The Guinea Stamp Part 57

Then the nervous restlessness which had taken possession of Gladys seemed to be quietened down, and she stood quite still on the hearth-rug, and her face was calm, but deadly pale.

'Shall we go before George comes up?' asked Mrs. Fordyce, involuntarily rising; but Gladys made answer, with a shade of imperious command,--

'No, I wish you to remain. Mina can go, if she likes.'

Mina had not the opportunity. A quick, eager footstep came hurrying up-stairs, and the door was thrown open with a careless hand.

'You here, Gladys?' he exclaimed, with all the eagerness and delight he might have been expected to display, but next moment the light died out of his face, and he knew that the bolt had fallen. Even those who blamed him most must have commiserated the man upon whom fell that lightning glance of unutterable loathing and contempt.

'I have sent for you to come here, because it was here I saw you first,'

she said, and her voice rang out clear and sweet as a bell. 'You know why I have sent for you?--to give you back these things, the sign of a bond which ought never to have been between us. How dared you--how dared you offer them to me, after your monstrous cruelty to that poor girl from whose death-bed I have just come?'

She threw the rings down upon the table; they rolled to the floor, sparkling as if in mockery as they went, but none offered to touch them.

Mina opened the door hurriedly, and left the room. Mrs. Fordyce turned away also, and a sob broke from her lips.

Gladys stood quite erect, the linen at her stately throat not whiter than her face, her clear eyes, brilliant with indignation, fixed mercilessly on her lover's changing face. He was, indeed, a creature to be pitied even more than despised.

'Gladys, for G.o.d's sake, don't be too hasty! Give me opportunity for explanation. I admit that I did wrong, but there are extenuating circ.u.mstances. Let me explain, I entreat you, before you thus blight my life, and your own.'

'What explanation is there to give? If it is true that you ruined that poor girl,--and do you think that a lie can be uttered on a death-bed,--what more is there to say? Gather up these baubles, and take them away.'

Her bearing was that of a queen. Well might he shrink under that matchless scorn, yet never had she appeared more beautiful, more desirable in his eyes. He made one more attempt.

'Take time, Gladys. I deny nothing; I only ask to be allowed to show you, at least, that I am a repentant man, and that I will atone for all the past by a lifetime of devotion.'

'To whom?'

'To you. I have been a wild, foolish, sinful fellow, if you like, but never wholly bad,' he said eagerly. 'And, Gladys, think of the fearful scandal this will be. We dare not break off the marriage, when it is so near.'

'I dare; I dare anything, George Fordyce. And I pray G.o.d to forgive you the awful wrong you did to that poor girl, and the insult you were base enough to offer me in asking me to be your wife--an insult, I fear, I can never forgive.'

'Aunt Isabel, will you not help me?' said he then, turning desperately to his aunt. 'Tell Gladys what you know to be true, that there are hundreds of men in this and other cities who have married girls as pure and good as Gladys, and whose life before marriage would not bear investigation, yet they make the best of husbands. Tell her that she is making a mountain out of little, and that it will be madness to break off the marriage at this late date.'

Mrs. Fordyce slowly turned towards them. The tears were streaming down her face, but she only sadly shook her head.

'I cannot, George. Gladys is right. You had better go.'

Then George Fordyce, with a malignant scowl on his face, put his heel on the bauble which had cost him a hundred guineas, crushed it into powder, and flung himself out of the room. Then Gladys, with a low, faint, shuddering cry, threw herself upon the couch, and gave way to the floodtide of her grief and humiliation and angry pain.

Mrs. Fordyce wisely allowed it to have full vent, but at last she seated herself by the couch, and laid her hand on the girl's flushed and heated head.

'Now, my dear, be calm. It is all over. You will be better soon, my poor, dear, darling child.'

Gladys sat up, and her wet eyes met those of her kind friend, who had allowed her upright and womanly heart to take the right, if the unworldly side.

'Just think how merciful it was of G.o.d to let me know in time. In a few weeks I should have been his wife, and then it would have been terrible.'

'It would,' said Mrs. Fordyce, with a sigh; 'but you would just have had to bury it, and live on, as many other women have to do, with such skeletons in the cupboard.'

'I don't suppose I should have died, but I should have lived the rest of my life apart from him. Is it true what he says, that so many are bad? I cannot believe it.'

'Nor do I. There are some, I know, who have had an unworthy past, but you must remember that all women do not look at moral questions from your exalted standpoint. There are even girls, like Julia, for instance, who admire men who are a little fast.'

'How dreadful! That must lower the morality of men. It shall never be said of me. If I cannot marry a man who entertains a high and reverent ideal of manhood and womanhood, I shall die as I am.'

'He will be difficult to find, my dear,' said Mrs. Fordyce sadly. 'This is a melancholy end to all our high hopes and ambitions. It will be a frightful blow to them at Pollokshields.'

'I am not sorry for them. They will think only of what the world will say, and will never give poor Lizzie one kindly thought. If it is a blow, they deserve it; I am not sorry for them at all.'

'And you are not in the least disconcerted at the nine days' wonder the breaking of your engagement will make?'

'Not in the least. What is it, after all? The buzzing of a few idle flies. I have no room for anything in my heart but a vast pity for the poor dead girl who was more sinned against than sinning, and a profound thankfulness to G.o.d for His unspeakable mercy to me.'

She spoke the truth; and in her own home that night, upon her knees, she poured forth her heart in fervent prayer, and mingling with her many strange feelings was a strange and unutterable sense of relief, because she was once more free.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE WORLD WELL LOST.

Gladys returned to her own home that night, and when she again left it it was in altered and happy circ.u.mstances. Those who loved her so dearly watched over her the next days with a tender and solicitous concern, but they did not see much, in her outward demeanour at least, to give them cause for alarm. She was certainly graver, preoccupied, and rather sad; but, again, her natural gaiety would over-flow more spontaneously than it had done for long, thus showing that pride and womanly feeling had been wounded; the heart was perfectly whole.

She lived out of doors during the splendid September weather, taking an abounding interest in all the harvest-work, finding comfort and healing in simple things and homely pleasures, and feeling that never while she lived did she wish to set foot in Glasgow again. There was only one tie to bind her to it--one spot beneath its heavy sky dear to her; how much and how often her thoughts were concentrated upon that lowly place none knew save herself.

Since that melancholy morning in the ward of the Royal Infirmary she had not heard of or seen Walter, but she knew in her inmost heart that she should see him, and waited for it with a strange restfulness of heart, therefore it was no surprise to her when he came one sunny evening up the avenue to the house. She saw him coming, and ran out to meet him--something in the old childish fashion--with a look of eager welcome on her face. His dark face flushed at her coming, and he gave his head a swift turn away, and swallowed something in his throat. When they met he was grave, courteous, but a trifle distant; she was quick to note the change.

'I knew you would come to see me again, Walter,' she said, as they shook hands with the undemonstrative cordiality of tried friends. 'I am very glad to see you.'

'Are you? Yet it was a toss-up with me whether I should come or not,' he said, looking at the graceful figure, and noticing with some wonder that she was all in black, relieved only by the silver belt confining her silk blouse at the waist; 'but I thought I had better come and say good-bye.'

'Good-bye! Are you going away, then, somewhere?' she asked in a quiet, still voice, which betrayed nothing.

'Yes; I have taken my pa.s.sage to Australia for the fourteenth of October, sailing from London. I leave on Monday, however, for I have some things to see to in London.'

'On Monday? And does your mother accompany you?'

'No; she is too old for such an undertaking. I have arranged for her to board with a family in the country. She has been there some weeks now, ever since I sold off, and likes it very much. It is better for me to go alone.'

'I suppose so. Are you tired with your walk, Walter, or can you go on a little farther? It is a shame that you have never seen anything of Bourhill. Surely you will at least sleep here to-night? or must you run away again by the nine-fifteen?'

'I can stay, since you are good enough to wish it,' he said a trifle formally; 'and you know I shall be only too happy to walk anywhere you like with you.'

'How accommodating!' said Gladys, with a faint touch of ironical humour.