Mrs. Grant and d.i.c.k had one very stormy and decided interview. That is to say, Mrs. Grant stormed and wept, d.i.c.k merely stated quite quietly and very definitely that he intended to follow Joan to London and that he was going to do his best to make her marry him.
"You do not mind how much you break my heart," Mrs. Grant sobbed, "your mother is of no consequence to you. My years of love and devotion to you when you were a baby count for nothing. You throw them all aside for this impossible, outrageous girl."
"Nothing is to be gained by calling her names," d.i.c.k answered, "and there is no reason why your heart should break, Mother. When you see her again----"
"Never," interrupted Mrs. Grant dramatically, "never. Even as your wife I shall always refuse to meet her."
"You must do as you please about that," d.i.c.k answered, and turned and went from the room.
Upstairs he met Mabel just coming out of the nursery and would have pa.s.sed her without speaking, but that she put out a hand to stop him.
"d.i.c.k," she said, "you are awfully angry with me, I know, and I realize that more or less it was my fault. But I wanted and I still want to be friends with her. You know how sometimes, even against one"s will, one stiffens up and cannot talk."
"I know you never were any use at dissembling," he answered. "I had hoped you might like her, but you evidently did not do that."
"I do not think I gave myself a chance," Mabel spoke slowly. "I had been arguing against her in my own mind ever since you told me about her. You see I am being truthful, d.i.c.k. It was just because one half of me wanted to like her and the other half did not, that the result was so disastrous."
d.i.c.k laughed. "Disastrous just about describes it," he admitted. "I am going to marry her, Mabel, though mother does threaten to break her heart."
"I know," Mabel nodded. "I knew from the very first moment I saw your eyes when they looked at her. Perhaps that was what made the unpleasant side of me so frigid. Will you give me her address, d.i.c.k, in London?
Next week, when I am up there with Tom, I will call and make it up with her. If I go all alone I shall be able to explain things."
"And what about mother"s broken heart?" d.i.c.k questioned.
Mabel shook her head. "It won"t break," she said. "As soon as you are married she will start thinking that she arranged the match and saying what a good one it is."
Again d.i.c.k laughed, but there was more lightness in the sound now. He put his two hands on her shoulders and looked down at her.
"You are a good sort, Mabel," he said; "this afternoon I thought you were the most horrible sister a man could have, and that just shows how little even I know you."
"No," she answered; her eyes held a shadow of pain in them. "It is not that, it is just that a man in love is sometimes blind to everything and everybody excepting the woman he is in love with. She is a lucky girl, d.i.c.k, I nope she realizes how lucky."
CHAPTER XXIII
"But through all the joy I knew--I only-- How the hostel of my heart lay bare and cold, Silent of its music, and how lonely!
Never, though you crown me with your gold.
Shall I find that little chamber as of old!"
F. BANNERMAN.
Brown called an early rehearsal next morning. They were to play _The Waltz Dream_ as their last performance, for on leaving Sevenoaks the company was to break up, and just at the very last moment, before the curtain had come down on the previous night"s performance, Grace Binning--the girl who usually played the part of Franzi--had fallen down and sprained her ankle. Who was to play her part? f.a.n.n.y proposed Joan for the vacant place, but Brown was dubious, and Joan herself not at all anxious for the honour. She had more or less understudied the part, every member of the chorus took it in turn to understudy; but the question was whether it would not be better if f.a.n.n.y"s understudy took the part of the Princess and f.a.n.n.y played Franzi. It was a character which she had often scored it. Against this had to be set the fact that f.a.n.n.y"s voice was needed for songs which the Princess had to sing, and that Franzi had very little singing to do. What she did have could be very largely cut.
Anyway the whole company a.s.sembled at 10.30, and Brown put them through their paces. Finally he decided on Joan; she had already achieved popularity by her dancing, the audience would be kind to her. If she saved up her voice for her duet with Strachan and her one little solo at the fall of the curtain, Brown thought she might be heard beyond the footlights.
"Now look slippy," he ordered, "only the princ.i.p.als need stay. We will just run through the thing, Miss Leicester, and see if you know what to do."
Joan found herself living out the part of Franzi as she rehea.r.s.ed. It seemed somehow to fit into her own feelings.
"Now love has come to me, I pray, That while I have the chance to, I still may have the heart to play A tune that you can dance to."
Franzi"s one brief night of love which shone out, showing all the world golden, and then the little singer creeping back into the shadows with a broken heart but gay words on her lips.
"I still may have the heart to play A tune that you can dance to."
Brown thought as he watched her that she showed promise as an actress.
Why had he not noticed it before. He meditated a proposal by which she should be persuaded to join the company again when it started out on its Spring tour. f.a.n.n.y had told him that Joan was tired of the life and meant to go back to office work, but if she had talent, that was of course absurd. Perhaps he had not done enough to encourage her.
To-morrow he would have a good long talk with her and point out to her just how things stood.
f.a.n.n.y, too, was impressed by Joan"s powers. "You act as if you really meant it, honey," she said. "You make me want to cry in that last bit where Franzi goes off and leaves me, a bloated aristocrat on the throne, with my erring husband beside me. You make me think you feel it."
"Perhaps I do," Joan answered; "perhaps I am going back alone."
"But why," f.a.n.n.y cried out; she ran to Joan and threw her arms round the other girl, they were in the dressing-room making up for the evening performance. "Why, honey? He is ready to go with you."
"And the Prince was ready to go with Franzi," Joan answered, "but she would not take him, not back into her land of shadows. Oh, f.a.n.n.y, you are a dear, romantic soul, but you don"t understand. Once, long ago when I was young, doesn"t that sound romantic, there were two paths open to me and I chose the one which has to be travelled alone. If I dragged him on to it now it would only hurt him. You would not want to hurt something you loved," her voice dropped to a whisper, "would you?"
"No," f.a.n.n.y admitted. She had drawn a little back and was watching Joan with wide eyes. "But----" she broke off abruptly. "I haven"t any right to ask," she said, "but do you mean that there is something which you have done that you would be ashamed to tell him."
"Not exactly ashamed," Joan answered, "it would hurt him to know, that is all. I came to London two years ago because I was going to have a baby. It was never born, because I was in an accident a few months before it should have come."
"But why tell him, why tell him?" f.a.n.n.y clamoured. "Men have lots of secrets in their lives which they don"t tell to good women, why must they want to know all about our pasts. I have always thought I should tell a man just exactly as much as I wanted to and not a whisper more.
Honey," she drew close again and caught hold of Joan"s hands, "it doesn"t pay to tell them, the better they are the more they bring it up against you. If they don"t say anything you can see it in their eyes.
"She has been bad once," they say, "she may always be bad again.""
"Yes," agreed Joan. "It does not pay to tell them, as you say. That is why I am going to go back to my own shadows alone, because if you love a person you cannot keep a secret from him."
"But it wouldn"t exactly be a secret," f.a.n.n.y pleaded, "it would just be something that it was no business of his to know."
Joan laughed. "Your philosophy of life, f.a.n.n.y, is delightful. But if you don"t hurry up with your dressing you will be late when the call boy comes."
She had the dressing-room to herself presently, for she did not have to appear until the second act, and as she sat there, reading over her part, the call boy put in his head with an impish grin.
"A gentleman left these for you, miss," he held out a large bunch of violets, "most particular you should get them before you went on, he was, and he will be round again after the show. Same gentleman," he winked at her, "as has been here most regular like since the third night."
"All right, Tommy, thank you," Joan answered. She held out her hands for the violets. They were very sweet-scented and heavy; she let them fall on the dressing-table, but after Tommy had vanished, whistling shrilly along the pa.s.sage, she bent forward and buried her cheeks and lips in their fragrance. Her tears smarted in her eyes. This man had grown so suddenly dear to her that it hurt her almost more than she could bear to shut him out of her life.
When f.a.n.n.y danced into the room presently it was to find her standing before the looking-gla.s.s, and against the soft blue of her waistbelt the violets showed up almost like a stain.
"He"s there," f.a.n.n.y told her, "third from centre in the second row.
Young Swetenham is with him, but none of the women folk, praise be to heaven. Have you asked him to the supper afterwards?"
"No," Joan admitted, "and, f.a.n.n.y, if it could possibly be arranged and Brown would not be very hurt, would it matter if I did not come myself?
I feel so much more like going home to bed."
"Doesn"t do to mope," f.a.n.n.y remonstrated. "Why not bring him along and have one good evening to finish?"