The Imaginary Marriage Part 32

"I see. Very good, sir. I'll see to things, of course. And about letters, perhaps you won't want them forwarded as you didn't last time, and--"

"I shall want every letter forwarded, the very hour it arrives," said Hugh quickly.

"Very good, sir. Where shall I send them to?"

"I don't know yet. I'll wire you an address."

Yes, he must go to London. He could not go and watch Joan at Starden, but he could go to London and watch Mr. Philip Slotman.

"What I'll do is this--I'll have a watch kept on that man. There are private detective chaps who'll do it for me. If he goes down to Starden, I'll be after him hot-foot. And if he does go there to annoy and insult Joan--I'll break his neck!" he added, with cheerful decision.

"And she--she is going to marry another man, a man she doesn't love--she can't love. I know she cannot love." He added aloud: "Joan, you don't love him, my darling, you know you don't. You dared not stay and face me that day. Your words meant nothing. You may think you despise me, but you don't: you want to, my dear, but you can't; and you can't because, thank G.o.d, you love me! Oh, fool! Cheer yourself up, slap yourself on the back. It doesn't help you. She may love you as you boast, but she'll never marry you. She wants to hate you, and she'll keep on wanting to hate, and I believe--Heaven help me--that her will is stronger than her heart. But--but anyhow, that brute Slotman shan't worry her while I can crawl about."

He was driven to the station the following morning. And now he was in the train for London.

"I'll find out a firm of detectives and put 'em on Slotman," he thought, "but first I'll go and have a look round. What's the name of the place?--Gracebury."

At the entrance to Gracebury, which as everyone knows is a cul-de-sac of no considerable extent, Hugh stopped his taxi and got out. He walked down the wide pavement till he came to the familiar door.

"I'll see him," he thought. "I'll go in and have a few words with him, just to remind him that his neck is in jeopardy."

He went up the stone steps and paused.

The door of Mr. Philip Slotman's office was closed. On the door was pasted a paper, stating that a suite of three offices was to let.

CHAPTER XXIX

"WHY DOES SHE TAKE HIM FROM ME?"

"Why--why--why?" Ellice asked herself. Why should this woman who did not love him wish to take him away from her, who wors.h.i.+pped the ground he trod on, who looked up to him as the best, the finest of all G.o.d's created creatures?

That Joan Meredyth did not love John Everard no one understood more clearly than Ellice Brand. She had watched them when they were together, she had watched the girl apart; and the watcher's body might be that of a child, but her eyes were the eyes of a woman, as was her heart too.

"Why should she take him from me?" she asked herself, and all her being rose in pa.s.sionate revolt and resentment.

"Perhaps she does not know that I love him. Perhaps she looks on me only as a child--a silly, foolish, infatuated child. But I am not! I am not!"

Ellice cried. "I am not! I love him. I loved him when I was a baby, when I came here eight years ago, and now I am eighteen and a woman, and I have never changed and never shall!"

During the days that followed the announcement of Joan Meredyth's engagement to John Everard, Connie watched the girl. She felt troubled, anxious, and yet scarcely could say why. She knew the girl's pa.s.sionate nature. Connie almost dreaded something reckless even tragic. She was more worried than she could say and of course she could not consult Johnny. There was no one to consult but Helen, and Helen did not understand Ellice in the least. Helen was inclined to look down on Ellice from her superior height as a wayward, wilful, foolish child--nothing more.

"Send her away. I suppose she is really too old to go to school now, Connie. How old is she, sixteen?"

"Eighteen."

"She has the heart and the body of a child."

"And the soul of a woman!"

"Sometimes, Connie dear," said Helen sweetly, "you make me almost angry.

You actually seem to be siding with this foolish little thing!"

Connie sighed. "In--in some ways I do. She loves him so, and I know it.

I can't be hard-hearted, I can't blind myself to the truth. Of course, I know that Johnny's marriage with Joan is the best thing in the world for both of them, but--"

"But just because a stupid, self-willed girl of eighteen believes herself deeply in love with Johnny--Oh, Connie, do be your own reasonable self."

Johnny Everard, blind as most men are, did not notice how quiet and reserved Ellice had grown of late, how seldom she spoke to him, how when he spoke to her she only answered him in brief monosyllables, and how never came a smile now to her red lips, and certainly never a smile into her great dark eyes.

He did not see what Connie saw--the heaviness about those eyes, the suggestion of tears during the night, when she came down silently to her breakfast. She had changed, and yet he did not see it, and if he had seen it might never guess at the cause.

And Connie too, always kindly and gentle, always sweet and unselfish; during these days the girl's unselfishness was something to wonder at.

She had always loved Ellice; she had understood the child as none other had. And now there seemed to be a bond between them that drew them closer.

Three years ago Johnny had bought a bicycle for Ellice. She had been going daily then to Miss Richmond's school at Great Langbourne, three miles away, and he had bought the bicycle that she might ride to school and back again. Since she had left school the bicycle had remained untouched and rusted in one of the outhouses, but now Ellice had got the machine out and cleaned it and put new tyres on it.

Deep down in her mind was a plan, as yet not wholly formed, a desperate venture that one day she might embark on, and the old bicycle was part of that plan, for she would need it to carry out the plan. She had not decided yet, not even if she would ever carry it out, but she might.

Day after day saw her on the road; more often than not her way lay towards Starden village. She would ride the six and a half miles to Starden, wait there for a time, and then ride back. She never called at Starden Hall. Helen knew nothing of these trips.

Connie watched the girl with misgivings and doubts, and Ellice knew that the elder girl was watching her.

"Connie, I want to speak to you," she said quietly one morning.

"Yes, darling?"

Ellice slipped her small brown hand into Connie's.

"I--I know that you are worrying, dear, that you are anxious--and for me."

Connie nodded, tears came into her eyes.

"I want you to understand, Connie, that I--I promise you I will do nothing--nothing, I will never do anything unless I come to you first and tell you. I promise you that I will do nothing--nothing that I should not do, nothing mad and foolish and wrong, unless I come to you first and tell you just what I am going to do."

"Thank you, dear, for telling me this. It lifts a great weight and a great anxiety from my heart. Thank you, dear--oh, Ellice darling, I thought once that it would be a fine thing for him, but now--now I could wish it otherwise!"

Another moment and the girl was in her arms, clasping her pa.s.sionately, and kissing her pa.s.sionately and gratefully.

Then suddenly Ellice broke away, and a few minutes later was riding hard down the road to Starden.

It was always to Starden that she rode. Always she pa.s.sed the great gates of Starden Hall, yet never even glanced at them. She rode into the little village, propped her bicycle against the railings that surrounded the old stocks that stood on the village green, and there sat on a seat and watched the ducks in the green village pond and the children playing cricket. Then, after waiting perhaps an hour, she would mount and ride slowly back to Buddesby again.

It was the programme that she carried out this morning. It was twelve o'clock when she came in sight of Buddesby village, a mile distant as yet.

"Missy! Missy!" Someone was calling. Ellice slowed down and looked about her. On the bank beside the road a man sat, and he was nursing an ugly yellow lurcher dog in his arms.