Chapter XXIX

"You can't know what you are saying," Lorin said, gently, after a pause. "You forget what has passed between us--you forget that you have again and again sworn that I am the first man you have ever loved, that my kisses are the first ever laid on your lips; and now you tell me, without any warning, that you are another man's wife----"

"No, Lorin--I never said so! It would not be true. Just four years and a half ago I went through a ceremony at a registry-office. Remember I was only just sixteen and very unhappy at home, and I had no idea of the real value of my action. I had only known this man for three weeks, and had seen hardly anything of him. He was my father's friend, and--my father is dead, Lorin; but he was not a very good man. The two arranged the whole thing. It was a bargain, for a certain sum of money depended upon an immediate marriage; and this sum they agreed to divide between them. Of all this I knew nothing; but we were very poor and in debt, and I was very lonely after my dear mother's death, and had to do rough servant's work. And when this man came and bought me sweets and pretty things to wear, and took me and all my childish friends out for treats and excursions, he seemed a sort of fairy prince, and I was quite proud of the idea of getting married and coming away to England, where I had been so happy with my mother as a child. But, within an hour of the marriage, I heard them quarrelling--my father and this man; and he--my husband--spoke of me already as a drag and a bore to him. I was to be made to lie and cheat if I did not help him in his schemes to get money, and to be subjected to ill-treatment if I did not obey him. And, as I listened to all this, I suddenly changed, and from a child grew into a woman. Escape was the one and only thought in my mind. By myself I came away to England, to the house of an old school-fellow of my mother's, who kept a school at Norwood. I taught there until she left for Australia to get married; and then I answered Mrs. Vandeleur's advertisement and became her companion. There--now you know all my life, and I am not deceiving you any more!"

Her voice broke as she finished speaking, and she sank on a chair by the window, gazing out, with tear-laden eyes that saw not, upon the dreary snow-covered square. Every line of her figure looked drooping and forlorn, and Lorin's heart ached with pity as he beheld her.

"Dear," he whispered, gently, "was it quite fair to wait until now to tell me all this?"

"You don't understand," she returned, looking at him in a helpless, frightened manner. "When I first knew you, I thought I would not speak one word of this until after--after we were married."

"After we were married? Laline, you can't know what you are saying! If your husband is alive, our marriage would not be legal."

"I can never make you understand," she said, leaning her elbows on a little table before the window and burying her face in her hands. "I was dense enough, mad enough, to believe you were my husband! That is why I loved you so readily--that is why I let my heart go out to you--that is why I encouraged you to make love to me! Oh, I have been a fool! But you would try to forgive me, I know, if I could tell you what I am suffering now."

"You--thought--I--was your husband?" he repeated, slowly, feeling utterly bewildered. "Laline, what can you mean?"

"It was the same name!" she sobbed, weakly, breaking down altogether. "And, when you were shown into this room that evening, I had no idea that there could be another Wallace Armstrong----"

"Good heavens!" he cried. "You cannot mean----It would be too horrible!"

"It is true all the same," she said, raising a white tear-washed face to his. "I am Laline, your cousin Wallace's wife."

"Am I dreaming?" he asked, staring down at her with dilated eyes. "I saw his wife's grave--Wallace and her uncle showed it me----"

"It was all an invention," she said, wearily, "to account for my disappearance. Captain Garth was not my uncle, but my father. I was married to your cousin not a month, but an hour, when I disappeared. They altered the date of the certificate. Oh, you can prove that what I say is true by making inquiries at Boulogne! And now I have confessed; no more lies stand between us and we can just say 'Good-bye!'"

He stood silent for a few moments, looking at her.

"Why should we say 'Good-bye'?" he asked, in a low, unsteady voice. "Does Wallace know of this?"

She shook her head.

"No. And until he came last Sunday, and I, thinking it was you, rushed into his arms, I believed--on my honour I believed, Lorin--that you were my husband. Oh, I cannot tell you how happy the thought made me! I used to whisper to myself, 'I am Laline Armstrong and his wife already.' But I dared not tell you, partly because we were so happy together that I feared to spoil things, and partly because I had heard you speak so harshly of that poor Laline. So I waited, and you never hinted at the existence of a cousin and a namesake; nor did your uncle either----"

"We were ashamed of him," Lorin said, curtly. "He had not long been out of prison, and I feared to displease you. But go on."

"There is nothing more to tell," she said, in the same tired way. "When I found the horrible mistake I had made, I felt as if I should go mad. For the first glance at your cousin's face and the first sound of his voice told me that it was he I had known at Boulogne and whom I had married!"

"And you could believe," he exclaimed, in reproachful astonishment, "that I could have married you as a child for money, and could have threatened to ill-treat you if you did not lie and cheat for me?"

"Lorin," she said, suddenly, "when once I knew you it didn't matter what I remembered against you; for I loved you instantly, and I forgot--deliberately forgot--all that I thought I knew against you! At every word you uttered during our first meeting my thoughts grew gentler about you. When you left the house I watched you, as you know. I dreamed about you all that night; and from that moment the idea of you never left my mind. You see," she added, breaking down again, "I thought I was growing to love my own husband."

"And I remembered you," he said, wonderingly. "I had seen at Boulogne a portrait of you, with loose hair about your shoulders, as a child. But are you really sure that Wallace does not recognise you?"

"I half feared he would yesterday. Oh, Lorin, I can't bear even to talk of him! The very sight of him turns me sick and cold with dislike! Lorin"--seeing that he stood aloof from her, looking stern and pale--"you are not going to tell me to go back to him?"

In an instant he was kneeling by the side of her chair with his arms wrapped about her.

"Go back to him!" he repeated in horror. "Heaven forbid! Lina, you don't know the man--you can't understand his nature. The very thought of his claiming you is sacrilege! That marriage of yours is all an ugly dream which you must forget. It is not as if he wanted you, or as if he even knew of your existence. I want you, darling! My whole nature cries out for you! I cannot live another day without you. Listen to me, my dear one! I don't believe your story--you have no proofs of it. You have, on the contrary, my cousin's word, Captain Garth's letters, and the Boulogne certificate against you--and the testimony of my own eyes too, for I saw Laline's grave. You are not she. You are 'Lina Grahame;' and by this time to-morrow you shall be 'Lina Armstrong.' All that you told me was pure fancy. You are weak and hysterical and over-wrought, and living in the unwholesome, over-strained mental atmosphere of this ghost-ridden and witchcraft-haunted house has turned your brain a little. There is only one real and true thing in life, only one thing worth reckoning with--our love for each other. The rest are shadows and fancies. Clasp your dear hands round my neck, my queen, my wife, and forget everything but that I love you and you love me!"

He was holding her passionately to him, raining quick hot kisses upon her lips and eyes. The fear of losing her worked in him like madness, and he felt that he must clasp her close and fast against the world.

And she? For a few brief seconds she yielded to the dear delight of his embrace, and clung to him, still sobbing like a penitent child. But, even while her lips met his, it seemed as though the spectre of Duty rose impalpably between them, and she turned her face abruptly away from his kisses and drooped her cheek upon his shoulder.

"We must part, all the same," she whispered. "Think, Lorin. I am your cousin's wife--I have sworn to keep faith with him. How could I meet him and your uncle and all the world and know that I was a cheat and a fraud?"

"I tell you those are mere fancies!" he exclaimed, almost angrily. "But you need never meet these people. I have quite sufficient income for us to live abroad. We should not mind where we went, so long as we were together--should we, dear?"

"No," she cried, rousing herself by a supreme effort and walking away from him, with her hands pressed to her eyes--"no, Lorin; I must not listen, and you must not urge me! You know in your heart that what I said is true, and you know that we must say 'Good-bye.' To-night I shall leave London----"

"Where will you go?"

"I don't know yet. I have to begin a new life alone."

"That you shall never do. Your life belongs to me, as mine to you. Even if all that fancied tale were true, of what value is the promise wrung by fraud from an ignorant child beside the vow made with all her heart by a loving woman? You have given me your word, and you cannot take it back. I will not release you; and wherever you go, Lina, I will follow you!"

He had sprung after her and caught her in his arms, holding her so closely that his grasp hurt her. Laline trembled and cried; but, with all her heart and soul yearning for his caress, she felt powerless to resist him. So they stood a moment, she with her pale cheek pillowed on his breast, while, bending his head, he spoke rapidly and passionately in her ear.

"Does nature count for nothing?" he whispered. "Does it mean nothing that your whole soul asks for me as mine does for you? Does it mean nothing that our ears are dull and dead to other voices, and our nerves unresponsive to other touches, but that when we speak to each other, when my lips meet yours--like this--a very heaven opens to us both? We never meant to love each other, darling, but, as soon as we met, love came! I knew that you must be mine. And, even if your story were true and not an idle dream, what should stand between us? Our love, our life's happiness, on the one side; on the other, a childish promise to a man who does not want you, who does not love you, who is not even aware of your existence. There is no hesitation possible, Lina. Your heart, throbbing with love for me, has answered for you."

She reddened and paled by turns as she listened to his words, and a very intoxication of bliss seemed to rise to her brain as he put the temptation before her. Yet that it was a temptation she knew; and, with only the thought of religion and of her dead mother's teaching to support her, she meant to fight against it. She could not love Lorin the less for wishing to persuade himself that a lie was truth; but the consciousness of her power to make him faithless to his ideals, and his power to make her perjured and foresworn, filled her with something like terror. Inwardly she called on a Higher Power for aid in her weakness; and, as they stood together thus, moved by a very whirlwind of passion, doubt, hope, and despair, neither Laline nor Lorin heard the door softly open to admit a third actor into the scene.

The new-comer was Wallace Armstrong.

No contrition, but a malicious joy filled his mind as he beheld the two standing together in lover-like attitude--Lorin with his arm round Laline's waist, and she with her head on his shoulder. The sight of their pale, agitated faces amused him hugely. He had already taken the edge off any finer sensations he might possess by more than one brandy-and-soda, and for the space of several seconds he stood watching, with a kind of ogre-like geniality, the endearments of the pair whom he was about to separate forever.

From the inner room where he stood their figures were clearly revealed against the window; but they, for their part, had no suspicion of his presence until Laline broke again away from Lorin.

"Ah, what is the use of talking?" she cried. "I am another man's wife; no words can alter that, even if he has forgotten me!"

"But he has not forgotten you, Laline!"

Then they both turned and faced him, knowing that the worst had happened and Wallace had come to claim his own; and, as Lorin gazed from his cousin's face to that of the woman he loved, a dumb rage seized him.

He understood Wallace better than any man living, and, although he invariably took his part and bore with him as no one else had ever done, in his heart he could not refrain from loathing the man's vices even while he tried to make allowances for him to others. Grief had rendered Laline's appearance even more fragile and spiritual than it was normally; the despair in her soft eyes was like the voiceless agony of a dying animal. Lorin felt that his self-control would give way if he looked at her, or if his eyes sought that companion-picture of the man, brutalised and degraded by drink and dissipation, whom the law had made her master. Turning abruptly away, he walked to the window and stood there a few seconds with his back to the other occupants of the room.

"I am afraid," Wallace observed sardonically, after a short pause, "that neither of you are particularly glad to see me. I am really sorry to disturb your charming little matrimonial plans; but, as I happen to be the lady's husband----"

"Understand," exclaimed Lorin, turning round upon him fiercely--"I will have no cowardly sneers at the expense of this lady! If she has indeed the misfortune to be your wife, I pity her with all my heart and soul!"

"Pity is akin to love, they say."

"And I love her and honour her and reverence her, and would give my life to serve her! Lina, you know that, do you not?"

"Yes," she said, softly--"I know it, Lorin. But we must say 'Good-bye,' for I am going away!"

"Not without me!" put in Wallace, advancing farther into the room. "Why, Laline, now that I have found you, do you think I shall let you give me the slip again? Look at my cousin there and look at me. Which of us looks as though he wanted a woman's helping, saving hand--he or I? He has his money-making, his friends, his amusements, his afternoon-parties and balls, his painting and dabbling in art. But what have I? I am shunned and despised because I went off the rails long ago and contracted bad habits which no one has ever cared for me sufficiently to break me of. If you had stuck by me all these years and had had a little patience with me, I should not have been the worthless wreck I have become."

She looked at him doubtfully, a woman's gentle pity struggling with her instinctive aversion against him.

"I could not have helped you!" she murmured. "And, when I had heard the truth, I could not stay."

"The truth!" he repeated, in what sounded like accents of genuine passion. "What do you call the truth? You heard an angry altercation between two men, neither of them wholly sober and each trying to provoke the other. I have never been one to wear my heart upon my sleeve, and, had I told your father I wanted to marry you because I loved you, and because I believed that you could make another man of me, he would have been the first to disbelieve me. Remember, though he was your father it was he who first ruined me, he who first introduced me to bad company, and taught me cynicism and taught me fraud. Oh, I was an apt enough pupil, I dare say! It is always easier to learn evil than good. But, Laline, with all my heart, bad as I may have been, I pitied you for the hardness of your life at Boulogne, and I meant to make you happy. In your pure eyes I read my last hope of salvation; and, though I won you by a trick, I never meant you to regret your bargain. I meant to reform--I should have reformed, but your desertion maddened me; and, since you left me, I have gone from bad to worse. Listen, Laline--I am your husband, but I renounce a husband's right to your obedience! I want your helping hand to save my life, such as it is, as a drowning man wants a rope to save him. Will you refuse to hold it out to me?"

His voice seemed to ring with sincerity and fervour. Laline began nervously clasping and unclasping her hands. Her eyes sought those of Lorin; but he, very pale, with features sternly set, stood a little apart from the other two, as though he knew that his part was played, and that he could now be only a spectator in their life-drama of life. Already he guessed how it would end, for he knew that his cousin would move Laline to pity and remorse, both of which would be causeless and undeserved.

For Lorin understood that his cousin was but acting the penitent to gain his own ends, as he had often acted it before and afterwards mocked at his own performance. In this case the prize for which he played was no longer the loosening of a credulous old man's purse-strings, but the life and soul of a woman, the woman Lorin loved.

Yet his tongue was tied. He would not even raise his eyes to her face lest he should influence her decision. And, as he waited in the silence that followed Wallace's appeal, Lorin felt himself growing old with pain.

Had he only known, it was his presence which swayed Laline far more than that of her husband. Her heart was torn between regrets for lost opportunities and neglected duties, pity for the man before her, and an instinctive, intense dislike against him; but, stronger than all these, there surged up in her heart a flood of passionate love for Lorin, a love so strong and unreasoning that she herself was terrified by its force. That she should feel thus now in the very presence of the man who had a legal right to claim her and whom she had sworn to cherish seemed to Laline a sting both horrible and sinful. Once she turned to Lorin appealingly; but his eyes were averted and he steadily avoided her gaze. The full daylight showed her her husband's face, worn and old before its time, his stooping form and prematurely silvered hair, and the look of eager humble longing he knew well how to assume.

Only by one act could she save herself and Lorin too, and it seemed to Laline that her mother's voice sounded in her ears, telling her of the duty which lay straight before her.

With a dry sob in her throat she spoke to Wallace.

"I am your wife," she said, "and I will come to you. Now please go--and leave me quite alone!"