The Halo Part 51

In a few hours Joyselle was returning to town, and he was glad, for the strains, more than one, to which his stay had subjected him, were telling on his nerves.

The rose-garden, even in mid-September, was a pleasant place, and as he walked along its broad gra.s.s paths the violinist wished it were July, and that the fine standard roses might be in bloom. He loved flowers, and with the curiously rapid a.s.similation of superficial knowledge common to artistic natures, had picked up a considerable amount of rose-lore at the house of some friends in Devons.h.i.+re.

There was one big yellow rose on a bush near the middle of the garden, and bending over it, he buried his nose in it.

"Victor!"

Brigit had joined him unheard, and stood looking at him, her hand held out. "Let me give you that rose."

But he shook his head. "No, let it die there. It is so beautiful among the leaves. You are up early."

"Yes. I saw you from the window, and brought you your letters." She handed him several as she spoke.

"Thanks."

"And--I want to thank you for staying. It is you, and only you, who have saved Tommy."

He nodded gravely. "I love Tommy. We must not let him overwork again, Brigit."

"No."

Joyselle turned over his letters without looking at them. "Did Theo speak to you the other day about--our--that is to say, his plan?"

Her face stiffened. "No."

This was the first time she had succeeded in seeing Victor alone during all the five days of his stay. Un.o.btrusively but effectively he had avoided her, shutting himself, when he was not in the sick-room, in his own room, under the pretext of fatigue or correspondence. And she had not submitted to this without repeated efforts to foil his intentions.

Again and again she had made little plans to catch him alone, but she had invariably failed, and as the days pa.s.sed and she realised his strength of determination, a dull, slow fire of anger had begun to burn in her.

Theo, who had been down twice, had found her manner very unsatisfactory; she was strikingly different from what she had been in Falaise, and the young man was puzzled and hurt. While Tommy was still very ill he had borne with her change of mood with great patience, but the time was coming when he must demand an explanation. All this she felt and resented.

She looked, as she stood by the rose-bush, very tired, and older than her years, but she looked remarkably handsome; pallor and heavy eyelids did not disfigure her as they do most women.

Joyselle took out his silver box and made a cigarette.

"He was talking to me about it," he went on, disregarding the final quality of her negative. "And I find it very good. It is that Tommy should live much with--_you_--when you are married. Your mother does not know how to bring him up; he is delicate and high-strung, and Theo is very fond of him."

"I am not going to marry Theo!" she burst out, exasperated beyond endurance.

He looked up. "Are you mad?" he asked quietly.

"No. But--you seem to be trying to make me mad. I can't understand you, Victor."

"Can't you, Brigit? I should think it was very easy. You remember what we agreed at Falaise? That----"

"That I was to marry Theo and 'live happy ever after'? Oh, yes, I remember. But do you remember how miserable you were the day before--and the day of--the wedding? And why that was?"

He was silent for a moment.

"Yes," he answered humbly. "I know. I was--jealous."

"Well--and you expect me to be happy and content while you behave as you are doing now? You never speak to me; you never look at me; you fly from me as if I were an infectious disease. It is--unbearable," she ended pa.s.sionately. "I can't bear it."

He smoked in silence for some seconds. "I am--sorry to have hurt you, Brigit."

"Sorry to have hurt me! I don't believe you love me. If you were jealous, so am I! I will _not_ be treated like this."

His white face was like a mask. "I am sorry," he repeated, with a kind of dogged patience.

"Then if you are--be good to me. I love you, Victor."

He met her eyes and his did not falter in their steady gaze. "Please do not excite yourself," he said very gently, "and--I think I will go in now. It must be breakfast time."

Driven beyond her own control by his tone, she caught his arm and pleaded with him, her voice harsh and broken, and she could not stop, although she saw that she was, besides annoying him, injuring herself in his eyes.

"Please--Brigit----"

"Then tell me that you love me. You can't have stopped--it is only a week since the wedding--I--can't bear this----"

But her mistaken line of conduct brought its inevitable punishment.

"This is--absurd," he said coldly, "and--undignified. I told you at Falaise that I was ashamed of myself for being jealous of my son. It was monstrous and hideous. I think I have been not quite in my right mind for some time. But I have a strong will and can force myself to anything----"

"And you are forcing yourself to kill your love for me----"

"No. I am trying to learn to love you as a--a daughter, and I am beginning to succeed. But if you insist in making scenes like this----"

He broke off and gave his shoulders an expressive shrug. "It is--not womanly."

Then, breaking the yellow rose from the bush, he drew its stem through his b.u.t.ton-hole and strolled leisurely away, whistling under his breath.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

For two days Brigit Mead remained in her room, refusing to see anyone.

Tommy, who had reached the period when convalescents sleep most of the time, was told that she was resting, and that he must be very good and eat a great deal, with a view to surprising her by his progress when she reappeared.

But the girl was not resting.

Up and down the two rooms she paced, day and night, her face set, her hands clenched, talking aloud to herself sometimes, sometimes silent, always thinking, thinking, thinking of Joyselle.

Had he ceased to love her, or was it merely a pose, or--ten thousand theories occurred to her, to drive her perilously near madness in her solitude. Things he had done, words he had said, characteristics she had observed in him, all these things flashed into her mind, upsetting and confirming each and every theory with an utter lack of logic, but with pitiless conclusiveness.

And the longer she thought the more hopeless things grew. Theo himself she dismissed with furious impatience; his letters remained unopened, an affectionate wire of congratulation on Tommy's improvement she did not answer. He and everyone else were swept aside by the flood of emotional a.n.a.lysis regarding Joyselle that, in its headlong course, threatened to carry her reason with it.

"If I had been married," she thought over and over again with cruel shrewdness, "things--would have been different, and then he _could_ not have escaped."