To Love Part 7

The man shook his head. "I was not fool enough to ask--'Do you love me?'" he reminded her; "what I want to know is, 'Will you marry me?'"

"Without love?"--her eyes besought him--"marriage must be hideous."

"I will risk it if you will," he answered. "Sit down, let us talk it out."

He had won back his self-possession, though his eyes were still eager in their demand. Mabel sat down on the window-seat and he pulled up a chair at a little distance from her.

"Look here," he began, "it is like this. I am not a young man, probably I am twelve to fourteen years older than you. If you have heard what the village scandal says about me you can take it from me that it is true; it is better that you should know the worst at once. But until I met you, this I can swear before G.o.d, I have never really loved. It is not a question of money this time; I would give my soul to win you. And I don't want you as I have wanted the other women in my life; I want you as my wife."

"Yet you can buy me just as you could them," Mabel whispered.

"No"--again he shook his head. "I am not making that mistake either. I know just why I can buy you. Anyway, let us put that aside. This is the case as I see it. I have money, heaps of it; I have a good large house and servants eating their heads off. I will make Mrs. Grant comfortable; she will live with us, of course, and she is welcome to everything I have got; and I love you. That is the one great drawback, isn't it? The question is. Will you be able to put up with it?"

Away in the back of Mabel's mind another voice whispered, "I love you."

She had to shut her lids over the "Dream Eyes," to hold back the tears.

"Even if things were different," she said, "I could not love you; I have always loved someone else."

Mr. Jarvis sat back in his chair with a quick frown. "Any chance of his marrying you?" he asked.

"No," she had to admit, "there has never been any chance of that."

"I see"--he looked up at her and down again at his podgy, fat hands, clenched together. "My offer still holds good," he said abruptly.

"Oh, I don't know what to say or what to do." Mabel's calm broke, she stood up nervously. It almost seemed as if the walls of the room were closing in on her. "There are so many things to think of; Mother and d.i.c.k and----"

Perhaps he understood the softening of her voice as she spoke of d.i.c.k, for he looked up at her quickly.

"Yes, there is your brother," he agreed. "I guess he is pretty tired having to look after you two, and he is a clever lad; there ought to be a future before him if he has his chance. Put the weight on to my shoulders, Mabel; they are better able to bear it."

She turned to him breathlessly; it was quite true what he was saying about d.i.c.k. d.i.c.k had his own life to make. "I have told you the truth,"

she said. "I don't love you, probably there will be times when I shall hate you. If you are not afraid of that, if you are ready to take Mother and me and let us spend your money in return for that, then--I will marry you."

Mr. Jarvis got quickly to his feet. "You mean it?" he gasped; his face was almost purple, he came to her, catching her hands in his. "You mean it? Mind you, Mabel, you have got to put up with my loving you. I am not pretending that I am the kind of man who will leave you alone."

"I mean it," she answered, very cold and quiet, because it seemed as if all the tears in her heart had suddenly hardened into a lump of stone.

CHAPTER VII

"I ride to a tourney with sordid things, They grant no quarter, but what care I?

I have bartered and begged, I have cheated and lied, But now, however the battle betide, Uncowed by the clamour, I ride ride, ride!"

VICTOR STARBUCK.

Joan did not see Aunt Janet again. Miss Abercrombie carried messages backwards and forwards between the two, but even Miss Abercrombie's level-headed arguments could not move Aunt Janet from the position she had taken up. And Miss Abercrombie was quite able to realize how much her old friend was suffering.

"I never knew a broken heart could bring so much pain," she told Joan; "but every time I look at your aunt I realize that physical suffering is as nothing compared to the torture of her thoughts."

"Why cannot she try to understand. Let me go to her," Joan pleaded. "If only I can speak to her I shall make her understand."

But Miss Abercrombie shook her head. "No, child," she said, "it would be quite useless and under the circ.u.mstances you must respect her wishes. I am fearfully sorry for both of you; I know that it is hurting you, too, but when you have wilfully or inadvertently killed a person's belief in you the only thing you can do is to keep out of their way. Time is the one healer for such wounds."

The tears smarted in Joan's eyes, yet up till now she had not cried once. Hurt pride, hurt love, struggled for expression, but words seemed so useless.

"I had better hurry up and get away," she said; "I suppose Aunt Janet hates the thought of my being near her even."

Miss Abercrombie watched her with kindly eyes. The tragedy she had suspected on the first night was worse even than she had imagined. It stared at her out of the old, fierce face upstairs, it slipped into her thoughts of what this girl's future was going to be.

"Have you made any plans?" she asked; "do you know at all where to go?"

"Does it matter very much?" Joan answered bitterly.

"My dear," Miss Abercrombie spoke gently, "I am making no attempt to criticize, and I certainly have no right to judge, but you have a very hard fight before you and you will not win through if you go into it in that spirit. I do not want to ask questions, you would probably resent them, but will you tell me one thing. Does the man know about what is going to happen?"

"No," answered Joan. "It wouldn't make any difference if he did. It is not even as if he had persuaded me to go and live with him; I want you to understand that I went of my own free will because I thought it was right."

"You will write and tell him," suggested Miss Abercrombie. "That is only fair to him and yourself."

"No," Joan said again, "it was the one thing he was most afraid of; I would not stoop to ask him to share it with me."

Miss Abercrombie put out a quick hand. "You are forgetting that now there is someone else who is dependent on how you fight and whether you win through. You may say, 'I stand alone in this,' yet there is someone else who will have to share in paying the cost."

The colour swept from Joan's cheek; she choked back the hard lump in her throat. "We will have to pay it together," she said. "I cannot ask anyone else to help."

The tears, long held back, came then and she turned away quickly. Miss Abercrombie watched her in silence for a minute or two. At last she spoke. "You poor thing," she said slowly and quietly; "you poor, foolish child."

Joan turned to her quickly. "You are thinking that I am a coward," she said, "that I am making but a poor beginnings to my fight. But it isn't that, not exactly. I shall have courage enough when it comes to the time. But just now it is hurting me so to hurt Aunt Janet; I had not reckoned on that, I did not know that you could kill love so quickly."

"You can't," Miss Abercrombie answered. "If her love were dead all this would not be hurting her any more."

So Joan packed up her trunks again, fighting all the time against the impulse which prompted her to do nothing but cry and cry and cry. The chill of Aunt Janet's att.i.tude seemed to have descended on the whole household. They could have no idea of the real trouble, but they felt the shadow and moved about limply, talking to each other in whispers.

Miss Janet was reputed to be ill, anyway, she was keeping her room, and Miss Joan was packing up to go away; two facts which did not work in well together. No wonder the servants were restless and unhappy.

Uncle John met Joan on her way upstairs late that evening. His usually grave, uninterested face wore an expression of absolute amazement, it almost amounted to fear.

"Will you come into my room for a minute," he said, holding the door open for her to pa.s.s.

Once inside, he turned and stared at her; she had never imagined his face could have worn such an expression. She saw him trying to speak, groping for words, as it were, and she stayed tongue-tied before him.

Her day had been so tumultuous that now she was tired out, indifferent as to what might happen next.

"Your aunt has told me," he said at last. "I find it almost impossible to believe, and in a way I blame myself. We should never have allowed you to go away as we did." He paused to breathe heavily. "I am an old man, but not too old to make a fight for our honour. Will you give me this man's name and address, Joan?"