The Halo Part 29

The moment had come when she _must_ think, she told herself, but her brain refused to work. The only thing that mattered was that he should stay. What must she say, truth or lie, that would inspire that necessity?

She stared at him blankly, and then, before she could speak, he knelt at her feet and pressed a fold of her dress to his face.

"Victor," she said slowly, trembling so she could hardly stand, "you will not--leave me?"

And Joyselle caught her up off the floor and held her as if she had been a baby.

"_Dieu merci_," he cried. "_Dieu merci._"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

An hour later Brigit Mead came quietly down the now nearly dark stairs of the old house, smiling faintly to herself.

Joyselle's confession had been complete and circ.u.mstantial. He had not attempted to hide from her one thing, and in the relief of his, as it seemed, unavoidable avowal, he had hardly given her time to speak. "It was, I think, the evening you came in the golden gown. You remember? It was a vision; but an angelic vision, Most Beautiful; but one that turned me first to stone, and then to fire. Vivien must have worn a golden gown. And then the evening in Pont Street--the storm, when I put my arms round you--they went round the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, it is true, but also round my daughter. But--in that lightning flash of time I found they were round the woman compared to my love of whom the whole world does not matter! And I ran into the night and walked for hours in the rain, and I think I was mad. Then I determined to go to America. And I would have gone, G.o.d knows, but--you came, and your unconsciousness broke me down. If you had suspected, I should have gone; I was on my way to the Steams.h.i.+p Company when I met you. And then, Hampstead--and this past week--and then you came to me here where I work--and where I dream--ah, my beloved!"

He was very gentle in his unhoped-for happiness, and to her immense relief he never once mentioned, or even appeared to remember, his son.

When he asked her, with the marvelling curiosity of a boy lover, when and why she ever came to love him, she only shook her head. "I love you," she answered, and he forgot, looking at her, to insist.

No word of the future had been said, not a plan had been made. Only, at parting, to meet later in the evening at the Newlyns, he said to her, "I will be the greatest violinist in the world, my woman."

And her heart beat high with honest pride in him.

Too happy to think, she went down the stairs, and half-way down found herself face to face with Gerald Carron.

It was nearly dark, but she could just see that his white face was drawn and hideous with anger.

"What are you doing here?" she cried, drawing back, but furious in her turn.

"What are you doing here? You--you!"

"You have been spying on me," she returned with a good a.s.sumption of courage that she was very far from feeling. "Well--I have been to talk to Mr. Joyselle. Have you any objection to my doing so?"

"Objection? Yes, I have. You have fooled us all. Engaged to the boy, and--I have always known that you didn't care for that child, and wondered--Now I know." He laughed shrilly. "And other people shall know, too! Your mother will be pleased, and--the clean peasant! I only wonder you haven't _married_ that poor wretch. The situation would then be even more--biblical."

She tried to pa.s.s him, but he barred her way. "If you don't let me go, I will call for M. Joyselle. And if he doesn't hear me, someone else will.

Do you understand?"

He did not answer, and looking at him carefully for a moment she was for the first time terrified. His eyes were not those of a sane man.

"Gerald, don't be nasty," she urged, gently. "Surely you must see that there is no harm in my coming to see Joyselle! In a month or two he will be my father-in-law."

He sneered. "Ah, bah! I saw your face as you pa.s.sed the last window. It was not the face of a girl coming from her future father-in-law. It was the face----"

Before he could finish a door opened on the floor above and two children came downstairs, chattering gaily to each other. Brigit turned to the elder, a boy of six, dressed in a quaintly cut green blouse.

"Is your papa at home, my dear?" she asked.

The child laughed. "My papa is dead," he answered cheerfully, "but Uncle Chris is there."

Brigit looked at Carron for a moment, and then went downstairs with her hand on the little boy's shoulder. "And what is your name?" she asked.

"I'm Bob Seymour, and this is Patty. Uncle Chris has been painting us.

He gives us a s.h.i.+lling apiece each time."

"How very nice." Patty, who wore as obviously artistic a costume as her brother's, thumped noisily from behind them, and a few seconds later Brigit had kissed her unconscious but all-powerful bodyguard and jumped into the hansom.

If a man had come instead of the children, almost anything might have happened, for she had no doubt that Carron's sanity was approaching snapping-point, but the innocent courage of Bob and Patty had quieted him.

Brigit had a very unpleasant drive home, but the romantic cabby was delightfully thrilled. As it happened, he had been "crawling" for some minutes before Brigit had engaged him in Sloane Square, and had noticed her being accosted by Carron.

"Something queer along of all this," he meditated; "that lean chap didn't look quite right, an' she 'adn't no patience with 'im neither.

Then in she goes to the old 'ouse, an' then along comes another 'ansom with the lean chap. Then I waits an hour, an' out she comes with the little kids, kissin' 'em, an' the biggest little kid arsks 'er 'er nime!

If she didn't know 'im, why did she kiss 'im? An' before we'd got to the corner out comes the lean 'un, lookin' like a bloomin' corpse. Something must 'ave 'appened in that old 'ouse, an' I'll keep a lookout in the _People_ and see wot it was. I'd like to 'ave been a fly on the wall during that there interview, I would. A fly on the wall with a tiste for short'and."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Lady Kingsmead, who was going to the Newlyns' ball later, was having dinner in her little sitting-room when Carron came rus.h.i.+ng in, nearly treading on the heels of the afflicted Fledge, who did like to have a chance to announce visitors properly.

"Good Lord, Gerald!--what is the matter?"

"Matter enough. Brigit is Victor Joyselle's mistress."

He sank into a chair and pressed his thin hands together until the bones cracked.

"Gerald!"

"She is! she _is_! I have just come from his studio in Chelsea. Followed her there. She was alone with him for over an hour. And when she came out----"

Lady Kingsmead rose and went to him.

"Now listen to me," she said firmly. "You have either been drinking or you are mad. I don't care where you have been or where you saw Brigit.

This story is--rot!"

Lady Kingsmead was not a clever woman, but this move on her part, the result not of a virtuous belief in virtue or of a sudden swing of her mental pendulum towards the effective, such as some women have--was amazing in its effect, because it was spontaneous and sincere.

"Will you have something to drink?" she asked.

It was a curious scene; the dainty little room with the swivel-table laid for one, the pretty, well-preserved woman, looking down with real pity but something very near scorn at the broken, haggard, untidy man sprawling in a rose-coloured chair.

"You are a fool, Tony," he said roughly. "I tell you I know."