Chapter XI: Part 11

Franklin got himself under control, stood in front of the fireplace and asked himself what he was going to do. The moment had come when he could get free of the girl who tortured his lonely hours and compelled his adoration and was further away than Heaven. In a few words he could give her people, who deserved most of the blame, the story of the result of spoiling. Should he seize it? Should he cut loose from an empty tie and become his own master again? Once, at school, he had been summoned before the Head Master to give evidence against Malcolm Fraser, who had broken bounds. He had lied through his teeth to save his friend. Under the eyes of these people the feeling came back to him and pervaded him like a perfume that he was standing again in the sanctum of that stern, old task-master. Not for a friend this time, not for a man who could take his punishment and grin, but for a girl who would be stained in the sight of unbelievers, the girl of all living girls whom he loved beyond words and whom, under any circumstances, he must hold, he would lie himself black in the face to defend. That was settled. It was almost laughable to have supposed that there had been any other solution. He turned. There was a curious smile in his eyes. "What is your proposition?" he asked.

Aunt Honoria took a sheet of note paper from the little table at her elbow. There was something about this man Franklin that reminded her of the one who had taken her heart with him beyond the outpost of eternity. With some difficulty she steadied her voice. "When we first read that paragraph with its abominable suggestiveness," she said, "we had no intention of being drawn into making a statement. We agreed that it would be undignified. But since then, having talked of nothing else, we have come to the conclusion that we must send something to the leading papers. What we suggest is this, if it meets with your approval."

"Please read it." He noticed that Beatrix was opening and closing her hands as though she had pins and needles.

"My brother drew this up and he left the spaces for you to fill in, Pelham." Aunt Honoria then read the statement which her brother had written and re-written at least a dozen times. "'From the recent account of the romantic and closely-guarded marriage of Miss Beatrix Vanderdyke and Mr. Pelham Franklin published by us we omitted to give the name of the church in which it was celebrated and the date of the ceremony. 'The Church was ---- and the date ----.' All you have to do is to fill in the facts and I will send the necessary copies to town to-night by messenger. If this doesn't put an end to letters and paragraphs we must then claim the protection of the law."

Franklin took the sheet of paper. All he had to do was to fill in the facts! Ye Gods, what was he to do with the thing? He glanced at Beatrix. She still seemed to be half frozen. No help was to be had from her. He must put forward a good objection and a good alternative at once. "I think that your first idea was the right one," he said. "This statement is a confession of weakness. I want you, if you will, to leave the whole thing to me. I know the man who's written those letters. It will give me immense pleasure to deal with him. One visit to the office of that paper will settle the editor's hash." He spoke with all the confidence that he could master and smiled at the three Vanderdykes, who seemed to hang on his words. "And, after all, this is entirely my affair. Beatrix is my wife and it is for me and no one else to protect her."

Beatrix, now fully alive, sprang to her feet. "No," she said, "it's not your affair. It's mine, and it's for me to put an end to it."

All eyes were turned on her,--the Vanderdykes' with some surprise. Franklin's with quick apprehension. She was going to give the show away, he saw. At all costs she must be stopped. With what he tried to make a newly-married smile he took her hand and scrunched it so that she nearly screamed with pain. "There's going to be a friendly argument between us," he said. "Would you permit us to conduct it out in the air?" And before another word could be said by anybody he put his arm around Beatrix's waist, controlled her to one of the open French windows and out under the sky.

"What do you mean by this?" she cried angrily.

He held her tight. "You were going to give yourself away."

"Yes, I was." She tried to shake him off. "And I will."

"No, you won't, if I have to gag you, you won't."

She gave her hand a violent wrench. "Let me go. I've had enough of it."

Instead of which he stooped down, picked her up in his arms, carried her down the terrace steps and through the sleeping garden to the tea house overlooking the Sound. Here he put her down and stood in front of her, ready to catch her again if she tried to escape. In that place, not so long ago, he had found her impossible.

"Now, then," he said, "come to cues."

She gave a scoffing laugh. "What is all this? An attempt to play the primeval man, or what?"

"Be sarcastic if you like," he said. "I don't care. Be anything you please, but play the game. You started it."

"Play the game!" she echoed, blazing with anger. "That's exactly what I was going to do."

"I don't agree with you."

"What do I care whether you agree or not?"

"I'm going to make you care."

"Make me? You? Have you ever been able to make me do one single thing?"

"This is where I begin. Sit down."

"I won't sit down." He put her into a chair and stood over her. He was in no mood for conventionality.

"Dear me, how strong we are!" she said, like a rude little girl.

"Impertinence is wasted on me to-night. So try something else. We're back again at the beginning of this game of yours, but to-night we start afresh."

"So far as I'm concerned the game's over."

"Yes, but what you fail to realize is that you're not the only one concerned. There's your family and there's me."

"I'm not going over all the old arguments again, I assure you. I tell you the thing is over. You may be able to prevent me from telling the truth to-night, but there's to-morrow and the day after. I'm in no immediate hurry."

"I am though, and I'm going to keep you here until you give in to me."

"Order breakfast for eight o'clock," she said calmly.

He ignored her audacity. "You will do three unforgivable things by telling the truth. You will put your people into a panic, hold me up to the ridicule of the earth and hurt your reputation beyond any sort of repair. It isn't sporting to do the first two and I'm not going to let you do the other."

"My reputation----" She began, and stopped.

The word sporting dried up her words. It opened up a new point of view. She had harped on this word in regard to him. She held it in high respect. For the first time in their long and fluctuating struggle of temperament he had scored.

He saw it and went on quickly. "Because of your people and because of you,--I can always disappear,--I'm going to carry on your lie through thick and thin. If, when I've finished what I've got to say, you go back and tell them that you're not married to me I shall say that you're lying again. I shall be believed and I shall first break every bone in York's body and thrash the paragraphist into a hospital. Then, as soon as McLeod's had his three days' leave you, being a sportsman, will come aboard the _Galatea_ with me,--Malcolm's waiting,--and we will make a bee line for the Irish Coast and get married in Queenstown. It's impossible in this country now."

"And then, what?" she asked.

"Africa for me, home for you,--or anywhere else you like."

"I see. And are you childish enough to think that this precious plan will kill scandal?"

"Yes. Why not?"

"Divorce,--what of that?"

"That's a small matter. You can't get a divorce without having first been married. It's the question of marriage that we're up against."

Beatrix was silent for a moment. Her anger had gone. By the unexpected use of that one word "sporting" he had convinced her that she couldn't go back on a creed. Here was a man who had the right to enforce something to which he had lived up so splendidly. She had made her bed and must lie on it.

"May I get up?" she asked quietly.

"Please," he said, and stood back.

She went over to the wall and put her hands on it and looked out over the silent water. Was she beaten at last? Had this man broken her as well as unconsciously won her love? Was she to fail utterly in her reiterated attempt to make him eat the words that had hurt her so? Was she, in fact, quite down from the pedestal upon which every one had placed her? A rush of tears blurred her eyes,--but only for a second. She forced herself under control and looked round to see where Franklin was. He hadn't moved. He was standing where she left him,--not looking very much like a man who had won, she saw, without surprise. He was not that kind of man, she knew.

"I want you," she said.

He went over.

"Will you tell me something?"

"Anything."

She felt the blood rush into her face. "Why was Ida Larpent in your room the other night?"

He answered simply. "To smoke a cigarette and have a yarn."

One awful weight fell from her heart. "Will you say that you're sorry for that horrid thing you flung at me about the huts and the desert island?"

He thought for a moment, remembered and laughed. "Yes," he said, "I'm sorry."

The other weight fell. There was a third, heavier than these two, that would always remain. "I will marry you," she said.

And he gave a queer groan and his hands went out to catch her and fell to his sides.

And the other weight fell with what seemed to her to be a crash that echoed all over the world. Being a woman, and a woman in love, she stood on tiptoe and kissed him.

"Don't do that," he cried out.

"Why not?" she asked softly, standing so close that the perfume of her hair made him shake. "Aren't you forcing me to be your wife?"

"No. I'm only going to make you marry me."

"Then I won't marry you," she said.

"What the devil do you mean?"

She smiled at his roughness and held up her face so that he might see what she meant in her eyes. She stood up straight, young and slim and sweet,--her whole body radiating with love and joy and triumph.

And he looked and saw, gave a great cry like a shipwrecked man who sees the shore, and held her against his heart, out there in the night, under the stars, giving praise.

*XLII*

"Sorry you're going to leave us, sir," said Moffat, putting a pair of shoes into a chamois bag.

"Thanks," said Malcolm.

"Mr. Franklin told me that you're going to make straight for my village, sir,--London."

The valet chuckled at his little joke.

"Yes, London for the autumn, Paris for the winter, and probably back to New York for the spring."

"And very nice too, sir, I'm sure."

Malcolm went over to one of the open port-holes of his stateroom. The _Galatea_ lay in the harbor of Queenstown. The setting sun lay kindly on the houses of the small Irish port that behaved as though it were the hub of the universe. In one of them, a few hours ago, he had stood in the shabby little room of the registrar of births, deaths and marriages, making a mental and never-to-be-forgotten picture of a worn, cheap desk, a worn, cheap man with a mop of grizzled hair and an absolutely expressionless face, an inkpot which looked as though it had never been cleaned, a square of green blotting paper, a dog-eared testament, and a strip of carpet across which, slanting from the door to the desk, there was a threadbare path made by the passing of feet. Births, deaths and marriages,--they were all the same to the registrar. He had his quiet days and his busy ones. Births and deaths gave a little less trouble than marriages but they all worked out pretty much the same.

And in this picture, a startling contrast to the shabby and sordid room, stood the vital figures of Beatrix and Franklin, hand in hand, the representatives of the spirit of youth and love in that place which also registered the beginning and the end of life. The feeling and the symbolism and the beauty of this scene made their appeal to Malcolm Fraser both as a poet and a man. Here stood a man and a woman, in all the glory of youth, at the second of the three milestones. On to the third, hidden behind the curtain of spring leaves, they would now go together. God grant them the gifts of give and take and the blessed fruit of love. Here stood his friend and the woman he had loved and loved still. He wasn't losing her because he was never in the running to win. He wasn't losing him because their bond was everlasting. All was well, then. He had no complaints.

He followed his luggage on deck. Beatrix and Franklin were waiting for him. How different they looked, he thought. No wonder. They had found the way to live.

"Don't go, Mally," said Beatrix, putting an arm round his shoulder. "Send your things down again and come back with us."

"Yes," said Franklin. "Come on."

Malcolm shook his head. "Don't tempt me," he said. "I've been lazy long enough. I'm going to begin to work in the old cities. With any luck I'll have a thin volume ready, very expensively bound, for your golden wedding."

They all laughed. It was, somehow, a rather emotional moment. It was good to laugh.

"All ready, sir," said Jones, who regretted to be the one to put good old Peter Pan ashore.

Malcolm gave his hand to Beatrix. "God bless you, my dear," he said.

"God bless you, Mally."

"Good luck, old man."

"So long," said Franklin.

They watched him into the launch and away, waving their hands.

"Good old Malcolm!" said Franklin. "Among other things that he did for me he brought you on the _Galatea_."

"But not for my honeymoon," said Beatrix with a little look that made his heart jump. "When do we sail?"

"As soon as Jones gets back."

"And then, where?"

"Heaven," he said.

They began to walk. The sun was slipping away. A new day was coming, a new beginning.

"I know one thing," she said.

"What's that?"

"You won't spoil me."

He saw the old mischievous smile lurking in her eyes. But she escaped his eager hands and ran into her state-room.

And he followed her and shut the door.

THE END

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