Chapter XXIII

Lorin little guessed how his words, "You might have saved him," concerning his cousin Wallace stung Laline.

It was a view of the matter which had never presented itself to her that she had failed in her duty when she fled from her husband and her father at Boulogne. The formal and business-like contract before the Consul had meant so little to her, and the shock of discovering Wallace's real feelings and character was so great, that flight seemed the only course open to her at the time. But now, from the mouth of the man she loved, she heard the first judgment and condemnation of her conduct which had ever reached her, and as she walked on in silence by his side in her heart she rebelled against the sentence.

She was so young. What possible influence could a girl of sixteen have had over a man of determined temper and confirmed bad habits such as Wallace Armstrong? He did not even love her. Had she not heard him avow to her father that he considered her in the light of an encumbrance? More than that--his words had clearly foreshadowed the rough and even brutal treatment she would receive should she refuse to tell a series of lies to gain his ends. And by her help he had attained them. He had been taken to England, had been received into his uncle's house and given that start in life of which he professed to stand in need. Had she sacrificed her life to him as well, what more could he have secured? He had had his chance and had miserably failed to make use of it. With a wife or without a wife, in all probability he would still have been the same worthless, reckless, ne'er-do-well he had that evening shown himself to be.

Another point presented itself clearly to Laline in the pause that followed Lorin's speech. It was evident that he had formed an unfavourable opinion of his cousin's lost bride. On the strength of the falsified certificate and Wallace's misrepresentations he believed that she had been married for rather more than a month before she died. Should Laline therefore have been minded to tell him the whole truth, she would not only have had the greatest difficulty in making it credible and comprehensible to him, but she would have had to persuade him, in the face of her husband's and her late father's testimony and that of the certificate, that she had never been more than a nominal wife to his cousin.

A hot blush enveloped her from head to feet at the thought. Lorin was inclined to be jealous. How would he ever believe her again when he recalled her oft-repeated assertions that never before had she known the happiness of loving and being loved, and that his kisses were the first she had ever received, in the face of the fact of that early marriage?

To confide in him was clearly impossible. From what he had already stated as his opinions he might even think it right for her to go back to her husband, a course of which the mere idea sickened and terrified her. And yet, while he ignored the fact of her marriage, how could she possibly sever the link between them?

"Lorin," she asked him, suddenly, "what would you do, loving me as you say you do--and I believe you--if some terrible obstacle were to come between us?"

"I should fight against it until it was destroyed, of course."

"No--don't answer lightly. I am in earnest--in terrible earnest! Suppose it was with you as with some people in a book I read not long ago--that you had, while very young, contracted a marriage, a wholly unsuitable marriage, with a woman, whom you had left immediately because you found you had been terribly mistaken in her; suppose that you saw and heard nothing of her for years, and that then, having good reason for believing your wife dead, you had met me--just as you did, you know--and had grown to love me, as a man can love, with all your heart and mind and soul?"

"Well?"

"Then--say, at just this point where we are now--either to-night or to-morrow--say that you learned that the woman you married was not dead, but that, so far from wanting you, she ignored your existence, that she was practically insane, and that you could neither get free from her nor render her the least assistance, what would you do? Now think well, dearest, before you answer, for a great deal depends upon it."

"What can you mean?"

"Nothing; but that, much as I love you, I can't love you wholly unless I understand you wholly. Remember how short a time we have really known each other. I know you always tell me the truth; and so, by putting these imaginary cases and learning how you would act in them, I can grow to understand you better. Tell me what you would do?"

"It's so difficult to say," he answered, after a short pause, knitting his brows. "And you have made it more difficult by something you have just said--'I know you always tell me the truth.' A man might be terribly tempted in such a case as you described to say nothing, and to seize his happiness while it lay within reach. Life is so short and happiness so hard to get. But, if a woman trusted a man as you say you trust me, that would be a cowardly and treacherous act towards her."

"How, cowardly and treacherous if it made her happy--if it would have broken her heart to part from him?"

"My darling, you are exciting yourself very unnecessarily over these imaginary difficulties! There are actually tears in your eyes! Surely life has enough worries without inventing others? Let us dismiss the subject and be happy together while we may."

"I can't be happy unless you satisfy me. I am fanciful to-night, I know, but my head aches; and--and please humour me, Lorin dear, and answer me about yourself and what you would do. Don't say 'a man might,' but 'I should do' so and so. Think again! If you told me the truth in such a case, I suppose the only word you could expect would be 'Good-bye'?"

"I wonder," he said, thoughtfully--"I wonder if you would say that?"

"No--I shouldn't--I couldn't!" she cried, suddenly clinging to his arm. "And if I refused to part from you, knowing all, what would you do?"

"I suppose a man ought to protect a woman even against herself," he replied. "But I don't like to think of what I might do if losing you were at stake. You see, Lina, I have been waiting for you all my life; and I am twenty-eight this year--approaching middle life, in fact. Women have often charmed and interested me. I have wanted to talk to them, to sketch them, to look at them, but never to marry them. But as soon as I saw your face, and even before I saw it, when I had only stood near you and heard you speak, a voice within me said, 'That is my wife.' If you had been in quite another rank of life it would have been the same. Had you been a princess of the blood-royal or a laundress, I should have had to what is called 'make a fool of myself' for you. I was bound to follow you, to tell you of my love, to try and make you love me, but in any case to marry you. There was nothing else to be done, even if it involved Israel's seven years' courtship, though I should certainly have rebelled against such a long engagement! All my nature cried out for you. It is not only your beauty--though I love that most heartily--but it is the beautiful soul looking from your eyes that I love. Your voice, your touch, your presence, your mind and thoughts, are all just what I have dreamed of as my ideal, just what I require to make my life complete. Selfish that sounds, doesn't it? But I could not quite feel all that unless you had almost equal need of me. That is why I say that nothing must part us; and it would be not only folly but absolute wickedness either for you or for me to try to break the bond between us."

"Even if either of us was--married?" she faltered almost inaudibly.

"To some one else? But that would be impossible. I could not have felt as I did about you if I had not been, as you have often told me, the first and only man who ever spoke to you of love; nor could your eyes have met mine as they did and shown me your sweet child-mind shining through had you ever before cared for any man. There--are all your questions answered, and all your doubts set at rest?"

"Yes--I suppose so," she conceded. "I am tired, Lorin. Take me home now."

They passed out of the Park into the high road, and she walked by his side in silence while he spoke to her, tentatively at first, but with more assurance as she did not attempt to interrupt him, concerning their future plans, gently urging her to fix the exact date of their wedding.

"It seems odd that Mrs. Vandeleur should know nothing as yet direct from you about our engagement," he said; "but of course as you have not seen her that could not be helped. She will be in when you return, no doubt; and then you can tell her and arrange about the purchase of this wonderful _trousseau_ which seems to trouble you so much. Surely a fortnight will be amply sufficient to buy all the finery you want? My uncle sends you, with his love, a blank cheque, to be filled in with what amount you please. Shall I give it to you now, or will you take it to-morrow when you are coming to luncheon with us?"

"Oh, to-morrow--to-morrow!" she answered, hurriedly, snatching at the chance of deferring that explanation which sooner or later was bound to come.

If she could only put off the marriage indefinitely the while she could enjoy the solace of Lorin's society, she told herself she would be well content.

"We are so happy as we are," she observed, presently, "that it seems to me to be very silly to hurry to another state of things. Old married people always look back to their courting days as to the happiest period of their lives. Personally I don't in the least want to be married for years to come. We can be dear friends and companions, and can meet when we please----"

"That is not nearly enough for me," he interrupted. "It is like offering a starving man a caramel to expect me to be satisfied with seeing you occasionally. I must not only see you all the time, but you must belong to me and I to you. My friend Robert Browning, whom you must grow to read and love, has glorified married love, which is the only happy love, in some of the finest lines ever written. Listen!

"'Life will just hold out the proving both our powers, alone and blended; And then, come next life quickly! This world's use will have been ended.'"

A sob rose in Laline's throat as Lorin, holding her hand close within his arm, bent his head to murmur the words in her ear. The picture they presented before her mind's eye was tantalisingly happy, and yet it was just such perfect happiness that she must nerve herself to banish from her life. Tears blinded her as, with lowered head, she walked on by his side.

They had by this time reached the High Street, deserted at this late hour on Sunday night but for a small group of dirty loiterers outside a public-house, from the doors of which a man was apparently being forcibly thrown.

Laline, who had a feminine terror of drunken men, clung closer to Lorin's arm; but as he moved quickly to the outer edge of the pavement in order to give the group a wide berth, she felt him suddenly start violently, and looking up, perceived that he was frowning heavily and that he wore a look of deep annoyance.

Following the direction of his eyes, Laline instantly understood the cause of his vexation; for the man who, lividly pale and madly intoxicated, was struggling in the grasp of three others, shouting curses and dealing murderous blows to right and left of him, was Wallace Armstrong, Lorin's cousin and her husband.

Tightening the pressure of her hand within his arm, Lorin was hurrying Laline past the shameful spectacle, when she suddenly stopped him.

"Leave me," she whispered, with pale lips--"go to him! Take him away before he does more mischief!"

Lorin stared at her in astonishment.

"What--do you know----" he began, when she cut him short.

"I know everything. Leave me and take him home!"

Then, before he could speak, she drew her hand from his arm and flew rather than walked the short distance to St. Mary's Crescent.

Once she had re-entered the house and gained the privacy of her own room, she threw herself face downwards on the bed, feeling utterly worn out and exhausted by the experiences of the past twenty-four hours. Before her closed eyes two faces arose in the darkness--those of the man she loved and the man who was her husband.

As she had last seen them, so they flitted before her, Lorin's face clouded by a look of distress and indignation, which changed to deep tenderness as his eyes met hers, and Wallace's distorted by drink and by fury, as she had seen it years ago upon her wedding-day and again beheld it on this eventful evening.

And as she marked the contrast between them and compared her instinctive dislike and disgust in the presence of her husband with the passionate delight which thrilled her at the proximity of her lover, a temptation stole into her mind and grew stronger every moment.

Why, she asked herself, should not the dead past bury its dead? Laline Armstrong had disappeared--Wallace himself had given out that she was dead and his cousin and uncle believed him. She would even have some difficulty in proving her identity; and without the testimony of Mrs. Melville, between whom and herself many miles of ocean rolled, she would find it almost impossible to connect Lina Grahame with Laline Garth. The latter was dead and her actions had died with her. Why should she, Lina Grahame, hesitate to marry the man she loved because that dead Laline had once gone through a form of marriage with his cousin?

It was quite clear that Wallace did not recognise his over-grown child-bride in the tall and slender woman who was engaged to his cousin; and even Lorin, who had at first been haunted by her likeness to a portrait he had seen of Laline as a child, failed to recall where the picture had met his eyes. Only her own word could betray her, and that word she was strenuously resolved not to utter.

Surely--surely, she argued, as she lay there like some dead thing, scarcely breathing, so intent she was in thought, she would be committing no great sin if she ignored the past? It was not as if Wallace wanted her, remembered her, or had even ever loved her. Wallace was hopeless; and she almost wondered now at her own conduct when she despatched Lorin to his cousin's aid that night. Was she to spoil Lorin's life, and her own as well, for the sake of a degraded and drunken creature, alike incapable of gratitude and of love?

And yet the next moment, through all her horror of the man, there shone a gleam of compassion. Was it wholly his own fault that he was a pariah, driven to herd with social outcasts, to sit and drink his brains away amid tavern surroundings? To her personally, in those far-away Boulogne days, he had seemed extremely kind. She well remembered the treats he had given her and the children, the drives and sweets and pastry, and the pretty things he had bought for her. Her childish mind had been fascinated and interested by the man whose sable locks and stalwart frame reminded her of Brian de Bois-Guilbert.

Since those days he had indeed degenerated rapidly; but some good there must certainly be in him, or he could not have retained through all these years the affection of his uncle and his cousin. Her own father, too, had helped to ruin him as a very young man; and it was to settle debts incurred in Captain Garth's gaming establishment that Wallace had committed the forgery which first brought about his banishment from his native land.

These thoughts tortured Laline; and through the long hours of the night she lay awake, torn by conflicting sentiments of pity for Lorin, pity for herself, and pity for her husband. Towards morning she had half decided on flight as the sole way out of her difficulties, until the thought of a confession to old Alexander Wallace of all but the name of her husband suggested itself as an alternative course.

Throughout the wakeful hours she strove to fight down the insidious temptation to hold her peace and fulfil her engagement with the man she loved. No happiness could come, she repeatedly reminded herself, of a union founded on a lie. And how could she ever meet Lorin's eyes and hear him asseverate his trust and his belief in her with such a secret between them?

So all through the night the turmoil of her mind endured; and, when she rose in the morning, it was with the feeling that many years of thought and suffering had passed over her head.

Not one word of Lorin did she speak to Mrs. Vandeleur when she asked permission to go out to luncheon; and, once arrived at the bank, she half dreaded meeting him. Adams, the sedate-looking man-servant, showed her into the cosy sitting-room up-stairs, in which tea had been served on the occasion of her former visit.

A man, who was seated by the fire, with his back to the door, reading a newspaper, rose on her entrance and faced her. And Laline saw, to her intense vexation and alarm, that it was not Lorin, but his cousin Wallace Armstrong.