Then he knew why she had been afraid, and behind his pity he was glad.
"Joan," he whispered again, and quite simply she drew closer to him and laid her cheek against his coat, "does it really matter to you, dear?"
His arms were round her, yet they did not hold her as tightly as she clung to him. "Must you go?" she said breathlessly. "There are such hundreds of others; must you go?"
d.i.c.k could not find any words to put the great beating of his heart into, so he just held her close and laid his lips, against her hair.
"Take me into that little room where I first saw you," he said presently. "I have remembered it often, Joan; I have always wanted to come back to it, and have you explain things to me there."
She drew a little away and looked up at him. "What you thought of me the other night"--she spoke of it is yesterday, the months in between had slipped awry--"wasn"t true, d.i.c.k. I----"
He drew her to him quickly again, and this time he kissed her lips.
"Let"s forget it," he said softly. "I have only got to-day and to-morrow, I don"t want to remember what a self-satisfied prig I was."
"Is it to be as soon as that?" she asked. "And I shall only have had you for so short a time."
"It is a short time," d.i.c.k a.s.sented. "But I am going to make the best of it; you wait till you have heard my plans."
He laughed at her because she pointed out that the flowers could not be left to die, but he helped her to arrange them in the tall, clean vases.
They won back to a brief, almost childish, happiness over the work, but when the last vase had been finished and carried back to its proper place, he caught hold of her hands again.
"Now," he said, "let"s talk real hard, honest sense; but first, where"s my room?"
She led him silently to the little room behind the drawing-room. She had taken it over again since her return; the pictures she liked best were on the walls, her books lay about on the table. The same armchair stood by the window; he could almost see her as he had seen her that first morning, her great brown eyes, wakened to newfound fear, staring into the garden.
"You shall sit here," he said, leading her to the chair. It rather worried him to see the dumb misery in her eyes. "And I shall sit down on the floor at your feet. I can hold your hands and I can see your face, and your whole adorable self is near to me, that"s what my heart has been hungering for. Now--will you marry me the day after to-morrow, before I go?"
"d.i.c.k," she said quickly; she was speaking out of the pain in her heart, "why do you ask me? Why have you come back? Haven"t you been fighting against it all this time because you knew that I--because some part of you doesn"t want to marry me?"
His eyes never wavered from hers, but he lifted the hands he held to his lips and kissed them. "When I saw you again in that theatre in Sevenoaks," he said, "it is perfectly true, one side of me argued with the other. When I came to your rooms and found that other man there, green jealousy just made me blind, and pride--which was distinctly jarred, Joan"--he tried to wake an answering smile in her eyes--"kept me away all this time."
"Then why have you come back?" she repeated.
"Because I love you," he answered. "It is a very hackneyed word, dear, but it means a lot."
"But it doesn"t always stay--love," she said. "Supposing if afterwards those thoughts came back to worry you. What would it mean to me if I saw them in your eyes?"
"There isn"t any reason why they should. Listen, dear"--he let go her hands and sat up very straight. "Let"s go over it carefully and sensibly, and lay this bugbear of pain once and for all. Before you knew me or I knew you, you loved somebody else. Perhaps you only thought you loved him; anyway, I hope so; I am jealous enough of him as it is. Dear, I don"t ask you to explain why you gave yourself to this man, whether it was impulse, or ignorance, or curiosity. So many things go to make up our lives; it is only to ourselves that we are really accountable. After to-day we won"t dig over the past again. At the time it did not prevent me falling in love with you; for two years I thought about you sometimes, dreamed of you often. I made love to a good many other women in between; don"t think that I show up radiantly white in comparison to you; but I loved just you all the time. I saw you in London once, the day after I landed, and I made up my mind then to find out where you lived, and to try and persuade you to marry me."
He waited a minute or two; his eyes had gone out to the garden; he could see the tall daisies of which Joan had carried an armful waving against the dark wall behind them. Then he looked back at her very frankly.
"It is no use trying to pretend," he said, "that I was not shocked when I first saw you dancing. You see, we men have got into a habit of dividing women into two cla.s.ses, and you had suddenly, so it seemed to me, got into the wrong one. Dear little girl, I don"t want to hurt you"--he put his hand on her knee and drew a little closer, so that she could feel him leaning against her. "I am just telling you all the stupid thoughts that were in me, so that you can at last understand that I love you. It only took me half a night to realize the mistake I had made, and then I set about--you may have noticed it--to make you love me. When I came up to London I had made up my mind that you did love me; I was walking as it were on air. It was a very nasty shock that afternoon in your room, Joan; I went away from it feeling as if the end of the world had come."
"Oh, I know, I know," she said quickly. "And I had meant it to hurt you.
I wanted to shake you out of what I thought was only a dream. I had not the courage to tell you, and yet, that is not quite true. I was afraid if I told you, and if you saw that I loved you at the same time, you would not let it make any difference. I did not want you to spoil your life, d.i.c.k."
"You dear girl!" he answered. "On Monday," he went on slowly, "I got my orders for France. They are what I had been wanting and hoping for ever since the War started, and yet, till they came, funnily enough, I never realized what they meant. It seems strange to talk of death, or even to think of it, when one is young and so horribly full of life as I am--yet somehow this brings it near to me. It is not a question of facing it with the courage of which the papers write such a lot; the truth is, that one looks at it just for a moment, and then ordinary things push it aside. Next to death, Joan, there is only one big thing in the world, and that is Love. I had to see you again before I went; I had to find out if you loved me. I wanted to hold you, so that the feel of you should go with me in my dreams; to kiss you, so that the touch of your lips should stay on mine, even if death did put a cold hand across them.
He is not going to"--he laughed suddenly and stood up, drawing her into his arms--"your face shall go before me, dear, and in the end I shall come home to you."
"What can I say?" Joan whispered, "You know I love you. Take me then, d.i.c.k, and do as you wish with me."
They talked over the problem of his people and her people after they had won back to a certain degree of sense, and d.i.c.k told Joan of how Mabel had wished him luck just as he started out.
"You are going to be great friends," he said, "and Mother will come round too, she always does."
"I am less afraid of your Mother than I am of Mabel," Joan confessed. "I don"t believe Mabel will ever like me."
d.i.c.k stayed to lunch and waited on afterwards to see Colonel Rutherford.
He had extracted a promise from Joan to marry him on Sat.u.r.day by special licence. He would have to go up to town to see about it himself the next day; he wanted to leave everything arranged and settled for her first.
He and Joan walked down to the woods after lunch, and Joan tried to tell him of her first year in London, and of some of the motives that had driven her. He listened in silence; he was conscious more of jealousy than anything else; he was glad when she pa.s.sed on to talk of her later struggles in London; of Shamrock House, of Rose Brent and f.a.n.n.y.
"And that man I met at your place," he asked. "You did not even think you loved him, did you, Joan?"
"No," she answered quickly, "never, d.i.c.k, and he had never been to my room before. He just pretended he had been to annoy you because I suppose he saw it would hurt me."
Colonel Rutherford arrived for tea very tired, but jubilant at the success of the meeting, which had brought in a hundred recruits. He did not remember anything about d.i.c.k, but was delighted to see him because he was in uniform. The news of the other"s early departure to the front filled Colonel Rutherford with envy.
"What wouldn"t I give to be your age, young man," he grunted.
Joan slipped away and left them after tea, and it was then that d.i.c.k broached the subject of their marriage.
"I have loved her for two years," he said simply, "and I have persuaded her to marry me before I leave on Sat.u.r.day. There is no reason why I should not marry, and if I die she will get my small amount of money, and a pension."
Colonel Rutherford went rather an uncomfortable shade of red. "You said just now," he said, "that you were the doctor here two years ago. Did you know my niece in those days?"
"I only saw her once," d.i.c.k admitted. "I was called in professionally, but I loved her from the moment I saw her, sir."
"G.o.d bless my soul!" murmured Colonel Rutherford. A faint fragrance from his own romance seemed to come to him from out the past. "Then you know all about what I was considering it would be my painful duty to tell you."
"Yes," d.i.c.k answered, "I know."
The other man came suddenly to him and held out his hand. "I don"t know you," he said, "but I like you. We were very hard on Joan two years ago; I have often thought of it since; I should like to see a little happiness come into her life and I believe you will be able to give it her. I am glad."
"Thank you," d.i.c.k said. They shook hands quite gravely as men will.
"Then I may marry her on Sat.u.r.day?"
"Why, certainly, boy," the other answered; "And she shall live with me till you come back."
"You are very lucky, Joan," he said to his niece after d.i.c.k had gone away. "He is an extremely nice chap, that. I hope you realize how lucky you are."
Joan did not answer him in so many words. She just kissed him good-night and ran out of the room. To-night of all nights she needed Aunt Janet; she threw a shawl round her shoulders presently and stole out. The cemetery lay just across the road, she could slip into it without attracting any attention. This time she brought no gift of flowers, only she knelt by the grave, and whispered her happiness in the prayer she prayed.
"G.o.d keep him always, and bring him back to me."
CHAPTER x.x.xI