The Shield of Silence Part 64

At this Martin came and stood over Doris. Joan looked up and suddenly her eyes dimmed. She seemed alone. Alone among them all. There was no one beside her--they seemed, Martin and Raymond, to be defending their loved ones from her.

"And now, my brother Ken!" The words were like a call.

"Oh, let me off!" Raymond tried to speak lightly.

"No, indeed! The safety of my family is at stake!"

Raymond was inwardly angry, but he sat down and defiantly spread his hands.

Joan regarded them silently for a dramatic moment, then she quietly opened her own.

"Isn't this odd," she said, "there is a line in your hand and mine--alike!"

Every eye was fixed on the four hands.

"Right here----" Joan traced it.

"What does it mean?" Martin asked.

"Capacity for friends.h.i.+p; that we are rather daring; not afraid of many things--but canny enough to know----"

"What, Joan?--out with it!" It was Doris who spoke.

"Canny enough--to distrust ourselves once in awhile."

Martin gave a guffaw.

"Joan," he said, "you ought to be sent to bed. Your eyes are too big and your colour too high. Stop this foolishness and let us take a turn on the river road. The moonlight is filling it--it's too rare to be overlooked."

So they went out, keeping together and talking happily until it was time to return to the house; there, Raymond managed to say to Joan, just as they were parting:

"This has been rather a shock, you know, I wish I could see you alone--for a moment."

She looked up at him, and all the mad daring was gone from her eyes.

"Is there anything to say?" she whispered. "Now or--ever?"

"Yes."

And Raymond knew that Joan would come back.

He sat on the broad porch, opening to The Gap, and smoked. The house grew still with that holy quietness that holds all love safe.

Then came a slight noise; someone was coming!

It was significant that Raymond should know at once who it was. All the love and yearning in the world would not have drawn Nancy through the sleeping house to him. The knowledge made him smile grimly, happily.

Doris, once having said good-night, meant it, and Martin had gone to his bungalow.

"Well--here I am." Joan appeared and sat down, looking as if she were doing the most commonplace thing in life. It was the old daring that had led to dangerous ways.

"Is it--safe?"

"Why not?" It was the same frank, childlike look.

"But--Nancy; your Aunt----"

Joan twisted her mouth humorously.

"We'll have to risk them--you said you had something to say."

"Joan! Good Lord! but it's great to have a name to call you by--you drove me pretty hard to-night. I make no complaint--except----" He paused.

"For Nancy?" Joan asked.

"Yes! Joan, she's wonderful. She's the sort that makes a man rather afraid until he realizes that he means to keep her as she is--forever."

This was spoken with a definiteness of purpose that made Joan recoil.

Again he was defending Nancy from what he had believed Joan to have been!

"I wonder"--she looked away--"I wonder if any one could do that? Or if it would be wise if he could?"

"Joan, when I saw you to-night, after the shock--I could have fallen on my knees in grat.i.tude--there have been hours when the fear I had about you nearly drove me crazy; made me feel I had no right--to Nancy."

"So you--did remember, for a little time?"

"Yes. I went to the Brier Bush--Miss Gordon gave me to understand that you had gone away with someone--married, she thought.

"Joan--who was--Pat?"

For a moment Joan could not understand, then, as was the way with her, the whole truth flooded in.

Raymond had taken thought for her--Elspeth had deceived him--oh! how hard Elspeth could be. Joan recalled scenes behind closed doors when Elspeth Gordon dealt with her a.s.sistants!

"And when you thought--I had--gone away--you felt free?" Joan's face quivered. Raymond nodded. How easy it was to talk to Joan. How quick she was to comprehend and help one over a hard stretch!

"Joan--who was Pat?" That seemed to be the vital thing now. And then Joan told him. As she spoke in low, trembling tones, she saw his head bow in his hands; she knew that he was suffering with her, for her; as good men do for their women. Joan was conscious of this att.i.tude of Raymond's--she was reinstated; fixed, at last, where she could be understood: she belonged to his world!

"Poor little girl! After the beast in me dashed your card house to atoms you made another try--alone!" Raymond raised his face.

"No--I had Pat." At that instant Patricia symbolized the link between the unreal and the real.

"Yes, for a little while--but, Joan, it didn't pay--the danger you ran and all that--did it? Such girls as you cannot afford such experiences."

"Yes. Having had Pat, I am able to see--wider."

Joan was thinking of the girls whom Raymond could _not_ have understood or sympathized with! Girls such as she might so easily have been like--unless---- Unless what?

"Joan, you and I always said we could speak plain truth, didn't we?"