A Life For a Love Part 19

"I am. I'm in desperate earnest. Will you promise?"

"Yes, yes, you silly child, if you set such store on an utterly ridiculous promise you shall have it. Only if I were you, Valentine, I wouldn't begin even to have such tiny little secrets as that from my husband. I wouldn't, Val; it isn't wise--it isn't really."

Valentine neither heard nor heeded these last words. She gave Lilias a hasty, frantic kiss, and rushed back to her own room.

"Now," she said to herself, "now--now--now--if he tells me everything, every single thing, all may be well. I won't ask him a question; but if he tells, tells of his own accord, all may be quite well yet. Oh, how my heart beats! It is good I have not learned to love him any better."

Gerald rose up at her entrance and went to meet her eagerly.

"Ah, here's my bright little wife," he said. "Give me a kiss, Valentine."

She gave it, and allowed him to fold her in his arms. She was almost pa.s.sive, but her heart beat hard--she was so eagerly waiting for him to speak.

"Sit down by the fire, darling. I don't like long evenings spent away from you, Val. How did you enjoy _Captain Swift_?"

"We didn't go to the Haymarket; no, we are going to-morrow. Father thought it a pity you should miss such a good play."

"Then where did you go? You and Lil did not stay at home the whole evening?"

"No, father took us to another theatre. I can't tell you the name; don't ask me. I hate theatres--I detest them. I never want to go inside one again as long as I live!"

"How strongly you talk, my dear little Val. Perhaps you found it dull to-night because your husband was not with you."

She moved away with a slight little petulant gesture. When would he begin to speak?

Gerald wondered vaguely what had put his sweet-tempered Valentine out.

He stirred the fire, and then stood with his back to it. She looked up at him, his face was very grave, very calm. Her own Gerald--he had a nice face. Surely there was nothing bad behind that face. Why was he silent? Why didn't he begin to tell his story? Well she would--she would--help him a little.

She cleared her throat, she essayed twice to find her voice. When it came out at last it was small and timorous.

"Was it--was it business kept you from coming with me to-night, Gerry?"

"Business? Yes, my darling, certainly."

Her heart went down with a great bound. But she would give him another chance.

"Was it--was it business connected with the office?"

"You speak in quite a queer voice, Valentine. In a measure it was business connected with the office--in a measure it was not. What is it, Valentine? What is it, my dear?"

She had risen from her seat, put her arms round his neck, and laid her soft young head on his shoulder.

"Tell me the business, Gerry, Tell your own Val."

He kissed her many times.

"It doesn't concern you, my dear wife," he said. "I would tell you gladly, were I not betraying a trust. I had some painful work to do to-night, Valentine. Yes, business, certainly. I cannot tell it, dear.

Yes, what was that you said?"

For she had murmured "Hypocrite!" under her breath. Very low she had said it, too faintly for him to catch the word. But he felt her loving arms relax. He saw her face grow grave and cold, something seemed to go out of her eyes which had rendered them most lovely. It was the wounded soul going back into solitude, and hiding its grief and shame in an inmost recess of her being.

Would Gerald ever see the soul, the soul of love, in his wife's eyes again?

CHAPTER XXIV.

A few days after the events related in the last chapter Mr. Paget asked his son-in-law to have a few minutes' private conversation with him.

Once more the young man found himself in that inner room at the rich merchant's office which represented more or less a torture-chamber to him. Once more Valentine's untroubled girlish innocent eyes looked out of Richmond's beautiful picture of her.

Wyndham hated this room, he almost hated that picture; it had surrounded itself with terrible memories. He turned his head away from it now as he obeyed Mr. Paget's summons.

"It's this, Gerald," said his father-in-law. "When a thing has to be done the sooner the better. I mean n.o.body cares to make a long operation of the drawing of a tooth for instance!"

"An insufficient metaphor," interrupted Wyndham roughly. "Say, rather, the plucking out of a right eye, or the cutting off a right hand. As you say, these operations had better be got quickly over."

"I think so--I honestly think so. It would convenience me if you sailed in the _Esperance_ on the 25th of March for Sydney. There is a _bona fide_ reason for your going. I want you to sample----"

"Hush," interrupted Wyndham. "The technicalities and the gloss and all that kind of humbug can come later. You want me to sail on the 25th of March. That is the main point. When last you spoke of it, I begged of you as a boon to give me an extension of grace, say until May or June.

It was understood by us, although there was no sealed bond in the matter, that my wife and I should spend a year together before this--this _temporary_ parting took place. I asked you at one time to shorten my season of grace, but a few weeks ago I asked you to extend it."

"Precisely, Wyndham, and I told you I would grant your wish, if possible. I asked you to announce to your own relatives that you would probably have to go away in March, for a time; but I said I would do my utmost to defer the evil hour. I am sorry to say that I cannot do so. I have had news from India which obliges me to hasten matters. Such a good opportunity as the business which takes you out in the _Esperance_ will probably not occur again. It would be madness not to avail ourselves of it. Do not you think so? My dear fellow, do take a chair."

"Thank you, I prefer to stand. This day--what is this day?" He raised his eyes; they rested on the office calendar. "This day is the 24th of February. A spring-like day, isn't it? Wonderful for the time of year.

I have, then, one month and one day to live. Are these Valentine's violets? I will help myself to a few. Let me say good-morning, sir."

He bowed courteously--no one could be more courteous than Gerald Wyndham--and left the room.

His astonished father in-law almost gasped when he found himself alone.

"Upon my word," he said to himself, "there's something about that fellow that's positively uncanny. I only trust I'll be preserved from being haunted by his ghost. My G.o.d! what a retribution that would be.

Wyndham would be awful as a ghost. I suppose I shall have retribution some day. I know I'm a wicked man. Hypocritical, cunning, devilish.

Yes, I'm all that. Who'd have thought that soft-looking lad would turn out to be all steel and venom. I hate him--and yet, upon my soul, I admire him. He does more for the woman he loves than I do--than I could do. The woman _we both love_. His wife--_my child_."

"There, I'll get soft myself if I indulge in these thoughts any longer.

Now is the time for him to go. Valentine has turned from him; any fool can see that. Now is the time to get him out of the way. How lucky that I overheard Helps that day. Never was there a more opportune thing."

Mr. Paget went home early that evening. Valentine was dining with him.

Lately, within the last few weeks, she often came over alone to spend the evening with her father.

"Where's your husband, my pet?" the old man used to say to her on these occasions.

And she always answered him in a bright though somewhat hard little voice.

"Oh, Gerald is such a book-worm--he is devouring one of those abstruse treatises on music. I left him buried in it," or, "Gerald is going out this evening," or, "Gerald isn't well, and would like to stay quiet, so"--the end was invariably the same--"I thought I'd come and have a cosy chat with you, dad."

"And no one more welcome--no one in all the wide world more welcome,"