The Triumph of Jill Part 20

"Enough!" exclaimed Jill excitedly. "If you don't go I shall ask Mr Thompkins to come and protect me from further indignity. How contemptible you are!--how mean! Why don't you insult me when my husband is at home? The sight of you is hateful to me. Why won't you go?"

"I will," he answered quietly, "as you wish it. I do not want to frighten you; but remember--always remember that I love you with all my heart."

Jill stood quite still and watched him as he gravely quitted her presence, and then listened dully to his footsteps clattering down the stairs. When they died away along the narrow pa.s.sage and she heard the street door bang behind him she put her hand to her forehead in a dazed kind of way, and glanced vaguely round the little room seeing nothing but Markham's cynical face with the ugly expression in his eyes that was in the painted eyes of the canvas on the easel. Her glance travelled to the portrait, and rested there for a moment. The sight of it seemed to rouse her into action, and, with a catch in her voice that sounded like an angry sob, she took up a brush, and in a few vigorous strokes painted the whole thing out again as she would have liked to blot the incident from her memory.

To Jill the fact that Markham loved her was anything but a congratulatory matter. The red blood surged to her temples in a flood of indignant colour at the mere thought of such an outrage to her wifehood. She was very angry; her calmness and self-possession had entirely deserted her leaving her excited and wholly unlike herself.

She did not expect St. John home for some time; he had told her not to wait tea, he should be late; and so she seated herself in the big chair by the window to watch for his return, too upset to think of getting tea for herself, too miserable to feel the need of it. St. John was not very late however. He had promised Thompkins to be back by six, and at a few minutes to the hour he arrived. Jill saw him coming but she did not move. She remained where she was until she heard his footstep on the stairs, then she rose and walking quickly to the door threw it open.

He was going into the bedroom to change his coat for the old one he did his work in. Jill called to him softly, but he went on as though he had not heard. She set her lips tightly and followed him, determined to clear up the misunderstanding that existed between them at any cost, and to tell him what had occurred during the afternoon.

"Jack," she said, "I want to talk to you."

"Sorry," he answered, "but I haven't time. I have a lot of work to do."

His manner was anything but encouraging. At another time she would have turned away and allowed the breach to widen, but to-day she was sick of quarrelling about nothing, and longed for a complete reconciliation, and so she persevered.

"You are not very kind to me, dear," she said. "I think the work can wait a few minutes longer, and what I have to say is most important. I have had a very unpleasant experience to-day, Jack, and feel quite worried and upset about it--if you only knew how worried I am sure you would give me your attention."

St. John turned towards her, an expression of surprise on his face. He was in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves, and looked handsome, bad-tempered and ill at ease, his afternoon with Evie had apparently not conduced to exhilaration of spirits.

"What on earth can be worrying you?" he exclaimed. "Didn't Markham turn up?"

"Yes, he turned up," answered Jill sharply. "That is the trouble. I had to send him away again. You, who knew him so intimately, had no right to leave me alone with such a man--no right to introduce me to him at all. He insulted me--he actually tried to make _love_ to me."

She broke off abruptly. Her voice shook a little, and she put up a hand to her burning face. St. John swore. He dropped the jacket he was holding on to the floor, and began struggling fiercely into his outdoor coat again. Jill watched him anxiously. Then she laid a restraining hand upon his arm.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"Find him and--give him a lesson."

He looked so fierce and determined that Jill felt frightened. She was nervous and unstrung with the excitement of the afternoon, and she trembled slightly as she clung tenaciously to his arm.

"Let him alone," she cried quickly. "I will not have my name dragged into any dispute. We have done with him; that is enough. The matter must end there."

"That is all very well," he retorted, "but do you suppose I am going to stand quietly by and allow any cad to make love to my wife?"

"If you had not stood quietly by it might never have happened," she answered. "I don't quite know what it is we have been quarrelling about, but I do know that lately we have drifted apart, and he noticed it--he said so. He thought that I had found out that our marriage had been a mistake."

She looked up to meet St. John's gaze riveted upon her face, with an expression in his eyes that puzzled her, it was so unlike anything she had seen in them before. He looked as a man might look when someone he has loved and trusted deals him a blow on the face, so stern and white and miserable, and so full of an unspeakable shame.

"Jack," she half-whispered, "what is it? What is the matter, dear?"

"Forgive me," he cried brokenly, "If I have misjudged you; but I thought--as Markham thinks. And, my G.o.d, I think so still."

Jill drew away from him, wounded into silence by what she heard. For a few moments she stood irresolute, struck motionless with an anguish too deep for words; then with a half articulate cry she tottered forward, and fell, a forlorn little bundle, at his feet St. John stooped swiftly, and gathering her up, laid her tenderly upon the bed, and, bending over her with a face even whiter than her own, stared down, awed and humbled, at the motionless, unconscious form.

He was almost too stunned at first to realise that there was anything serious the matter; but it gradually dawned upon him that she ought not to be allowed to lie there as she was without calling in some a.s.sistance, and so, not pausing to put on his coat, he ran out of the bedroom on to the landing, and stood there in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves, in terrified and breathless anxiety.

"Thompkins!" he cried excitedly. "Thompkins!"

"Hallo!" answered a voice from the bottom of the stairs, a voice of calm and unruffled serenity.

"For G.o.d's sake run for the doctor," St. John called back.

There was silence for a few seconds; then the street door was opened and banged to again, and St. John returned to the room to watch by his wife and wait.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

It was not many weeks after her sudden and unusual attack of unconsciousness that Jill presented her husband with a little son. The small stranger appeared upon the scene rather too soon, and was delicate and puny in consequence, and a great source of anxiety to its parents.

Jill, herself, was very ill for a long while after its birth, so that St. John had a trying and expensive time of it, the only beneficial result being that every minor worry was forgotten in the all absorbing one of his wife's health.

After the child's birth he wrote a brief note to his father acquainting him with the news. He considered it his duty to do so, though he neither expected nor hoped for any reply to the letter; and he was not disappointed; Mr St. John, Senior, might never have received it for all the sign he made, and Jill, being ill and low-spirited at the time, cried with annoyance to think that her husband should have written to him at all.

"He will only imagine that you want something out of him," she exclaimed pettishly.

"Never mind what he imagines," answered St. John, bending over the speaker's couch, and touching the baby's smooth cheek with his finger.

"It needn't bother us so long as we are satisfied that we have done what is right. You wouldn't like to think that one day this little man might fail in his duty to _his_ father, would you?"

Jill looked down at the wee, mottled face, and laughed softly, though the tears stood in her eyes still, and would not be blinked away.

"How absurd it seems," she said, "to think that this will one day be a man. It's so small and frail that I'm half afraid of it, Jack. And it's dreadfully ugly too, isn't it, dear? Not even you could call it pretty."

"Never mind it's looks," St. John answered rea.s.suringly. "They're all putty-faced at first, you know. If he only grows up with but half his mother's charm and goodness he'll do all right."

Jill laughed again; the extravagance of the compliment amused her.

"I hope he won't grow up with his mother's temper," she said, adding with a mischievous look at St. John, "nor his father's either for that matter; I'd like him to strike out an original line there, Jack."

"Too late, I'm afraid," St. John answered ruefully as the baby screwed up its face preparatory to howling. "He always yells for nothing just when we're having a quiet chat."

Jill sat up a little and rocked the child gently in her arms.

"He is jealous," she explained; "he takes after you in that."

"I think the less _you_ say about it the better," he retorted. "I remember some rather uncomfortable half hours spent on Evie's account."

She smiled, her face close pressed to the baby's, her lips caressing it's hair.

"How ridiculous it all seems now!" she exclaimed--"How small! What a pair of geese we were!"

"Yes," he said, and he straightened himself and walked away to the window to hide the mortification in his eyes. His jealousy had been of a far graver nature than hers, and he did not like to hear it referred to even. He was very much ashamed of himself, and rather embarra.s.sed by a generosity that forgave so quickly and entirely as Jill had done.

"Yes," he repeated softly more to himself than her, "we were a pair of geese. How I wish we had found it out sooner than we did. What an infinitude of suffering it might have saved us both!"

The next important event in their lives, which took place as soon as Jill was well enough to walk to Church, was the baby's christening. He was called John after his father as the eldest sons of the St. John's had been from time immemorial. It was Jill's wish that this should be, St. John, himself, having no idea on the subject. It was also Jill's wish that Mr Thompkins should stand G.o.dfather, and, upon being asked, the senior partner gave a somewhat reluctant consent. He was a practical, hard-working old bachelor, and babies were not much in his line, but he had an unbounded admiration and respect for this baby's mother, so when she informed him of her desire very much after the manner of one conferring an inestimable favour he had not the pluck nor the cruelty to say her nay. The honour cost him a guinea in the shape of a christening present, but the guinea weighed lightly in the balance compared with the interest that he was expected to take in his G.o.dson.

Jill had a way of putting it in his arms, and watching him nurse it which not only embarra.s.sed but annoyed him greatly; and sometimes St.

John would come in and look on with a grin, observing the while that he was quite a family man, or something equally idiotic.

St. John _was_ idiotic in those days. He thought so much of his ugly offspring, as the infant's G.o.dfather mentally called it, and spoilt as many plates in attempting to photograph it as would have served for all the babies that came to the studio in a year. Mr Thompkins groaned, but Jill laughed happily; this tiny link between herself and Jack seemed the one thing necessary to make her life perfect. Its advent had closed a chapter in their history and commenced a new one altogether brighter and happier than the last. The last had known Evie Bolton, and Markham; but now the name of the one was seldom mentioned, the other never. Jill had not seen Markham from the hour she sent him from her presence-- neither had St. John--but a few days after the affair she had received a letter from him, just a short note of apology which ran as follows:--