The Halo Part 54

"Yes. Does a man change in a week? You are a child. Now tell me what you have come for--if you have any object other than your usual one of seeing how much I can endure, and then--go. I am strong, and you cannot make me change my mind, and I--I despise you for trying to make of me--the--_thing_ I was at one time. But I am not made of stone, and you hurt me--almost too much."

His voice was very even and low-pitched, but she shrank back in her corner and hastened to answer.

"You wrong me. I have not come to tempt you. I have come--to tell you that nothing in the world nor out of it can induce me to marry Theo."

"You will not----"

"No, I will not marry him."

Papillon, who had unearthed a long-cherished bone in a dark corner under a Dutch cabinet, dragged his treasure across the floor and laid it at his master's feet with a pleased growl.

"You will not marry Theo?"

"No."

She had risen, and the two faced each other defiantly, while the little dog between them wagged his tail with joy.

"Why?" asked Joyselle sharply.

"Because--I cannot. I have dawdled and dallied, and refused to face things long enough. Now I see that the worst crime I could commit against him would be to marry him. I love you. Whether you love me or not, I love you, and I always shall. And I ask you as a great favour to tell Theo for me that I cannot marry him."

"But what are you going to do?"

His voice trembled and he spoke very slowly.

"I am--going away. I don't know where. To Italy, probably, with the Lenskys. And I shall, I daresay, marry in the course of time."

"Whom are you going to marry?" he cried furiously, forgetting that she had just said that she loved him, and mad with jealousy.

She laughed. "_Qui sait?_ I don't. Possibly Lord Pontefract--he has just come back from the Andes--possibly someone whom--you do not know."

"Then," returned Joyselle very quietly, "I will kill him."

And she could have laughed aloud.

"You will tell Theo?" she asked, picking up her gloves.

"No, I will not. I cannot. And you shall not go. Or, yes--Brigit--you shall go--with me. If you will not marry him, then there is nothing between us. I have fought, I have done my best, but I can bear no more.

We will go, you and I----"

Catching her in his arms he held her close, whispering incoherent, broken words in her ear, while the little yellow dog, thinking it was a game, snapped playfully at her trailing skirts.

"You will go with me, my woman? You and I alone, all alone? For ever and ever and ever?"

And putting her arms round his neck she answered, "Yes, I will go with you. For ever."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Brigit Mead did not go to bed at all that night. All night she worked in her little flat making her plans, packing, and writing letters.

She had burnt her boats and the relief was great. Having broken with her mother, there was no need for her to write to Kingsmead. To Tommy she sent a note, saying that she was going away, but would write soon and explain.

To Pam Lensky she wrote a rather long letter, for there were some few things she wanted made clear.

"Dear Pam,"--she began abruptly--"I am going away with Victor Joyselle. I wonder if you will blame me? In case you do, here is my only defence. I hate my present life, I am miserable without Joyselle, and he is miserable without me. My mother, with whom I have been on fairly decent terms since Tommy has been ill, is hopeless. Gerald Carron shot himself to-day, and mother, just, I honestly believe, to indulge her own taste for sentimental scenes, turned on me about him and pretended to believe a story he told her just before I left Pont Street--that I was Joyselle's mistress, in fact. If she believed the story I would forgive her, though it is not true, but I cannot forgive the kind of mind that can amuse itself with such vulgar melodrama. I have always disliked my mother, and now I simply cannot bear her any longer.

"And I have no other ties except Tommy. Tommy, to whom I shall write before long, is nearly well. He will be forbidden to come to see me, but he will come, and I do not think it will hurt him.

"As to Theo, Pam, I am deeply grieved. He is a remarkably nice young man, but I cannot marry him, and the mere fact of his father's loving me will not much hurt him. Whatever his father does, Theo in the long run thinks right, and he, too, will forgive us.

"Then there is poor Felicite. She has been very kind to me, but she has been stupid and over-self-confident, and I cannot consider her. I must consider him. She will suffer and I am indeed sorry, poor soul, but he--he shall be happy. So good-bye, Pam. Remember your own father and mother, and understand. We go to Paris by the eleven o'clock train to-morrow, and thence--to Arcadia, as your people used to say. My love to you. "Brigit."

Re-reading this letter, which she was far too self-engrossed to consider selfish, Brigit addressed it.

Then she looked over her clothes, packed them in three boxes, one of which she labelled, "To be called for," the other two of which were to go with her.

It was long after one when she had finished her work and sat down to rest. She was not tired, nor did she feel any special excitement. It had happened, that was all, and it seemed to her that she had always foreseen this night, with its letter writing and packing.

To-morrow at this time they, she and Victor, would be in Paris. And then they would go--where-ever he chose. She did not care.

And, although she did not know it, this unformulated mental att.i.tude was the first sign in her of any approach to an unselfish love.

Through the long hours she sat in her brilliantly lighted little sitting-room, waiting for day. At five o'clock she switched off the electricity and opened the blinds. A wan light came in.

"It is day. It is _to-day_," she told herself aloud, her beautiful mouth quivering with happiness. "In four hours he will come."

She made herself a cup of tea and then lay down on the sofa where her mother had lain the day before, and went to sleep.

She dreamed that she stood in a sloping, very green meadow; in the distance a flock of dingy sheep browsed, and some invisible person was playing a pipe! "_Il etait une bergere he ron, ron, ron_,"--it was the nursery song Joyselle had played to Tommy when the little boy was ill.

She smiled and moved her head.

Then suddenly she was awake, and Theo stood before her. "Brigit," he said quietly, "my mother is dead. Will you come to father?"

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Felicite had died in her sleep beside her husband. An hour before he had waked, and, lying quietly by her, thinking no doubt of the woman for whom he was going to desert her, he had by chance touched her hand as it lay on the counterpane, with the shabby black rosary in it, and--the hand was cold.

They had not called a doctor, for there was no doubt that she was dead, and she had hated doctors. She had been very happy the day before, and in the evening she had asked Joyselle to play to her, a thing she very rarely did. He had played, they had drunk some Norman cider, and gone to bed early.