June."
As she spoke, she took from her purse and laid in front of Laline's
plate a cutting from a newspaper, headed--"Disgraceful Conduct of a
Gentleman."
Laline's heart beat with a sickening apprehension. Not wishing Clare
to see her emotion, she rose from the table and took the cutting to
the window, where, with checks crimson with mortification, she read
that Wallace Armstrong, "stated to be nephew to the well-known banker
Alexander Wallace," had been brought before the magistrate on a charge
of drunkenness and brutal assault on the police. The accused, it was
stated, made no answer to the charge; and, it being proved that on
three previous occasions fines had been inflicted for similar offences
and instantly paid, the magistrate decided to mark his sense of the
man's disgraceful conduct by sending him to prison with hard labour for
six months.
"Of course they got him off again," Clare volunteered, as Laline
returned the paper to her without speaking, "and it was kept out of
most of the papers. I am so dreadfully sorry for that poor dear old
Mr. Wallace! That sort of drunkenness is nothing else but insanity;
and I suppose one ought to be sorry for Mr. Armstrong as well. As soon
as I heard the dreadful story it explained so many things I couldn't
understand during our visit the other day. That person shut up near the
studio, for instance, was no doubt Mr. Armstrong's keeper, close at
hand to look after him in case he should have one of his attacks."
"You pretended that it was a woman who sprang out upon you."
"Did I say so? Of course in the dark I couldn't see. In any case, I am
very, very sorry for the whole business; and I do hope, dear Lina, that
you won't take it too much to heart. Remember, Mr. Armstrong is only
a very slight and recent acquaintance; it isn't as if he were an old
friend. Don't worry yourself about him, dear."
"I don't want your sympathy and I don't want your advice; I don't
believe in either of them!" flamed out poor Laline. "I believe that
these are all lies and that Mr. Armstrong will be easily able to
disprove them. And as to being a mere acquaintance--I love him, and I
am going to marry him!"
With that, Laline swept from the room, desperately unhappy, but
determined in spite of all appearances to be loyal to the man she loved.
She tried not to think about him in church, tried to appear at
luncheon as though nothing had ruffled her usual serenity. But Clare's
exaggerated consideration and obvious sympathy were well-nigh
intolerable. Laline could neither eat nor talk, and could hardly keep
back from her eyes tears of shame and vexation at the turn things had
taken since the morning.
Wallace, her chivalrous, tender, manly lover, a drunkard and an
insensate brute! The thought seemed sacrilege. And yet Laline
remembered she had somewhere heard that dipsomaniacs were often, but
for that one hideous vice, among the most refined and sweet-natured
of men. Of one thing she was the more resolved every hour--she would
see her husband at once, tax him with what she had learned, and if
possible elicit from him the entire truth. If only her influence might
avail to wean him from this degrading vice she would not for one moment
hesitate, but would dedicate her life to the task of reclaiming him.
With these conflicting reflections agitating her mind, she could
hardly pretend to pay any attention to Clare's easy and incessant
flow of chatter during the course of the meal any more than she could
attune her mind to Mrs. Vandeleur's fantastic talk in her study in the
afternoon. The little lady shook her head sadly as she looked at her
secretary.
"Already spoiled! Already spoiled!" she murmured. "Lina, have you
nothing to say to me?"
"I shall have ever so much that I want to say to you by this time
to-morrow!" Laline cried, springing from her chair and beginning to
move restlessly about the room. "But you must let me see Mr. Armstrong
once more first, dear Mrs. Vandeleur. After that, I promise I will tell
you the entire truth."
The little sibyl looked at her long and intently through her jewelled
eye-glasses.
"You are very much in love," she observed, in her light silvery voice,
and forthwith sighed. "It is a great pity, when we were getting on
so well together," she added, regretfully. "I wish," said Laline,
wistfully, "that you could tell me whether it will all turn out
happily. What does it mean, Mrs. Vandeleur, when one dares not look
ahead, when one watches the hands of the clock in dread of what the
next hour will bring forth? And all for no reason or for insufficient
reason. It is true that to-day I have heard something that troubles me
greatly. But I was not wholly unprepared to face it, and this dreadful
foreboding seems to presage something even worse, some terrible
misfortune for which I am wholly unprepared."
She stood before Mrs. Vandeleur in her trailing white draperies, with
scarcely more colour in her face than in her gown. Even her lips were
pale, as, with low trembling accents, she gave voice to her fears.
"I have told you that love would bring trouble into your life,"
said Mrs. Vandeleur, "but of course I did not expect you to pay any
attention to my words. To a limited extent, you have yourself the
gift of second sight. I am going out now to pay a long-promised call
on Lady Wray. While I am away take this crystal; concentrate your
gaze immovably upon it, and let your heart guide your thoughts. It is
possible that you may be able to learn as much about your future as I
can tell you."
With that, she gently pushed Laline into a seat, and, placing in her
hand the crystal ball, passed her fingers lightly and rapidly over the
girl's brow, softly murmuring some undistinguishable words the while.
A feeling of drowsiness crept over Laline. Her eyelids closed, and for
a few seconds she was lost to her surroundings. When she again opened
her eyes she was alone, sitting by the fire, the light from which
danced on the gleaming tiles and tall brass "dogs" within the fender.
The afternoon was one of black frost and gray fog, and although it was
not yet four o'clock the dull, red sun gave but little illumination.
St. Mary's Crescent was intensely quiet, but the boards and panelling
of Mrs. Vandeleur's study emitted fitful creakings in the highest
degree calculated to startle a nervous person.
Laline, as a rule, did not like to be alone there in the twilight, but
this afternoon she was so much absorbed in her thoughts that she was
almost indifferent to outer influences. She was intensely anxious to
see Wallace and deeply regretted her own parting mandate to the effect
that he must defer his visit until the following day. It was terrible
to live in suspense, dreading and doubting lest he should not be able
to clear himself from the abominable charges made against him. And yet,
in the face of that newspaper cutting, what could he say? Already the
ecstastic happiness which had filled her heart on the preceding evening
had been dispelled; in spite of everything, she persisted in loving
Wallace as dearly as ever, but her tranquil joy in loving him was a
thing of the past.
As she leaned over the fire, lost in thought and rendered dreamier than
was her wont by Mrs. Vandeleur's parting touches, Laline had entirely
forgotten the crystal which the latter had placed in her hand, and it
was only the sparkle of the glass as it caught the firelight which
attracted her attention to it again. She held it from her and gazed
into its glistening depths; the dancing flames, the ruddy logs, the
cloudy night sky flecked with stars painted on the ceiling, the dark
oak panelling of the walls, and the faded tints and gruesome figures
in the "Dance of Death" tapestry which ran as a frieze round the room,
were all mirrored there in miniature, seen imperfectly by the aid of
her near-sighted vision. Gradually, as she bent nearer, fascinated
by the prettiness of the reflections, her own face came within focus,
unusually intent and pale, with eyes fixed and distended. Once before,
on the afternoon of Wallace's first visit, she had held the crystal in
her hands, and on that occasion, as she recalled now, she had seemed to
see imaged the figure of her husband.
Would the same thing happen now? she wondered, as, with straining eyes,
she stared into the crystal.
Presently the glass became clouded, the various objects about the room
were no longer there, and in their stead Laline caught a gleam of green
shutters, opened to flood with sunshine a small uncarpeted room on the
floor of which a bright-haired girl was playing with a kitten. Laline
held her breath. She knew before it happened that the door would open
and a red-faced man with a heavy white moustache would enter, bringing
another man after him.
"A gentleman to see us, Laline!"
She could almost hear the words, but, as the door opened and the girl
sprang to her feet to greet the visitor, the figures in the crystal
began to fade, and of the tall massive form following close on that of
Captain Garth Laline caught barely more than a glimpse.
Only a glimpse, yet it drove the blood from her cheeks and lips
and made her catch her breath as one half suffocated. With all the
will-power she possessed she strove to gaze again into the past. At
first her efforts were in vain, but after a few seconds of quivering
apprehension the crystal depths became cleared again. She could see
waves rippling in the sunlight and up the shiny green supports of a
pier, upon which two figures were seated side by side--a man and a girl.
Every detail was correct. Laline remembered the pink cotton frock,
made with her own fingers, and the black lace hat and Suède gloves,
Wallace's gifts, which she had worn so proudly. The man's head was
lowered over the girl, whose left hand he held in his. But although
Laline could not see his face she experienced a thrill of repulsion and
terror at sight of his figure and thick curly black hair which showed
under his straw hat.
Once again her memory brought back words from the past to complete the
picture, and a man's voice, at sound of which her heart stood still
with fear, slowly and impressively pronounced these words--
"This man will love you, and you will not be able to escape from him.
His line of fate and yours run side by side and nothing but death can
separate them!"
On the words the glass became clouded, the figures grew fainter and
fainter until they vanished altogether, and Laline sat, trembling in
every limb, with a new dread in her soul.
"It is the future and not the past which I must see," she told herself.
"If I could only get sight of something to guide me!"
From the depths of the crystal the face of a man seemed to resolve
itself, and brilliant bluish-gray eyes under heavy black eyebrows to
fix themselves upon her. A faint cry rose to Laline's lips. She did not
wish to see what the glass held; she would not believe her eyes. Every
moment the face became clearer while her sentiment of loathing and
detestation increased in proportion.
Moved out of herself by overmastering excitement, she would have flung
the crystal from her; but at that exact moment the silence in the
room was suddenly broken by the opening of the door and Susan's voice
announcing--
"Mr. Wallace Armstrong!"