The Imaginary Marriage. Henry St. John Cooper

refuse?"

      "Of course!"

      He seemed staggered; he looked about him as one amazed. He had kept this back as the last, the supreme temptation, the very last card in his hand; and he had played it, and behold, it proved to be no trump.

      "I would neither marry you nor go out with you, nor do I wish to have anything to say to you, except so far as business is concerned. As that seems impossible, it will be better for me to give you a week's notice, Mr. Slotman."

      "You'll be sorry for it," he said—"infernally sorry for it. It ain't pleasant to starve, my girl!"

      "I had to do it, I had to, or I could not have respected myself any longer," the girl thought, as she made her way home that evening to the boarding-house, where for two pounds a week she was fed and lodged. But to be workless! It had been the nightmare of her dreams, the haunting fear of her waking hours.

      In her room at the back of the house, to which the jingle of the boarding-house piano could yet penetrate, she sat for a time in deep thought. The past had held a few friends, folk who had been kind to her. Pride had held her back; she had never asked help of any of them. She thought of the Australian uncle who had invited her to come out to him when she should leave school, and then had for some reason changed his mind and sent her a banknote for a hundred pounds instead. She had felt glad and relieved at the time, but now she regretted his decision. Yet there had been a few friends; she wrote down the names as they occurred to her.

      There was old General Bartholomew, who had known her father. There was Mrs. Ransome. No, she believed now that she had heard that Mrs. Ransome was dead; perhaps the General too, yet she would risk it. There was Lady Linden, Marjorie Linden's aunt. She knew but little of her, but remembered her as at heart a kindly, though an autocratic dame. She remembered, too, that one of Lady Linden's hobbies had been to establish Working Guilds and Rural Industries, Village Crafts, and suchlike in her village. In connection with some of these there might be work for her.

      She wrote to all that she could think of, a letter of which she made six facsimile copies. It was not a begging appeal, but a dignified little reminder of her existence.

      "If you could assist me to obtain any work by which I might live, you would be putting me under a deep debt of gratitude," she wrote.

      Before she slept that night all six letters were in the post. She wished them good luck one by one as she dropped them into the letter-box, the six sprats that had been flung into the sea of fortune. Would one of them catch for her a mackerel? She wondered.

      "You'd best take back that notice," Slotman said to her the next morning. "You won't find it so precious easy to find a job, my girl; and, after all, what have I done?"

      "Annoyed me, insulted me ever since I came here," she said quietly. "And of course I shall not stay!"

      "Insulted you! Is it an insult to ask you to be my wife?"

      "It seems so to me," she said quietly. "If you had meant that—at first—it would have been different; now it is only an insult!"

      Three days passed, and there came answers. She had been right, Mrs. Ransome was dead, and there was no one who could do anything for Miss Meredyth.

      General Bartholomew was at Harrogate, and her letter had been sent on to him there, wrote a polite secretary. And then there came a letter that warmed the girl's heart and brought back all her belief and faith in human nature.

      "MY DEAREST CHILD,

       "Your letter came as a welcome surprise—to think that you are looking for employment! Well, we must see to this—I promise you, you will not have far to look. Come here to me at once, and be sure that everything will be put right and all misunderstandings wiped out. I am keeping your letter a secret from everyone, even from Marjorie, that your coming shall be the more unexpected, and the greater surprise and pleasure. But come without delay, and believe me to be,

       "Your very affectionate friend,

       "HARRIET LINDEN."

      "P.S.—I suggest that you wire me the day and the train, so that I can meet you. Don't lose any time, and be sure that all past unhappiness can be ended, and the future faced with the certainty of brighter and happier days."

      Over this letter Joan Meredyth pondered a great deal. It was a warm-hearted and affectionate response to her somewhat stilted little appeal. Yet what did the old lady mean, to what did the veiled reference apply?

      "So you mean going, then?" Slotman asked.

      "I told you I would go, and I shall. I leave to-morrow."

      "You'll be glad to come back," he said. He looked at her, and there was eagerness in his eyes. "Joan, don't be a fool, stay. I could give you a good time, and—"

      But she had turned her back on him.

      She had written to Lady Linden thanking her for her kindly letter.

      "I shall come to you on Saturday for the week-end, if I may. I find there is a train at a quarter-past three. I shall come by that to Cornbridge Station.

       "Believe me,

       "Yours gratefully and affectionately,

       "JOAN MEREDYTH."

      There was a subdued excitement about Lady Linden during the Thursday and the Friday, and an irritating air of secretiveness.

      "Foolish, foolish young people! Both so good and so worthy in their way—the girl beautiful and clever, the man as fine and honest and upright a young fellow as ever trod this earth—donkeys! Perhaps they can't be driven—very often donkeys can't; but they can be led!"

      To Hugh Alston, at Hurst Dormer, seven miles away, Lady Linden had written.

      "MY DEAR HUGH,

       "I want you to come here Saturday; it is a matter of vital importance." (She had a habit of underlining her words to give them emphasis, and she underscored "vital" three times.) "I want you to time your arrival for half-past five, a nice time for tea. Don't be earlier, and don't be later. And, above all, don't fail me, or I will never forgive you."

      "I expect," Hugh thought, "that she is going to make a public announcement of the engagement between Marjorie and Tom Arundel."

      It was precisely at half-past five that Hugh stepped out of his two-seater car and demanded admittance at the door of the Manor House.

      "Oh, Mr. Alston," the footman said, "my lady is expecting you. She told me to show you straight into the drawing-room, and she and—" The man paused.

      "Her ladyship will be with you in a few moments, sir."

      "There is festival in the air here, Perkins, and mystery and secrecy too, eh?"

      "Yes, sir, thank you, sir," the man said. "This way, Mr. Alston."

      And now in the drawing-room Hugh was cooling his heels.

      Why this mystery? Where was Marjorie? Why didn't his aunt come?

      Then someone came, the door opened. Into the room stepped a tall girl—a girl with the most beautiful face he thought he had ever seen in his life. She looked at him calmly and casually, and seemed to hesitate; and then behind her appeared Lady Linden, flushed, and evidently agitated.

      "There," she said, "there, my dears—I have brought you together again, and now everything must be made quite all right! Joan, darling, here is your husband! Go to him, forgive him if there is aught to forgive. Ask forgiveness, child, in your turn, and then—then kiss and be friends, as husband and wife should be."

      She beamed on them both, then swiftly retreated, and the door behind Joan Meredyth quickly closed.

CHAPTER IV

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