The Imaginary Marriage Part 14

"And Rankin was interested, as a young lady he was acting for had just come into a pot of money and a fine place down in Kent, and he had heard that she used to be employed by you. Ah, ha!" Bloomberg laughed. "You oughtn't to have let her slip away, old man. She was as pretty as a peach, and now with some hundreds of thousands she will be worth while, eh?"

"I suppose so," Slotman said, apparently indifferently. "And did you hear the name of the place she had come into?"

"I did. Something--Den--all places in Kent are something or other--Den.

Oh, Starden! That's it! Well, I must go. But tell me, what's your opinion about those Calbary Reef Preferentials?"

Ten minutes later Slotman was alone, frowning at thought. If it were true, then indeed the luck had been against him. Even without money he had been willing, more than willing to marry Joan, in spite of the past, of which he knew nothing, but suspected much. Yes, he would have married her.

"She got hold of me," he muttered, "and I can't leave off thinking of her, and now she is an heiress, and Heaven knows I want money. If I had a chance, if--" He paused.

For a long while Mr. Philip Slotman sat in deep thought. About Joan Meredyth there was a mystery, and it was a mystery that might be well worth solving.

"I'll hunt it out," he muttered. "I'll have to work back. Let me see, there was that old General--General--?"

He frowned, Ah! he had it now, for his memory was a good one.

"General Bartholomew! That was the name," Slotman muttered. "And that is where I commence my hunt!"

CHAPTER XV

"TO THE MANNER BORN"

Starden Hall was one of those half-timbered houses in the possession of which Kent and Suss.e.x are rich. It was no great mansion, but a comfortable, rambling old house, that had been built many a generation ago, and had been added to as occasion required by thoughtful owners, who had always borne in mind the architecture and the atmosphere of the original, and so to-day it covered a vast quant.i.ty of ground, being but one storey high, and about it spread flower gardens and n.o.ble park-land that were delights to the eye.

And this place was hers. It belonged to her, the girl who a few short weeks ago had been earning three pounds a week in a City office, and whose nightmare had been worklessness and starvation.

Helen Everard watched the girl closely. "To the manner born," she thought. And yet there was that about Joan that she would have altered, a coldness, an aloofness. Too often the beautiful mouth was set and hard, never cruel, yet scornful. Too often those l.u.s.trous eyes looked coldly out on to a world that was surely smiling on her now.

"There's something--" the elder woman thought, for she was a clever and capable woman--a woman who could see under the surface of things, a woman who had loved and suffered, and had risen triumphant over misfortunes, which had been so many and so dire that they might have crushed a less valiant spirit.

General Bartholomew had explained briefly:

"The child is alone in the world. There is something I don't quite understand, Helen. It is about a marriage--" The old gentleman paused.

"Look here, I'll tell you. I had a letter from Lady Linden, an old friend, and she begged me to find Joan and bring her and her young husband together again."

"Then she is married?"

"No, that is, I--I don't know. 'Pon my soul, I don't know--can't make head or tail of it! She says she isn't, and, by George! she isn't a girl who would lie; but if she isn't--well, I'm beaten, Helen. I can't make it out. At any rate, I did bring her and the lad, and a fine lad he is too, George Alston's son, together. And he left the house without seeing me, and afterwards the girl told me that he was practically a stranger to her, and that there had never been any marriage at all. At the same time she asked me not to write to Lady Linden, and she said that it was no business of hers, which was true, come to that. And so--so now she's come into this money, and she is utterly alone in the world, and wants to go to Starden to live--why, my dear--"

"I see," Helen said. "I shall be glad to go there for a time you know; it's Alfred's country."

"I remembered that."

"John Everard is living at Buddesby with his sister Constance. They are two of the dearest people--the children, you know, of Alfred's brother Matthew."

"Yes--yes, to be sure," said the old gentleman, who was not in the slightest degree interested.

"And they will be nice for your Joan Meredyth to know," said Mrs.

Everard.

"That's it, that's it! Take her about; let her see people, young people.

Make her enjoy herself, and forget the past. I don't know what the past held. Joan is not one to make confidants; but I fancy that her past, poor child, has held more suffering than she cares to talk about. So try and make her forget it. Get the Everards over from Buddesby, or take her there; let her see people. But you know, you know, my dear. You're a capable woman!"

Yes, she was a capable woman, far more capable than even General Bartholomew realised. Clever and capable, kindly and generous of nature, and the girl interested her. It was only interest at first. Joan was not one to invite a warm affection in another woman at the outset. Her manner was too cold, too uninviting, and yet there was nothing repellent about it. It was as if, wounded by contact with the world, she had withdrawn behind her own defences. She, who had suffered insult and indignity, looked on all the world with suspicious, shy eyes.

"I will break down her reserve. I think she is lovable and sweet when once one can force her to throw aside this mask," Helen Everard thought.

So they had come to Starden together.

Joan had said little when she had first looked over the place; but Helen, watching her, saw a tinge of colour come into her cheeks, and her breast rise and fall quickly, which proved that Joan was by no means so unmoved as she would appear.

It was her home, the home of her people. It was to-day almost as it had been a hundred years ago, and a hundred years before that, and even a hundred years earlier still.

The low-pitched, old-fas.h.i.+oned rooms, with the mullioned windows, the deep embrasures, the great open, stone-slabbed hearths, with their andirons and dog-grates, the walls panelled with carved linen-fold oak, darkened by age alone and polished to a dull, glossy glow by hands that would work no more.

Through these rooms, each redolent of the past, each breathing of a kindly, comfortable home-life, the girl went, looking about her with eyes that saw everything and yet seemed to see nothing.

"You like it, dear?" Helen asked.

"It is all wonderful, beautiful!" Joan said, and yet she spoke with a touch of sadness in her voice.... "How--how lonely one might be here!"

she added.

"You--you must not think of loneliness; you will never be lonely, my dear. If you are, it will be of your own choice!"

"Who knows?" Joan smiled sadly. She was thinking of a man who had told her that he loved her. There had been more than one, but the one man stood out clear and distinct from all others; she could even remember the words he had used.

"If, in telling you that I love you, I have sinned past all forgiveness, I glory in it, and I take not one word of it back."

Yet how could he love her? How could he, when he had insulted her, when he had used her name, as he had, when he had humiliated and shamed her, how could he profess to love her? And they had met but three times in their lives.

"Joan, dear," Helen Everard said, "Joan!"

"Yes? I am sorry, I--I was thinking." Joan looked up.

Helen had come into the room, an open letter in her hand.

"I wrote to John and Constance Everard, my nephew and niece," Helen said. "I told them I was here with you, and asked them to come over.

They are coming to-morrow, dear. I think you will like them."

"I am sure I shall," Joan said; but there was no enthusiasm in her voice, only cold politeness that seemed to chill a little.

"I glory in it," she was thinking, "and take not one word of it back."

She shrugged her shoulders disdainfully and turned away.