"Dear Heart," Dick had written:"Is it cheek to begin a letter like that to you? Only after last night I seem to know that you love me and that is all that really matters. I am coming to 6, Montague Square, on Tuesday afternoon at five o'clock to get my answer. Doesn't that sound precise? I would like to come to-day, but I won't because I don't want to hurry you. Oh, dear heart, I love you!—I have loved you for longer than you know of just at present. That is one of the things I am going to explain to you on Tuesday,"Yours ever,"Dick Grant."
"Dear Heart," Dick had written:
"Is it cheek to begin a letter like that to you? Only after last night I seem to know that you love me and that is all that really matters. I am coming to 6, Montague Square, on Tuesday afternoon at five o'clock to get my answer. Doesn't that sound precise? I would like to come to-day, but I won't because I don't want to hurry you. Oh, dear heart, I love you!—I have loved you for longer than you know of just at present. That is one of the things I am going to explain to you on Tuesday,
"Yours ever,"Dick Grant."
Fanny was much perturbed by Joan's appearance when she was sufficiently awake to notice it.
"My, honey, you do look bad," she gasped. "Daddy Brown will see I was talking the truth last night, which is a good thing in one way. He was most particularly anxious to see you last night, was very fussed when he found you hadn't come." She paused and studied Joan's face from under her lashes. "Did you meet him?" she inquired finally.
"Yes," Joan admitted; she turned away from the other's inquisitive eyes. "He walked home with me."
"I told him you had a headache and were not coming to supper with us," Fanny confessed. "It is no use being annoyed with me, honey. I thought it over and it seemedto me that by saying 'No' to him because of something that happened before he knew you, you were cutting off your nose to spite your face. Not that I personally should tell him," she added reflectively; "he is too straight himself to understand a woman doing wrong; but that is for you to decide. One thing I do know: it won't make a pin's worth of difference to his wanting to marry you; he is too much in love for that."
She was saying aloud the fear which had knocked at Joan's heart all night. It might be true that Dick was too much in love to let what she had to tell him stand between them. But afterwards, when love had had time to cool, when trust and good-fellowship would be called on to take the place of passion, when he saw her, perhaps, with his child in her arms, how would he look at her then? Would he not remember and regret, would not a shadow stand between them, a shadow from the one sin which no man can forgive in a woman? She was like a creature brought to bay; he had guessed that she loved him; what arguments could she use, how stand firm in her denial against that knowledge?
For a little she had thought of the possibility of his taking her just as Gilbert had done. She was not worthy to be his wife, but she would be content, she knew, to follow him to the end of the world. Not because she viewed the matter now in the same light as she had done in those days. She had never loved Gilbert; if she had, shame and disgrace would have been powerless to drive her from his side, and she would have wanted him to marry her, just as now she wanted marriage with Dick. It seemed to her that, despite pioneers and rebels and the need for greater freedom, which she and girls like her had been fighting for, the initial fact remained and would always remain the same. When you loved you wanted to belong to the man absolutely and entirely; freedom counted for very little, you wanted to give him your life, you wanted to have the right to bear his children. That was what it all came down to in the end;Love was bigger and stronger than any ideas, and marriage had been built upon the law of Love.
Daddy Brown came round in the course of the morning to talk over his new idea for Joan's future. It appeared that if she was willing to think it over, he would pay for her to have singing and dancing lessons during the winter. That was, of course, provided the War did not come off. If it did, as he had said once before to Fanny, there would not be any Spring tours for the Brown Company.
"But war isn't likely," he spoke heavily. "England has too much to lose to go running into it if she can steer clear, and there's my offer, my girl. I think, from what I saw last night, that if you like to put your heart into it you ought to make something of an actress. You have distinct ability, and you have charm, which is on the good side too."
Joan was hardly in the mood to pay much attention to her future prospects; the present loomed too forbiddingly ahead of her. She would let him know, she told him finally; she was most awfully grateful to him for his suggestion, but she must have at least a fortnight to think things out and decide what she was going to do.
"Very well," Brown agreed, he rose to take his leave; "but mind you, it is worth considering, young lady; you don't get such an offer every day."
Fanny was staying behind for another day; she had some amusement in store with Swetenham which she did not want to miss, but the rest of the company, Joan included, caught the three o'clock train back to town. Joan could not refuse to go with them, but the journey was one long torture to her; she wanted to get right away by herself; there was only one day left in which to plan and make ready for Dick's visit. Some of Brown's ponderous remarks as to the probable effect of a war on the theatrical profession had filtered down to the junior members of the company. They talked together rather mournfully as to what thewinter might be going to mean for them. "If it knocks pantomimes, we are done," Grace Binning summed up the situation. But Grace Binning was inclined to be mournful; as Mrs. O'Malley said, her sprained ankle would keep her out of work in any case for six weeks.
At Victoria Station Strachan ferreted out Joan's luggage and hailed a taxi for her.
"Good-bye," he said to her at the last—they had always been very good friends, with a little encouragement he might have considered himself in love with her—"and good luck. Also, if you will excuse me saying so, Miss Rutherford, I should marry that faithful young man. You are not a bit suited or happy in our life."
Then he drew back his head quickly and smiled at her as the taxi started off.
Joan had written to Mrs. Carew, asking her to see about a room, and found to her relief that her old attic was still at her disposal.
"Thought you would find it homelike," Mrs. Carew panted up the stairs in front of her, "and for that matter it has been shut up since you left. Bad year for letting this has been."
Obviously the room had been shut up since she left. Joan struggled with the fast-closed window and threw it open, but even so the place retained an atmosphere of overpowering stuffiness, and presently, not staying to unpack or open the letter which had been waiting for her on the hall table, she sallied out again in search of fresh air.
She would walk to Knightsbridge, she decided, and so on through the Park. If she tired herself out perhaps she would be able to sleep when she went to bed, and sleep was what she needed almost more than anything else.
The Park was deserted and sun-swept; it had been an exceptionally hot summer, the trees and bushes seemed smothered under a weight of dust. Joan found a seat in sight of one of the stretches of water and opened herletter. It was from Miss Abercrombie, that she had known from the envelope, and written from the Rutherford home at Wrotham.
"Dear Joan," the letter ran:"Your people are home, they have just come back from abroad and had a very tiresome journey over because of the mobilization on the Continent. Janet wrote, or rather your uncle wrote for her, asking me to be here to meet them. Janet is very ill, she will never be able to walk or stand up again in her life. They have tried all sorts of things for her abroad, now it has come to the last. All day, and most of the night, for she sleeps very badly, she lies flat on her back, and all the time her eyes seem to be watching for something. She speaks very little, everything seems to be shut away in her heart, but yesterday—after having first talked the matter over with your uncle—I went up to her room and asked her point blank: 'Janet, aren't you eating out your heart for Joan?' and she nodded stiffly, the tears in her eyes. So I sat right down and told her all about you: about your accident, about the hard (child, I know it has been hard) fight you have had, and at the end I said: 'Shall I send for her, Janet?' This time when she nodded the tears were streaming down her face. So I am sending for you. Don't let pride or anger stand between you, enough anguish has been caused already on both sides, and she is practically dying. Come, child, show a charity which your struggle will have taught you, and help to make her going a little easier, for she has always loved you, and her heart breaks for the need of you."
"Dear Joan," the letter ran:
"Your people are home, they have just come back from abroad and had a very tiresome journey over because of the mobilization on the Continent. Janet wrote, or rather your uncle wrote for her, asking me to be here to meet them. Janet is very ill, she will never be able to walk or stand up again in her life. They have tried all sorts of things for her abroad, now it has come to the last. All day, and most of the night, for she sleeps very badly, she lies flat on her back, and all the time her eyes seem to be watching for something. She speaks very little, everything seems to be shut away in her heart, but yesterday—after having first talked the matter over with your uncle—I went up to her room and asked her point blank: 'Janet, aren't you eating out your heart for Joan?' and she nodded stiffly, the tears in her eyes. So I sat right down and told her all about you: about your accident, about the hard (child, I know it has been hard) fight you have had, and at the end I said: 'Shall I send for her, Janet?' This time when she nodded the tears were streaming down her face. So I am sending for you. Don't let pride or anger stand between you, enough anguish has been caused already on both sides, and she is practically dying. Come, child, show a charity which your struggle will have taught you, and help to make her going a little easier, for she has always loved you, and her heart breaks for the need of you."
It was a very sentimental letter for Miss Abercrombie to have written. And Aunt Janet was dying; quite long ago Joan had forgiven the hardness from her, there was no bitterness in her heart now, only a great sense of pity.She would go, of course she would go. Like a flash it came to her that she might just slip away and leave no address, no message to Dick. But even with the thought came the knowledge that she would only be shelving the difficulty for a little; he would wait, he would search till he found her. She did not think he would be very easy to put off.
With Miss Abercrombie's letter open on her lap, she sat and watched the people passing by her. She was thinking of all her life since she had first come to London; Gilbert, their time together—strange how that memory had no more power to hurt—the black days that had followed, Rose and Fanny. Of them all perhaps she had loved Fanny the best; Fanny's philosophy of life was so delightfully simple, she was like some little animal that followed every fresh impulse. And she never seemed to regret or pay for her misdeeds. Apparently when you sinned calmly in the full knowledge that it was sin, you paid no penalty; it was only when you sinned attempting to make new laws for yourself and calling it no sin that the burden of retribution was so heavy to bear.
A man was coming down the path towards her; she did not notice him, although he was staring at her rather intently. Opposite to her he came to a pause and took off his hat.
"Hallo," he said, "I am not mistaken, am I, it is Pierrette."
She lifted startled eyes to his and Landon laughed at her. He had forgotten all about her till this moment, but just for the time being he was at a loose end in London when all his friends were out of town, and with no new passion on to entertain him. Pierrette, were she willing, would fill in the gap pleasantly; they had not parted the best of friends, but he had forgotten just enough for that memory not to rankle. He sat down on the chair beside her and took one of her hands in his.
"Where have you been, Pierrette? And what haveyou been doing? Also, are you not glad to see me, and whose love letter were you reading?"
"It is not a love letter." Joan took her hand away and folding up Miss Abercrombie's letter, slipped it into her purse. "It is from my people, asking me to come home, and I am going."
"Going, when I have only just found you again!"
His tone, his whole manner was unbearably familiar. Joan turned with quick words of resentment on her lips, but they were never said. A sudden thought came across her brain. Here was something with which she could fight down and kill Dick's purpose. Better, far better than any confession of hers, better than any stating of the truth, however bluntly put, would be this man's easy familiarity, his almost air of ownership. She found herself staring at Landon. What had she ever seen in him that was either pleasant or attractive? She hated his eyes, and the way they looked at her, the too evident care which had been expended on his appearance, his long, shapely hands.
"Well, Pierrette, when you have finished studying my personal appearance," Landon broke in, "perhaps you will explain yourself more explicitly. Why are you flying from me just when I have found you? And, Pierrette, what about supper to-night at Les Gobelins?"
"I can't do that," Joan spoke quickly. She had clenched her hands in her lap; he did not notice that, but he could see that the colour had fled from her face. "And I have got to go away the day after to-morrow. But couldn't you come and have tea with me to-morrow at 6, Montague Square? Do, please do."
What was she driving at? Landon caught his breath on a laugh. Was it the last final flutter before she had to go back to home life and having her wings cut? Or was she throwing herself into his arms after having fought so furiously—he remembered that she had fought the last time, perhaps she had learned her lesson; perhaps thepoor little devil had really fallen in love with him, and had been eating her heart out all this time. That was almost amusing. She had never, even in their days of greatest friendship, asked him into her room before, though he had often suggested coming.
"Why, Pierrette, of course," he said. Then he laughed out loud. "And I'll bring some red roses, afterwards we will go out to supper, and it shall be like old times."
"Afterwards," Joan repeated. The excitement had left her, she sounded on the instant very tired, "I don't know about afterwards, but bring the red roses and come at half-past four, will you?" She stood up, "I must go home," she said, "I have got to pack and get everything ready before to-morrow."
He could not understand her mood in the least, but he could draw his own conclusions from her invitation. It set him whistling softly on his way home. The tune he selected was one that was being played everywhere in London at the time. It fitted into his thoughts excellently:
"Just a little love, a little kiss,I will give my life for this."
Poor, silly little Pierrette! Why had she fought with him before and wasted so much precious time? As a matter of fact, he broke off his whistle as the startling truth flashed on him, he might quite easily have forgotten all about her in the interval, and then where would she have been?
Dora Sigerson.
Mrs. Carew was in a state of discontent which amounted almost to anger.
"I knew such kind of things were bound to happen," she grumbled fiercely, "if she joined in with a girl like that Miss Bellairs. I have never held and I never will hold with young ladies having men to tea in their bedrooms."
"Why don't you just tell her so?" suggested her helpmate from his customary entrenched position in an armchair behind the newspaper. "It would be a good deal cheaper than breaking the kitchen china, Maria."
"Tell her!" snorted Mrs. Carew. "She don't give me a chance. Cool as a cucumber she turns to me this morning, she says: 'Oh, I've two gentlemen to tea this afternoon, Mrs. Carew, just show them up when they come.' Then she 'ops it out of the front door like a rabbit. 'Gentlemen,' indeed, and she with not so much as a screen round her bed."
"Perhaps they are her brothers," ventured Mr. Carew.
Mrs. Carew came to a pause beside him and swept aside his paper. "Brothers!" she repeated, "now, Arthur, you know better than to say that. What I say and what I always shall say is: Let 'em do what they like outside, poor motherless girls that they are, but in my house things have got to be run straight. I won't have them bringing men in here."
"Well, hang it all, Maria, what do you want me to do? Go upstairs and turn the gents out?"
"We'll see," said Mrs. Carew darkly. She grabbed up the tea-tray and made for the door. "To-morrow I shall tell her it is not to happen again."
"All right, you tell her," her husband muttered behind her retreating back. "Can't think, though, why you don't leave the girls alone. However they start it always ends that way. You and I have seen quite a number take to the streets, and you don't do much to prevent them short of grumbling at them."
"They shan't do it in my house," reiterated Mrs. Carew; she stumped in dignified protest from the room, and upstairs to the offender's attic.
The first guest had already arrived, so Mrs. Carew could not voice her disapproval; she expressed it, however, in a glare which she directed towards him, and the noise with which she dumped down the tea-tray. The room was full of flowers, which did not add to her approval; she detected in them a sure sign of immorality. Great, beautiful red roses, nodding from every vase, filling the air with their rather heavy scent. The visitor also inspired her with a sense of distrust. He looked what Mrs. Carew described as "a man about town." She had been fond of Joan; behind her anger lay a small hurt sense of pity; she was too nice a young lady to go the way of the others.
She opened the door to Dick a little later with a sour face, and she did not even trouble to take him upstairs.
"Miss Rutherford is high up as you can get"—she jerked her thumb upwards—"it's the only door on the landing, you can't mistake it."
With that she left him, and Dick found his own way upstairs. He had stayed away all day till the exact hour he had named, with some difficulty, but with a punctilious sense of doing right. Joan had not answered his letterand he looked upon her silence as an admission that she loved him, but there were a great many things between them that would have to be talked over first coldly and sensibly. He had thought the matter out and he had decided that he would not leave it all to her, to tell or not to tell as she thought best, which had been his first idea. He would help her by telling her that he had always known, and that it made no difference. He wanted to make her confession as easy as possible.
It was not until after he had knocked that he realized with a shock of disappointment that Joan was not alone. He could hear her talking to somebody, then she moved across the room and pulled the door open. He saw only her first of all, his eyes sought hers and stayed there. He could notice that she seemed very pale, and almost frightened looking, and that she had dressed for the afternoon in black. Some long clinging stuff, and up near where the blouse opened at the neck she had pinned in one red rose, its warm and velvety petals lying against the white of her neck. The room seemed full of the scent of the roses too, and a little oppressive. Dick held his breath as he looked at her; to him she seemed so beautiful as to be almost amazing; then he came a little further into the room and his eyes took in the other occupant. A man sat, or rather lounged, on the sofa, pulled up under the window. He was watching the meeting with curious eyes, and in his hands he held another rose, the same sort as the one Joan wore. When Dick's eyes met his, he smiled, and laying the rose aside, stood up.
"Did not know it was to be a tea-party, Pierrette," he said, "you ought to have warned me."
Joan had shut the door and moved forward into the centre of the room. She was evidently very nervous over something; Landon was more than a little amused, though also inclined to be annoyed.
"Oh, it isn't a tea-party," she was saying. "It's just us three. Doctor Grant, this is Mr. Landon. Will youhave this chair?—it is really the only one which is quite safe to sit on."
Dick took the proffered chair stiffly; he was conscious of a bitter sense of disappointment, tinged with disapproval. It was, of course, different for himself, but he loathed to see the other man so much at home in this quaint little dust-laden attic where Joan lived. Her bed stood against the wall, a black counterpane of sorts thrown across it; her brush and comb, the little silver things for her dressing-table were scattered about on the top of the chest of drawers standing near. The place would have been sacred to him; but how did this other man look at it? And why had Joan asked him? Was it a deliberate attempt to shield herself from something she dreaded? or did it mean that, after all, she had only been playing with him—that the fluttered surrender of her lips had been but a flirt's last fling in the game of passion? If a man is really very much in love, as was Dick, and something occurs to make him lose his temper, it is sure to end in rapid and sometimes lasting disaster. After the first five minutes Dick made no attempt even to be polite to Landon. Rage, blind, merciless rage, and a sense of having made a damned fool of himself, throbbed in his mind as he watched Joan talking to the other man, and saw the evident familiarity which lay between them. Yet he could not get up and go away; he would not leave her, not till he had hurt her as much as she was now hurting him.
For Landon, the amusement of baiting the other man's evident misery soon palled. He was a little annoyed himself that Joan should have seen fit to drag him in as such a cat's-paw, for a very few minutes of their threesome had shown him what his part was intended to be. It meant in addition that the girl had fooled him, and that he had wasted his background of red roses. It was all very annoying and a very stupid way of spending the afternoon, for no one could imagine that there was any amusement to be got out of a bad tea in squalid surroundings—thus mercilessly but almost truthfully did he dismiss the atmosphere of Joan's attic—with a girl palpably in love with someone else. Landon rose presently with his most languid air of boredom.
"Sorry, Pierrette," he said; "must fly, but I leave my roses behind me as a memory. They are not what I should call my lucky flower." He turned to Dick, who stood up with a grim face and stern-set mouth. "Good-bye, Doctor Grant; delighted to have met you: if Pierrette feels like it, get her to tell you about our last venture into the rose world. Romantic tale, isn't it, Pierrette?" He laughed, lifting her hand to his heart very impressively. "But ours has always been a romance, hasn't it? That is why we christened each other Pierrot and Pierrette." He let go her hand and bowed gravely. Joan followed him to the door. "I'll come and see you out," she said; she had not realized until the moment came how horribly afraid she was of Dick. "You might lose your way."
"Oh no," Landon assured her; he shot one last slightly vindictive glance at Dick; "I know it by heart." Then he laughed and went from the room, shutting the door behind him.
Joan stayed where she was, a seeming weight on her lids, which prevented her lifting her eyes to look at Dick. But she was intensely conscious of him, and round her heart something had closed like a band of iron. At last, since he said nothing and made no sign, she moved forward blindly and sat down in the nearest chair.
"Aren't you ever going to speak again?" she whispered.
Her words shook Dick out of his silent self-restraint. Hot anger, passionate reproaches, fought for speech in his throat; he drove them back.
"Is this your answer to my question?" he said finally. "It would have been simpler to have put it some other way. But you may at least congratulate yourself on havingsucceeded. You have killed something that I had thought to be almost eternal." He drew in his breath sharply, but passion was shaking him now, it had to have its say. "I have loved you," he went on hoarsely, "ever since I first saw you. Common sense has argued against you; pride has fought to throw you out of my life; but against everything your face has lived triumphant. I don't know why God makes us feel like that for women of your stamp, why we should bring such great ideals to so poor a shrine. I am talking arrant nonsense, just raving at you, you think, and I sound rather absurd even to myself. Only—my God! you don't know what you have done—you have broken my faith in you; it was the strongest, the best thing in my life."
Joan crouched down in the chair; she seemed to be trying to get as far away from his voice as possible; she sat with her head buried in her arms.
"I built up a dream about you two years ago," Dick went on. "You don't remember anything about me; but our meeting, your face as you stood that day with your back to the wall, were stamped on my heart as with a branding-iron. Of all the foolish things that a man could do perhaps I chose the worst; for ever as I stood and watched you the shadow of shame grew up beside you, and other people turned away from you. But I thought I saw further than the rest; I imagined that I had seen through your eyes, because already I loved them, into your soul. There is some mistake here, I argued, some mystery which she herself shall one day make clear to me." Joan had lifted her head and was staring at him. "From that day I started building my dream. I went abroad, but the memory of your face went with me; I used to make love to other women, but it was because I looked for you in their eyes. Then I came home and I saw you again. Suddenly my dream crystallized into clear, unshakable fact; I loved, I had always loved you; nothing that other people could say against you would have any effect. It lay just with you,and to-day you have given me your answer and broken with your own hand the dream."
He turned towards the door; Joan staggered to her feet and ran to him. The vague memory in her mind had leapt to life; his eyes had often reminded her of someone. She remembered now that he was the young doctor that Aunt Janet had sent for. She remembered her own defiance as she had faced him and the pity in his eyes.
"Dick," she whispered, "Dick, I didn't know, I didn't understand. I thought—oh, don't go away and leave me just like this, I might explain." Her torrent of words broke down before the look on his face; she fell to her knees, clutching at his hands. "Won't you listen? It was because I was afraid to tell you; I was afraid, afraid."
Her position, the paroxysm of tears which, once they came, she could in no way stop, disquieted him. He shook her hands from him. "And because you were afraid," he said stiffly, "I suppose you had the other man here to protect you." Then his mood changed.
"Whatever you have done," he said, "it isn't any business of mine. Please forgive me for ranting like a schoolmaster, and please don't cry like that. While I sat there watching that other man and feeling that everything my heart had been set on was falling to pieces all round me, I wanted to hurt you back again. It's a pugnacious sensation that one gets sometimes, but it's gone now; I don't want you to be hurt. It was not your fault that I lifted you up in my heart like that; it is not altogether your fault that you have fallen. Perhaps you did not know how cruel you were being when you had that other man here to make clear to me something you did not wish to put into words yourself. I have said some beastly things to you, and I am sorry for them. Please don't let them worry you for long."
Then he had gone, before she had time to speak or lift her hands to hold him. Gone, and as she crouched against thedoor the sound of his feet trod into her heart, each step a throb of agony.
Mrs. Carew was holding forth to Fanny in the hall as Dick swung past them. He did not glance at them even, and Fanny did not have a chance to call out to him, he went so rapidly, slamming the door behind him.
"Not as how they haven't left at seasonable hours," Mrs. Carew went rambling on; "but I 'as always said and always will say, I don't hold with such doings in my house."
"What doings?" Fanny expostulated. "For goodness, old Carew, do try and make yourself more clear; who has been carrying on and how?"
"Miss Rutherford," Mrs. Carew announced. She was viewing Fanny with unfriendly suspicion. "Only came back from this 'ere theatrical show yesterday, and to-day she has two men to tea with her in her bedroom."
"Two men?" repeated Fanny. "Did you know they were coming?"
"Ask them," snorted Mrs. Carew. "And what I said is——"
"Oh, run away, Carew," Fanny broke in, "with your nasty suspicion. It's all my bad example, you'll be saying next. Bring up some tea for me, there's an old dear; I'm fairly parched for a drink."
But before she went into her own room Fanny ran upstairs and knocked softly oh Joan's door. There was no answer and no sound from within the room; yet when she tried turning the handle, and pushing her foot against the door, it was to find it locked. What did it all mean? Two men to tea, Dick's face as he had passed through the hall, and Joan's locked door? That was a problem which Fanny set herself to disentangle in her own particular way.
F. Heaslip Lee.
How Joan lived through the hours that followed she never knew. Heart and brain seemed paralysed; things had lost their power to hurt. When Fanny crept upstairs in the early morning and knocked timidly at the door, Joan opened it to her. She had no wish to see Fanny; she did not want to talk about yesterday, or explain what had happened; but vaguely through her absolute misery she realized that life had still to be gone on with, and that Fanny was one of the items of life which it was no use trying to disregard. As a matter of fact, until she opened the door and caught Fanny's look of dismay, she did not remember that she was still in her black afternoon frock, nor the fact that she had spent most of the night crouched against the door as Dick had left her.
"Oh, my dear, my dear!" Fanny whispered; she came quickly into the room and threw warm, loving arms round Joan. "You haven't been to bed at all; why didn't you let me in last night? I'd have helped you somehow or other."
Joan stood limply in the embrace, but she did not turn and cling to Fanny, or weep as the other girl rather wished she would.
"How ridiculous of me," she answered. "I must look a strange sight this morning."
Fanny became practical on the moment, since sympathywas evidently not desired. "Well, you'll start right away now," she stated, "and get out of your things. It's early yet, only about seven; I will brush your hair for you, and you will slip into bed. You needn't get up until late to-day, you know."
"I haven't the slightest desire to sleep," Joan told her; none the less she was obeying the other's commands. "And I have got to catch an early train."
"You are going away?" gasped Fanny.
"Back home," Joan answered. "They have sent for me; my aunt has been ill. Oh, it's not for good, Fanny"—she almost laughed at the other's amazed face—"I shall be back here before long."
"I hope not;" Fanny spoke, for her, fiercely. "I shall hate to lose you, honey, but after all I don't stand for much, and you aren't meant for this kind of world. You can't get the fun out of it I can, it only hurts you." She was brushing out the soft brown hair. "What happened yesterday?" she asked suddenly, her head on one side.
Joan moved from under the deft hands and stood up. "You want to know why I am looking like a tragedy queen this morning," she said. "It isn't strange you should be curious; I must seem quite mad. Yesterday"—she caught her hands to her throat—"was what might be called a disastrous failure. I tried to be very clever, and I was nothing but a most awful fool. He knew, he had known all the time, the thing which I had been so afraid to tell him. It had not made any difference to his loving me, but yesterday I had that other man here, you remember him, don't you? You might almost recognize his roses." Her eyes wandered round the room, her hands came away slowly from her throat; she had seemed to be near tears, but suddenly the outburst passed. "That's all," she said dryly, "Dick drew his own conclusions from the man being here. I tried to explain, at least I think I tried to explain. I know I wanted to hold him back, but he threw aside myhands and went from the room. I shan't ever see him again, Fanny, and the funny thing is that it doesn't really seem to matter this morning."
"Oh, you poor thing," Fanny whispered again. She did not say much else, because for the present words were useless. Otherwise her own mind was full of consoling reflections. A man, after all, is not so easily turned aside from what must have been a very big purpose in his life. Already Fanny could look into the future and say "Bless you, my children," in her heart. She had been afraid, drawing her conclusions from Dick's face and Joan's silence, that things were very much worse. Joan might, for instance, have told the truth, and Dick, man-like, might have resented it.
She ran downstairs presently and came up again with the breakfast, fussing round Joan till the other made an attempt to eat something, pouring out her tea for her, buttering her toast. "I should very much like to see you have a jolly good cry, honey," she confessed when the pretence at breakfast had finished. "It would do you a world of good. But since you don't seem able to, I shall pull the curtains and you must try and sleep. I'll come and call you again at ten."
Joan lay quite still in the dim and curtained room, but she did not either sleep or cry. She did not even think very much. She could just see the pattern of the wall-paper, and her mind occupied itself in counting the roses and in working out how the line in between made squares or diamonds.
It was like that all day; little things came to her assistance and interested her enormously. The collection of flowers which Fanny had got on her new hat; the map on the wall of the railway carriage; the fact that the station master at Wrotham seemed to have grown very thin, and was brushing his hair a new way. Uncle John met her as once before at the station, and almost without thinking Joan lifted her face. He stooped very gravelyto kiss it. "You are welcome home, Joan," he said. "We have been lonely without you."
The sound of his voice brought back to her mind the last time he had spoken to her, and she was suddenly nervous and tongue-tied. A fat Sally still rubbed her sides against the shafts, nothing had been changed. It was just about this time she had come home two years ago, only now nervousness and a confused sense of memories that hurt intolerably swept aside all thoughts of pleasure and relief.
Uncle John made no further remark after his greeting until they were driving down the village street. Then he turned to her suddenly.
"There is going to be war between England and Germany," he said. "Did you see any signs of excitement in London this morning?"
War! Joan realized on the instant that for the past four days she had not even looked at a paper. Daddy Brown had mentioned some such possibility in connection with his Spring tour, and the members of the company had discussed the prospect with varying shades of excitement on their way up to London. But for herself, her own interests, her own griefs had so swamped her that she had not even noticed the greater tragedy which loomed ahead. Yet what a curious thrill lay in the word; it could rouse her to sudden interest as nothing else had been able to do all day; she could feel the nerves in her body tighten, and she sat a little more erect.
"War, with Germany!" she repeated. "I haven't read the papers, Uncle John. Has it come as near as that?"
"They have invaded Belgium," he answered, "on their way through into France. We couldn't stand aside now if we wanted to. To-night, I expect war will be declared. That was why I asked you if you had seen any signs of excitement in the streets; the papers say that the crowds have been clamouring for war for the last three days."
She could not tell him that she had sat in the cab counting the daisies in Fanny's hat. "What will it mean?" she asked.
"Something bigger than we have ever tackled before," he answered. "It will mean millions of money and millions of men. I don't see much down here, grubbing about among my plants and weeds, but I have kept an eye on Germany." A most unusual excitement was shaking him. "In my young days it was a myth, 'one day Germany will declare war on us.' It has come true too late for me. I'd give everything I possess to get back into the regiment, but they wouldn't have me. This will be a world-shaking war, and I am too old to take part in it." The excitement left his voice as they turned in at the gate. "Your aunt is very ill," he said. "I meant to have warned you before, but somehow I can't think of anything but the one thing these days. You must not be shocked at her appearance."
Miss Abercrombie was waiting to receive them where Aunt Janet had waited for their other home-coming. "Did you bring any news from London?" she asked quickly; the same light shone in her eyes as in Uncle John's. "Has anything been settled yet?"
Joan shook her head. "I have been living this last week with my eyes shut," she confessed; "till Uncle John told me, I did not even know that anything was going to happen."
Miss Abercrombie looked beyond her; the blue eyes had narrowed, a strange expression of intentness showed in her face. "I have always tried not to," she said, "and yet I have always hated the Germans. I wish I was a man." She turned abruptly. "But come upstairs, child, your aunt had her couch moved close to the window this morning, she has lain watching the drive all day. You will find her very changed," she added. "Try not to show any signs of fear. She is very sensitive as to the impression she creates. Every week it creeps a littlehigher, now she cannot even move her hand. From the neck downwards she is like a log of wood."
"And she is dying?" whispered Joan.
"Mercifully," the other answered. "My dear, we could not pray for anything else."
She opened the door and motioned to Joan to go in. "I have brought her to you, Janet," she said. "Now is your heart satisfied?"
Joan waited for a moment in the doorway. A long, low couch stood by the window, the curtains were drawn back and the head of the couch had been raised up, so that a full stream of light fell upon the figure lying on it. But Aunt Janet's face itself was a little in the shadow, and for the moment it looked very much like Joan's old memories. The straight, braided hair, the little touch of white at the throat, the dark, searching eyes. A nurse, a trim upheld figure in blue, stood a little behind the couch out of sight of Aunt Janet's eyes, so that she could frown and beckon to Joan to come forward unseen by the woman on the couch. But Aunt Janet had noticed the slight hesitation, her face broke into the most wistful smile that Joan had ever seen.
"I can't hold out my arms to you, Joan," she said; "but my heart aches for you, all the same."
Joan took a little step forward; "Aunt Janet," she whispered. Then all that had been bitter between them vanished, and much as she had used to do, when as a child she sought the shelter of those dear arms, she ran forward, and, kneeling by the couch, pressed her warm cheek against the lifelessness of the other's hand. "I have come home, Aunt Janet," she said, "I have come home."
The nurse with one glance at her patient's face tiptoed from the room, leaving them alone together, and for a little they stayed silent just close touching like that. Presently Aunt Janet spoke, little whispered words.
"I hardened my heart," she said, "I would not letyou creep back; even when God argued with me I would not listen. My life finished when I sent you from me, Joan, but so long as I could hold myself upright and get about, I would not listen. I am a hard, grim old woman, and I took it upon myself to judge, which is after all a thing we should leave to God. This is my punishment—you are so near to me, yet I cannot lift a hand to touch you. I shall never feel your fingers clinging to mine again."
"Oh, hush, hush, Aunt Janet," Joan pleaded. "Why should you talk of punishment?"
"When you were a child," the old voice went on again, "you would run to me at the end of your day's playing. 'Read me a story,' you would say, and then we would sit hand in hand while I read aloud to you something you knew almost by heart. When I dream now I feel your little warm hands in mine, but I can't feel your lips, Joan, not even when you lay them against my hand as you do now. Nor your tears, dear, silly child, I have made you cry with my grumbling. Joan, look up and see the happiness in my eyes to have you back."
And Joan looked. "I never meant to hurt you as I did, Aunt Janet," she said; "do you believe that?"
Just for a second the lids closed down over the dark eyes. "I hurt myself," Aunt Janet answered, "far more than you hurt me. Put your face down close, so that I can kiss you just once, and then you shall draw up a chair and we will talk sensibly. Nurse will be severe to-night if I excite myself."
Miss Abercrombie put her head in at the door presently and suggested taking Joan downstairs to tea. "Nurse is just bringing up yours," she said. "I know from the expression of her face that she thinks it is time that you had a little rest."
"Very well," Aunt Janet agreed, "take her away, Ann, but bring her back again before I go to bed. Has any news come through yet?"
Miss Abercrombie shook her head. "Colonel Rutherford has just gone over to the station to find out," she added.
Uncle John came back with no further information. He was evidently in a strong state of agitation, he confessed that the question which the Government was settling was like a weight on his own conscience. "It is a question of honour," he kept repeating, "England cannot stand aside."
"'Know we not well how seventy times sevenWronging our mighty arms with rust,We dared not do the will of Heaven,Lest Heaven should hurl us in the dust.'"
Miss Abercrombie quoted to him.
He stared at her with puzzled old eyes. "I don't think that can apply to England," he said. "And in this case the people won't let them. We must have war."
A curious, restless spirit seemed to have invaded the household. Joan sat with Aunt Janet for a little after dinner till the nurse said it was time for bed, after that she and Miss Abercrombie, talking only in fits and starts, waited up for Colonel Rutherford, who had once more tramped down to the station in search of news.
"Nothing has come through," he had to admit on his return; "but I have arranged with the people of the telegraph office to send on a message should it come. We had better get off to bed meanwhile."
Tired as she was, Joan fell asleep almost at once, to dream of Dick—Dick attired, through some connection of her thoughts, in shining armour with a sword in his hand. The ringing of a bell woke her, and then the sound of people whispering in the hall. She was out of bed in a second, and with a dressing-gown half pulled about her, she ran to the top of the stairs. The hall was lit up, the front door open. Uncle John was at it, talking to a man outside; Miss Abercrombie stood a little behind him,a telegram form in her hand. She looked up at the sound of Joan's feet. "It's war," she called softly. "We declared war to-night."
From somewhere further along the passage there was the abrupt sound of a door being thrown open. "Miss Abercrombie, Colonel Rutherford," the nurse's voice called, "quick, quick! I am afraid Miss Rutherford is dying! Someone must run for the doctor at once, please."
W. E. Henley.
Dick went out into the still night air from the close atmosphere of Joan's room, his mind a seething battleground of emotions—anger, and hurt pride, and a still small sense of pain, which as time passed grew so greatly in proportion that it exceeded both the other sensations. He had said very bitterly to Joan that she had broken his dream, but, because it had been broken, it none the less had the power to hurt intolerably. Each fragment throbbed with a hot sense of injustice and self-pity. He had not the slightest idea what to do with himself: every prospect seemed equally distasteful. He walked, to begin with, furiously and rather aimlessly down in the direction of the Embankment. The exercise, such as it was, dulled his senses and quieted a little the tumult of his mind. He found himself thinking of other things. The men to-day in his Club had been discussing the possibility of war, they had been planning what they would do; instinctively, since the thought of Joan and the scene he had just left were too tender for much probing, his mind turned to that. Ashe stamped along he resolved, without thinking very deeply about it, that he would volunteer for active service, and speculated on the possibility of his getting taken on at once.
"Doctors will be very needful in this war," one man had said at the Club.
"Yes, by Gad," another had answered. "We have got some devilish contrivances these days for killing our brother men."
Looked at from that point of view, the idea seemed strange, and Dick caught his breath on the thought. What would war mean? Hundreds of men would be killed—hundreds, why it would be more like thousands. He had read descriptions of the South African war, he had talked with men who had been all through it.
"We doctors see the awful side of war, I can tell you," an old doctor had once told him. "To the others it may seem flags flying, drums beating, and a fine uplifting spectacle; but we see the horrors, the shattered bodies, the eyes that pray for death. It's a ghastly affair."
And yet there was something in the thought which flamed at Dick's heart and made him throw his head up. It was the beating of drums, the call of the bugles that he heard as he thought of it; the blood tingled in his veins, he forgot that other pain which had driven him forth so restless a short hour ago.
The great dark waters of the river had some special message to give him this evening. He stood for a little watching them; lights flamed along the Embankment, the bridges lay across the intervening darkness like coloured lanterns fastened on a string. Over on the other side he could see the trees of Battersea Park, and beyond that again the huddled pile of houses and wharfs and warehouses that crowded down to the water's edge. He was suddenly aware, as he stood there, of a passionate love for this old, grey city, this slow-moving mass of dark waters. It symbolized something which the thought ofwar had stirred awake in his heart. He had a hot sense of love and pride and pity all mingled, he felt somehow as if the city were his, and as if an enemy's hand had been stretched out to spoil it. The drumming, the flag-waving, and the noise of bugles were still astir in his imagination, but the river had called something else to life behind their glamour. It did not occur to him to call it love of country, yet that was what it was.
His walk brought him out in the end by the Houses of Parliament, and he found himself in the midst of a large crowd. It swayed and surged now this way and now that, as is the way of crowds. The outskirts of it reached right up to and around Trafalgar Square. When Dick had fought his way up Parliament Street he could see a mass of people moving about the National Gallery, and right above them Nelson's statue stood out black against the sky.
"If they want war, these bally Germans," someone in the crowd suddenly shouted in a very hoarse and beery voice, "let's give it them."
"Yes, by God!" another answered. "Good old England, let's stand by our word."
"We have got men behind the guns," declaimed a third.
But such words were only as the foam thrown up by a great sea; the multitude did no real shouting, the spirit that moved them was too earnest for that. There were women among the crowd, their eager, excited faces caught Dick's attention. Some were crying hysterically, but most of them faced the matter in the same way that their menkind did. Dick could find no words to describe the curious feeling which gripped him, but he knew himself one of this vast multitude, all thinking the same thoughts, all answering to the same heart-beats. It was as if the meaning of the word citizen had suddenly been made clear to his heart.
He moved with the shifting of the crowd as far as Trafalgar Square, and here some of the intense seriousness ofthe strain was broken, for round and about the stately lions of Nelson's statue a noisy battle was raging. Several Peace parties, decked with banners inscribed "No War" and "Let us have peace," were coming in for a very rough five minutes at the hands of the crowd. Rather to his own surprise Dick found himself partaking in the battle, with a sense of jubilant pride in his prowess to hit out. He had a German as his opponent, which was a stroke of luck in itself, but in a calmer moment which followed on the arrival of the police, he thought to himself that even that was hardly an excuse for hitting a man who was desirous of keeping the world's peace. Still the incident had exhilarated him, he was more than ever a part of the crowd, and he went with them as far as Buckingham Palace. Some impulse to see the King had come upon the people; they gathered in the square in front of the Palace, and waited in confident patience for him to appear.
Dick was standing at the far end of the Square, pressed up against the railings. In front of him stood two women, they were evidently strangers to each other, yet their excitement had made them friends, and they stood holding hands. One was a tall, eager-faced girl; Dick could not see the other woman's face, but from her voice he imagined her to be a good deal older and rather superior in class to the girl. It was the younger one's spirit, however, that was infectious.
"Isn't it fine?" she was saying. "Aren't you proud to be English? I feel as if my heart was going to jump out of my mouth. They are our men," she went on breathlessly; "it is a most wonderful thought, and of course they will win through, but a lot of them will die first. Oh, I do hate the Germans!" Her whole face flushed with passionate resentment.
"One need not hate a nation because one goes to war with it," the other woman answered. Dick thought her voice sounded very tired.
"Yes, one need," the girl flamed. "We women can'tfight, but we can hate. Perhaps we shouldn't hate so much if we could fight," she added as a concession.
"I am married to a German," Dick heard the other woman say bitterly. "I can't hate him."
He saw the girl's quick face of horror and the way she stood away from her companion, but just at that moment some impulse surged the crowd forward and he lost sight of them. Yet the memory of the woman's voice and the words she had said haunted him. War would mean that, then, the tearing apart of families, the wrecking of home life.
"The King, the King!" the crowd yelled and shouted in a million voices. "God save the King."
Dick looked up to the Palace windows; a slight, small figure had come out on to one of the balconies and stood looking down on the faces of the people. Cheer upon cheer rose to greet him, the multitude rocked and swayed with their acclamation, then above the general noise came the sound of measured music, not a band, but just the people singing in unison:
"God save our gracious King,Long live our noble King,God save the King."
The notes rose and swelled and filled the air, the cry of a nation's heart, the loyalty of a people towards their King.
The sheer emotion of it shook Dick out of the sense of revelry which had come upon him during his fight. He pushed his way through the crowd, and climbed over the railings into the darkness of St. James's Park. It was officially closed for the night, but Dick had no doubt that a small bribe at the other side would let him out. The Queen and the little Princes had joined the King on the balcony. Looking back he could see them very faintly, the Prince was standing to the salute, the Queen was waving her handkerchief.
His Club was crowded with men, all equally excited, alltalking very fast. Someone had just come back from the House. War was a dead certainty now, mobilization had been ordered, the Fleet was ready.
"Our Army is the problem, there will have to be conscription," was the general vote.
Dick stayed and talked with the rest of them till long after twelve. Morning should see him offering his services to the War Office; if they would not have him as a doctor he could always enlist. One thing was certain, he must by hook or by crook be amongst the first to go.
"We will have to send an Expeditionary Force right now," the general opinion had been, "if we are to do any good."
Dick thought vaguely of what it would all mean: the excitement, the thrill, an army on the march, camp life, military discipline, and his share of work in hospital. "Roll up your sleeves and get at them," his South African friend had described it to him. "I can tell you, you don't have much time to think when they are bringing in the wounded by the hundred."
Not till just as he was turning into bed did he think again of Joan. Such is the place which love takes in a man's thoughts when war is in the balance. The knowledge of her deceit and his broken dream hurt him less in proportion, for the time he had forgotten it. He had been brutal to her, he realized; he had left her crouched up on the floor crying her heart out. Why had she cried?—she had achieved her purpose, for she could only have had one reason in asking the other man to meet him. He could only suppose that he had frightened her by his evident bad temper, and for that he was sorry. He was not angry with her any longer. She had looked very beautiful in her clinging black dress, with the red rose pinned in at her throat. And even the rose had been a gift from the other man. Well, it was all ended; for two years he had dreamed about love, for one hour he had known its bitterness. He would shut it absolutely outside of his life now, he would never, he neednever, thanks to the new interests which were crowding in, think of Joan again.
He opened his window before getting into bed and leaned out. The streets were deserted and quiet, the people had shouted themselves hoarse and gone home. Under the nearest lamp-post a policeman stood, a solid, magnificent figure of law and order, and overhead in a very dark sky countless little stars shone and twinkled. On the verge of war! What would the next still slumbering months bring to the world, and could he forget Joan? Is not love rather a thing which nothing can kill, which no grave can cover, no time ignore?
Anon.
The wave of enthusiasm caused by the War swept even Fanny into its whirlpool of emotion. For several days she haunted the streets, following now this crowd, now that; buying innumerable papers, singing patriotic songs, cheering the soldiers as they passed. She wanted to dash out into the road, to throw her arms round the young soldiers and to kiss them, she was for the time being passionately in love with them. It was her one pathetic and rather mistaken method of expressing the patriotism which surged up in her. She could not have explained this sensation, she only knew that something was so stirred within her that she wanted to give—to give of her very best to these men who symbolized the spirit of the country to her. Poor, hot-hearted little Fanny; she and a great many like her came in for a good deal of blame during the days that followed, yet the instinct which drove them was the same that prompted the boys to enlist. If Fanny hadbeen a man she would have been one of the first at the recruiting station. So submerged was she in her new excitement that Joan and Dick in their trouble slipped entirely out of her mind, only to come back, with the knowledge that she had failed to do anything to help, when, on coming back one afternoon to Montague Square, she saw Mabel standing on the steps of No. 6. To be correct, Mabel had just finished talking to Mrs. Carew and was turning away. Fanny hastened her walk to a run and caught the other up just as she left the step.
"You were asking to see Joan, Miss Rutherford," she panted. "Won't you come in and let me tell you about her?"
Mabel had hardly recognized her. Fanny, dressed up in her best to meet Joan's possible future relations, and Fanny in her London garments, which consisted of a very tight dress slit up to well within sight of her knee, and a rakish little hat, were two very different people. And whereas the Fanny of Sevenoaks had been a little vulgar but most undeniably pretty, this Fanny was absolutely impossible—the kind of person one hardly liked to be seen talking to. Yet there was something in the girl's face, the frank appeal of her eyes, perhaps, that held Mabel against her will.
"The woman tells me that Miss Rutherford has left," she spoke stiffly. "I was really only going to call upon her."
"Yes, I know she's gone," Fanny nodded, "back to her people. But there is something between her and your brother that awfully badly wants to be explained. Won't you come in and let me tell you? Oh, do, please do."
She had caught hold of the other's sleeve and was practically leading her back up the steps. Mabel had not seen Dick since he had left Sevenoaks. He had written a note to their hotel saying he was most awfully busy, his application for service had been accepted, but pending his being attached to any unit he was putting in the time examining recruits. He had not mentioned Joan, Mabelhad noticed that; still she had promised to call and make it up with the girl, and Mabel was a person who always religiously kept her promises. But if there had been any disagreement, as Fanny's anxiety to explain showed, then surely it was so much the better. Here and now she would wash her hands of the affair and start hoping once again for something better for Dick.
Fanny had opened the door by this time and had led the way inside. "My room is three flights up," she said. "Will you mind that? Also it is probably dreadfully untidy. It generally is."
This was where Mabel, following the wise guidance of her head, ought to have said: "I am not coming, I really haven't time," or some excuse of that sort. Instead she stepped meekly inside and followed the girl upstairs. Perhaps some memory of Dick's face as he had spoken of Joan prompted her, or perhaps it was just because she felt that in some small way she owed Joan a reparation.
Fanny's room was certainly untidy. Every chair was occupied by an assortment of clothes, for before she had gone out that morning Fanny had had a rummage for a special pair of silk stockings that were the pride of her heart. She bundled most of the garments on to the bed and wheeled forward the armchair for Mabel to sit in.
"I never can keep tidy," she acknowledged. "It used to make Joan fair sick when we shared rooms on tour. Joan is so different from me." Suddenly she threw aside pretence and dropped down on her knees before the armchair, squatting back on her heels to look at Mabel. "That is what I do want you to understand," she said, earnestly. "Joan is as different to me as soap to dirt. She is a lady, you probably saw that; I am not. She is good; I don't suppose I ever have been. She is clean all through, and she loves your brother so much that she wanted to break her heart to keep him happy." She looked down at her hands for a second, then up again quickly. "I'll tell you, it won't do any harm. Mind you, usually, I say a secretis a secret though I mayn't look the sort that can keep one. Joan told me about it at the beginning when I chaffed her about his loving her; and he does, you know he does. It seems that when she first came to London she had funny ideas in her head—innocent, I should call it, and sort of inclined to trust men—anyway, she lived with some man and there was to have been a baby," she brought the information out with a sort of gasp.
"I knew that," Mabel answered, "and because of it I tried to persuade my brother not to marry her."
"I suppose it is only natural you should," Fanny admitted, "though to me it seems that when a woman has a baby like that, she pays for all the fun that went before." She threw back her head a little and laughed. "Oh, I'm not moral, I know that, but Joan is, that's what I want you to understand. Anyway, Joan left the man, or he left her, which is more likely, and the baby was never born. Joan was run over in the street one day and was ill in hospital for a month. That was what Joan came up against," she went on, "when she fell in love with your brother. Tell him, I said, it won't make a pin's worth of difference to his love—and it wouldn't. But Joan did not believe me, she had learned to be afraid of good people, some of them had been real nasty to her, and she was afraid."
"She need not have been," Mabel said. The girl was so earnest in the defence of her friend that one could not help liking her. "Dick knew about it all the time."
Fanny nodded. "Yes, Joan told me that on the day after he had been here. It would have been fairer if he had said so from the beginning. You see," she leant forward, most intense in her explanation, "Joan thought, and thought and thought, till she was really silly with thinking. He had told her he was coming here on Monday to ask her to marry him, and she loved him. I should have held my tongue about things, or whispered them to him as I lay in his arms, holding on to him so that he couldnot push me away, but Joan isn't my sort. She just couldn't bear to tell him, I guess she was afraid to see his face alter and grow hard. Do you blame her because she was afraid? I don't really know the rest of the story," she finished, "because I was away, but I think Joan got hold of the silly notion that the best thing to do was to have another man hanging about here when Dr. Grant called. She thought it would make him angry, and that he would change his mind about wanting to marry her on the spot. And she pretty well succeeded. I had just got back and was standing in the hall, when Dr. Grant got back from her room and went out. He did not notice me, his face was set white and stern like people's faces are when they have just had to shoot a dog they loved. The other man meant nothing to her, nothing; why she hasn't even seen him for months, and she never liked him. Oh, can't you explain to your brother, he would listen to you." She put her hand on Mabel's knee in her earnestness and pulled herself a little nearer. "It's breaking both their hearts, and it's all such a silly mistake."
"Are you not asking rather a lot from me?" Mabel said quietly; she met the other's eyes frankly. "Putting aside all ideas, moral or immoral, don't you understand that it is only natural that I should want my brother to marry some girl who had not been through all that Miss Rutherford has?"
The quick tears sprang to Fanny's eyes. "If he loves her," she claimed, "is not that all that matters?"
"He may love again," Mabel reminded her.
Fanny withdrew her hand and stayed quiet, looking down at the ground, blinking back her tears. "You won't help," she said presently. "I see what you mean, it doesn't matter to you what happens to her." She lifted her head defiantly and sprang to her feet. "Well, it doesn't matter, not very much. I believe in love more than you do, it seems, for I do not believe that your brother will love again, and sooner or later he will come back toher." She paused in her declamation and glanced at Mabel. "Is he going to the War?" she asked quickly.
"Yes," Mabel assented; she had stood up too and was drawing on her gloves. "He may go at any moment, as soon as they need him. You think I am awfully hard," she went on; "perhaps I am. Dick means a lot to me; if I find that this is breaking his heart I will tell him, will you believe that? But if he can find happiness elsewhere I shall be glad, that is all."
Fanny huddled herself up in the armchair and did a good cry after she had gone. Joan's thread of happiness seemed more tangled than ever; her efforts to undo the knots had not been very successful. There was only her belief in the strength of Dick's love to fall back on, and love—as Fanny knew from her own experience—is sometimes only a weathercock in disguise, blown this way and that by the winds of fate.
The night post brought a letter from Joan. It was written on black-edged notepaper: