To Love Part 27

She studied the other's face. "There," she added impulsively, "if you don't feel like it you shan't be made to do it. Bother Daddy Brown and his feelings. You stay here quiet and let us all get away; we will be walking over to the 'Queen's,' you see, then you can slip out after we have gone and cut home on your own. I will tell Brown you are over-wrought after the show, it is quite natural you should be."

"Yes," admitted Joan; she hesitated on her way out, for the call boy had just run down the pa.s.sage shouting her name, "and, f.a.n.n.y, if he is there"--she met the other girl's eyes just for a moment--"take him along with you, will you? I--I am afraid of meeting him to-night."

Joan caught d.i.c.k's eyes just for a second before she began her first song, but she was careful not to look his way again. For the rest she moved and acted in a dream, not conscious of the theatre or the audience. Yet she knew she must be playing her part pa.s.sably well, for Strachan whispered to her at the end of the duet: "You are doing splendidly." And Brown himself was waiting to greet her with congratulations when she ran into the wings for a moment.

The heat of the theatre killed her violets; they were crushed and dead at the end of the second act, yet when she changed for the third she picked them up and pinned them in again. Franzi's part in the third act is very brief. She is called in to give evidence of the Prince's infidelity, and instead she persuades the Princess that her husband has always loved her. Then, as the happy pair kiss one another at the back of the stage, Franzi turns to the audience, taking them, as it were, into her confidence:

"Now love has come to me, I pray, That while I have the chance to, I still may have the heart to play A tune that you can dance to."

Joan's voice broke on the last line, the little sob on which she caught her breath was more effective than any carefully-thought-out tragedy.

With her eyes held by those other eyes in the audience she took the violets from her belt and held them, just for a second, to her lips.

Then they fell from her hands and she stood, her last farewell said, straight and silent, while the house shouted over what they considered to be a very fine piece of acting. They would have liked to have had her back to bow to them after the fall of the curtain, but Joan would not go, and f.a.n.n.y brought Brown to realize that if the girl were worried in any way she would probably wax hysterical.

"Fine acting," Brown kept repeating over and over again. Joan heard him vaguely. He was so impressed by it, however, that he sent for some champagne and insisted on their all drinking her health on the spot.

There, however, he was content to leave it, and presently the company slipped away, one after the other, and Joan and f.a.n.n.y were left alone.

"You really think you won't come on, honey?" f.a.n.n.y tried a final argument before she followed the others. "He has sent up his card, you know; he is waiting downstairs for you."

"I simply can't, f.a.n.n.y," Joan answered. "You go, like a dear, tell him anything you like; that I have gone on with Brown, or that I am coming later; only just persuade him to go away with you, that's all I ask."

f.a.n.n.y looked at her reflectively, but she did not say anything further, gathering her cloak round her and going from the room.

Joan waited till the place seemed silent and deserted save for the call boy's shrill whistle as he strolled round, locking up the various dressing-rooms. She did not want him to see her as she groped her way back to the front of the stage and stooped to feel in the dark for her bunch of violets. It was quite ridiculous, but she could not leave them to lie there all night and be swept into the rubbish-basket in the morning. It took her a minute or two, but at last her hands closed on them and she stood up and moved into the light just as he came dashing along the pa.s.sage.

"Hulloa," he called out to her, "you still here, miss? Everyone else has gone. You might have got shut in."

"I am just going myself," she answered; "and I knew you were here, Tommy; I heard you."

He followed her to the door and stood watching her along the street with curious eyes. To his mind it seemed strange that she should have stayed on after the others had gone. It betokened something that she wished to hide from prying eyes, and his were not satisfied till he saw a man's figure come forward out of the darkness and meet her.

"Thought as much," commented Tommy, the worldly-wise. "Gent of the violets, I suppose. Not likely they would be going to a crowded supper-party."

"I thought you were never coming," d.i.c.k was saying quickly to Joan.

"Miss Bellairs told me you weren't feeling very well and were going straight home. I was just s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up my courage to come upstairs and find out for myself what had happened to you."

So f.a.n.n.y had failed her. Joan, guessing the other's purpose, smiled ruthfully.

"I had a headache," she admitted, "and I could not face a supper-party.

I am so sorry you should have waited about, though; I had hoped you would go on with f.a.n.n.y."

"Hoped!" said d.i.c.k. "Did you think I would?"

They had turned in the direction of the girls' lodgings and were walking very fast. Joan set the pace, also she was rather obstinately silent.

d.i.c.k walked in silence, too, but for another reason. Clamorous words were in his heart; he did not wish to say them. Not yet, not here. Up in London, in her own place, when she would be free from the surroundings and trappings of theatrical life, he was going to ask her to marry him.

Till then, and since his heart would carry on in this ridiculous way because she was near him, there was nothing for it but silence.

At the door of the house, though, he found his tongue out of a desire to keep her with him a little longer.

"You played splendidly to-night," he said, holding her hand. "Were those my violets you kissed at the end?"

"Yes," she answered; the words were almost a whisper, she stood before him, eyes lowered, breathing a little fast as if afraid.

The spell of the night, the force of his own emotion shook d.i.c.k out of his self-control. The street was empty and dimly lit, the houses on either side shuttered and dark. The two of them were alone, and suddenly all his carefully thought-out plans went to the wind.

"Joan," he whispered. She was all desirable with her little fluttered breath, her eyes that fell from his, her soft, warm hand. "Joan!"

Joan lifted shut eyes and trembling lips to his; she made no protest as he drew her into his arms, his kiss lifted her for the time being into a heaven of great content. So they clung together for a breathing-s.p.a.ce, then Joan woke out of her dream and shuddered away from him, hiding her face in her hands.

"Oh, don't," she begged, "please, please don't!"

Her words, the very piteousness of her appeal, remembering all her circ.u.mstances, hurt d.i.c.k. "My dear," he said, "don't you understand; have I made you afraid? I love you; I have always loved you. I was going to have waited to ask you to marry me until next week when I came to you in town. But to-night, because I love you, because you are going away to-morrow, I couldn't keep sensible any longer. And anyway, Joan, what does it matter?--to-day or to-morrow, the question will always be the same. I love you, will you marry me, dear? No, wait." He saw her movement to answer. "I don't really want you to say anything now, I would rather wait till we meet in town next week. You are not angry with me, are you, Joan? You are not afraid of my love?"

But Joan could make no answer, only she turned from him and ran up the steps; the bunch of violets lay where she had dropped them when he caught her hands, but neither of them noticed it. He saw her face for a second against the lighted hall and a little to his dismay he could see that she was crying. Then she had gone and the door shut to behind her quickly.

d.i.c.k waited about for a little, but she made no sign, and finally he turned rather disconsolately away. One thought, however, was left to comfort him through the night, the memory of her soft, yielding hands, the glad surrender of her lips.

CHAPTER XXIV

"Ah, sweet, and we too, can we bring One sigh back, bid one smile revive?

Can G.o.d restore one ruined thing, Or he who slays our souls alive Make dead things thrive?"

A. C. SWINBURNE.

Early morning brought Joan a letter from d.i.c.k. She had hardly slept all night. Once she had got up, determined to write him; the truth would look more cold and formal in a letter, but her courage had failed her, and instead she had sat crouched over the table, her body shaken with a storm of tears. Then f.a.n.n.y had come in, an after-supper f.a.n.n.y, noisy and sentimental, and she had had to be helped to bed, coughing and explaining that "life was good if you only knew how to live it." Joan had crept back to her own bed once the other girl had fallen asleep, and she had lain with wide eyes watching the night turn from blackness to soft grey, from grey to clear, bright yellow. There were dark shadows round her eyes in the morning, and her face was white and strained-looking.

"DEAR HEART," d.i.c.k had written:

"Is it cheek to begin a letter like that to you? Only after last night I seem to know that you love me and that is all that really matters. I am coming to 6, Montague Square, on Tuesday afternoon at five o'clock to get my answer. Doesn't that sound precise? I would like to come to-day, but I won't because I don't want to hurry you. Oh, dear heart, I love you!--I have loved you for longer than you know of just at present. That is one of the things I am going to explain to you on Tuesday,

"Yours ever, "d.i.c.k GRANT."

f.a.n.n.y was much perturbed by Joan's appearance when she was sufficiently awake to notice it.

"My, honey, you do look bad," she gasped. "Daddy Brown will see I was talking the truth last night, which is a good thing in one way. He was most particularly anxious to see you last night, was very fussed when he found you hadn't come." She paused and studied Joan's face from under her lashes. "Did you meet him?" she inquired finally.

"Yes," Joan admitted; she turned away from the other's inquisitive eyes.

"He walked home with me."

"I told him you had a headache and were not coming to supper with us,"

f.a.n.n.y confessed. "It is no use being annoyed with me, honey. I thought it over and it seemed to me that by saying 'No' to him because of something that happened before he knew you, you were cutting off your nose to spite your face. Not that I personally should tell him," she added reflectively; "he is too straight himself to understand a woman doing wrong; but that is for you to decide. One thing I do know: it won't make a pin's worth of difference to his wanting to marry you; he is too much in love for that."

She was saying aloud the fear which had knocked at Joan's heart all night. It might be true that d.i.c.k was too much in love to let what she had to tell him stand between them. But afterwards, when love had had time to cool, when trust and good-fellowship would be called on to take the place of pa.s.sion, when he saw her, perhaps, with his child in her arms, how would he look at her then? Would he not remember and regret, would not a shadow stand between them, a shadow from the one sin which no man can forgive in a woman? She was like a creature brought to bay; he had guessed that she loved him; what arguments could she use, how stand firm in her denial against that knowledge?

For a little she had thought of the possibility of his taking her just as Gilbert had done. She was not worthy to be his wife, but she would be content, she knew, to follow him to the end of the world. Not because she viewed the matter now in the same light as she had done in those days. She had never loved Gilbert; if she had, shame and disgrace would have been powerless to drive her from his side, and she would have wanted him to marry her, just as now she wanted marriage with d.i.c.k. It seemed to her that, despite pioneers and rebels and the need for greater freedom, which she and girls like her had been fighting for, the initial fact remained and would always remain the same. When you loved you wanted to belong to the man absolutely and entirely; freedom counted for very little, you wanted to give him your life, you wanted to have the right to bear his children. That was what it all came down to in the end; Love was bigger and stronger than any ideas, and marriage had been built upon the law of Love.