The Imaginary Marriage. Henry St. John Cooper

FACE TO FACE

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      It was, Hugh Alston decided, the most beautiful face he had ever seen in his life and the coldest, or so it seemed to him. She was looking at him with cool questioning in her grey eyes, her lips drawn to a hard line.

      He saw her as she stood before him, and as he saw her now, so would he carry the memory of the picture she made in his mind for many a day to come—tall, perhaps a little taller than the average woman, tall by comparison with Marjorie Linden, brown of hair and grey of eye, with a disdainfully enquiring look about her.

      He was not a man who usually noticed a woman's clothes, yet the picture impressed on his mind of this girl was a very complete one. She was wearing a dress that instinct told him was of some cheap material. She might have bought it ready-made, she might have made it herself, or some unskilled dressmaker might have turned it out cheaply. Poverty was the note it struck, her boots were small and neat, well-worn. Yes, poverty was the keynote to it all.

      It was she, womanlike, who broke the silence.

      "Well? I am waiting for some explanation of all the extraordinary things that have been said to me since I have been in this house. You, of course, heard what Lady Linden said as she left us?"

      "I heard," he said. His cheeks turned red. Was ever a man in a worse position? The questioning grey eyes stared at him so coldly that he lost his head. He wanted to apologise, to explain, yet he knew that he could not explain. It was Marjorie who had brought him into this, but he must respect the girl's secret, on which so much depended for her.

      "Please answer me," Joan Meredyth said. "You heard Lady Linden advise us, you and myself, to make up a quarrel that has never taken place; you heard her—" She paused, a great flush suddenly stole over her face, adding enormously to her attractiveness, but quickly as it came, it went.

      What could he say? Vainly he racked his brains. He must say something, or the girl would believe him to be fool as well as knave. Ideas, excuses, lies entered his mind, he put them aside instantly, as being unworthy of him and of her, yet he must tell her—something.

      "When—when I used your name, believe me, I had no idea that it was the property of a living woman—"

      "When you used my name? I don't understand you!"

      "I claimed that I was married to a Miss Joan Meredyth—"

      "I still don't understand you. You say you claimed that you were married—are you married to anyone?"

      "No!"

      "Then—then—" Again the glorious flush came into her cheeks, but was gone again, leaving her whiter, colder than before, only her eyes seemed to burn with the fire of anger and contempt.

      "I am beginning to understand, for some reason of your own, you used my name, you informed Lady Linden that you—and I were—married?"

      "Yes," he said.

      "And it was, of course, a vile lie, an insolent lie!" Her voice quivered. "It has subjected me to humiliation and annoyance. I do not think that a girl has ever been placed in such a false position as I have been through your—cowardly lie."

      He had probably never known actual fear in his life, nor a sense of shame such as he knew now. He had nothing to say, he wanted to explain, yet could not, for Marjorie's sake. If Lady Linden knew how she had been deceived, she would naturally be furiously angry, and the brunt of her anger would fall on Marjorie, and this must not be.

      So, silent, unable to speak a word in self-defence, he stood listening, shame-faced, while the girl spoke. Every word she uttered was cutting and cruel, yet she shewed no temper. He could have borne with that.

      "You probably knew of me, and knew that I was alone in the world with no one to champion me. You knew that I was poor, Mr. Alston, and so a fit butt for your cowardly jest. My poverty has brought me into contact with strange people, cads; but the worst, the cruellest, the lowest of all is yourself! I had hoped to have found rest and refuge here for a little time, but you have driven me out. Oh, I did not believe that anything so despicable, so unmanly as you could exist. I do not know why you have done this, perhaps it is your idea of humour."

      "Believe me—" he stammered, yet could say no more; and then a sense of anger, of outraged honesty, came to him. Of course he had been foolish, yet he had been misled. To hear this girl speak, one would think that he had deliberately set to work to annoy and insult her, she of whose existence he had not even known.

      "My poverty," she said, and flung her head back as she spoke, "has made me the butt, the object for the insolence and insult of men like yourself, men who would not dare insult a girl who had friends to protect her."

      "You are ungenerous!" he said hotly.

      She seemed to start a little. She looked at him, and her beautiful eyes narrowed. Then, without another word, she turned towards the door.

      The scene was over, yet he felt no relief.

      "Miss Meredyth!"

      She did not hear, or affected not to. She turned the handle of the door, but hesitated for a moment. She looked back at him, contempt in her gaze.

      "You are ungenerous," he said again. He had not meant to say it; he had to say something, and it seemed to him that her anger against him was almost unreasonable.

      She made no answer; the door closed on her, and he was left to try and collect his thoughts.

      And he had not even apologised, he reflected now. She had not given him an opportunity to.

      Pacing the room, Hugh decided what he would do. He would give her time to cool down, for her wrath to evaporate, then he would seek her out, and tell her as much as he could—tell her that the secret was not entirely his own. He would appeal to the generosity that he had told her she did not possess.

      "Hugh!"

      "Eh?" He started.

      "What does this mean? You don't mean to tell me, Hugh, that all my efforts have gone for nothing?"

      Lady Linden had sailed into the room; she was angry, she quivered with rage.

      "I take an immense amount of trouble to bring two foolish young people together again, and—and this is the result!"

      "What's the result?"

      "She has gone!"

      "Oh!"

      "Did you know she had gone?"

      "No, I knew nothing at all about her."

      "Well, she has. She left the house twenty minutes ago. I've sent Chepstow after her in the car; he is to ask her to return."

      "I don't suppose she will," Hugh said, remembering the very firm look about Miss Joan Meredyth's mouth.

      "And I planned the reconciliation, I made sure that once you came face to face it would be all right. Hugh, there is more behind all this than meets the eye!"

      "That's it," he said, "a great deal more! No third person can interfere with any hope of success."

      "And you," she said, "can let a girl like that, your own wife, go out of your life and make no effort to detain her!"

      He nodded.

      "For two pins," said Lady Linden, "I would box your ears, Hugh Alston."

CHAPTER V

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"PERHAPS I SHALL GO BACK"

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