A Bachelor Husband Part 69

"I'm quite comfortable, thank you." She leaned her head against Miss Chester's knee with a little snuggling movement, and the old lady stopped in her work for a movement to stroke the girl's dark hair.

"I've just remembered," she said, "that I've got some tickets for that Westminster bazaar to-morrow, Marie. Some of us really ought to go. I promised the vicar we would. Couldn't you and Dorothy just run in for half an hour?"

Marie made a little grimace.

"I hate bazaars," she said.

Dorothy looked across the room at Chris.

"I think I ought to go home to-morrow," she said. "I've been here over a week. You'll all be sick to death of me."

"Of course, we shan't," Marie cried. She was touched by the hard note of unhappiness in her friend's voice, and stretched out her hand to her. "Don't go, Dorothy. They can't have finished with the scarlet fever yet."

"I shall have to see. I dare say I shall hear from home in the morning."

She excused herself presently on the plea of headache and went to bed. She shook hands with Feathers and kissed Marie and Miss Chester, but Marie noticed with a queer little shrinking at her heart that she seemed to avoid Chris altogether, and her thoughts went back with unwilling suspicion to the moment when she had found Dorothy crying.

"Dorothy doesn't look well," Miss Chester said, as the door closed behind the elder girl. "I really think all this golf is too much for her. She ought to take a rest and do something less strenuous."

"Knitting shawls, for instance, eh, dear?" Marie asked tenderly.

The old lady looked over her gla.s.ses.

"It would do her no harm," she said severely.

It was only ten o'clock when Feathers left, and Chris said he would walk part of the way with him.

"I shan't be long," he said to Marie. "But it's so hot indoors, and I must get a breath of air."

She said good-night to them both in the hall, and after they had gone she stood for a moment looking at the closed door with a feeling of desolation. She had counted so much on this evening, and on seeing Feathers, and now he had gone--and nothing had happened, nothing been said!

She did not know what she had expected to happen or what she had hoped he would say, but she was conscious of bitter disappointment as she went up to bed.

It seemed as if she must have dreamed about those moments on Sunday when he had let her know that he loved her--that they could never have been real, and in her heart she knew that she was not satisfied. She wanted more than the little he had given.

She heard Chris come in just after she had gone to bed, and her heart thudded nervously as his step crossed the landing and stopped outside her door; but he went on again, and presently silence fell on the house.

And Marie fell asleep, to dream the old, terrible dream that she once more was drowning--that she was sinking down, down into bottomless depths of clear green water, and she woke, shivering and fighting for breath. Her face and the palms of her hands were wet with perspiration.

She sat up in bed and turned on the light. Only a Dream! She looked round the room with thankful eyes and yet ... it would have been such a simple answer to all her troubles if Feathers had only let her drown that summer's morning.

"If you two are going to the bazaar this afternoon," Chris said at lunch next day, "I'll go and look Feathers up. He asked me last night if I would, but I didn't promise," He looked at Marie, "I'll come with you if you like," he said quickly.

She laughed.

"Of course not! We shan't stay long, shall we, Dorothy?"

"We won't go at all if you'd rather not," Dorothy said.

"But I promised the vicar," Miss Chester broke in, in distress. "I think you really must go, my dears."

"Of course we will," Marie said. "If there's a fortune-teller we'll have our palms read; shall we, Dorothy?"

The elder girl shrugged her shoulders.

"You don't believe in that rubbish, surely?"

"I think it's fun," Marie answered.

She was childishly pleased when, during the afternoon, they found a palmist's tent in a corner of the big hall where the bazaar was being held.

"Do let's go in," she urged on Dorothy. "Of course, we shan't believe it, but it will be fun!"

She lifted the flap of the tent, and Dorothy reluctantly followed her.

A woman sat at a small round table in the half light of the tent.

She was not at all like the usual fortune teller, and she was dressed plainly in a white frock, instead of in the usual gaudy trappings which such people affect.

She was small and dark, with rather a plaintive face and large eyes, and Marie was struck by the extreme slenderness and whiteness of her hands as they rested on a little velvet cushion on the table before her.

"We want to have our palms read," Marie said. She was conscious of an eerie feeling, and she looked back at the closed flap of the tent nervously. "Dorothy--you go first ..."

"I don't believe in it," Dorothy said, hardily, but she sat down at the table, and laid her hands, palms upwards, on the cushion.

The palmist spoke then, for the first time, to Marie.

"If you will kindly wait outside, mademoiselle," she said. She spoke with a slightly foreign accent, but her voice was soft and musical.

Marie went reluctantly. She would like to have heard what Dorothy was told.

It was only a few minutes before Dorothy was out again, her face flushed and her eyes bright as if with unshed tears.

"It's all rubbish," she said harshly, when Marie eagerly questioned her. "As if anybody believes in it! Are you going in? Very well, be quick. I'll tell you afterwards what she said to me."

Marie went back into the tent. She had taken off her gloves and slipped her wedding ring into her pocket. The palmist had addressed her as mademoiselle, and she was curious to know if she would still believe her to be unmarried when she had examined her hands.

She laid them palm upwards on the velvet cushion, and the woman opposite took them in her soft clasp, smoothing the palms with her forefingers and peering into the little lines and creases for a moment without speaking. Marie watched her curiously. Her first nervousness had lost itself in interest She almost started when, quite suddenly, the woman began to speak in a low, clear voice.

"You are very young, but you are already a wife. You have married a man whom you love devotedly, but he is blind! And because he is blind he has let your love waver from him to the keeping of another. You are proud! You have wrapped your heart about with pride, until you have stifled its best affections, and persuaded yourself that you do not care."

She ran her slender fingers along a faint line at the base of Marie's fingers.

"You started with dreams--alas! so many dreams--and they have forsaken you one by one. But they will come back." And she raised her dark eyes suddenly to Marie's pale face. "A little patience and they will come back--dreams no longer, but reality. You were meant to be a happy wife and mother, my little lady, but something has intervened--something has fallen across your life like a big shadow, and for a little the sunshine will be blotted out..."

She broke off, and for a moment there was silence. Then she went on again, more slowly: "If you will allow your heart to govern your head you can never go far astray--it is only now, when you are trying to stifle all that your heart would say, that the shadows deepen... ."