When Laline left the study and fled up-stairs to her room, she had by
no means terminated her adventures for the day.
At first she could do nothing but sit with her hands tightly clasped
in her lap, half-numbed by the extent of her misfortune. Her folly in
failing to distinguish between the two cousins appeared to her now
equally inexcusable and incomprehensible. Gradually, as she collected
in her mind the evidence upon which she had acted, a conviction
strengthened within her mind that she had been only too desirous of
deceiving herself.
"I loved him, and so I persisted in believing he was my husband!" was
the despairing cry of her heart. She had fallen in love at first with
the younger Wallace Armstrong, and had encouraged herself in loving
him by assuring herself that she was his wife already. This was now
the first week in February, the month in which they were to have been
married. Laline sprang from her chair at the thought and pressed her
hands to her burning cheeks.
"How can I tell him?" she cried aloud. "How can I say that I must
break it off and that we must never meet again, when only yesterday
I kissed him and let him kiss me, and promised to be his wife? It is
all horrible--impossible! What excuse can I give that he will believe?
I cannot go to him and say, 'I will not marry him because I am his
cousin's wife!' No one must ever know that. I would a thousand times
rather die at this moment than be claimed by that horrible man, the
very sight of whom turns me sick with disgust and hate! How could
I ever think that Lorin, my Lorin, could have acted like that at
Boulogne, could have ever been a gambler and a forger, ungrateful,
deceitful, selfish, dissipated, and worthless?"
A wave of joy passed over her heart, in spite of her grief and
perplexity, at the thought that the man she loved was in very truth the
honourable and chivalrous gentleman Mrs. Vandeleur had declared him to
be. Like Tennyson's "Lily maid of Astolat," Laline felt it was--
"Her glory to have loved
One peerless, without stain."
She had been ready to take him as her husband in spite of all she
remembered and all she heard against him, but now that she knew his
record to be absolutely clear she loved him the more. Tears rushed from
her eyes as she realised that the happy life they had planned together
could never be theirs. She must banish him from her sight; or, if he
would not obey her entreaties and commands, she must herself pass out
of his life and begin a new career in some place out of his reach and
ken.
Until she met him, the prospect of a busy existence uncheered by the
love of a man had not appeared specially formidable to Laline. But
now her future life seemed to stretch before her as an arid plain,
cheerless, and dreary, the mere thought of which made her shudder.
"I cannot live without him!" she sobbed. "I cannot live without his
love! Why did he come into my life at all, if it was only to offer me a
taste of happiness which I must never hope for again? It is too hard,
too cruel!"
Rebellious, passionate thoughts rose in her mind, thoughts at which
her own soul took fright. Through the fog the church-bells pealed out,
faint and muffled; but Laline grew calmer at the sound. Her early
training had been deeply religious, and now, in this hour of loneliness
and despair, she sought comfort and refuge from her distracting grief
in the service of the church.
Hastily slipping on her hat and cloak and the furs which Lorin had
bought for her on the preceding day, she hurried down the stairs and
out of the house unnoticed by any of the other inmates. To her aching
heart and tired brain the quiet of the sacred building, the dignified
yet simple words of the service she knew so well, and the sermon,
taken from a beautiful passage in St. John's Gospel, proved infinitely
soothing, and the mere act of supplication brought with it a sense of
strength and coming help.
She had prayed to be taught what was her duty, and rising from her
knees at the close of the service, tired out with the emotions of
the day and very pale, her eyes red with long weeping and her lips
quivering in the endeavour to keep back her tears, she passed out of
the church with the rest of the congregation.
A walk of a very few minutes led to the opening of St. Mary's Crescent,
and Laline was hastening thither, a little dazed by the fog and
darkness after the brightly-lighted church, when some one laid a hand
upon her shoulder.
"At last, my darling!"
She had known by his touch, which thrilled her with delight, that it
was Lorin even before she had seen or heard him; and in the first
moment of joy at the unexpected meeting she turned on him a face
radiant with love and welcome. The light from a gas-lamp at the side of
the pavement fell full upon her, and Lorin started back.
"My darling, how pale you are! And you have been crying! What has
troubled you?"
His words recalled the truth to her. She turned away and strove to
answer coldly.
"My head aches this evening," she said. "I must get off to bed early.
I--I dare say it is the fog."
"Let me come in with you and speak to Mrs. Vaudeleur about you. I have
a great deal to say to her."
"No, no--not to-night, and not until you have spoken to me first! You
must come to-morrow and have a long talk with me. It is too late now,
and I feel ill and tired--very tired!"
He drew her hand tenderly through his arm.
"You are crying again, my dear one!" he said. "I have a right to know
what is troubling you. Let me take you home and stay with you a little
while. Mrs. Vandeleur will, I am sure, excuse the informality of the
visit now that she knows that we are so soon to be married."
"She knows nothing of all that."
"What? You have not told her?"
"Not yet. Don't be vexed, Lorin. I have not even seen her since you
left me at the door last night."
"Well, at least you have told Miss Cavan?"
"Yes," Laline admitted, reluctantly, "I did say something about you to
Miss Cavan."
"Something about me? Well, I suppose I must be content with that! But,
Lina dear, are you so very much ashamed of me that you don't like to
mention to any one that we are engaged?"
"No, of course not! How can you ask such an absurd question! But"--and
here Laline was seized by a brilliant idea--"you know Mrs. Vandeleur
will be very much annoyed at the idea of losing me just when I am
beginning to be so useful to her as a secretary. We are exceedingly
busy over her two books, and she has often told me that my value to her
lies in the fact that my mind is not distracted by thoughts of love or
money. She has been exceedingly kind to me, and it really seems too
bad to talk about leaving her to get married almost as soon as we have
started comfortably working together. It isn't fair to her, you see."
She spoke very fast, and lowered her head that he might not see the
anxiety and distress in her eyes.
He laughed and drew her arm closer against his.
"Not fair to her!" he said. "How about being fair to me? Which is the
more important--that Mrs. Vandeleur should lose an amanuensis to assist
her in the compilation of her interesting but mischievous mysticism,
or that you and I should miss the happiness of both our lives? Under
the circumstances I should say it was rather wise of her to foretell
terrible troubles to you should you fall in love. You are in love, I
hope, dearest! And where are all these prophesied griefs and woes? No
future can look brighter than ours."
She shuddered and clung closer to his arm. If he only knew!
"My uncle," Lorin continued, "is in the highest state of delight about
our coming marriage. He wants you to have luncheon with him to-morrow.
Bring Mrs. Vandeleur, if she will come at such short notice; but don't
disappoint him. He was most anxious that I should bring you round
to-day to receive his congratulations. I told him you had forbidden
me to call until Monday. What I did not tell him was that I have been
hanging round St. Mary's Crescent at intervals the whole day, hoping to
catch you as you went in or out. I had a presentiment that you would be
in trouble or low spirits, the result, I suppose, of a bad dream I had
about you last night."
"What was that?"
"Oh, just as utterly meaningless and inconsequent as are most dreams!
I thought I was in a forest, looking for you and following you. Every
now and then I caught a glimpse of your white dress--you wore that gown
you had on when I first saw you--glimmering through an opening in the
trees. But as soon as I dashed forward in pursuit the branches closed
together, as in the 'Sleeping Beauty' story, and you were lost to me
again, while the whole wood seemed filled with mocking laughter."
"What sort of laughter?" she inquired, eagerly. "Was it like the
laughter of any one you know?"
"Why do you ask? Perhaps it was--a little. But, Lina dear, you are
trembling. It is horribly selfish of me to keep you walking about in
the fog when you told me you were so tired! Let me take you home!"
"No--not yet, Lorin! I have a great deal to say to you, and I must say
it now while no one can hear me. I--I have been thinking deeply all
to-day, and I have decided that you and I have been too hasty--we have
not given ourselves time to know our own minds."
"Wait!" he exclaimed. "I felt sure something was weighing on your mind;
but I can't listen here in the noise of the streets. We will pass into
the Park while you tell me."
They had reached the Albert Hall, and he led her at this point into
Hyde Park, deserted but for a few devoted sweethearts, as regardless as
themselves of the cold and fog and frost.
"Now tell me again, dear," he said, gently, "what you have to say about
our engagement!"
In the obscurity he slipped his arm about her waist, and at his touch
a restful delight crept over her senses. For a few seconds she kept
silence. Very soon they must part, and with a whole lifetime of dreary
lovelessness before her, surely she might without great sin afford
herself the momentary joy of revelling in his caresses.
But duty, stern and forbidding, lay before her, and suddenly nerving
herself to the effort, she drew away from him.
"I have something to say to you," she began, "and I want you to walk
quietly by my side listening, and not to touch me while I speak.
Lorin, we have made a great mistake; I, at least, know that I was only
flirting with you. I had made up my mind before I met you not to marry,
and I am still of the same mind. Let us just be friends again!"
"Never! We never have been friends, my darling, and we never can be! I
loved you from the first moment when I heard your voice, from the first
moment when I saw your face in the full lamplight. I was never your
friend only, and I never shall be. I was and am your lover, and I shall
be your husband!"
"I was only flirting!" she cried in desperation. "I thought you were in
love with Clare Cavan! You flirted with her, I flirted with you. I--I
have no real feeling for you at all! It was just a little petty triumph
to get you away from her!"
The words died on her lips. He had stopped in the middle of the
gravel-path and had drawn up her hands upon his shoulders.
"I told you not to touch me!" she faltered.
"Lina," he whispered, "Lina dear, even in fun I can't let you speak of
yourself like that!"
He drew her tenderly into his arms. Her heart was beating madly and
convulsive sobs began to shake her frame.
"Why do you torment me?" she cried, breaking into a storm of tears.
"Can't you see that I am in earnest--that I am trying to find any
excuse to free myself from my promise to you? I cannot marry you--I
will not marry you! It is of no use to ask me for reasons! On my word
of honour I am in earnest--I was never more in earnest in my life! It
has all been a mistake from the beginning. I can never be your wife!"
"Lina!"
"It is of no use," she cried, hysterically, "to remonstrate with me or
to appeal to my feelings. I have no feelings where men are concerned. I
was always a flirt--Mrs. Melville could have told you that. At Norwood
the foreign masters used to propose to me; but I never cared. It is all
vanity with me and I don't know what love means!"
"Lina!"
"Oh, don't stand repeating my name like that! It would be more
dignified if you get angry. But nothing can make any difference. You
might spend the rest of your life and mine on your knees to me, but I
cannot marry you--cannot! Do you understand, Mr. Armstrong? It is all
over, this love-story of ours, and all we have to do now is to forget
it!"
Through all the hysterical excitement of her talk there rang a note
of despair which Lorin failed not to recognise and for which he was
greatly at a loss to account.
"Lina," he said, again, "you are ill and unstrung; you don't know what
you are saying. Something very serious has happened to trouble you
to-day. Presently, when you feel better and calmer, you must tell me
all about it. But, my darling, it is useless to try and persuade me
that you did not love me yesterday or that you do not love me now!"
"I do not!"
"Lina, it is horribly dark and foggy and you don't see very well with
those lovely, tearful eyes of yours. But look up now into my face, with
your hands in mine--so--and your heart beating near mine, and tell me
again that you do not love me!"
She stood still as he directed, and, clasping her hands, he held them
up against his breast. Her face was ashen pale and even her lips were
white. She strove to keep up the pitch of unnatural nervous excitement
to which she had worked herself; but gradually, as he clasped her
hands close in his, he felt their tension relax. Her form lost its
defiant erectness; she quivered and swayed towards him, and would have
fallen had he not caught her in his arms.
"Oh, Lorin, Lorin, I am so unhappy! I think my heart will break!"
Very weak and pitiful her accents sounded now as, like a tired child,
she rested her cheek upon his shoulder for a few seconds, weeping
bitterly. Lorin asked her no questions and contented himself with
gently soothing her. Presently her sobs ceased, and suddenly raising
her head, she tried to laugh.
"It's like a servant on her 'Sunday out,' isn't it," she said, with
a feeble attempt at cheerfulness, "to meet my 'young man' after
church, and walk in Hyde Park, with his arm round my waist, crying?
Servants, when they get engaged, always cry a great deal. I remember
when our parlour-maid at Norwood got engaged to the baker, she used
to shed floods of tears in the pantry, and even weep while waiting at
table. She and her young man were perpetually having what she called
'words'--about three times a week it used to happen--and then Emma
cried her eyes out until they made it up. And after all she married the
postman."
"Well, and, now that we have had our 'words,' darling, and you have had
your weeping, and we have made it up, since we are having our 'Sunday
evening out' in the Park, and it's so dark one can't see across the
road, you must kiss me in sign of reconciliation."
But she shrank away from him, remembering, with a pang, that she was
another man's wife, and that her love for Lorin was no longer a pride
to her but a grievous fault.
"Not now," she said; and then, before he had time to complain of her
coldness, she suddenly asked him why he had never, in speaking to her,
alluded to his namesake and cousin.
Lorin did not answer for a moment, and when he spoke, it was in a
somewhat constrained tone.
"I may not have mentioned him by name," he said, "but we have certainly
alluded to him in our conversations. I have spoken to you of the
responsibility I undertook more than five years ago, when I brought my
cousin over from Boulogne to England after his wife's death----"
"You brought him over?"
"Yes. Uncle Alec thought he had reason to distrust him; but I believed
my cousin's letters and went to him. It was a very sad and painful
experience in many ways. He had only been married a month when the poor
girl died. I was shown her grave and a picture of her, painted when she
was a child. She must have been very pretty; but from what my cousin
subsequently told me, I should say that she and old Garth, who called
himself her uncle, but who impressed me very unfavourably, and who, I
strongly suspect, was really her father, were nothing better than a
couple of needy and swindling adventurers. Wallace always speaks of
them both with intense bitterness; but Uncle Alec has never heard him,
and persists in believing that this Laline is an angel of goodness,
and that, had she lived, Wallace would have been very different. And
I think he is probably right. A good wife is a man's salvation if she
will only cling to him through good report and ill, and may well redeem
him by her unselfish love."
"You overrate me, I know," Laline said, in a stifled voice, "and think
me much better than I am. Tell me truly, Lorin, knowing me and knowing
him, do you think that if your cousin Wallace had been married to me,
for instance, he would have been induced to lead a better life?"
He pressed both her hands tightly in his.
"It seems sacrilege," he exclaimed, "to think of you as married to him!
But I believe that, if you had met him at the time I speak of, you
might have saved him."