A Woman Martyr

"I feel as if-if he does not come-I shall break down, utterly-I shall not be able to bear my life any more!" she told herself, despondently. "I shall end it all-no one will care! There is only old Nana, who is barely alive, and she would follow me at once!"

The Duke of Arran was a man of ideas-and he lived to carry them out. The balls and entertainments at Arran House were always unique. That evening was no exception. As Joan alighted, and passing through the hall accompanied Lady Thorne through the vestibule and up the wide staircase, even she felt transient admiration. White and gold everywhere was the rule to-night at Arran House, where the famous marble staircase had been brought from an old Venetian palazzo. This evening's decorations were carried out in gold-yellow; after the gardens and houses had been denuded of gold and white flowers to the disgust of the ducal gardeners, the London florists had been commissioned to supply the banks and wreaths and festoons of gold and white blossoms which everywhere met the eye, perfumed the atmosphere, and made a fitting background for the large staff of tall, handsome powdered men-servants in black velvet and satin liveries, which was augmented to-night into a very regiment.

One sickening glance round the magnificent ballroom, full of delicately-beautiful toilettes, bright with flowers, lights, and laughter, gay with the music of a well-known band-told her Vansittart was not there. However, she maintained her composure-he might yet come-and with her usual chilly indifference allowed her few privileged friends to inscribe their initials on her tiny tablet. New partners she declined, with the plea of fatigue. But it was weary work! She was just telling herself, fiercely, that she could bear no more; she was seeking Lady Thorne to implore a retreat, when she came upon Vansittart talking pleasantly to her aunt in a cool corner.

"I was waiting for you," he said, looking into her eyes and reading in them that which fired his blood. "You will give me this dance?"

"Yes," she said, and she accompanied him, meek, silent, subdued, and allowing him to encircle her slight waist with a firm, proprietory clasp, glided round and round to the dreamy melody of the "Bienaimée" valse. Once before, when she had first longed for his love, and felt the throes of this overwhelming life-passion, they had danced together to that swaying, suggestive melody. He remembered it-remembered how to feel her slight form almost in his embrace had urged him into a reckless avowal of a love which was promptly rejected. He set his teeth. He was at a white heat again-and she-? By some subtle sense he believed his moment had come.

"I must speak to you," he hoarsely said, as they halted, Joan white and breathless with emotion. "May I?"

She looked up into his eyes, and at the intensity of the appealing, passionate abandonment to his will in that gaze, he thrilled with triumph.

"We will go into the Duchess's boudoir, I know we may," he said, feeling a little giddy as he escorted her along a corridor and through the drawing-rooms. The boudoir was empty-one or two couples only were seated in the adjacent anteroom, he saw at a glance they were well occupied with their own flirtations. He closed the door, drew the embroidered satin portiére across-they were alone in the dimly-lighted room.

He turned to her as she stood gazing at him, pale, fascinated. He took her hands. "Joan!" he said-then, as he felt her passion, he simply drew her into his arms, and stooping, kissed her lips-a long, passionate kiss.

To feel his lips on hers was ecstacy to her-for a few moments she forgot all-it was like heaven before its time. Then she feebly pushed him away, and gave a low moan.

"Oh! what have I done?" she wailed, and she glanced about like a hunted creature. "How could you?"

"You love me! What is to keep us asunder?" he hoarsely cried. As she sank shuddering, gasping, into a chair, he fell at her knees, and embraced them. "I am the happiest man on earth! For your uncle will approve, and you-you, Joan! All that was wanted was your love to make you my dear-wife!"

"Wife!" She sank back and groaned. "I shall never be any man's wife!" she said. "Why? Because I do not want to be! That is all! Because I never shall and will be!"

Was she crazy? He rose, slowly, and contemplated her. No! There were anguish and suffering in the lines about her mouth and eyes-in those lustrous, strained brown orbs-but no insanity.

"We must talk it all over. I must-I mean, I may see you to-morrow, may I not?" he gently said, drawing a chair near, and seating himself between her and the door, he besought at least one interview, so that they should "understand each other." He had but just obtained a reluctant consent to a tête-à-tête on the morrow, when the door suddenly opened, a gay young voice cried, "surely there can't be any one in here!" and a bright face peeped round the curtain and at once disappeared.

"Lady Violet!" exclaimed Joan, starting up. "She has seen us!"

"And if she has?" asked her lover, mystified by her terror at having been discovered alone with him by the Duke's eldest daughter. Still, with the promise of an elucidatory interview, he obeyed her wishes, and left her to return to the ballroom without his escort.

She did not linger: she almost fled, scared, from the boudoir through the drawing-rooms, into the corridor. Which way led to the ballroom? Hesitating, glancing right and left, she saw one of the picturesque black-clad servitors coming towards her. She would ask him.

As he advanced, the man's face riveted her attention. Not because of its wax mask-like regularity, and the intent, glittering stare of the black eyes which fixed themselves boldly upon her own; but because the countenance was singularly like one which haunted her memory-waking and sleeping-the hideous ghost of her foolish past.

"Heavens-how terribly like him!" she murmured to herself, unconsciously, involuntarily shrinking back against the wall as he came near.

Like! As the man came up, and halted, she gave a strangled cry like the pitiful dying wail of a poor hare.

"I see, you recognize me," he said, in a low voice, with a bitter little smile. "Don't be alarmed! I am not going to claim you publicly, here, to-night. But if you do not want me to call and send in my credentials at your uncle's house, you will meet me to-morrow at the old place, in the evening. I shall be there at eight, and will wait till you come. Do you understand?"

"Yes," she whispered. As he passed on and opening a baize door, disappeared, she stood gazing after him as if his words had been a sword-thrust, and she was a dead woman.

CHAPTER IV

Joan stood in the corridor, white, hardly breathing, as if turned to stone, her beautiful eyes riveted on the spot where the man who was once her lover had disappeared.

"Victor!" she thought, as her whole being seemed to writhe in an agony of despair. "Victor-and in the duke's livery-am I mad?"

She gave a wild laugh, and the sudden sound startled her into sanity. Numbness had followed the shock of seeing the man living, in the flesh, whom she had hoped against hope was dead. Now she seemed to come to life again. She clenched her nails into her gloved hands so vehemently that the fine kid was rent. She suppressed her almost ungovernable desire to groan out her misery, and as she set her teeth and closed her eyes to realize the situation and deal with it, she seemed to see her soul naked within her, and it was ablaze with one dominating passion alone-love for Vansittart.

"I am all his," she slowly told herself. "How I have become so-I never wished it-Nature, fate, the Creator who made us, alone, know. But I am his, he is my lord and master, and whatever comes between me and him must be trodden under foot!"

Her whole being, violently shocked and almost outraged by the sudden blow, the reappearance of the unscrupulous man who had dared to annex her fair young girlhood and chain it to his fouled existence, rose and asserted itself in a strong, overpowering will-to belong to Vansittart, its rightful owner by legitimate conquest, against all and every obstacle. The feeling was so huge, so powerful, she felt as a very feather in its grasp: she was awed by it, but strengthened.

"I will, I must be his, and I shall be!" she told herself, feeling as if the words had uttered themselves prophetically, by some mysterious agency, within her soul. And she quietly returned to the ballroom, calmed; for she was as an almost automaton, swayed by some obsessive spirit which had asserted itself when she was half wild with despair.

Entering the ballroom, she saw Vansittart, pale, his eyes laden with emotion, watching for her just within the doorway. The heat, the buzz, the patter of feet upon the parquet-they were dancing a cotillon-the braying of the band, took her aback in her strained, nervous state for a moment. Then she recovered herself and went up to him.

"Take me to auntie," she said, smiling up at him. "But first, one word! Do I look ill? I feel so-I am subject to horrid neuralgia, and it has just begun. I am distracted with pain! I shall be in bed all day to-morrow, I am sure! Put off coming till the day after, won't you?"

Was it a dream, an illusion-her confiding, tender manner-that sweet appealing look in those adored, beautiful eyes? Vansittart felt suddenly weak and tremulous as he drew her hand within his arm. She loved him! He was certain of it! She loved him! She had not known it till he dared all in that passionate kiss. He vaguely felt himself the Pygmalion who had awakened another Galatea.

"My darling, I am afraid it is my fault," he murmured in her ear, as he conveyed her towards the corner where Lady Thorne sat patiently listening to the prattle of the surrounding dowagers, and trying not to wish the evening at an end. "How dear of you to to say 'No!' Of course I will postpone coming. But I may call and enquire? No? Very well! You have only to command me, my queen, my adored!"

Could it be real, that faint pressure of his arm, as he looked fondly down upon that lovely little golden head? Vansittart almost lost his grip upon himself, almost forgot to act the mere amiable cavalier, as he accompanied Joan and her inwardly relieved and delighted aunt to the cooler regions of the ducal establishment, and after vainly pressing them to take some refreshment, found their carriage. As he stood bareheaded under the awning after they had driven off, he glanced up at the sky-it had been raining and now a wreath of cloud had parted to disclose a misty moon-and a vague but real remorse that he had not kept up with the noble truths he had learned at his dead mother's knee in those days which seemed a century or more ago brought the moisture to his happy eyes. "God forgive me, I do not deserve her!" was the honest prayer which went up from his overladen heart as he turned, somewhat giddily, and tried to walk into the ducal mansion without the unsteadiness which might lead some of those priggish menservants to imagine he had dined rather too well than wisely. "But, if I only can succeed in making her my own, her life shall be a royal one!"

Would he have felt so triumphantly joyful if he could have seen his beloved, after they parted?

Arrived at home, Joan dismissed her maid as soon as she could get rid of her without exciting any suspicion, and spent a night's vigil in facing the situation.

She remembered her innocent, ignorant schooldays-when, infected by the foolish talk of frivolous elder girls-they were mostly daughters of rich parents, Joan's godmother paid for the education which could not be afforded by the poor clergyman and his invalid wife-she was flattered by the admiring gaze of a handsome young man who watched her in church each Sunday from his seat in a neighbouring pew. Schoolgirl talk of him led to chance glances of hers in response. Then came a note artfully dropped by him and picked up by a school friend, delighted to feel herself one of the dramatis personæ in a living loveplay. This and ensuing love-letters proved the young man a clever scribe. He represented himself as a member of a distinguished family, banished from home on account of his political opinions. The secret correspondence continued; then, with the assistance of a bribed housemaid whose mental pabulum was low class novelettes with impossible illustrations of seven feet high countesses and their elongated curly-haired lovers, there were brief, passionate meetings. When Joan was just recovering from her grief at her father's recent death, the climax came. Her mother died-her lawyers sent for her. When she returned to school, it was with the knowledge that the rich uncle intended to take her from thence, why and for what she did not know; that her godmother acknowledged his right to deal with her future, and that her days in C- were numbered.

With what agony and humiliation she remembered that next wildly emotional meeting with the man she fancied she loved-his passionate pleading that she would be his-her reluctant consent-their meeting in town a few weeks later when she had boldly fled from school to her old nurse in the little suburban house where she let lodgings, and their marriage before the Registrar, to attain which Victor Mercier had falsely stated her age, and their parting immediately after! She went to her uncle somewhat in disgrace because of her precipitate flight from school. But her beauty and the pathos of her orphanhood, also a secret remorse on his part for his hardheartedness to her dead parents, induced him to consider it a girlish freak alone, and to ignore it as such.

She had hardly become settled in her new, luxurious home when the blow fell which at first seemed to shatter her whole life at once and for ever. She read in a daily paper of a discovered fraud in the branch office at C- of a London house, and of the flight and disappearance of the manager, Victor Mercier.

To recall those succeeding days and weeks of secret anguish, fear, dread and sickening horror, made her shiver even now. In her desperation she had confided in her old nurse. "But for her, I should have gone mad!" she told herself, with a shudder.

"You will never see him again, my pretty; all you have to do is to forget the brute!" was the burden of Nurse Todd's song of consolation. "Such as him daren't ever show his face at Sir Thomas'! Your husbin'? The law 'ud soon rid ye of a husbin' of his sort! But there won't be no call for that! He's as dead as a doornail in this country-and, you're not likely ever to see him again!"

And now he had come to life, and in the Duke's livery!

"He was one of the auxiliaries, of course!" Joan told herself. "But how does he dare to be here? If only I had the courage to tell Uncle-all! I believe he might forgive me. But I could never face Vansittart again-if he knew! It would be giving up his love, and that-that I will not do."

No, she must endure her second martyrdom in secret, as she endured the first. There was nothing else to be done. And, she must become that most subtle of all actresses-the actress in real life.

Morning came, and she declared herself too unwell with an attack of neuralgia to rise. Her aunt came up and petted her, and she was left in a darkened room until evening when she sat up for a little.

"You need not stay in to-night, Julie," she told her maid, a devoted, if somewhat frivolous girl-her uncle and aunt, satisfied she was better, had gone out to a dinner whither she should rightly have accompanied them. "Tell them not to disturb me unless I ring. I shall go to bed directly and get a long sleep." Julie left her, half reluctant, half eager, for her evening out-lying cosily on a soft sofa, the last new novel from the library open in her hands.

As soon as she considered that those among the servants who indulged in surreptitious outings were clear of the premises, and the supper bell had summoned the others to the favourite meal of the day, she rose, dressed herself in a short cycling costume and a long cloak, tied a veil over her smallest, plainest hat, took a latchkey she had once laughingly stolen from her uncle, but had never yet used, and after locking her door and pocketing the key, crept quietly downstairs, crossed the deserted hall, and shut herself out into the warm, cloudy night.

CHAPTER V

The big mansion of which she was the pampered, cherished darling, lay solemn, pompous, solid, dark, behind her. Before her, the pavement, wet after a summer shower, shone in the lamplight. Dark, waving shadows against the driving clouds, with their fitful patches of moonlit sky, were the trees in the enclosure, dangled by the wind. She hurried along-turning down the first by-street she came to-and emerging at its end into one of the principal thoroughfares, she hailed a crawling hansom.

"Regent's Park, Clarence Gate," she said, in a muffled voice, as she sprang lightly in.

To be dashing along the lighted streets to meet the absconded swindler who had dared to take advantage of her girlish folly to make her his wife by law, was delirious work. Cowering back in the corner of the hansom, she gazed with sickened misery at the gay shop-windows, at the crowded omnibuses, at the cheery passengers who carelessly stepped along the pavement, looking as if all life were matter-of-fact, plain sailing, "above-board." A hundred shrill voices seemed clamouring in her ears-"turn back-turn back! Face the worst, but be honest!" She had almost flung up her arm and, opening the trap, bid the driver return, when the memory of Vansittart-of his love-of his kiss-came surging upon her with redoubled force.

"If I am a coward, I shall lose him!" cried her whole nature, fiercely. No! She must battle through: she must circumvent her enemy-the enemy to her love, and Vansittart's.

But how?

"I will dare him," was her instinct. "I will tell him to claim me if he can!" But that was the madness of passion. Reason bade her use other means.

"One must fight a man with his own weapons," she told herself, as the hansom dashed along Gloucester Place, and she knew her time was short. It was now nearer nine than eight-she had seen that by an illuminated clock over a shop. He was to be at their trysting-place of old, when she had lodged with her old nurse in a street in Camden Town, at eight. "He lied to me from the first moment to the last. I must lie to him. I will pretend I have cared for him! It will put him off his guard," she thought, as, with a double fee to the cabman, who said "thank-ye, miss," with odious familiarity, she scurried away in the darkness, and crossing the wet road, turned up that which led to the Inner Circle.

There was no chance of forgetting the spot where they two had last met! As she neared it, a slim, dark figure stepped out from the shadow.

"My wife," he exclaimed, in emotional tones. He would have embraced her, but she slipped away and leant up against the paling.

"You can call me that-after leaving me all these years-not knowing whether you were alive or dead," she panted hoarsely. Under any circumstances emotion was natural, so she made no effort to conceal it.

"I? It was you who would not reply to my letters!" he exclaimed bitterly. "I wrote again and again, under cover to your miserable old nurse-and don't say you never had them! The last came back to me-'not known.' But the others did not-they would have if they had not reached!"

"If she had them, she never gave them to me!" she said truthfully. "And I don't wonder! I was so utterly wretched when I read of your-your-flight-that I told her-all! I had to-I should have gone raving mad if I had kept it to myself!"

"Well, all that is over and done with, thank goodness!" he exclaimed, cheerfully, after a brief pause. "I will not scold you for misjudging me-you were but a child! But you are a woman now, of age, your own mistress! I have been fortunate of late, or I should not be here. Speculations of mine have turned up trumps-and not only that, but I have friends in the City who will introduce me to your uncle, and if you only play your cards well, our real wedding shall be followed by a sham one, and Mrs. Victor a'Court will take a very nice place in society. My dear, cash opens all doors, and I have it!"

"Some one is coming," she said feebly. His speech had called forth all her powers of endurance, and, while bracing herself to bear up as she did, Nature determinedly asserted itself. She felt cold and giddy-her limbs seemed as if they did not belong to her.

"Only a Bobby," he said, with a light vulgarity which seemed the last straw. As she turned to walk along by his side, she tottered.

"Don't do that, or the Bobby will think you are drunk," he said, coarsely, holding her up by the arm. His detested touch achieved what her slackening courage had failed to do. She felt suddenly strong with a new, fierce emotion-was it hate?

"I cannot understand how you can be well off-or, indeed, how you can be here at all," she softly began, as the policeman marched solemnly on before them, the light of one of the occasional lamps gleaming on his wet weather cape. "I thought-"

"You mean, your old nurse thought!" he went on angrily. "You-you were not capable of suspecting me, if that old wretch had not put it into your head! My love, I was a victim of circumstances. The people I was with were a rotten lot. They accused me to protect themselves. They were bankrupt three years ago! Mercier was not my real name. My father was Victor Mercier a'Court. It suited me to use it, that's all! What-you don't believe me?"

"You told me lies then-why should I believe you?" she boldly said.

"Because you are my wife! It will not pay me to tell you untruths-nor will it pay you to doubt me!" he savagely retorted. "I had expected a welcome! Instead, I am treated like this! It is enough to exasperate a saint-and I don't profess to be that! Come, let us talk business, as you don't feel inclined for love. You are mine, and I mean to have you. You understand? I have waited for you all these years, and precious hard work it has been, I can tell you, for plenty of girls as good-looking as you made a dead set at me-and girls with loads of oof, too! If I don't get you by fair means, I will have you by foul-it is for you to select. By Jingo, it would serve you right if I went to that wretched uncle of yours to-morrow, and claimed you!"

She stopped short and confronted him. The moon, breaking through the driving clouds, shone full on her face. Beautiful, corpse-like in its sombre, set expression, there was that in her great, shining eyes which gave him, hardened worldling though he was, a slight shock. He felt he had gone too far.

"Drop the tragedy queen, do, and be my own little darling once more!" he wheedled, and would have embraced her, but she slid away as he approached.

"Listen!" she began, in clear, determined tones, in which there was neither fear nor hesitation, "unless you treat me with consideration, decency, respect-unless you can give me time to arrange matters so that to avow myself your-wife-will not ruin me, body and soul, I swear before God that I will put a barrier between myself and you which will separate us for ever."

"Pah, pah, pah, spitfire!" he sarcastically said, swinging his umbrella and beginning to walk onward. "I know what you mean! You have some romantic idea of suicide. You are not the kind of girl who kills herself, I can tell you that-so that threat won't hold water with me. Come now, don't let us waste time quarrelling. What do you propose to do? Before I tell you my ideas, let's hear yours. Place aux dames was always my motto."

During her long vigil, scheme after scheme of escaping him and of belonging irrevocably to Vansittart, one plan wilder than another, had agitated her mind. She had at last arrived at one set conclusion-Victor Mercier must be cajoled into giving her time. Events would decide the rest.

"All I ask of you is to wait," she pleaded earnestly, vehemently. "Give me time to find some way of introducing you to friends, and through them to uncle and aunt-then I can begin seeming to encourage you, and feel my way-"

He burst into a derisive laugh.

"Rats!" he cried brutally. "That sort of thing won't do for me, my dear wife, I can tell you! I see you are as big a baby as ever-you need some one badly to teach you your way about! No, no! I want you at once-who and what's to prevent me from taking possession of my lawful property? There is only one thing for us to do: to bolt together-and to leave them completely in the dark as to your fate. I hear that those two old prigs who wouldn't give bite or sup to your father when he was a dying man are dead nuts on you. We must make 'em suffer, my darling! We must madden them till they are ready to do anything and everything if they can only find you alive. And we must talk it over-so that your disappearance may be a regular thunderbolt! Can you come to my lodgings to-morrow evening? I want you to myself-it's natural, isn't it? This road, quiet as it is, is hardly the place for husband and wife to meet, is it? What? You can't come?" His voice hoarsened-he clutched her arm so fiercely that she gave a faint cry. "You don't want me?" he exclaimed, in tones which to her strained ears seemed those of deadly menace. "If you don't-I know you, you see! I have not forgotten your kisses, if you have mine-it means another man! And if it does, I will have no mercy on you, do you understand? None!"