Mufti Part 32

For a while they walked on over the clean-cut turf and the wind from the sea swept through the gorse and the rustling gra.s.ses, and kissed them, and pa.s.sed on.

"There is a hayrick, I see, girl o' mine," said Vane. "Let's go and sit under it. And in defiance of all laws and regulations we will there smoke a cigarette."

They reached the sheltered side of it, and Vane threw down his coat on the ground for her to sit on.

"Aren't you forgetting something?" she whispered, and he drew her into his arms and kissed her. Then he made her sit down, and arranged the coat around her shoulders.

"You come in too," she ordered. "There's plenty of room for both. . . ."

And so with his arm around her waist, and his cheek touching hers they sat for awhile in silence.

Then suddenly Vane spoke. "Grey girl--I'm going away to-day."

"Going away?" She echoed the words and stared at him incredulously.

"But . . . but . . . I thought. . . ."

"So did I," he returned quietly. "When I came down here yesterday I had only one thought in my mind--and that was to make you give up Baxter. I wanted it from purely selfish reasons; I wanted it because I wanted you myself. . . ."

"And don't you now?" Her voice was wondering.

"More--infinitely more--than I did before. But there's one thing I want even more than that--your happiness." He was staring steadily over the great stretch of open country to where Crowborough lay in the purple distance. "When you came to me last night, little Joan, I thought I should suffocate with the happiness of it. It seemed so gloriously trustful of you . . . though, I must admit that idea did not come at first. You see I'm only a man; and you're a lovely girl. . . ." He laughed a little shortly. "I'd made up my mind to drift these next two or three days, and then when you came it seemed to be a direct answer to the problem. I didn't realise just to begin with that you weren't quite capable of thinking things out for yourself. . . . I didn't care, either. It was you and I--a woman and a man; it was the answer. And then you started to cry--in my arms.

The strain had been too much. Gradually as you cried and clung to me, all the tearing overmastering pa.s.sion went--and just a much bigger love for you came instead of it. . . . You see, it seemed to me that you, in your weakness last night, had placed the settlement on my shoulders. . . ."

"It's there now, dear man," she whispered. "I'd just got tired, tired, tired of fighting---- And last night it all seemed so clear." With her breast rising and falling quickly she stared over the hills, and Vane watched her with eyes full of love.

"I know it did--last night," he answered.

"Don't you understand," she went on after a moment, "that a woman wants to have her mind made up for her? She doesn't want arguments and points of view--she wants to be taken into a man's arms, and kissed, and beaten if necessary. . . . I don't know what was the matter with me last night; I only know that I was lying in bed feeling all dazed and bruised--and then suddenly I saw the way out. To come to you--and get things settled." She turned on him and her face was very tense.

"You weren't--you weren't shocked," her voice was very low. "Not disgusted with me."

Vane threw back his head and laughed. "My lady," he said after a moment, "forgive my laughing. But if you could even, in your wildest dreams, imagine the absurdity of such an idea, you'd laugh too. . . ."

Then he grew serious again, and stabbed at the ground with the point of his stick. "Do you suppose, dear, that I wouldn't sooner have taken that way out myself? Do you suppose that the temptation to take that way out isn't beating and hammering at me now? . . . That's why I've got to go. . . ."

"What do you mean?" Her face was half-averted.

"I mean," he answered grimly, "that if I stopped at Melton to-night, I should come to your room. As I think I said before, I'm just a man, and you're a lovely girl--and I adore you. But I adore you sufficiently to run away from a temptation that I know would defeat me. . . ."

She turned and faced him. "And supposing I want it to defeat you?"

"Ah! don't--don't. . . . For the love of G.o.d--don't!" he cried, getting up and striding away. He stood with his back towards her, while a large variety of separate imps in his brain a.s.sured him that he was an unmitigated fool.

"For Heaven's sake!--take what the G.o.ds offer you," they sang. "Here in the cold light of day, where there's no question of her being overwrought, she's asking you to settle things for her. Take it, you fool, take it. . . ."

And the G.o.d who concerned himself with that particular jig-saw among a hundred others paused for a moment and gave no heed to the ninety-nine.

Then he turned over two or three pages to see what was coming, and forthwith lost interest. It is a bad thing to skip--even for a G.o.d.

Suddenly Vane felt Joan's hand on his arm, and looking down he found her at his side.

"Don't you understand, dear man?" she said. "I'm frightened of being left to decide . . . just frightened to death."

"And don't you understand, dear girl," he answered, "that I'm frightened of deciding for you? If one decides wrong for oneself--well, it's one's own funeral. But if it's for somebody else--and it's their funeral. . .."

"Even if the other person begs you to do it?"

"Even if the other person begs one to do it," he repeated gravely.

"Except that the s.e.xes are reversed, little Joan--something much like this happened not long ago. And the woman told the man to go and make sure. . . . I guess she was frightened of staking everything on a sudden rush of s.e.x. She was right." He turned to her and caught both her hands in his with a groan. "Oh! my dear--you know what you said to me last night before dinner. s.e.x--s.e.x--s.e.x; the most powerful weapon in the world--and the most transitory. And I daren't use it--I just daren't any more."

He caught her in his arms and kissed her. "I can't forget that when you decided before--you decided against me. Something has happened since then, Joan. . . . Last night. . . . It's another factor in the situation, and I don't quite know how powerful it will prove. It's too near, just at present. . . . It's out of focus. But clear through everything I know it wouldn't be playing the game to rush you with another--last night. . . ."

He stared over her head, and the wind blew the tendrils of her hair against his cheek. "We've got to get last night into its proper place, grey girl," he went on after a while. "And only you can do it. . . .

As far as I'm concerned--why there's never been any doubt. . . . It's just for you to decide. . . ."

"But I don't want to decide." Her voice, a little m.u.f.fled, came from his shoulder. "I want you to decide for me." Then, leaning away from him, she put both her hands on his shoulders. "Take me away, Derek--take me away with you now. Let's go and get married--just you and I and Binks--and go right away from everyone, and be alone." Once again the imps knocked tauntingly, but Vane only smiled gravely and shook his head.

"Where would the difference be, darling?" he asked. "Where would the difference be? I guess it's not a question of with or without benefit of clergy between you and me."

Her hands fell to her side wearily, and she turned away. "I suppose you're doing what you think is right, dear," she said at length. "And I can't take you and drag you to the altar, can I?"

"I'll want no dragging, little Joan, if you're of the same mind in a fortnight's time." Then suddenly he caught both her hands in his. "My dear, my dear!" he cried hoa.r.s.ely; "don't you see I must give you time to make sure? I must. . . ."

She shook her head. "I've had too much time already, Derek. I'm frightened of time; I don't want to think. . . . Oh! boy, boy, don't let me think; just take me, and think for me. . . ."

But once again Vane smiled gravely, and shook his head. "We can't dodge it like that, my darling--we just can't. . . ." He bent down to pick up his coat, and the G.o.d in charge sent a casual glance in their direction, to see that matters were progressing favourably. And when he saw the little hopeless smile on the girl's face he turned to one of his pals.

"It's too easy," he remarked in a bored voice, and turned his attention to a struggling curate with four children who had married for love. . . .

And so that afternoon Vane acted according to his lights. Maybe it was wisdom, maybe it was folly, but the point is immaterial, for it was written in the Book of the Things that Happen.

He went, telling his host that he had found fresh orders at the Post Office that morning: and the girl waved her handkerchief at him from her bedroom window as the car went down the drive.

For one brief moment after lunch they had been alone--but she had made no further attempt to keep him. She had just kissed him once, and listened to his words of pa.s.sionate love with a grave little smile.

"Only a fortnight, my darling," he had told her. "But we must give it that. You must be sure." And he had been too much taken up with his own thoughts to notice the weariness in her eyes.

She said nothing to him of the unread letter lying on her dressing-table upstairs, and not till long after he had gone did she pick up the envelope and turn it over and over in her fingers. Then, at last, she opened it.

It was just in the same vein as all the letters her father was writing her at this period. Br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with hope and confidence and joy and pleasure; planning fresh beauties for their beloved Blandford--he always a.s.sociated Joan with himself in the possession of it; scheming how she was to come and stay with him for long visits each year after she was married. It was the letter of a man who had come out of the darkness of worry into the light of safety; and as in all the others, there was the inevitable reference to the black times that were over.

Slowly the dusk came down, the shadows deepened in the great trees outside. The Downs faded into a misty blur, and at length she turned from the window. In the flickering light of the fire she threw herself face downwards on her bed. For an hour she lay there motionless, while the shadows danced merrily around her, and darkness came down outside.

Just every now and then a little pitiful moan came from her lips, m.u.f.fled and inarticulate from the depths of the pillow; and once a great storm of sobs shook her--sobs which drenched the old scented linen with tears. But for the most part she lay in silence with her hands clenched and rigid, and thus did she pa.s.s along the way of Pain to her Calvary. . . .

At six o'clock she rose and bathed her face, and powdered her nose as all normal women must do before facing an unsympathetic world, even if the torments of h.e.l.l have got them on the rack. Then with firm steps she went downstairs to the drawing-room, and found it empty. Without faltering she crossed to the piano, and took from the top of a pile of music "The Garden of Kama." She turned to the seventh song of the cycle--

"Ah! when Love comes, his wings are swift, His ways are full of quick surprise; 'Tis well for those who have the gift To seize him even as he flies. . . ."

Her eyes ran over the well-known lines, and she sat down at the piano and sang it through. She sang it as she had never sung before; she sang it as she would never sing it again. For the last note had barely died away, throbbing into silence, when Joan took the score in her hands and tore it across. She tore the pages again, and then she carried the pieces across and threw them into the fire. It was while she was pressing down the remnants with a poker that Mrs. Sutton came into the room and glanced at her in mild surprise.

"It's an old song," said Joan with a clear, ringing laugh. "One I shall never sing again. I'm tired of it. . . ."