A Bachelor Husband Part 20

Moonlight might be romantic, and all the rest of it, he told himself, but a moonlight bath was not exactly pleasant.

He cursed Mrs. Heriot under his breath and his own folly; he could not imagine what had possessed him to go out with her; he congratulated himself for having bluffed Feathers, for he knew Feathers hated Mrs. Heriot.

He rang for a hot whisky and went to Marie's room. He could hear her moving about inside, and tapped at the door.

"Come in!"

He turned the handle. He wondered if he could explain things to her as effectually as he had done to Feathers; somehow he rather doubted it--Marie had a way of looking into his very soul.

She still wore the frock she had worn at dinner that night, and was sitting at the window looking out at the moonlight.

Chris went forward.

"Did you think I'd got lost?" he asked lightly. He stood beside her, leaning his shoulder against the window-frame.

"Did you play billiards, after all?" Marie asked. She did not answer his question.

She was sitting with her back to the light, or he might have seen the tear-stains on her face.

"No." He looked away from her and up at the moon with vindictive eyes. "I took a skiff out and got upset" He laughed awkwardly.

"Got upset!" Her voice was full of alarm. "Oh, Chris, you might have been drowned!"

"When I was born to be hanged?" he queried. "Never, my child; but it was a cold bath I can tell you. I had to change and make myself presentable before I came to you. Well--how did you enjoy the concert?"

"Very much." She told him a little about it; she had not enjoyed it a bit; her thoughts had been with him all the time, but she would have died rather than let him guess it.

His handsome eyes searched her face; she looked wonderfully sweet and dainty in the moonlight, and with sudden impulse he stooped and took her hand.

"It's a queer sort of honeymoon, Marie Celeste," he said rather hoa.r.s.ely.

He felt the little hand tremble in his and then suddenly lie very still, but she did not speak, and he went on with an effort to get away from the something tragic of which he was vaguely conscious.

"Are you sorry yet that you married me?"

She shook her head, "Of course not."

He let her hand go, chilled by her words.

"There are heaps of other fellows in the world--better than I, who would have made you happier," he said.

She laughed at that; a little broken laugh of amus.e.m.e.nt.

"There is n.o.body else I would have married," she said faintly.

"You say that now, but you're such a kid! In a year or so you'll think very differently."

"Perhaps you will, too," she told him with trembling lips.

Chris laughed scornfully.

"I! I've never been a woman's man, you know that."

She did know it, and was glad to know it. It was the one small ray of hope in her darkness that if he did not love her at least he had never loved anybody else.

She gave a long sigh of weariness.

"You're tired," said Chris, quickly. "I'll go. Don't sit by the window any more. It's getting cold, and you've got to be careful, you know."

"Very well," she said, as she rose obediently, and he drew the window down. They looked at one another silently, then Chris said:

"Good-night, Marie Celeste."

"Good-night." Her voice was almost inaudible, and, moved by some impulse he could not explain, Chris laid his hands on her shoulders.

"Kiss me--will you?"

She turned her face away sharply.

"I'd--I'd rather not."

"Very well. Good-night."

He went out of the room without another word, and Marie stood where he had left her, staring helplessly at the closed door.

He had asked her to kiss him and she had refused--refused, though her whole heart and soul had longed to say "yes."

Had she been wrong? She did not know. She had tried so hard all along to do only the best thing for his happiness, and yet she had been miserably conscious of the hurt in his face as she turned her own away.

Should she go after him and ask him to come back? She longed, yet feared to go. Perhaps he would only kiss her in the old careless way as a brother might have done, and it was not that sort of kiss she wanted.

Half a loaf is better than no bread! The old proverb floated mockingly before her. But half a loaf was no good to her, starving for love as she was; better die, she thought pa.s.sionately, than have anything less than all.

Twice she went to the door and turned the handle, but each time she came back again to pace the room restlessly.

He had not really wanted to kiss her, or he would not have asked.

He would have taken it without waiting for so poor a thing as her permission. Her cheeks burned as she thought of this humiliating fortnight which people were calling her "honeymoon."

She had hardly seen Chris--it was Feathers who had been her chief companion--good, kind Feathers, with his ugly face and his heart of gold. Did he know, she wondered, what sort of a marriage hers was?

If so, he had never let her guess by word or look that he knew, and once more she fell back on her old desperate hope.

"I shall get used to it--I must get used to it."

She had been married a fortnight now--only fourteen days--but they seemed like years. The pain had not lessened, and the weary, aching disappointment was still as keen.

And sudden revolt rose in her mind. She had as much right to her happiness as anyone else. After all, what was the use of straining after the unattainable? Why not take what the G.o.ds gave and be thankful?

She opened the door again and looked out on to the landing; she knew that Chris' room was the one next to hers, with a communicating door which she had locked on her side.