The Phantom Lover Part 61

A long moment of silence followed Micky's broken confession. He dared not look at Esther, though she was staring at him, staring hard, with a curious sort of wonderment in her grey eyes. Then all at once she began to laugh, a laugh which held no real mirth, only incredulity.

Micky raised his head sharply.

For a second they stared at one another; then Micky said hoa.r.s.ely--

"You don't believe me"; and then again, more slowly: "You mean that you--don't believe--me?"

He half rose to his feet.

"Esther, I implore you."

She moved back from him.

"It was clever of you--to think of such an excuse," she said unevenly.

"It's the truth; I swear it if I never speak again. I know now that I must have been out of my mind to attempt such a thing, but it has only seemed impossible since you showed me how little you thought of me. I wrote those letters--every one of them. I----"

In the excitement of the moment neither of them had noticed that the train had reached its destination and was slowly stopping.

A voluble porter had already wrenched open the door and was imploring monsieur to accept his services; it was impossible to say any more to Esther.

Micky followed her out on to the platform; he felt that the last shred of his patience and tenderness had been killed.

She did not believe him--whatever he said she would never believe him; it was useless to waste his breath; he might as well give up and let her go her own way; perhaps a sharp lesson would teach her better and more quickly than all his love had been able to do.

He was dispirited and hungry, and hunger alone makes a man angry. He looked at the girl for whose sake he had raced all these miles of wild-goose chase, and a boorish longing to hurt her, to let her suffer rose in his heart.

Let her go to Ashton and see for herself the sort of man he was.

He spoke with savage impulse.

"I won't bother you with my unwelcome company any longer. You will be able to get breakfast in the restaurant, and you will find that most people here understand English.... Good-bye----"

Esther gave a little gasp--

"You're not going to leave me?"

The hardness of his eyes did not soften.

"You are not trying to tell me that you wish me to stay, surely?" he submitted drily.

She raised her head.

"Certainly not; after all, it's your own fault you came."

He did not answer, perhaps he could not trust himself; he raised his hat and turned away unseeingly, and Esther clutched her suit-case tightly and walked away with her head in the air, trying to look as if she knew every inch of the Gare St. Lazare and had been there thousands of times before.

But her heart was beating up in her throat, and she would have given a great deal, had it been compatible with dignity, to rush after him and beg him to stay.

She wandered out of the station, not knowing where to go, Raymond seemed to have faded into the background; she only thought of him subconsciously; it was the figure of Micky Mellowes that worried her--she could not forget him.

Supposing he had really written those letters? "But he didn't," she told herself in an agony. "I know he didn't."

She took one of the letters from her suit-case and stared at the handwriting--Raymond's writing. The whole thing was too preposterous.

She did not know what she meant to do, or where she meant to go; it no longer seemed that she had come here for any specific purpose.

The early morning greyness and chilliness had faded; the sun had risen and cleared away the mists.

She found herself in some gardens where an elderly man was feeding sparrows; she sat down on a bench and watched him.

It seemed years ago that she went down to Enmore with June--since she sat in the little inn with Micky and heard those two men talking.

The hot blood beat into her cheeks as she remembered something that for the moment she had forgotten--that Raymond Ashton was married!

The man gave the sparrows his last crumbs and went away. The little brown birds came hopping to Esther's feet, looking up at her with bright, eager eyes, as if expecting her to supply a further meal.

The sun faded and went in, and a few drops of rain came pattering down. She rose and began to walk on slowly. The light suit-case seemed to have grown heavy since yesterday.

At the back of her mind was the frightened knowledge that she was alone in Paris; that she had n.o.body to turn to now that Micky had deserted her; but as yet it was only in the background. Raymond was somewhere, perhaps quite close; but she no longer felt that she wanted to go to him.

Further on she found another bench sheltered under some trees and sat down again; she opened the suit-case and took out a bundle of Micky's letters ... Micky's! No, Raymond's.... Oh, whose letters were they?

She opened the one that had been written from the hotel in Paris. Its fond words seemed to take on a new meaning....

"Some day, if all that I wish for comes true, I will tell you the many things you would not let me say when we were last together...."

The one sentence caught her eye. She wondered that she had never before thought how unlike Raymond this was. Why was it she had not realised before that Raymond could never have written this?

Somewhere in the distance a church clock chimed; Esther found herself mechanically counting the bells--nine, ten, eleven! All those hours since Micky had left her at the station.

She was cold and hungry, but it did not seem to matter; she felt there was a great, unanswered question in her mind which she must settle.

She rose and walked on again; she turned out of the gardens and found herself in a street of shops. People looked at her curiously.

Hardly knowing that she did so, she stopped and looked in at a jeweller's window; there were trays of precious stones. She felt her own ring beneath the glove--she had worn it so long now, she wondered how she would feel when she had to take it off. Of course, she could not go on wearing it if Raymond was really married.

Micky had once gone into a pond on a bitter night to save a kitten from drowning; she wondered what made her remember that.

The man who could save a drowning kitten would never hurt a woman so that she could hardly think or feel; June had claimed for Micky that he was the best man in the world.

"But I don't believe in him--I don't believe anything he says," Esther told herself feverishly; she moved on again away from the trays of flashing diamonds.

Two girls pa.s.sing her were chattering in French--Esther looked after them vaguely.

This was really Paris--this rather noisy, confusing place; the Paris she had longed to see.