A Question of Marriage Part 4

"It is a long time since you have seen English flowers. To an Englishman nothing can ever be quite so beautiful. You must be glad you came home in the time of roses!"

The intentionally soft tone of the girl's voice threw into greater contrast the man's hoa.r.s.e accents.

"Will you give it to me? May I keep it?"

Jean stared, her delicate brows arched in dignified surprise. Certainly she would not give a flower which she had been wearing to a perfect stranger, and that in the presence of three pairs of watching eyes.

This Robert Gloucester was disconcertingly direct, and must be kept in his place--gently, however, for he had other points in his favour, such as being young and handsome, and transparently impressed by herself.

"Not this one, I think. It is too faded and tired. I am cruel to flowers when I wear them. I can't leave them alone. Please take your choice from any in that bowl. They are all quite fresh!"

She held out her hand, gently imperious, and Gloucester mutely returned the rose. He could do no less; but his air was so discouraged, so out of all proportion abashed, that the girl felt a swift remorse. It was like disappointing an eager child, and watching the shadowing of the happy face. Now it was not her own wish, but simply the presence of onlookers which prevented the refusal from being changed into consent.

She laid the recovered flower on the table beside the fragrant bowl of roses, almost disliking it for having been the cause of this check in the conversation. Her eyes softened, she smiled into Gloucester's troubled face with her sweetest, most childlike expression, and prattled dainty nonsense, unchecked by his lack of response. Presently he began to smile; it was impossible to resist Jean when she set herself to charm, but once and again the murmured answers missed the point, and she was conscious that, though his thoughts were absorbed in herself, he was paying scant heed to her words. The mysterious nervousness which had affected her at his first gaze returned to Jean once more in the process of this one-sided conversation; she turned her head to where the three ladies were sitting, and met Edith Morton's eyes fixed upon herself with an intensity of scrutiny which aroused a quick suspicion.

Edith did not care to see her guest monopolised; she was not content to be banished to the end of the room. Jean smiled and raised her voice, addressing her directly by name, so as to show her desire for a general conversation.

"I have been telling Mr Gloucester, Edith, that when I was very good you used to read me extracts from his letters, and thrill me by repeating his adventures. They were such nice, full, detaily letters.

I think you would get a prize in a foreign correspondence compet.i.tion, Mr Gloucester. Most men write such sc.r.a.ppy notes."

"Ah, I should have been ungrateful if I had done that, for Edith sent me such splendid letters from home. No one knows how a fellow appreciates letters when he is abroad--a blank mail is a blighting experience.

Edith has been a brick to me in that way; as good as any sister."

He smiled at the girl as he spoke, and Edith Morton smiled bravely back.

Gloucester saw nothing strained or unnatural in that smile, but the three women divined its secret with lightning intuition. Poor Edith who had watched and waited all these years, counting each day as it pa.s.sed, enduring a grey present in the hope of a golden future which would surely begin when the Prince returned to his own. And now her long wish was fulfilled--her hero was restored to her side, not unconscious of her care, but full of grat.i.tude and affection. He smiled at her with kindly eyes, he paid her public thanks, he compared her to a sister, and Edith's heart cramped with despair.

She was a tall, slight girl, with dark hair, a dull complexion, and pretty eyes. She dressed tastefully, though without style, and spoke with a delightfully clear, musical intonation. When addressed she had a trick of drooping her head, which gave her a somewhat timid and shrinking air, and her hands were small and white. Women admired and loved her, and constantly asked of each other, "Why is she not married?"

Men pa.s.sed her by as if unconscious of her presence. The mysterious quality which attracts masculine approval was lacking in her case, and until the present she had not regretted its absence.

The while Gloucester continued an easy flow of conversation, the same thought pa.s.sed through the mind of each feminine hearer. If Edith wished to appropriate this man for herself, why had she so hastened to bring him into the temptation of Jean Goring's presence? Jean, with her characteristic impulsiveness made a dozen impossible resolutions to keep out of Robert's path; to be cold to him, to refuse to speak. Vanna sighed over the hardness of fate which ever advances to its festivals over the corpses of the slain. Mrs Goring, with tightened lips, sneered at the blindness of men whose vision was blinded by a pretty face. Edith, with a sad pride, told herself that above all things sincerity was the most precious, and that if Gloucester were to be hers, it must be of his own unbiased will. If he loved her--if he were even beginning to love her--Jean's beauty would leave him untouched. Every day one beheld ordinary-looking women wooed by men who had pa.s.sed by others infinitely more favoured, to seek them out. Beauty meant much, but it was not all. The mystic tie of affinity in no way depended on its presence. Robert and Jean were bound to meet during the next few weeks; her own influence should be used to make those meetings more frequent, rather than less. She would condescend to no scheming to attain what was worth having only if it came as a free-will gift.

When she spoke again it was to invite Jean and her friend to dinner the next evening.

"We are expecting some of Robert's old friends, and we need you two girls to balance numbers. You must come!"

Jean hesitated. She had just decided to refuse all invitations; but this was put in the light of a favour, which it would seem discourteous to refuse. Besides, Vanna had seemed interested in Robert Gloucester.

She must consider poor, dear Vanna!

"You are sure you want us? Really? It seems so soon to come again. If any of the men drop out, be sure to let us know. We shall quite understand," she replied, a.s.suaging her conscience with this loophole of escape, and Edith rose to say good-bye, smiling another difficult smile.

It was Jean's usual custom to accompany her friend downstairs at the end of each visit, linking arms, and standing long in the hall as one item of news after another presented itself for discussion; but to-day she rang the bell for a maid, and made her adieux at the drawing-room door; the most careless and perfunctory of adieux to the man, to the girl a kiss, and an eloquent grip of the hand. Edith was her friend, a friend of years' standing; and Jean, for all her flirtatious nature, was loyal to her s.e.x. The last thing she would wish to do would be to annex another girl's lover. Nevertheless it was with a sigh and an unusual sense of depression that she re-entered the drawing-room. Vanna was standing by the sofa in the corner, looking down on the carved oak table. Jean's eyes followed hers, and her heart gave a sudden, startling leap. The bowl of roses was untouched, but the table was bare, the faded bud had disappeared!

CHAPTER FIVE.

JEAN RUNS AWAY.

The next day Jean displayed an inexplicable unwillingness to accept Edith Morton's invitation to dinner. All morning she affected to expect a letter announcing a cancelling of the plan. When afternoon came and no letter arrived, she fell back upon the usual feminine subterfuge.

"I think," she announced thoughtfully, "I'm almost sure, I have a headache!"

The two girls were seated alone in the upstairs boudoir, and anything less suffering than Jean's appearance would have been difficult to imagine. Vanna smiled, and put an incredulous question:

"Poor, puzzled darling. It is trying for you. How do you manage to decide these knotty points?"

For answer Jean ducked her head, and shook it violently from side to side. This singular process over, she raised a flushed, sparkling face, and p.r.o.nounced slowly:

"Yes, it does; I can feel it. I can always tell when I do that."

Vanna's clear laugh rang out mockingly. To one who knew what it was to suffer from prostrating headache, which made it impossible to move, to speak, almost to breathe, the sight of Jean's ducked, shaking head was irresistibly comic. She brushed aside the frail pretence.

"My dear, it's no use. I see through you. Better confess at once. You don't want to go. Why?"

Jean looked at her in silence. Her eyes dilated, the colour paled on the rounded cheeks. It was pretence no longer, but real unaffected earnest.

"Vanna, he frightens me--that Robert Gloucester! He behaved like, like they do, you know--at the end. It's absurd, at the very first meeting.

He couldn't possibly--_care_! I don't want to meet him again."

"You didn't like him, then?"

"Oh, yes, I did. Dreadfully. That's just why--"

"Enigma! Will you graciously explain?"

"Edith!" said Jean, in a low voice, almost a whisper. It seemed treacherous to speak of Edith's secret, but Vanna was as another self, to whom so far every thought had been confessed, and she was the most loyal of confidantes. Besides, if Robert Gloucester were to be successfully avoided, Vanna's co-operation would be needed.

"I am sure Edith cares for him, and if she does, she has had such a long, long wait. Imagine how it would feel, to love a man with those eyes, and wait alone at the other end of the world for six long years!

It would make me wretched to spoil Edith's happiness; but if he came often, and looked at me like that, I--I should look back, Vanna, I know I should. I might make all the resolutions in the world, but they wouldn't last. I'm a born flirt. It's shocking, but it's true; therefore you perceive there's only one thing for it--to avoid temptation. You must go alone to-night, and say that I'm ill."

"Which would bring Edith round post-haste to-morrow morning, accompanied by her guest. You must think of a better excuse than that if you really wish to avoid him, my dear," replied Vanna derisively.

There was no contradicting this statement, for Jean was one of those rare and blessed mortals who did not know the meaning of illness. As a child she had romped gaily through the list of juvenile ailments, thereafter for a dozen years she had bloomed in radiant flower-like health, without a single day's illness, or a nearer approach to pain than a headache whose reality had to be diagnosed in the novel manner already described. To announce herself too unwell to keep a social engagement would indeed arouse alarmed attention. She mused in silence for several moments then said slowly:

"Yes! quite true! I should have to stay in bed, and that would be too boring. I couldn't immolate myself to that extent even for Edith.

Vanna, what do you say to running off to the country to-morrow--you and I? Miggles is there already, getting ready the house. Theoretically she would chaperone us, practically we would bully her, and make her do whatever we liked. You are not keen on festivities just now, and the season will soon be over. I shouldn't mind giving up the few things that remain. We'd have lovely times together, and lead the simple life, and drink milk, and go to bed early, and give our poor tired hair a rest. It would be fun, wouldn't it, dear? Say you would like it too!"

Vanna looked thoughtfully at the lovely face. Jean was in earnest; and to one of her warmhearted, impulsive nature to be in earnest meant to be content with no half measures, but to insist upon wholesale surrender.

It would be useless to protest, and indeed she had no wish to do so.

Jean's flight would not avail; the fates had decreed that she and Robert Gloucester should meet, and would not be coerced from their plan--of that she was quietly convinced; at the same time, she felt a keen sympathy with the shattering of Edith's romance, and was content that Jean should put herself beyond the reach of blame.

"Oh, yes, I'd love to go," she replied. "It will be delightful to have you all to myself, and I'm in no mood for functions. But are you quite sure you won't be bored? You won't find it too lonely?"

"Oh, well!" replied Jean, laughing. "Incidentally, there is Piers Rendall! He went down last week to fish, and to cheer his mother. He shall cheer us, too. Well, then, it's all settled. You'll go alone to-night, and to-morrow morning bright and early we'll set off for the sea. I wish I had not bought that white dress..."

So it was arranged, and at eight o'clock that evening, Vanna entered Mrs Morton's drawing-room alone, and saw a shadow fall over Robert Gloucester's face, while Edith listened to the offered explanations with a surprise from which she loyally strove to banish any trace of relief.

A shy girl of sixteen was summoned from the schoolroom to fill the vacant place at the table, and, putting aside his own disappointment, Gloucester insisted upon claiming her as his own partner, and kept her happy and amused throughout the meal. In the drawing-room his laugh was as cheery and content as if he had never known a care, and Vanna noticed that in a tactful, un.o.btrusive fashion he performed many of the duties overlooked by the host of the evening. It was he who observed that the draught from an open window was too strong for a delicate guest; he who turned aside from a laughing group to speak to the solitary occupant of a sofa; he who started an interesting topic of conversation, when the old showed signs of wearing thin; and the Mortons, old and young, regarded him with glowing eyes and punctuated their sentences with "Robert says," "Robert thinks," as though his opinion was sufficient to settle the most knotty point.

It was towards the end of the evening, when Vanna had her first quiet word with the hero of the occasion.