Chapter 13

THE GENERAL CONFESSES

“My dear, my dear, life is short. I am an old man, and yet looking back it seems but yesterday since I was a boy beginning life. Climbing the hill, my dear, climbing the hill; and when the top was gained, when I stood there in my young manhood, I thought that the world belonged to me. And then the descent, so easy and so swift. The years seem long when one is climbing, but they are as weeks when the top is passed and the descent into the valley begins.” He paused. He passed his hand across his forehead. “I meant to speak of something else, of you, child, of your life, of love and happiness, and of those things that should be dear to all us humans.”

“I know nothing of love, and of happiness but very, very little,” she said.

He took her hand and held it. “You shall know of both!” he promised. “There is strife, there is ill-feeling between you and that lad, your husband.”

She wrenched her hand free, her face flushed gloriously.

“You!” she cried. “You too !”

“Yes, I too! I sought him out yesterday, and asked him to this house on purpose that you and he should meet, praying that the meeting might bring peace to you both. I knew the lad’s father as I knew yours. Alicia Linden wrote to me and told me all about this unhappy marriage of yours. She told me that she loved you both, that you were both good, that life might be made very happy for you two, but for this misunderstanding—”

“Don’t!—don’t. Oh, General Bartholomew, how can I make you understand? It is untrue—I am not his wife! I have never been his wife. It was a lie! some foolish joke of his that he will not or cannot explain!”

He looked at her, blinking like one who suddenly finds himself in strong light after the twilight or darkness.

“Not—not married?”

“I never saw that man in my life before I met him at Lady Linden’s house, not two weeks ago. All that he has said about our marriage, his and mine, are foolish lies, something beyond my understanding!”

The General waved his hands helplessly.

“It is all extraordinary! Where can that foolish old woman have got hold of this story? What’s come to her? She used to be a very clear-minded—”

“It is not she, it is the man—the liar!” Joan cried bitterly. “I tell you I don’t understand the reason for it. I cannot understand, I don’t believe there is any reason. I believe that it is his idea of humour—I can’t even think that he wanted to annoy and shame and anger me as he has, because we were utter strangers.”

She stood at the window, looking out into the dull, respectable square. She saw a man ascend the steps and ring on the hall door-bell, but he did not interest her.

“I shall find work to do,” she said, “soon. I am grateful to you for—for taking me in, for giving me asylum here for a time—very, very grateful. I know that you meant well when you brought that man and me face to face last night—that man—” She paused.

She could see him now, that man with eager and earnest pleading in his eyes, with hands outstretched to her, as he told her of his love. And seeing him in memory, there came into her cheeks that flush that he had seen and remembered, and into her eyes the dewy, softness that banished all haughtiness, and made her for the moment the tender woman that she was.

“So,” she said, “so I shall find work to do, and I will go out again and earn my living and—”

“There will be no need!” the General said.

“I cannot stop here and live on your charity!”

“There will be no need,” he repeated.

“Mr. Rankin,” announced a servant. The door had opened, and the man she had been watching came in.

He shook hands with the General.

“Joan, this is Mr. Rankin. Rankin, this is Miss Joan Meredyth.”

She turned to him and bowed slightly.

“You will allow me to congratulate you, Miss Meredyth. Believe me, it is a great happiness to me that at last, after much diligent seeking, I have, thanks to the General here, found you. General—you have told her?” He broke off, for there was a puzzled look in the girl’s face.

“Told her nothing—nothing,” said the General; “that’s your business.”

Strangely, their words aroused little or no curiosity in her mind. What was it she had been told or not told, she did not know. Somehow she did not care. She saw a pair of pleading eyes, she saw the colour rise in a man’s cheeks. She saw an outstretched hand, held pleadingly to her, and she had repulsed that hand in disdain.

But Mr. Rankin was talking.

“Your uncle, on his way back to this country, died on board ship. His only son was killed, poor fellow, in the War. There was no one else, the will leaves everything to you unconditionally. Through myself he had purchased the old place, Starden Hall, only a few months before his death, and it was his intention to live there. So the house and the money become yours, Miss Meredyth. There is Starden, and the income of roughly fifteen thousand a year, all unconditionally yours.”

And listening, dazed for the moment, there came into her mind an unworthy thought—a thought that brought a sense of shame to her, yet the thought had come.

Did that man—last night—know of this, of this fortune when he had told her that he loved her?

A few days had passed, days that had found Joan fully occupied with the many matters connected with her inheritance.

To-day she and the old General were talking in the drawing-room of the General’s house.

“Of course, if you prefer it and wish it, my dear.”

“I do!” said Joan. “I see no reason why Lady Linden should be in any way interested in me and my affairs. I prefer that you should tell her nothing at all. I was very fond of Marjorie, she is a dear little thing, and Lady Linden was very kind to me once, that is why I wrote to her. But now I would sooner forget it all. I shall go down to Starden and live.”

“Alone?”

“I have no one, so I must be alone! Mr. Rankin says that all the business formalities will be completed this week, and there will be nothing to keep me. Mrs. Norton, the housekeeper at Starden, says the house is all ready, so I thought of going down at the beginning of next week!”

“Alone?” the old man repeated.

“Since I am alone, I must go alone.”

“My dear, I am an old fellow, and likely to be in the way, but if—my society—would—”

Joan smiled, and the smile transfigured her. It brought tenderness and sweetness to the young face that adversity had somewhat hardened.

“No, I won’t be selfish, dear,” she said gently. “You would hate it; you are at home here, and you have all you want. There you would be unhappy and uncomfortable; but I do thank you very, very gratefully.”

“But you can’t go alone, child. Why bless me, there’s my niece Helen Everard. She’s a widow, her husband’s people live close to Starden at Buddesby. If only for a time, let me arrange with her to go with you.”

“If you like,” she said.

“I’ll write to her at once,” the General said, and Joan nodded, little dreaming what the sending of that letter might mean to her.