The last words were so low he hardly heard them.
They strolled across to the Grand Hotel; it was f.a.n.n.y"s suggestion that they should not bother with a cab. She walked between the two men, a hand on each of them. Joan walked the further side of Swetenham, and d.i.c.k had no chance of seeing her even, but he knew that she was very silent, and, he could gather, depressed. At supper, which they had served in a little private room, and over the champagne, she won back to a certain hilarity of spirit. Swetenham was entirely immersed in amusing and being amused by f.a.n.n.y, and Joan set herself--d.i.c.k fancied it was deliberately--to talk and laugh. It was almost as if she were afraid of any silence that might fall between them. He did not help her very much; he was content to watch her. Absurd as it may seem, he knew himself to be almost happy because she was so near him, because the fancied dream of the last two years had come to sudden reality. The other feelings, the disgust and disappointment which had lain behind their first meeting, were for the time being forgotten. Now and again he met her eyes and felt, from the odd pulse of happiness that leapt in his heart, that his long search was over. So triumphantly does love rise over the obstacles of common sense and worldly knowledge--love, which takes no count of time, degrees, or place.
He had her to himself on the way home, for f.a.n.n.y had elected to go for a spin in Swetenham"s side-car, suggesting that d.i.c.k and Joan should go home and wait up for them.
"We shan"t be long," Swetenham a.s.sured d.i.c.k, remembering too late his promise to take the other man home, "and it is all right waiting there, they have got a sitting-room."
So Joan and d.i.c.k walked home through the silent streets and all pretence of gaiety fell away from Joan. She walked without speaking, head held very high, moving beside him, her face scarce discernible under the shadow of her hat. It was not to be believed that she was quite conscious of all she meant to this man; but she could not fail to know that he was attracted to her, she could not help feeling the warmth with which his thoughts surrounded her. And how does Love come to a woman?
Not on the same quick-rushing wings which carry men"s desires forward.
Love creeps in more a.s.siduously to a woman"s thoughts. He brings with him first a sense of shyness, a rather wistful longing to be more worthy of his homage. Unconsciously Joan struggled with this intrusion into her life. The man had nice eyes, but she resented the tumult they roused in her. Why was he not content to find in her just a momentary amus.e.m.e.nt, why did his eyes wake this vague, uncomfortable feeling of shame in her heart; shame against herself and her surroundings?
At the door of the lodgings she turned to him; for the first time he could see her face, lit up by a neighbouring lamp.
"Do you want to come in?" she asked, her voice hesitated on the words.
"I do not want to ask you," her eyes said as plainly as possible.
"No," he answered, "I would much rather you did not ask me to." Then suddenly he smiled at her. "We are going to be friends," he said. "I have a feeling that I have been looking for you for years; I am not going to let you go, once found."
He said the words so very earnestly, there was no hint of mockery in them, it could not seem that he was laughing at her. She put her hand into the one he held out.
"Well, friends," she said; an odd note of hesitation sounded in her voice.
CHAPTER XXI
"Love can tell, and Love alone, Whence the million stars were strewn; Why each atom knows its own; How, in spite of woe and death, Gay is life, and sweet is breath."
R. BRIDGES.
d.i.c.k walked home. It was a good long tramp, but he was glad of the exercise and the opportunity it gave him to arrange his thoughts into some sort of order. He had spoken to Joan, carried away by the moment, as they stood to say good-night, impelled to frankness by the appeal of her eyes. Now, slowly, reason gathered all its forces together to argue against his inclination. It would be wiser to break his half-made promise to the girl, and stay out of her life altogether. Immeasurable difficulties lay in the way of his marrying her. There was the child, her present position, his people"s feelings and his own dismay as he had watched her dancing on the stage and seen her smiling and radiant from the applause it awoke. He had built his dreams on a five minutes" memory and for two years the girl"s eyes had haunted him, but none the less it was surely rather absurd. Even love, strong, mysterious power as it is, can be suppressed and killed if a man really puts his mind to it.
At this moment, though of course d.i.c.k was not aware of the psychological happening, Love raised a defiant head amid the whirl of his thoughts and laughed at him--laughed deliberately, the sound echoing with all the old joy of the world, and d.i.c.k fell to thinking about Joan again. Her eyes, the way she walked, the undercurrent of sadness that had lain behind her gaiety. How good it would be to take her away from all the drabness of her present life and to bring real laughter, real happiness to her lips and eyes!
"I will marry her," he decided stormily, as he turned in to the drive of the house. "Why have I been arguing about it all this time? It is what I had made up my mind to do two years ago. I will marry her."
And again Love laughed, filling his heart with an indefinable glow of gladness.
His night mood stayed with him the next morning and started him singing most riotously in his bath. Mabel heard him and smiled to herself. It was good to listen, to him and know him so cheerful; whatever it was that had disturbed him the night before had evidently vanished this morning.
After breakfast, as was always her custom in summer, she took little d.i.c.kie out on to the lawn to sit under the big wide trees that threw so grateful a shade across the green. Big d.i.c.k joined them there with his pipe and he sat beside them in silence. It was very pleasant in the garden with the bluest of blue skies overhead and the baby chuckling and crowing in the very first rapture of life on the gra.s.s at their feet.
Presently, however, a stern nurse descended on the scene and laughter was changed to tears for one short minute before the young gentleman, protesting but half-heartedly, was removed. Then d.i.c.k turned to Mabel.
"I am going in to Sevenoaks again," he announced, "and shall probably spend the day there. Would you like me to explain myself, Mabel?"
"Why, yes, if you care to," she answered, "and if there is anything to explain."
d.i.c.k nodded in apparent triumph. "Yes," he said, "there is something to explain all right, Mabel." He smiled at her with his eyes. "I have got a secret, I"ll give you three guesses to reach it."
"No," Mabel spoke quickly, "I would rather you told me, d.i.c.k. Do you remember how once before I tried to dash in on your secret and how you shut me out. When it is ready to tell, I thought then, he will tell it me."
"Well, it is ready now," d.i.c.k said. "In a way it is the same old secret.
I was shy of it in those days, Mabel, but last night it dawned on me that it was the only thing worth having in the world. I am in love, insanely and ridiculously. Do you know, if you asked me, I should tell you with the most prompt conceit that to-day is a beautiful, gorgeously fine day just because I woke up to it knowing that I was in love."
A spasm of half-formed jealousy s.n.a.t.c.hed at Mabel"s heart. She had always wanted d.i.c.k to fall in love and marry some nice girl, yet the reality was a little disturbing.
"d.i.c.k," she exclaimed, "and you never told me, you never said a word about it in your letters."
"I could not," he answered, "because in a way it only happened last night. Wait," he put his hand on her knee because she seemed to be going to say something. "Let me explain it first and then do your bit of arguing, for I know you are going to argue. You spoke just now about that other talk we once had before your marriage; do you remember what you said to me then? "Did you think I should not know when you fell in love?" You had guessed the secret in my heart, Mabel, almost before I knew it myself." He leant forward, she noticed that suddenly his face flushed a very warm red. "Last night I saw her again; she was the dancer, you may have noticed her yourself. That was why I stayed behind.
I wanted to put myself to the test, I wanted to meet her again."
He sat up straight and looked at her; she could see that some strong emotion was making it very difficult for him to speak.
"It is not any use trying to explain love, is it?" he asked. "I only know that I have always loved her, that I shall love her to the end."
Mabel sat stiffly silent. She could not meet his eyes. She was thinking of all the scandal which had leapt to life round Joan"s name once the Rutherfords had left the village. She was remembering how last night Tom had said: "That little dancer girl is hot stuff."
"d.i.c.k," she forced herself to speak presently, "I have got to tell you, though it hurts and you will hate me for doing it, but this girl is not the kind of person you can ever marry, d.i.c.k. It is a kind of infatuation"--she struggled to make her meaning clear without using cruel words--"if you knew the truth about her, if----"
He stopped her quickly. "I know," he answered, "I have always known."
She turned to face him. "You knew," she gasped, "about the child?"
"Yes," he nodded, his eyes were very steady as they met hers. "That day when I was called in to see her, do you remember, she spoke out before her aunt and myself. She told us she was like Bridget Rendle. "I am going to have a baby," she said, "but I am not ashamed or afraid. I have done nothing to be ashamed of." Do you know how sometimes," he went on slowly, "you can see straight into a person"s soul through their eyes.
Well, I saw into hers that day and, before G.o.d, Mabel, it was white and innocent as a child"s. I did not understand at the time, I have not understood since, what brought her to that cross way in her life, but nothing will alter my opinion. Some day I hope she will explain things, I am content to wait for that."
What could she find to say to him? Her mind groped through a nightmare of horror. d.i.c.k"s happiness meant so much to her, she had planned and thought of it ever since she could remember.
"Love is sometimes blind," she whispered at last. "Oh, my dear, don"t throw away your life on a dream."
"My love has wide-open eyes," he answered, "and nothing weighs in the balance against it."
"Don"t tell the others, d.i.c.k," she pleaded on their way back to the house; "leave it a little longer, think it out more carefully."
"Very well," he agreed, "and for that matter, Mabel, there is as yet nothing to tell. I only let you into my secret because, well, you are you, and I want you to meet her. You will be able to judge then for yourself better than you can from all my ravings."
She did not answer his suggestion then, but later on, as he was getting into the car to drive to Sevenoaks, she ran down the steps to him.
"d.i.c.k," she said quickly, "ask her to come out to tea some day and bring one of the other girls if she likes. Tom is never in to tea; there will just be mother and me."
"Bless you," he answered; his eyes beamed at her. "What a brick you are, Mabel, I knew you would turn up trumps about it."
It took him some time to persuade Joan to accept the proffered invitation. It took her, for one thing, too near her old home, and for another she was more than a little disturbed by all f.a.n.n.y"s remarks on the subject. f.a.n.n.y had come back from her drive with Swetenham full of exciting information to give Joan about "the new victim," as she would call d.i.c.k.
"Do you know, honey," she confided, waking Joan out of a well simulated slumber, "I believe he is the same young man as was so taken with you that evening in the Strand. You remember the day we spent in town? It is love at first sight, that is what it is. Young Sockie"--that was her name for Swetenham, invented because of his gorgeous socks--"tells me he has never seen a chap so bowled over as the new victim was by your dancing, and he asked to be brought round and introduced. Did you catch him staring at you all through the dinner, and, honey, did he try to kiss you when he brought you home?"
"Of course not," Joan remonstrated; "I wish you would stop talking nonsense and get into bed. It is awfully late and I was asleep."