The Imaginary Marriage Part 48

"I--I don't think I shall go to-day, Gipsy. Shall we go for a walk across the fields?"

"You ought to go to Starden," she said. "She--she will expect you."

But a spirit of reckless defiance had come to him.

"She won't miss me if I don't go."

"No, she won't miss you," the girl said softly, and her voice shook.

"So--so come with me, Gipsy girl."

"If you wish it."

"You know I do."

Yet when they went together across the fields, when they came to the edge of the hop-garden and saw the neatly trailing vines, which this year looked better and more promising than he could ever remember before, they had nothing to say to one another, not a word. Once he took her hand and held it for a moment, then let it go again; and at the touch of her he thrilled, little dreaming how her heart responded.

He scarcely looked at her. If he had, he might have seen a glow in her cheeks, a brightness in her eyes, the brightness born of a new and wonderful hope.

"After all, after all," the girl was thinking. "I believe he cares for me a little--not so much as he loves her, but a little, a little, and I love him."

Connie smiled on them as they came in together. It was as she liked to see them. She noticed the deep colouring in the girl's cheeks, the new brightness in her eyes, and Connie, who always acted on generous impulses, kissed her.

"What's that for?" Johnny cried. "Haven't you one for me too, Con?"

"Always, always," she said. She put her arms about his neck and hugged him.

It seemed as if the clouds that had so long overcast this little house had drifted away this calm Sabbath day, and the sun was shining down gloriously on them.

For some time Connie had been quietly watching the girl. There came back into her memory a promise given long ago. "I will do nothing, nothing, Con, unless I tell you first."

She knew Ellice for the soul of honour; she had felt safe, and now she was waiting.

"Well, Ellice, have you anything to say to me?" Johnny was gone after dinner to his tiny study to wrestle with letters and figures that he abhorred.

"Yes," Ellice said.

"I thought you had--well?"

"I am going to Starden," the girl said. "I am going to Starden this afternoon, Con."

"What for?"

"To see--her?"

"Why--why, darling, why?"

"To ask her if she can be generous--and oh, I believe she can--to ask her why she is taking him away from me when I love him so, and when--oh, Con--Con, when I believe that he cares a little for me."

Con held out her arms, she caught the girl tightly.

"My love and my prayers and my wishes will go with you, darling."

CHAPTER XLII

"WALLS WE CANNOT BATTER DOWN"

"Why?" Helen asked. "Why isn't Johnny here to-day, Joan?"

"I do not know," Joan said. She had scarcely given a thought to Johnny Everard that morning. All her thoughts had been of two men, the men she had left in the darkness by the roadside. She blamed herself bitterly now that she had left them; she trembled to think what might have happened.

"Helen, if Johnny Everard does come, I wish to speak to him. I have a good deal to say to him. I want to be alone with him for some time."

"Of course, darling." But there was anxious enquiry in Helen's face.

Surely, surely there had been no quarrel between them? Johnny was not one to quarrel with anyone, yet it was strange that he had not been here for so many days, and that this being Sunday still he was not here.

"When he comes," Joan was thinking, "I shall tell him--everything." She knew she would hate it; she knew that she would feel that in some way she was lowering herself. It would be a horrible confession for one with her stubborn pride to have to make. Not of guilt and wrongdoing, but that such should be ascribed to her.

Helen was watching from the window, her mind filled with worries and doubts.

A man had turned in by the gates, was walking slowly up the winding drive.

It was Johnny, of course. Helen saw it all. The car had gone wrong, but Johnny, not to miss this Sunday, had walked.

"Joan, Johnny is coming," she called out. "He is walking. He--" She paused; it was not Johnny. She was silent; she stared for a moment. The man looked familiar, then she knew who it was.

"Joan, it is Mr. Alston," she said quietly. "What does he want here?"

And Helen's voice was filled with suspicion.

"Thank Heaven," Joan thought, "thank Heaven that he is here."

For the first time Hugh Alston knocked for admission on the Starden door. A score of times he had asked himself, "Shall I go?" And he could find no answer. He had come at last.

"What can he want? I did not know he was here in Starden. I didn't even know that he knew where Joan was. I don't understand this business at all," Helen was thinking.

A servant shewed him in. Joan shook hands with him. Helen did so, under an air of graciousness which hid a cold hostility. What was this man doing here? If he was nothing to Joan, and Joan was nothing to him, why did he come? And how could he be anything to Joan when she was to marry Johnny?

So this was her home! A fit setting for her loveliness, and yet he knew of a fitter, of another home where she could shine to even greater advantage. They talked of commonplace things, hiding their feelings behind words, waiting, Joan and Hugh, till Helen should leave them. But Helen lingered with less than her usual tact, lingered with a mind filled with vague suspicions, wondering why Johnny had not come.

Sitting near the window she could see the drive, and presently a young girl on an old bicycle coming up it. Helen stared.

"Why, here is Ellice Brand," she said, and fears took possession of her.

There was something wrong! Johnny was ill, or had met with an accident.

Ellice had ridden over to tell them.