Chapter XXX

Exactly a fortnight later Laline stood for the last time within the little room in which she had slept during her stay in Mrs. Vandeleur's house. Within an hour she would have turned her back on St. Mary's Crescent forever. Now, as she gazed for the last time round the simply-furnished room, it seemed as though she had lived, not a few weeks only, but a whole lifetime within the four walls of the old house in Kensington. Love, joy, and hope, terror, hatred, and dumb despair, were mere names to her until she became an inmate of Mrs. Vandeleur's household, and the first three of these she was leaving behind her as it seemed forever.

She moved mechanically about, putting the finishing touches to her packing. Clare's help she had declined, for Clare's malevolent satisfaction at the turn things had taken was more than Laline could bear. Of Lorin she had seen nothing since that interview which Wallace had interrupted; but she knew that he had left London. Old Mr. Wallace had told her that when he had come to visit her, ready and willing to forgive all Wallace's past lies and deception, and to welcome Wallace's wife with open arms. He had distracted her with questions, and striven hard to induce her to alter her determination to leave England with her husband immediately, but to no purpose.

"I cannot stay in England," she had said; "but, if you can find your nephew an opening abroad, I will go with him, and will do my best to make him happy and to help him to lead a new life amid fresh surroundings."

As to Wallace, he was tired of London, so he declared, and perfectly willing to leave it. Once away from his uncle's and his cousin's eyes, he could dispense with all make-believe of working, and settle down comfortably to spend the liberal allowance which old Alexander would settle upon the wife of his favourite nephew. In a few years' time, so the old man stipulated, the young couple must return--if not for good, at least for a long visit.

"I must have my children about me when I die!" he had pleaded.

And to this Laline had agreed. She would have agreed to anything only to put the sea between her and the man she loved, but of whom she would not even let herself think now.

She had sent him back his ring without a word; and now, within a few hours of leaving London for Liverpool on her way to Canada, a letter from Lorin had arrived with the postmark "Rome."

She would not open it at first, but held it in her hand as she walked about the room. She had reached a passive stage of grief, a point at which all feeling seemed to have left her, and she could look forward without either interest, curiosity, or even dread to her future existence.

By a succession of cablegrams Alexander Wallace had secured for his ne'er-do-weel nephew an opening in Toronto in the office of an old friend and client. Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong were to travel from London that evening, and sail from Liverpool for New York early on the following day.

And now, just as Laline had reached the stage of dull, feelingless acquiescence which usually follows a storm of emotion, the sight of Lorin's handwriting on the envelope made her heart quiver and ache, awakening to pain again.

Yet his words, when she could summon up courage to read them, were few and restrained.

"I received the ring," he wrote, "and I am sorry you did not care to
keep it. My uncle writes that you are going to Canada. I hope with
all my heart that you will be happy there--happy and prosperous.
You will no doubt be writing sometimes to my uncle, so that I shall
be able to hear about you. I shall be in Italy some weeks, or I may
cross to Spain. I do not very much care where I go, but I may have
to cut my wanderings short for Uncle Alec's sake. He is used to
me and may be lonely. I shall not be writing again; but you will
remember--will you not?--that at any time, while we both live, if
there is anything in the world you wish me to do it shall be done.

"Wallace Lorin Armstrong."

She read the letter with hot dry eyes. Then she sat down and learned it by heart--every word. That done, she tore it into little pieces and burned them one by one in the candle she lit for the purpose. Not one tear did she shed during the work, and her eyes were still tearless when she descended to the study to take leave of Mrs. Vandeleur.

To all appearance that lady was far more agitated than she.

"You are really going to him!" she exclaimed, rising hurriedly and coming over to where Laline stood, white as death, in her travelling-costume. "To the last I thought you would escape. Lina, you don't know what it is to live with a wholly uncongenial nature. You and your husband were born under opposing stars; he is wholly animal, you are as wholly spiritual. My poor dear child, my heart bleeds for you, and I feel as though I had brought all this upon you!"

The little lady had indeed bitterly reproached herself for having permitted her treacherous niece to be present on the occasion when Laline, under the influence of hypnotism, had confessed her marriage.

"You have always been very kind to me," Laline said, in dull steady tones. "I ought to have confided in you fully from the first; but it is useless to speak of that now."

"You seem so strangely resigned," the little lady exclaimed, peering at her curiously--"almost as though you did not realise what you are doing! It is a terrible thing to give your whole life into the keeping of a man you can neither love nor respect; but perhaps your feelings towards him have changed."

A shiver ran through Laline's frame. For a moment her dry lips refused to speak. Then at last she answered in unnaturally low level tones--

"Love is not everything! I want to do my duty!"

"It is so difficult to say what is one's duty," the elder woman said. "We owe duty to ourselves first of all. We may starve our own souls while fulfilling what we imagine to be our duty towards others. Is your mind quite made up?"

"Quite!"

"Take this, then, as a parting gift."

With a little key which hung at her watch-chain Mrs. Vandeleur unlocked a glass-covered table in which she kept some of the more valuable of her amulets and charms. Drawing out a slender gold chain of Eastern workmanship, from which a five-pointed star in beaten gold open-work depended, she flung it round the girl's neck. On the star some words were inscribed in Oriental letters.

"It is a charm," she whispered--"a charm which will preserve its wearer against the wickedness of evil minds. Wear it for my sake. Good-bye, my poor child! Remember, if you find the life impossible, you have always a home with me."

"Good-bye," Laline said, with a pale smile--"and thank you! But I shall not come back."

Her mind was resolutely fixed upon the line in life which she must follow, nor would she allow any room in it for regrets over the past or dread of the future. She had seen a good deal of Wallace during the past few days when he had called at St. Mary's Crescent. By Laline's request Mrs. Vandeleur had generally been present on these interviews, and Wallace had always been on his best behaviour, assiduously acting the part of a man of good and kindly impulse, whom weakness and neglect had caused to deviate from the straight path.

Yet, school himself though he might, here and there a look, a chance phrase, betrayed his real nature--selfish, cynical, and callous--and struck a chill fear into Laline's heart. That good existed in him she could not doubt, nor did he lack appreciation of goodness in others. And in yet another fact there lay hope for his future--he was unmistakably in love with his wife. Possibly his love, strong as it was, was of its nature ephemeral, too fitful and violent to last; but it was none the less certain that Wallace loved Laline, after his own fashion, with a jealous and exacting passion, stronger than he had ever yet felt for any woman.

Yet his love was very far from bringing happiness along with it. So far in life he had accustomed himself to despising the entire female sex, and the conviction that this woman, who was by law his property, was immeasurably above him, that only her religion and duty constrained her to tolerate him, that he might kill her pride and break her spirit, but that never could he hope to win the love she had so freely lavished upon his cousin, irritated him at times almost to madness.

He was her husband; she would follow him through the world, link her life to his broken fortunes, bear with his furious temper, his drunkenness, and his brutality, be proudly silent under his ill-usage, and remain throughout her whole existence faithful to him in word and deed, and yet he knew already that of her mind and heart he would never be master, that she would be kind to him, pitiful, and patient, but that her love he might not hope to gain.

Sometimes, after leaving Mrs. Vandeleur's little oak-panelled sitting-room, in the scented air and amid the weird accessories of which he felt strangely out of place, he would give way to a furious access of rage against his wife as he recalled her image, sitting there in her low chair by the fire facing Mrs. Vandeleur, and looking at him with those soft, searching dark eyes of hers. She was always kind to him; she listened to him with a great effort to appear interested in the unfolding of his plans for their future; but it was very difficult to lie to her, and sometimes an impotent rage against her kept him silent, lest he should break into curses against her cold quiet purity and aloofness from such a man as he.

His nerves were broken by the life he had led, and now and then he absolutely dreaded lest the mingled love and hate with which she inspired him might move him to strike the light out of that beautiful pale face of hers. Through all her gentleness he fancied he could read her dislike of him and the strain his presence inflicted upon her, and the thought stung his pride and self-love intolerably.

Thus the time had passed with him until the very day fixed for their departure from London. It had been arranged that Laline should call in a cab at her husband's rooms, and that they should proceed together to the station to catch the train for Liverpool. The arrangement was Laline's. She especially wished that Wallace should not come for her to St. Mary's Crescent. Between him and Clare there appeared always to be a kind of secret understanding, which puzzled and distressed Laline, who had no suspicion of the part Clare had played in the recent events of her life. Unpunctuality was one of Wallace's distinguishing characteristics, and, to guard against this, it had been arranged that Mrs. Wallace Armstrong should call with her luggage on the cab at nine o'clock, as the train for Liverpool left Euston Station at ten.

On the stroke of nine, therefore, a four-wheeled cab drew up at the door of Wallace's rooms in the dreary side street off the Strand. The elderly landlady opened the door so promptly that it was plain she had been on the watch, and her manner to Laline was very different from what it had been towards Clare Cavan on the occasion of that young lady's flying visit a fortnight before.

"Mr. Armstrong's things are all packed, ma'am, according to his orders. But Mr. Armstrong is not in just now. I expect him every minute. He went out about ten this morning and hasn't yet returned. But he expects you, ma'am. Please step inside and let me give you a cup of tea."

As she spoke she opened the door of a sitting-room on the ground-floor, a room furnished in the depressing fashion peculiar to London lodgings. Something in the untidy and neglected air of it, in the odour of stale spirits and tobacco, and the quantity of newspapers strewn around, took Laline's thoughts back instantly to the old Boulogne life with her father. There was plenty of time yet, and her head throbbed with a dull incessant pain. She therefore accepted the landlady's offer of tea and sat down in a shiny black horsehair arm-chair, with her eyes fixed on the clock, to wait for her husband.

The minutes ticked by. Tea was brought in. Laline drank it and dismissed the sympathetic but inquisitive landlady, who opined that "gentlemen do get detained like when they meet a friend in the Strand--especially gentlemen that are going abroad. It's 'Good luck to you!' and a glass here and a glass there, until many a gentleman doesn't rightly know the time of day or whether he's on his head or his heels."

Still the minutes ticked by. The half-hour struck, the quarter, and finally the hour. The train which was to take them on the first stage of their journey towards that new life in the West had left the station by this time, Laline knew. Motionless she sat, watching the hands of the clock, while the cab waited outside with her luggage, until the full pain and humiliation of her position suddenly burst upon her with overwhelming force.

Wallace was spending the day drinking, and had probably forgotten all about the appointment. The landlady outside, peeping curiously at her every now and then through the chink in the folding-doors leading to the adjoining room, knew it, and pitied her. She could not go back to Mrs. Vandeleur's--she had burned her ships. By this time every one believed that she and her husband had left London. This was the beginning of the ordeal she must go through, and, coming after a long period of intense strain and suffering, it seemed more than Laline could bear.

Suddenly slipping on her knees before the chair on which she had been sitting, she stretched up her arms in a despairing prayer to Heaven.

"Help me! Help me! I cannot bear it! My heart will break!"

She did not hear the folding-doors open; she did not see the shambling figure standing in the aperture with haggard eyes fixed upon her. She never guessed that Wallace had come home after a day spent in wild excess, and that, hearing of her presence, he had crept first into the bedroom and endeavoured, by plunging his head in cold water, to make himself presentable to his wife. He had forgotten the time fixed for the train, but he retained an uneasy sense of a last chance lost. The cold water partly sobered him, but right through his dull blurred senses Laline's heart-breaking cry pierced to his very soul.

He had spoiled his own life, and no new one was possible. He knew in his secret heart that he should go on in the old way again and drag her life down in the misery of his. She had come to him to save him, and already her heart was breaking. Lorin, too, who had been his friend through everything, was breaking his heart away from his home and his love. He turned back into the room and looked at himself in a strip of glass affixed to the wardrobe. Gray-haired, pallid, with shaking hands and bloodshot eyes, was he worth the sacrifice this girl was making for him?

Every nerve in his body thundered "No!" And, moved by the first unselfish impulse of his life, he crept out into the darkness and slippery rain of the thaw outside.

"'Found drowned,' that's what they'll call it. And she need never know."

So his horrid stumbling footsteps led him down to the embankment, and the turbid waters closed that night over one more wasted life.

* * * * *

One year later Laline Armstrong, a widow but never a wife, was married very quietly to Lorin in the presence of his uncle and Mrs. Vandeleur. Clare Cavan was not present. She had not indeed been invited, but was consoled about that time by an offer of marriage from an elderly and wealthy stock-broker, which she at once accepted. Rumour has it that it has proved a miserable union, and that Clare's husband's jealousy is beyond parallel. But, at least, her toilettes are much admired.

As to Lorin and Laline, we may leave them with a quiet mind, sure that for them--

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

THE END.

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