Chapter XXII

When Laline left the study and fled up-stairs to her room, she had by no means terminated her adventures for the day.

At first she could do nothing but sit with her hands tightly clasped in her lap, half-numbed by the extent of her misfortune. Her folly in failing to distinguish between the two cousins appeared to her now equally inexcusable and incomprehensible. Gradually, as she collected in her mind the evidence upon which she had acted, a conviction strengthened within her mind that she had been only too desirous of deceiving herself.

"I loved him, and so I persisted in believing he was my husband!" was the despairing cry of her heart. She had fallen in love at first with the younger Wallace Armstrong, and had encouraged herself in loving him by assuring herself that she was his wife already. This was now the first week in February, the month in which they were to have been married. Laline sprang from her chair at the thought and pressed her hands to her burning cheeks.

"How can I tell him?" she cried aloud. "How can I say that I must break it off and that we must never meet again, when only yesterday I kissed him and let him kiss me, and promised to be his wife? It is all horrible--impossible! What excuse can I give that he will believe? I cannot go to him and say, 'I will not marry him because I am his cousin's wife!' No one must ever know that. I would a thousand times rather die at this moment than be claimed by that horrible man, the very sight of whom turns me sick with disgust and hate! How could I ever think that Lorin, my Lorin, could have acted like that at Boulogne, could have ever been a gambler and a forger, ungrateful, deceitful, selfish, dissipated, and worthless?"

A wave of joy passed over her heart, in spite of her grief and perplexity, at the thought that the man she loved was in very truth the honourable and chivalrous gentleman Mrs. Vandeleur had declared him to be. Like Tennyson's "Lily maid of Astolat," Laline felt it was--

"Her glory to have loved One peerless, without stain."

She had been ready to take him as her husband in spite of all she remembered and all she heard against him, but now that she knew his record to be absolutely clear she loved him the more. Tears rushed from her eyes as she realised that the happy life they had planned together could never be theirs. She must banish him from her sight; or, if he would not obey her entreaties and commands, she must herself pass out of his life and begin a new career in some place out of his reach and ken.

Until she met him, the prospect of a busy existence uncheered by the love of a man had not appeared specially formidable to Laline. But now her future life seemed to stretch before her as an arid plain, cheerless, and dreary, the mere thought of which made her shudder.

"I cannot live without him!" she sobbed. "I cannot live without his love! Why did he come into my life at all, if it was only to offer me a taste of happiness which I must never hope for again? It is too hard, too cruel!"

Rebellious, passionate thoughts rose in her mind, thoughts at which her own soul took fright. Through the fog the church-bells pealed out, faint and muffled; but Laline grew calmer at the sound. Her early training had been deeply religious, and now, in this hour of loneliness and despair, she sought comfort and refuge from her distracting grief in the service of the church.

Hastily slipping on her hat and cloak and the furs which Lorin had bought for her on the preceding day, she hurried down the stairs and out of the house unnoticed by any of the other inmates. To her aching heart and tired brain the quiet of the sacred building, the dignified yet simple words of the service she knew so well, and the sermon, taken from a beautiful passage in St. John's Gospel, proved infinitely soothing, and the mere act of supplication brought with it a sense of strength and coming help.

She had prayed to be taught what was her duty, and rising from her knees at the close of the service, tired out with the emotions of the day and very pale, her eyes red with long weeping and her lips quivering in the endeavour to keep back her tears, she passed out of the church with the rest of the congregation.

A walk of a very few minutes led to the opening of St. Mary's Crescent, and Laline was hastening thither, a little dazed by the fog and darkness after the brightly-lighted church, when some one laid a hand upon her shoulder.

"At last, my darling!"

She had known by his touch, which thrilled her with delight, that it was Lorin even before she had seen or heard him; and in the first moment of joy at the unexpected meeting she turned on him a face radiant with love and welcome. The light from a gas-lamp at the side of the pavement fell full upon her, and Lorin started back.

"My darling, how pale you are! And you have been crying! What has troubled you?"

His words recalled the truth to her. She turned away and strove to answer coldly.

"My head aches this evening," she said. "I must get off to bed early. I--I dare say it is the fog."

"Let me come in with you and speak to Mrs. Vaudeleur about you. I have a great deal to say to her."

"No, no--not to-night, and not until you have spoken to me first! You must come to-morrow and have a long talk with me. It is too late now, and I feel ill and tired--very tired!"

He drew her hand tenderly through his arm.

"You are crying again, my dear one!" he said. "I have a right to know what is troubling you. Let me take you home and stay with you a little while. Mrs. Vandeleur will, I am sure, excuse the informality of the visit now that she knows that we are so soon to be married."

"She knows nothing of all that."

"What? You have not told her?"

"Not yet. Don't be vexed, Lorin. I have not even seen her since you left me at the door last night."

"Well, at least you have told Miss Cavan?"

"Yes," Laline admitted, reluctantly, "I did say something about you to Miss Cavan."

"Something about me? Well, I suppose I must be content with that! But, Lina dear, are you so very much ashamed of me that you don't like to mention to any one that we are engaged?"

"No, of course not! How can you ask such an absurd question! But"--and here Laline was seized by a brilliant idea--"you know Mrs. Vandeleur will be very much annoyed at the idea of losing me just when I am beginning to be so useful to her as a secretary. We are exceedingly busy over her two books, and she has often told me that my value to her lies in the fact that my mind is not distracted by thoughts of love or money. She has been exceedingly kind to me, and it really seems too bad to talk about leaving her to get married almost as soon as we have started comfortably working together. It isn't fair to her, you see."

She spoke very fast, and lowered her head that he might not see the anxiety and distress in her eyes.

He laughed and drew her arm closer against his.

"Not fair to her!" he said. "How about being fair to me? Which is the more important--that Mrs. Vandeleur should lose an amanuensis to assist her in the compilation of her interesting but mischievous mysticism, or that you and I should miss the happiness of both our lives? Under the circumstances I should say it was rather wise of her to foretell terrible troubles to you should you fall in love. You are in love, I hope, dearest! And where are all these prophesied griefs and woes? No future can look brighter than ours."

She shuddered and clung closer to his arm. If he only knew!

"My uncle," Lorin continued, "is in the highest state of delight about our coming marriage. He wants you to have luncheon with him to-morrow. Bring Mrs. Vandeleur, if she will come at such short notice; but don't disappoint him. He was most anxious that I should bring you round to-day to receive his congratulations. I told him you had forbidden me to call until Monday. What I did not tell him was that I have been hanging round St. Mary's Crescent at intervals the whole day, hoping to catch you as you went in or out. I had a presentiment that you would be in trouble or low spirits, the result, I suppose, of a bad dream I had about you last night."

"What was that?"

"Oh, just as utterly meaningless and inconsequent as are most dreams! I thought I was in a forest, looking for you and following you. Every now and then I caught a glimpse of your white dress--you wore that gown you had on when I first saw you--glimmering through an opening in the trees. But as soon as I dashed forward in pursuit the branches closed together, as in the 'Sleeping Beauty' story, and you were lost to me again, while the whole wood seemed filled with mocking laughter."

"What sort of laughter?" she inquired, eagerly. "Was it like the laughter of any one you know?"

"Why do you ask? Perhaps it was--a little. But, Lina dear, you are trembling. It is horribly selfish of me to keep you walking about in the fog when you told me you were so tired! Let me take you home!"

"No--not yet, Lorin! I have a great deal to say to you, and I must say it now while no one can hear me. I--I have been thinking deeply all to-day, and I have decided that you and I have been too hasty--we have not given ourselves time to know our own minds."

"Wait!" he exclaimed. "I felt sure something was weighing on your mind; but I can't listen here in the noise of the streets. We will pass into the Park while you tell me."

They had reached the Albert Hall, and he led her at this point into Hyde Park, deserted but for a few devoted sweethearts, as regardless as themselves of the cold and fog and frost.

"Now tell me again, dear," he said, gently, "what you have to say about our engagement!"

In the obscurity he slipped his arm about her waist, and at his touch a restful delight crept over her senses. For a few seconds she kept silence. Very soon they must part, and with a whole lifetime of dreary lovelessness before her, surely she might without great sin afford herself the momentary joy of revelling in his caresses.

But duty, stern and forbidding, lay before her, and suddenly nerving herself to the effort, she drew away from him.

"I have something to say to you," she began, "and I want you to walk quietly by my side listening, and not to touch me while I speak. Lorin, we have made a great mistake; I, at least, know that I was only flirting with you. I had made up my mind before I met you not to marry, and I am still of the same mind. Let us just be friends again!"

"Never! We never have been friends, my darling, and we never can be! I loved you from the first moment when I heard your voice, from the first moment when I saw your face in the full lamplight. I was never your friend only, and I never shall be. I was and am your lover, and I shall be your husband!"

"I was only flirting!" she cried in desperation. "I thought you were in love with Clare Cavan! You flirted with her, I flirted with you. I--I have no real feeling for you at all! It was just a little petty triumph to get you away from her!"

The words died on her lips. He had stopped in the middle of the gravel-path and had drawn up her hands upon his shoulders.

"I told you not to touch me!" she faltered.

"Lina," he whispered, "Lina dear, even in fun I can't let you speak of yourself like that!"

He drew her tenderly into his arms. Her heart was beating madly and convulsive sobs began to shake her frame.

"Why do you torment me?" she cried, breaking into a storm of tears. "Can't you see that I am in earnest--that I am trying to find any excuse to free myself from my promise to you? I cannot marry you--I will not marry you! It is of no use to ask me for reasons! On my word of honour I am in earnest--I was never more in earnest in my life! It has all been a mistake from the beginning. I can never be your wife!"

"Lina!"

"It is of no use," she cried, hysterically, "to remonstrate with me or to appeal to my feelings. I have no feelings where men are concerned. I was always a flirt--Mrs. Melville could have told you that. At Norwood the foreign masters used to propose to me; but I never cared. It is all vanity with me and I don't know what love means!"

"Lina!"

"Oh, don't stand repeating my name like that! It would be more dignified if you get angry. But nothing can make any difference. You might spend the rest of your life and mine on your knees to me, but I cannot marry you--cannot! Do you understand, Mr. Armstrong? It is all over, this love-story of ours, and all we have to do now is to forget it!"

Through all the hysterical excitement of her talk there rang a note of despair which Lorin failed not to recognise and for which he was greatly at a loss to account.

"Lina," he said, again, "you are ill and unstrung; you don't know what you are saying. Something very serious has happened to trouble you to-day. Presently, when you feel better and calmer, you must tell me all about it. But, my darling, it is useless to try and persuade me that you did not love me yesterday or that you do not love me now!"

"I do not!"

"Lina, it is horribly dark and foggy and you don't see very well with those lovely, tearful eyes of yours. But look up now into my face, with your hands in mine--so--and your heart beating near mine, and tell me again that you do not love me!"

She stood still as he directed, and, clasping her hands, he held them up against his breast. Her face was ashen pale and even her lips were white. She strove to keep up the pitch of unnatural nervous excitement to which she had worked herself; but gradually, as he clasped her hands close in his, he felt their tension relax. Her form lost its defiant erectness; she quivered and swayed towards him, and would have fallen had he not caught her in his arms.

"Oh, Lorin, Lorin, I am so unhappy! I think my heart will break!"

Very weak and pitiful her accents sounded now as, like a tired child, she rested her cheek upon his shoulder for a few seconds, weeping bitterly. Lorin asked her no questions and contented himself with gently soothing her. Presently her sobs ceased, and suddenly raising her head, she tried to laugh.

"It's like a servant on her 'Sunday out,' isn't it," she said, with a feeble attempt at cheerfulness, "to meet my 'young man' after church, and walk in Hyde Park, with his arm round my waist, crying? Servants, when they get engaged, always cry a great deal. I remember when our parlour-maid at Norwood got engaged to the baker, she used to shed floods of tears in the pantry, and even weep while waiting at table. She and her young man were perpetually having what she called 'words'--about three times a week it used to happen--and then Emma cried her eyes out until they made it up. And after all she married the postman."

"Well, and, now that we have had our 'words,' darling, and you have had your weeping, and we have made it up, since we are having our 'Sunday evening out' in the Park, and it's so dark one can't see across the road, you must kiss me in sign of reconciliation."

But she shrank away from him, remembering, with a pang, that she was another man's wife, and that her love for Lorin was no longer a pride to her but a grievous fault.

"Not now," she said; and then, before he had time to complain of her coldness, she suddenly asked him why he had never, in speaking to her, alluded to his namesake and cousin.

Lorin did not answer for a moment, and when he spoke, it was in a somewhat constrained tone.

"I may not have mentioned him by name," he said, "but we have certainly alluded to him in our conversations. I have spoken to you of the responsibility I undertook more than five years ago, when I brought my cousin over from Boulogne to England after his wife's death----"

"You brought him over?"

"Yes. Uncle Alec thought he had reason to distrust him; but I believed my cousin's letters and went to him. It was a very sad and painful experience in many ways. He had only been married a month when the poor girl died. I was shown her grave and a picture of her, painted when she was a child. She must have been very pretty; but from what my cousin subsequently told me, I should say that she and old Garth, who called himself her uncle, but who impressed me very unfavourably, and who, I strongly suspect, was really her father, were nothing better than a couple of needy and swindling adventurers. Wallace always speaks of them both with intense bitterness; but Uncle Alec has never heard him, and persists in believing that this Laline is an angel of goodness, and that, had she lived, Wallace would have been very different. And I think he is probably right. A good wife is a man's salvation if she will only cling to him through good report and ill, and may well redeem him by her unselfish love."

"You overrate me, I know," Laline said, in a stifled voice, "and think me much better than I am. Tell me truly, Lorin, knowing me and knowing him, do you think that if your cousin Wallace had been married to me, for instance, he would have been induced to lead a better life?"

He pressed both her hands tightly in his.

"It seems sacrilege," he exclaimed, "to think of you as married to him! But I believe that, if you had met him at the time I speak of, you might have saved him."