Chapter 21

“I SHALL FORGET HER”

Restless and unhappy, Hugh Alston had returned to Hurst Dormer, to find there that everything was flat, stale, and unprofitable. He had an intense love for the home of his birth and his boyhood, but just now it seemed to mean less to him than it ever had before. He watched moodily the workmen at their work on those alterations and restorations that he had been planning with interested enthusiasm for many months past. Now he did not seem to care whether they were done or no.

“Why,” he demanded of the vision of her that came to him of nights, “why the dickens don’t you leave me alone? I don’t want you. I don’t want to remember you. I am content to forget that I ever saw you, and I wish to Heaven you would leave me alone!”

But she was always there.

He tried to reason with himself; he attempted to analyse Love.

“One cannot love a thing,” he told himself, “unless one has every reason to believe that it is perfection. A man, when he is deeply in love with a woman, must regard her as his ideal of womanhood. In his eyes she must be perfection; she must be flawless, even her faults he will not recognise as faults, but as perfections that are perhaps a little beyond his understanding—that’s all right. Now in the case of Joan, I see in her nothing to admire beyond the loveliness of her face, the grace of her, the sweet voice of her and—oh, her whole personality! But I know her to be mean-spirited and uncharitable, unforgiving, ungenerous. I know her to be all these, and yet—”

“Lady Linden, sir, and Miss Marjorie Linden!”

They had not met for weeks. Her ladyship had driven over in the large, comfortable carriage. “Give me a horse or, better still, two horses—things with brains, created by the Almighty, and not a thing that goes piff, piff, piff, and leaves an ungodly smell along the roads, to say nothing of the dust!”

So she had come here behind two fine horses, sleek and overfed.

“Hello!” she said.

“Hello!” said Hugh, and kissed her, and so the feud between them was ended.

“You are looking,” her ladyship said, “rotten!”

“I am looking exactly as I feel. How are you, Marjorie?” He held the small hand in his, and looked kindly, as he must ever look, into her pretty round face. Because she was blushing with the joy of seeing him, and because her eyes were bright as twin stars, he concluded that she was happy, and ascribed her happiness, not unnaturally considering everything, to Tom Arundel.

“As the cat,” said Lady Linden, “wouldn’t go to Mahomed—”

“The mountain, you mean!” Hugh said.

“Oh, I don’t know. I knew it was a cat, a mountain or a coffin that one usually associates with Mahomed. However, as you didn’t come, I came—to see what on earth you were doing, shutting yourself up here in Hurst Dormer.”

“Renovations.”

“They don’t agree with you. I expect it’s the drains. You’re doing something to the drains, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I believe—”

“Then go and get a suitcase packed, and come back with us to Cornbridge.”

He would not hear of it at first; but Lady Linden had made up her mind, and she was a masterful woman.

“You’ll come?”

“Really, I think I had better—not. You see—”

“I don’t see! Marjorie, go out into the garden and smell the flowers. Keep away from the drains.... You’ll come?” she repeated, when the girl had gone out.

“Look here, I know what is in your mind; if I come, it will be on one condition!” Hugh said.

“I know what that condition is. Very well, I agree; we won’t mention it. Come for a week; it will do you good. You’re too young to pretend you are a hermit!”

“You’ll keep that condition; a certain name is not to be mentioned!”

“I am no longer interested in the—young woman. I shall certainly not mention her name. I think the whole affair—However, it is no business of mine, I never interfere in other people’s affairs!” said Lady Linden, who never did anything else.

“All right then, on that condition I’ll come, and it is good of you to ask me!”

“Rot!”

Hugh sent for his housekeeper.

“I am going to Cornbridge for a few days. I’ll leave you as usual to look after everything. If any letters—come—there will be nothing of importance, I may run over in a couple of days to see how things are going on. Put my letters aside, they can wait.”

“Very good, sir!” said Mrs. Morrisey. And the first letter that she carefully put aside was the one that Joan Meredyth had written, after much hesitation and searching of mind, in her bedroom that afternoon at Starden.

And during the days that followed Joan watched the post every morning, eagerly scanned the few letters that came, and then her face hardened a little, the curves of her perfect lips straightened out.

She had made a mistake; she had ascribed generosity and decency to one who possessed neither. He had not even the courtesy to answer her letter, in which she had pleaded for a meeting. She felt hot with shame of herself that she had ever stooped to ask for it. She might have guessed.

A week had passed since Slotman’s visit, and since she had with her own hands posted the letter to Hugh Alston. A week of waiting, and nothing had come of it! This morning she glanced through the letters. Her eyes had lost their old eagerness; she no longer expected anything.

As usual, there was nothing from “Him,” but there was one for her in a handwriting that she knew only too well. She touched it as if it were some foul thing. She was in two minds whether to open and read it, or merely return it unopened and addressed to Philip Slotman, Esq., Gracebury, London, E.C. But she was a woman. And it takes a considerable amount of strength of will to return unopened and unread a letter to its sender, especially if one is a woman.

What might not that letter contain? Apology—retraction, sorrow for the past, or further insolent demands, veiled threats, and a repetition of proposals refused with scorn and contempt—which was it? Who can tell by the mere appearance of a sealed envelope and the impress of a postmark?

Joan put the letter into her pocket. She would debate in her mind whether she would read it or no.

“A letter from Connie, dear,” said Helen. “She is coming over this afternoon and bringing Ellice Brand with her. Joan, it is a week or more since Johnny was here.”

“Yes, about a week I think,” said Joan indifferently. She was thinking meanwhile of the letter in her pocket.

Helen looked at her. She wanted to put questions; but, being a sensible woman, she did not. She had a great affection for Johnny. What woman could avoid having an affection and a regard for him? He was one of those fine, clean things that men and women, too, must like if they are themselves possessed of decency and appreciation of the good.

Yes, she was fond of Johnny, and she had grown very fond of late of this girl. She looked under the somewhat cold surface, and she recognised a warm, a tender and a loving nature, that had been suppressed for lack of something on which to lavish that wealth of tenderness that she held stored up in her heart.

Quite what part Hugh Alston had played in the life of Joan, Helen did not know. But she hoped for Johnny. She wanted to see these two come together. She was not above worldly considerations, for few good women are. It would be a fine thing for Johnny, with his straitened income and his habit of backing losers—from an agricultural point of view; but the main thing, as she honestly believed, was that these two could be very happy together. So she wondered a little, and puzzled a little, and worried a little why Johnny Everard should suddenly have left off paying almost daily visits to Starden.

“I like Connie, and I shall be glad to see her,” said Joan.

“I wish Johnny were coming instead of—”

“So do I!” said Joan heartily. “I like him, I think, even more than I like Connie. There is something so—so honest and straight and good about him. Something that makes one feel, ‘Here is a man to rely on, a man one can ask for help when in distress.’ Sometimes—” She paused, then suddenly she rose, and with a smile to Helen, went out.

So there had been no quarrel, why should there have been? Certainly there had not been. Joan had spoken handsomely of Johnny, and she had said only what was true.

“I shall tell Connie exactly what Joan said, and probably Connie will repeat it to Johnny,” Helen thought, which was exactly what she wished Connie would do.

In her own room Joan hesitated a moment, then tore open the envelope, and drew out Mr. Philip Slotman’s letter.

“MY DEAR JOAN (her eyes flashed at the insolent familiarity of it). Since my visit of a week ago, when you received me so charmingly, I have constantly thought of you and your beautiful home, and you cannot guess how pleased I am to feel that the wheel of fortune had taken a turn to lift you high above all want and poverty.”

She went on reading steadily, her lips compressed, her face hard and bitter.

“Unfortunately of late, things have not gone well with me. It is almost as if, when you went, you took my luck away with you. At any rate, I find myself in the immediate need of money, and to whom should I appeal for a timely loan, if not to one between whom and myself there has always been warm affection and friendship, to say the least of it? That I am in your confidence, that I know so much of the past, and that you trust in me so completely to respect all your secrets, is a source of pleasure and pride to me. So knowing that we do not stand to one another in the light of mere ordinary friends, I do not hesitate to explain my present embarrassment to you, and ask you frankly for the loan of three thousand pounds, which will relieve the most pressing of my immediate liabilities. Secure in the knowledge that you will immediately come to my aid, as you know full well I would have come to yours, had the positions been reversed, I am, my dear Joan,

“Yours very affectionately, “PHILIP SLOTMAN.”

The letter dropped from her hands to the carpet. Blackmail! Cunningly and cleverly wrapped up, but blackmail all the same, the reference to his knowledge of what he believed to be her past! He knew that she was one who would read and understand, that she would read, as is said, between the lines.

Three thousand pounds, to her a few short weeks ago a fortune; to her now, a mere row of figures. She could spare the money. It meant no hardship, no difficulty, and yet—how could she bring herself to pay money to the man?

She would not do it. She would return the letter, she would write across it some indignant refusal, and then—No, she would think it over, take time, consider. She was strong, and she was brave—she had faced an unkindly world without losing heart or courage. Yet this was an experience new to her. She was, after all, only a woman, and this man was assailing that thing which a woman prizes beyond all else—her good name, her reputation, and she knew full well how he might circulate a lying story that she would have the utmost difficulty in disproving now. He could fling mud, and some of it must stick!

Charge a person with wrongdoing, and even though it be definitely proved that he is innocent, yet people only remember the charge, the connection of the man’s name with some infamy, and forget that he was as guiltless as they themselves.

Joan knew this. She dreaded it; she shuddered at the thought that a breath should sully her good name. She was someone now—a Meredyth—the Meredyth of Starden. Three thousand pounds! If she paid him for his silence—silence—of what, about what? Yet his lies might—She paced the room, her brain in a whirl. What could she do? Oh, that she had someone to turn to. She remembered the unanswered letter she had sent to Hugh Alston, and then her eyes flashed, and her breast heaved.

“I think,” she said, “I think of the two I despise him the more. I loathe and despise him the more!”