The Imaginary Marriage Part 27

"I am afraid I am late," Joan said, and her voice was clear and cold, expressionless as a voice could be.

"Surely I deserve that at least, after the unforgivable delay in answering your letter."

"Yes," she said, "you--you were a long time answering." And suddenly she realised what that delay had meant.

Yesterday, if his answer had come, perhaps she would not have done as she had done. But it was done now, past recall.

"I was away. I found Hurst Dormer irksome and lonely. Lady Linden came over; she invited me to stay at Cornbridge," he explained. "So I went, and no letters were forwarded. Yours came within a few hours of my leaving. I hope you understand that if I had had it--"

"You would have answered it before, Mr. Alston? Yes, I am glad to feel the neglect was not intentional."

"Intentional!"

"I--I thought, judging from the manner in which we last parted, and what you then said to me, that you--you preferred not to--see me again."

"I was hurt then, hurt and bitter. I had no right to say what I said. I ask you to accept my apologies, Joan."

She started a little at the sound of her name, but did not look at him.

"Perhaps you were right. I have thought it over since. Yes, I think I acted meanly; it was a thing a woman would do. That is where a woman fails--in small things--ideas, mean ideas come to her mind, just like that one. A man would not think such things. Yes, I am ashamed by the smallness of it. You said 'ungenerous.' I think a better expression would have been 'mean-spirited.'"

"Joan!"

"But we need not discuss that. We owe one another apologies. Shall we take it that they are offered and accepted?"

He nodded. "Tea?" he asked, "or coffee?" For the hotel servant had come for his orders.

"Tea, please," she said; "and--and this time I will not ask for the bill." The faintest flicker of a smile crossed her lips, and then was gone, and he thought that in its place a look of weariness and unhappiness came into the girl's face.

She had sent for him to ask his help. His letter had only reached her that morning, and when she had read it, she had asked herself, "Shall I go? Shall I see him?" And had answered "No! It is over; I do not need his help now. I have someone else to whom I must turn for help, someone who will give it readily."

And yet she had come--that is the way of women. And because she had come, she would still ask his help, and not ask it of that other. For surely he who had brought all this trouble on to her should be the one to clear her path?

The waiter brought the tea, and Hugh leaned back and watched her as she poured it out. And, watching her, there came to him a vision of the bright morning room at Hurst Dormer, a vision of all the old familiar things he had known since boyhood: and in that vision, that day-dream, he saw her sitting where his mother once had sat, and she was pouring out tea, even as now.

A clearer, stronger vision this than any he had had in the old days of Marjorie. He smiled at the thought of those dreams, so utterly broken and dead and wafted away into the nothingness of which they had been built.

"You sent for me to help you?"

"Yes!" A tinge of colour rose in her cheeks and waxed till her cheeks and even her throat were flooded with a brilliant, glorious flush, and then, suddenly as it had come, it died away again, leaving her whiter than before.

"I wanted your help. I felt that I had a right to ask it, seeing that you--you--"

"Have caused you trouble and annoyance? You wrote that," he said.

She bowed her head.

"What you did, has brought more trouble, more shame, more annoyance to me than I can ever explain. I do not ask you to tell me why you did it--it was cruel and mean, unmanly; but you did it. And it can never be undone, so I ask for no reasons, no explanations. They--they do not interest me now. You have brought me trouble and--even danger--and so I turned to you, to ask your help. I have the right, have I not the right--to demand it?"

"The greatest right on earth," he said. "Joan, how can I help you?"

But she did not answer immediately, for the answer would be difficult.

"When you played with a woman's name," she said, "you played with the most fragile, the most delicate and easily breakable thing there is. Do you realise that? A woman's fair name is her most sacred possession, and yet you played with mine, used it for your own purpose, and so have brought me to shame and misery."

"Joan," he leaned towards her, "how--how--tell me how?"

"Three days ago," she said quietly, "I submitted and paid three thousand pounds blackmail, rather than that your name and mine, linked together, should be dragged in the mire!"

It was almost as though those white hands of hers had struck him a heavy blow between the eyes. Hugh sat and stared at her in amaze.

Her words seemed obscure, scarcely possible to understand, yet he had gathered in the sense of them.

"Three days ago I submitted and paid three thousand pounds blackmail rather than your name and mine, linked together, should be dragged in the mire."

A girl might well shrink to tell a man what she must tell him, to go into explanations that were an offence to the purity of her mind. Yet, listening to her, looking at her, at the pale, proud young face, white as marble, Hugh Alston knew that he had never admired and reverenced her as he did now.

"The story that you told of our marriage, that lie that I can never understand, pa.s.sed from lip to lip. Many have heard it; it has caused many to wonder. I do not ask why you uttered it. It does not matter now, nothing matters, save that you did utter it, and it has gone abroad.

Then one day you came to the office where I was employed, and the man who employed me put his private room at your disposal, knowing that by means of some spyhole he had contrived he could hear all that pa.s.sed between us. And then you offered me marriage--by way of atonement. Do you remember? You offered to--to atone by marrying me."

"In my mad, presumptuous folly, Joan!"

"And it was overheard; the man heard all. He did not understand--how should he? His vile mind grasped at other meanings. He went down to Marlbury and to Morchester to make enquiries, to look for an entry in a register that was never made. He went to General Bartholomew and then Cornbridge, where he saw Lady Linden, and heard from her all that she had to tell, and then--then he came to me. He told me that he knew the truth, and that if I would marry him he would forgive--forgive everything!"

Hugh Alston said nothing. He sat with his big hands gripped hard, and thinking of Philip Slotman a red fury pa.s.sed like a mist before his eyes.

"I told him to go, and then came a letter from him, a friendly letter, a letter that could not cause him any trouble. He a.s.sured me of his friends.h.i.+p and of his--silence, you understand, his silence--and asked me as a friend to lend him three thousand pounds. It was blackmail--oh, I knew that. I hesitated, and did not know what to do. There was none to whom I could turn--no one. I had no friend. Helen Everard is only a friend of a few short weeks. I felt that I could not go to her, I felt somehow that she would never understand. And then--then at last, because, I suppose, I am a woman and therefore a coward, and because I was so alone--so helpless--I sent the money."

"Oh, that I--"

"Remember," she said, "remember I had written to you, asking your help.

I had waited days, and no answer had come. I had no right to believe that I could ask your help."

"Joan, Joan, didn't you know that you could? Have you forgotten what I told you once--that stands true to-day as then, will stand true to the last hour of my life. I have brought shame and misery on you, G.o.d forgive me--yet unintentionally, Joan." He leaned forward, and grasped at her hand and held it, though she would have drawn it free of him. "I told you that I loved you that night. I love you now--my love for you gives me the right to protect you!"

"You have no rights, no rights," she said, and drew her hand away.

"Because you will not give me those rights. I asked you to marry me once. I came to you, thinking in my small soul that I was doing a fine thing, offering atonement--my--my very words, atonement--for the evil I had unwittingly done. And you refused to accept the prize!" He laughed bitterly. "You refused with scorn, just scorn, Joan. You made me realise that I had but added to my offence. I--I to offer you marriage, in my lordly way, when I should have sued on my knees to you for forgiveness, as I would sue now, humbly and contritely, offering love and love alone--love and wors.h.i.+p and service to the end of my days, as please Heaven I shall sue, Joan."

"You cannot!" she said quietly. "You cannot, and if you should, the answer will be the same, as then!"

"Because you can never forgive?"

"Because I have no power to give what you would ask for!"

"Your love?"

She did not answer. She turned her face away, for she knew she could not in truth say "No" to that, for the knowledge that she had been trying to stifle was with her now, the knowledge that meant that she could not love the man whose wife she had promised to be.