The Imaginary Marriage Part 31

"He has ideas. I don't say that they are brilliant, but he gets the germ of a plan into his brain. And now I will tell you what he suggests about Partridge's cottage and land when the lease falls in."

Lady Linden proceeded to explain Tom Arundel's idea, and Marjorie sat and stared out into the garden and thought of Hugh.

Was he at Hurst Dormer now? If not, where was he? What was he doing?

What was he thinking about? Did he still love her, or had he fallen in love with Joan? And, if he had, would he marry Joan? and if not.

"So there you see, and what do you think of that?" asked Lady Linden, coming to the end of her remarks.

"I think it would be very nice!"

"Very nice!" Lady Linden snorted. "Very nice! What a feeble remark. My good Marjorie, do you take no intelligent interest in anything? Upon my word, now I come to look back I wonder at myself, I do indeed. I wonder at myself to think that a man like Hugh Alston, an intellectual, deep-thinking man, a man with common-sense and plenty of it--what was I saying? Oh yes, I wonder at myself for ever hoping or believing that a man like Hugh could fall in love with a silly little donkey like you.

And yet men do, even clever men--I've known several quite clever men fall in love with perfect fools of women. But I was wrong, and you are right. I see it now. Tom Arundel is the man for you; you are fitted for one another. He is not quite a fool, but you are. He's not clever enough to be annoyed by your folly. Hugh, on the other hand, would positively dislike you after a month. There! don't howl, for goodness' sake--don't snivel, child! Run away and play with your doll"

"Patience!" said Lady Linden, when her niece went out--"I have the patience of ten Jobs rolled into one. She's a good little soul, but an awful idiot! And bless my wig!" added her ladyship, who did not wear one, but her own luxuriant hair, "what's that hopeless idiot of a Perkins doing with those standard roses?" She sallied out, battle in her eyes, to tell Perkins, the under-gardener, something about the culture of roses, and incidentally to point out what her opinion of himself was in plain and straightforward language.

Meanwhile, Marjorie had hurried out. It was not true! She was not so stupid and so silly that Hugh could never have fallen in love with her.

Why, he had fallen in love with her! He had wanted her for his wife, and she--she in her blindness and her folly, in her stupidity, which her aunt had but now been flinging in her teeth, had not realised that he was the one man in her world, the only man, and that she loved him as never, never could she love Tom Arundel or anyone else.

The little ancient disreputable car had been repaired by Rodding, the village handyman, who by some conjuring trick had made it run again.

Marjorie started it.

She had made up her mind. She would go to Hurst Dormer, she would see Hugh and--and quite what she would do she did not know. Everything was on the knees of the G.o.ds, only she knew that she was very unhappy, a very miserable, unhappy, foolish girl, who had got what she had asked for, and found that she did not want it now she had it.

Piff, piff, paff, paff went the car, and Marjorie rolled off with a succession of jerks, leaving behind an odoriferous cloud of smoke and exhaust gases that lay like a blue mist along the drive, and presently made Lady Linden cough and speak in uncomplimentary terms of motoring and motorists generally.

On to Hurst Dormer Marjorie plugged, sad at heart, realising her folly.

"It is my fault," she felt miserably; "it is all my fault, and I am not fair to Tom. He doesn't understand me. I see him look at me sometimes, and I don't wonder at it. He doesn't understand me a bit; he has every right to--to think--I love him, and I don't--I don't. I love Hugh!"

It was an hour later that Marjorie put in an appearance at Hurst Dormer.

Hugh was there, and Hugh was in. It brought relief. She wanted to cry with the relief she felt.

Over the tea-table, where she poured out the tea from the old silver Anne teapot, she looked at him, and saw many changes that one not loving him, as she knew she did now, might have missed. The cheery frank smile was there yet, but it had lost much of its happiness. His eyes were no less kind, but they had a tired look about them, a wistful look. Oh, that she might cheat herself into believing that their wistfulness was for her! But Marjorie was not the little fool her aunt called her. She was a woman, and was gifted with a woman's understanding.

"He does not love me now, not as he did. I had my chance, and I said no, and now--now it is gone for ever."

And he, leaning back in his chair, watched her pouring out the tea as he had a few days ago watched another pouring out tea in a London hotel.

The sight of Joan performing that domestic duty had brought to him then a vision of this same old room, this very old teapot, that his mother had used. And now, seeing Marjorie here, pouring out the tea, the only vision, the only remembrance that it brought to him was the memory of another girl pouring out tea in a London hotel.

"Hugh, have you seen her--Joan?"

He started--started at the sound of the name that was forever in his thoughts.

"Yes, dear," he said simply, for why should he lie to this child?

"Oh!" she said. "Oh, and--and Hugh, she and you--" She paused, she held her face down that he might not see it.

"Joan Meredyth," he said slowly, "and I met in Town a few days ago. She told me then, that she is engaged to be married."

"Oh!" Marjorie said, and her heart leaped with a new-born hope.

"And I," Hugh went on, "am worried and anxious about her."

"Hugh!"

"I can't worry you, little girl. It is nothing in which you could help; it is my fault, my folly!"

"Mine!" she said.

"No, it is mine. The whole idea was mine; I shoulder the blame of it all. It has succeeded in what we attempted. You are all right, you and Tom. I've made a lovely mess of everything else. But that does not matter so much. What we wanted, we won, eh?" He smiled at her, little dreaming that she had only won dead-sea fruit.

"Why are you worried and anxious about Joan?"

"I am not going to tell you, dear. I can't very well. Besides, you couldn't help. You are happy, you are all right. Tom is in high favour with her ladyship, so that's good, and you--you and Tom are happy, eh?"

"Yes," she said miserably.

"He's a good fellow, Marjorie. Make allowances for him. He'll need 'em, he's no angel; but he means well, and he's a good clean, honest man, is Tom Arundel, and you'll be a happy girl when you are his wife; please G.o.d!" he added, and put his hand on her shoulder, and did not notice that she was weeping silently.

He drove her back to Cornbridge in the moonlight, and left her at the gates of the Manor House. "Little girl," he said, "in this life there's a good deal of give and take. Don't expect too much, and don't be hurt if you don't get everything that you ask for. Remember this--I--I cared for you very much." "Cared!" she thought. "Cared?" He spoke in the past--Cared!"

"But I gave you up because you loved another man; you loved a man more worthy than I am. I wouldn't have stood aside if I had felt that the other man was not good enough, that he was a waster and would not make you happy; but I knew Tom better than that. Stick to him, don't ask for too much. Believe always that he loves you, and that he is built of the stuff that keeps straight and true, and so, G.o.d bless you, dear!"

He kissed her frankly as a brother might, and sat there watching her up the drive to the house. He did not guess that when she gained the house she slipped in by a garden door and ran up to her own room to indulge in that relief that a woman may ever find when the grief is not too black and too bitter, the relief of tears.

"I am worried about her," Hugh thought to himself; but "her" to him meant Joan, not Marjorie.

When he said, "I am worried about her," he meant that he was worried about Joan. If he said, "She would have liked this," "She" would mean Joan.

"I am worried about her and that blackguard Slotman," he thought. "There is something about that man--snake--toad--something uncanny. She's there; she has money and he's out for money. If I can sit here and tell myself that I have scared Slotman from offending and annoying her again, I am an idiot. When there's money to be gained, a man like Slotman will want a lot of scaring off it."

A week had pa.s.sed since Marjorie's visit.

Hugh sent for his housekeeper, Mrs. Morrisey.

"Mrs. Morrisey, I am going to London."

"Oh, Mr. Alston, when the men are--"

"The men are all right. I have to go to London on business."

"Very queer and restless he's been," Mrs. Morrisey thought. "I never known him like it before. When I thought he was in love with that pretty little Miss Linden and wanting to marry her, he was not a bit like he is now. He kept cheerful and smiling, and now; forever on the move. No sooner does he get here than back to London he wants to go."

"Shall you be away for long, sir?"

"I don't know," said Hugh. "Perhaps; perhaps not, I can't say."