The Phantom Lover Part 73

"If you were to hear that I'm married, you wouldn't be surprised, would you?" he asked with a rush.

Driver stood immovable.

"Not in the least, sir."

"You would even say that you knew that I've been married some weeks, wouldn't you?"

"I should, sir."

"Good--you may go."

"Thank you, sir, and good-night."

"Good-night," said Micky.

And now, what was to be done now?

When he left this room three hours ago it had been with the determination to put the past behind him for ever, and what had he done? Only walked more deeply into his quixotism and seriously compromised the woman he loved.

He had said that she was his wife. It gave him a little thrill to remember that a dozen of his acquaintances had heard him say it, and were probably even now spreading the story of his marriage far and wide.

He paced up and down the room. He had failed all round; even love and desperate desire had not been able to help him.

He thought suddenly of June; June who, with all her bluntness, had a great heart and a deep understanding.

She would not want explanations; she would know why he had done it, and sympathise.

But June was obviously not the one concerned. It was not to June that he must confess.

The clock in his room struck twelve; too late to do anything to-night.

The memory of Marie returned--Marie as she had looked when he found her in the drawing-room that night; as she had looked when he had left her in the little anteroom at the Hoopers' and gone out with murder in his heart to find Ashton.

He stopped dead in his pacing.

"Oh, you cad--you cad!" he said with a groan.

Life was an intolerable, purposeless thing. He sat down at his desk and leaned his head in his hands. His whole life seemed to spell failure. With sudden impulse he seized a pen and began to write.

For the first few moments he hardly knew what he wrote. It was only when he reached the end of the first page that he seemed to realise with a start what he had done. He looked back at the written lines with something of a shock. There was no beginning to the letter, no date or address; it simply started off as if the pen had been guided by some influence outside himself, some desperate need.

"I don't know what you will think when you get this letter. I am writing it because to-night I think I am half mad. I love you so much; there seems nothing in the whole world that counts any more now that I am beginning to understand that I can never have you.

Esther, I ask you on my knees to listen to what I have to say. I have tried to keep away from you, to forget you; I've tried to put you out of my heart and persuade myself that I do not care--but it's no use. I love you; I know you care something for me, but I shall love you always. To-night I have done an unpardonable thing for your sake. I explain things so badly. I can only hope that you will understand and try to make some excuse for me. Some one knows we were together in Paris--I need not tell you who. To-night, at a house where I was, he had told several people that you and I had been to Paris together...."

Micky had gone on writing rapidly--he seemed to have lost himself in a sea of eloquence; his heart was pleading with the woman he loved through the poor medium of a sheet of unaddressed paper.

"It nearly drove me mad to hear you spoken of by him. There was a scene, and I knocked him down ... you will hate me for this, but I would have killed him if they had let me. I told them afterwards that you were my wife--try and understand how I have suffered all these weeks--I told them that we had been married some time, and that it had been kept secret by your own wish. It's only now, when I am more alone and can think clearly, that I see what I have done. You don't care for me, and I have compromised you even more than that man did by his lying insinuations. Tell me what I am to do--anything, anything in the world. My whole life is yours to do with as you will. Be my wife, dear, be my wife...."

For a moment the pen faltered, but Micky went on again with an effort.

"I will stay in London twenty-four hours for your answer, and then, if I don't hear...."

The pen faltered again, and this time finally stopped.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

"The question is," said June critically, looking out of the window to the street where a fine drizzle of rain was falling, "does one, or does one not, wear one's best hat to go out and meet the one and only man one has ever loved?" She turned round and looked at Esther with a little nod. "That's grammar, though you may not think it, my dear,"

she said.

Esther laughed.

"I should say one does wear one's best hat," she said decidedly.

"Especially seeing what a very charming hat it is."

She leaned her elbows on the table and looked at June admiringly. "How long is it since you saw the great and only?" she asked.

June did some rapid counting on her white fingers.

"Nineteen hours exactly," she said. "But it seems like ninety! I nearly died with joy when his note came at breakfast time----" She looked at Esther wistfully. "You don't know how lovely it is to have some one of your very own," she said with unwonted sentimentality.

Esther averted her eyes.

"I envy you," she said quietly. "But you'll be late if you stand rhapsodising here--be off!"

June bent and kissed her.

"I shan't be long--he's only asked me for lunch...."

Esther smiled.

"I have known lunches that lasted till tea-time," she said. "When there has been a great deal to talk about."

June went downstairs singing. During the last few days she had, as she would have expressed it, begun to discover herself all over again.

Certainly the world had utterly changed, and was more like a fairy city than a place where it rained a great deal and where buses and taxicabs splashed pedestrians with mud.

Lydia met her at the foot of the stairs; she smiled at sight of the new hat.

"I was just coming up, Miss June," she said. "There's a letter for Miss Shepstone."

June held out her hand.

"I'll take it, and save you the trouble----" She became conscious all at once of the girl's admiring eyes, and blushed.

"Do you like my hat, Lydia?" She turned round for inspection.