Chapter 48

HER PRIDE’S LAST FIGHT

“... I came to Starden because I believed you might need me. You did, and the help that you wanted I gave gladly and willingly. Now your enemy is removed; he can do you no more harm. You will hear, or perhaps have heard why, and so I am no longer necessary to you, Joan, and because I seem to be wanted in my own place I am going back. Yet should you need me, you have but to call, and I will come. You know that. You know that I who love you am ever at your service. From now onward your own heart shall be your counsellor. You will act as it dictates, if you are true to yourself. Yet, perhaps in the future as in the past, your pride may prove the stronger. It is for you and only you to decide. Good-bye,

“HUGH.”

She had found this letter on her return from Little Langbourne. She had gone hurrying, as a young girl in her eagerness might, down to Mrs. Bonner’s little cottage, to learn that she was too late. He had gone.

Mrs. Bonner, with almost tears in her eyes, told her.

“Yes, miss. He hev gone, and rare sorry I be, a better gentleman I never had in these rooms.”

Gone! With only this letter, no parting word, without seeking to see her, to say good-bye. The chill of her cold pride fell on Joan. Send for him! Never! never! He had gone when he might have stayed—when, had he been here now, she would have told him that she was free.

Very slowly she walked back to the house, to meet Helen’s questioning eyes.

“I am glad, dear, that there seems to be a better understanding between you and Johnny,” Helen said.

“There is a perfect understanding between us. Johnny is not going to marry me. He is choosing someone who will love him more and understand him better than I could.”

“Then—then, after all, it is over? You and he are to part?”

“Have parted—as lovers, but not as friends.”

“And after all I have done,” Helen said miserably.

Hugh had gone home. He had had a letter from Lady Linden telling about the accident to Tom Arundel, about his serious illness, and Marjorie’s devoted nursing. And now he was shaping his course for Hurst Dormer. He had debated in his mind whether he should wait and see her, and then had decided against it.

“She knows that I love her, and she loves me. She is letting her pride stand between us. Everard is too good and too fine a fellow to keep her bound by a promise if he thought it would hurt her to keep it. Her future and Everard’s and mine must lay in her own hands.” And so, doing violence to his feelings and his desires, he had left Starden, and now was back in Hurst Dormer, wandering about, looking at the progress the workmen had made during his absence. He had come home, and though he loved the place, its loneliness weighed heavily on him. The rooms seemed empty. He wanted someone to talk things over with, to discuss this and that. He was not built to be self-centred.

For two days and two nights he bore with Hurst Dormer and its shadows and its solitude, and then he called out the car and motored over to Cornbridge.

“Oh, it’s you,” said her ladyship. “I suppose you got my letter?”

“Yes; I had it sent on to me.”

“It’s a pity you don’t stay at home now and again.”

“Perhaps I shall in future.”

She looked at him. He was unlike himself, careworn and weary, and a little ill.

“Tom is mending rapidly, a wonderful constitution; but it was touch and go. Marjorie was simply wonderful, I’ll do her that credit. Between ourselves, Hugh, I always regarded Marjorie as rather weak, namby-pamby, early Victorian—you know what I mean; but she’s a woman, and it has touched her. She wouldn’t leave him. Honestly, I believe she did more for him than all the doctors.”

“I am sure she did.”

Marjorie was changed; her face was thinner, some of its colour gone. Yet the little she had lost was more than atoned for in the much that she had gained. She held his hand, she looked him frankly in the eyes.

“So it is all right, little girl, all right now?”

She nodded. “It is all right. I am happier than I deserve to be. Oh, Hugh, I have been weak and foolish, wavering and uncertain. I can see it all now, but now at last I know—I do know my own mind.”

“And your own heart?”

“And my own heart.”

She wondered as she looked at him if ever he could have guessed what had been in her mind that day when she had gone to Hurst Dormer to see him. How full of love for him her heart had been then! And then she remembered what he had said, those four words that had ended her dream for ever—“Better than my life.” So he loved Joan, and now she knew that she too loved with her whole heart.

Death had been very close, and perhaps it had been pity for that fine young life that seemed to be so near its end that had awakened love. Yet, whatever the cause, she knew now that her love for Tom had come to stay.

“And Joan?” Marjorie asked.

“Joan?” he said. “Joan, she is in her own home.”

“And her heart is still hard against you, Hugh?”

“Her pride is still between us, Marjorie,” he said, and quickly turned the conversation, and a few minutes later was up in the bedroom talking cheerily enough to Tom.

“It’s all right, Alston, everything is all right. Lady Linden wanted to shoot the horse; but I wouldn’t have it. I owe him too much—you understand, Alston, don’t you? Everything is all right between Marjorie and me.”

And then Hugh went back to Hurst Dormer—thank, Heaven there was some happiness in this world! There was happiness at Cornbridge, and after Cornbridge Hurst Dormer seemed darker and more solitary than ever.

It was while she had been talking to Hugh that Marjorie had made up her mind.

“I am going to tell Joan the whole truth, the whole truth,” she thought. And Hugh was scarcely out of the house before Marjorie sat down to write her letter to Joan.

“... I know that you have always blamed him for what was never his fault. He did it because he is generous and unselfish. He loved me in those days. I know that it could not have been the great abiding love; it was only liking that turned to fondness. Yet he wanted to marry me, Joan, and when he knew that there was someone else, and that he stood in the way of our happiness, the whole plan was arranged, and we had to find a name, you understand. And he asked me to suggest one, and I thought of yours, because it is the prettiest name I know; and he, Hugh, never dreamed that it belonged to a living woman. And so it was used, dear, and all this trouble and all this misunderstanding came about. I always wanted to tell you the truth, but he wouldn’t let me, because he was afraid that if Aunt got to hear of it, she might be angry and send Tom away. But now I know she would not, and so I am telling you everything. The fault was mine. And yet, you know, dear, I had no thought of angering or of offending you. Write to me and tell me you forgive me. And oh, Joan, don’t let pride come between you and the man you love, for I think he is one of the finest men I know, the best and straightest.

“MARJORIE.”

Marjorie felt that she had lifted a weight from her mind when she put this letter in the post.

Long, long ago Joan had acquitted Hugh of any intention to offend or annoy her by the use of her name. Yet why had he never told her the truth, told her that it had never been his doing at all? She read Marjorie’s letter, and then thrust it away from her. Why had he not written this? Did he care less now than he had? Had she tired him out with her coldness and her pride? Perhaps that was it.

Yesterday Ellice had come over on the old bicycle—Ellice with shining eyes and pink cheeks, glowing with happiness and joy, and Ellice had hugged her tightly, and tried to whisper thanks that would not come.

She was happy now. Marjorie was happy. Only she seemed to be cut off from happiness. Why had he gone without a word, just those few written lines? He had not cared so much, after all.

And so the days went by. Joan wrote a loving, sympathetic letter to Marjorie. She quite understood, and she did not blame Hugh; she blamed no one.

It was a long letter, dealing mainly with her life, with the village, with the things she was doing and going to do. But of the future—nothing; of the past, in so far as Hugh Alston was concerned—nothing.

And when Marjorie read the letter she read of an unsatisfied, unhappy spirit, of a girl whose whole heart yearned and longed for love, and whose pride held her in check and condemned her to unhappiness.

Scarcely a day passed but Joan drove over to Little Langbourne. Philip Slotman came to look for her, and counted it a long unhappy day if she failed him; but it was not often.

She had discovered that he was well-nigh penniless, and that it would be months before he would be fit to work again. And so she had quietly supplied all his needs.

“When you are well and strong again, you shall go back. You shall have the capital you want, and you will do well. I know that. I shall lend you the money to start afresh, and you will pay me back when you can.”

“Joan, I wonder if there are many women like you?”

“Many better than I,” she said—“many happier.”

At Buddesby she was welcomed by a radiant girl with happy eyes, a girl who could not make enough of her, and there Joan saw a home life and happiness she had never known—a happiness that set her hungry heart yearning and longing with a longing that was intolerable and unbearable.

“Send for me, and I will come,” he had written; and she had not sent. She would not, pride forbade it, and yet—yet to be happy as Ellice was happy, to feel his arms about her, to rest her head against his breast, to know that during all the years to come he would be here by her side, that loneliness would never touch her again.

“I won’t!” she said. “I won’t! If he needs me, it is he who must come to me. I will not send for him.”

It was her pride’s last fight, a fine fight it made. For days she struggled against the yearning of her heart, against the wealth of love, pent-up and stored within; valiantly and bravely pride fought.

To-day she had been to the hospital. She had stopped, as she often did, at Buddesby. There was talk of a marriage there. Many catalogues and price-lists had come through the post, and Con and Ellice were busy with them. For they were not very rich, and money must be made to go a long way; and into their conclave they drew Joan, who for a time forgot everything in this new interest.

They had all been very busy when the door had opened and Johnny Everard had come in, and, looking up, Joan caught a look that passed between Johnny and Ellice—just a look, yet it spoke volumes. It laid bare the secret of both hearts.

Later, when she said good-bye, he walked to the gate where her car was waiting. They had said but little, for Johnny seemed shy and constrained in her presence.

“Joan, I have much to be very, very grateful to you for,” he said, as he held her hand. “You were right. Life without love would be impossible, and you have made life very possible for me.”

She was thinking of this during the lonely drive back to Starden; always his words came back to her. Life without love would be impossible, and then it was that the battle ended, that pride retired vanquished from the field.

“I want you to come back to me because I am so lonely. Please come back and forgive. “JOAN.”

The message that, in the end, she must write was written and sent.

And now that pride had broken down, was gone for ever, so far as this man was concerned, it was a very loving anxious-eyed, trembling woman who watched for the coming of the man that she loved and needed, the man who meant all the happiness this world could give her.

She had called to him, and this must be his answer. No slow-going trains, no tedious broken journeys, no wasted hours of delay—the fastest car, driven at reckless speed, yet with all due care that none should suffer because of his eagerness and his happiness.

It seemed to him such a very pitiful, humble little appeal, an appeal that went straight to his heart—so short an appeal that he could remember every word of it, and found himself repeating it as his car swallowed the miles that lay between them.

He asked no questions of himself. She would not have sent for him had she not been free to do so. He knew that.

And now the landscape was growing familiar, a little while, and they were running through Starden village. Villagers who had come to know him touched their hats. They passed Mrs. Bonner’s little cottage, and now through the gateway, the gates standing wide as in welcome and expectation of his coming.

And she, watching for him, saw his coming, and her heart leaped with the joy of it. Helen Everard saw, too, and guessed what it meant.

“Go into the morning-room, Joan. I will send him to you there.”

And so it was in the morning-room he found her. Flushed and bright-eyed, trembling with happiness and the joy of seeing him, gone for ever the pride and the scorn, she was only a girl who loved him dearly, who needed him much. She had fought the giant pride, and had beaten it for ever for his sake, and now he was here smiling at her, his arms stretched out to her.

“You wanted me at last, Joan,” he said. “You called me, darling, and I have come.”

“I want you. I always want you. Never, never leave me again, Hugh—never leave me again. I love you so, and need you so.”

And then his arms were about her and hers about his neck, and she who had been so cold, so proud, so scornful, was remembering Johnny Everard’s words, “Life without love would be impossible.”

And now life was very, very possible to her.

THE END