Читать книгу A Bachelor Husband - Ruby M. Ayres - Страница 4

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"All men kill the thing they love

By all let this be heard.

The coward does it with a kiss. … "

THERE followed a terribly dull week, during which Marie hardly went out. Miss Chester believed in seven days' unbroken mourning, and she kept the girl to it rigorously.

Christopher came and went. He seemed very busy, and was constantly shut up in the library with men whom Miss Chester said were "lawyers."

"There are a great many things to settle, you know," she told Marie. "Your father had large properties and much money to leave."

Marie said, "Oh, had he?" and lost interest. As yet money had not much significance for her, but she watched the closed library door with anxious eyes. Would it never open?

It was quite late that evening before she saw Chris again, and then he came into the drawing-room, where she was trying to read and trying not to listen for his step, and, crossing to where she sat, stood looking down at her.

It was getting dark—the June evening was drawing to a close—and she could not see his face very distinctly, though she felt in some curious way that there was a different note in his voice when he spoke to her.

"How old are you, Marie?"

She looked up amazed. Surely he ought to know her age when they had grown up together? But she answered at once: "I was eighteen last May."

"And a kid for your age, too," he said abruptly.

9 She closed her book, a faint sense of hurt dignity in her heart.

"I knew a girl who was married at eighteen," she said.

Christopher laughed. "I can't imagine you married, all the same." he said.

"Why not? I don't see why not," she objected, offendedly.

He stood for a moment looking down at her. She could feel his eyes upon her. Then he said, irrelevantly, it seemed: "After all, we've known each other most of our lives, haven't we?"

"Yes." She was mystified. She could not understand him.

"And got on well—eh?" he pursued.

She smiled ever so faintly. "Oh, yes," she said, with heartfelt fervor.

Chris laughed. "Well—I'll take you for a ride in the car to- morrow, if you like," he said, casually.

Marie could not have explained why, but she felt sure that this was not what he had originally intended to say to her, but she answered at once: "Yes, I should love it!"

It was the first ride of many, the first of many blissful days that followed, for Christopher no longer went out and about with his friends. He stayed at home with Marie and Miss Chester.

Sometimes he seemed a little restless and impatient, Marie thought. Often she caught him yawning and looking at the clock as if he were anxiously waiting for something, or for time to pass, but she was too happy to be critical. He was with her often, and that was all that mattered.

And then—quite suddenly—the miracle happened!

It was one Sunday evening—a golden Sunday in June, when London seemed sunbaked and breathless, and one instinctively longed for the sea or the country.

Miss Chester had had friends to tea, but they had gone now, and Chris was prowling round the drawing-room, with its heavy, old- fashioned furniture, hands in pockets, as if he did not know what to do with himself.

10 Half a dozen times he looked at Marie—half a dozen times he took a step towards the door and came back again. There was an oddly nervous expression in his blue eyes, and his careless lips no longer smiled.

Miss Chester had been very silent, too, since the visitors left, and presently, with a little murmured excuse, she gathered up her work and went out of the room.

Chris swallowed hard and ran a finger round his collar, as if he suddenly found it too tight, and his voice sounded all strangled and jerky, when suddenly he said:

"Put on your hat and come out, Marie Celeste! I can't breathe—it's stifling indoors."

He had always called Marie "Marie Celeste" since their childhood. It had been his boy's way of pretending to scorn her French name, but Marie liked it, as she liked everything he chose to do or say.

She rose now with alacrity. She was ready in a few minutes, and they went out together into the deserted streets.

It was very hot still, and Chris suggested they should go down to the Embankment.

"There'll be a breeze," he said.

It was a very silent walk, though Marie did not notice it She was perfectly happy; she was sure that every woman they passed must be envying her for walking with such a companion. Now and then she looked up at him with adoring eyes.

They walked along the Embankment, and away from it towards Westminster Abbey. There was a service going on inside, and through the open doors they could hear the wonderful strains of the organ.

Marie stopped to listen—she loved music, and Chris stopped, too, though he fidgeted restlessly, and drew patterns with his stick on the dusty path at his feet.

When they walked on again he said abruptly:

"We've got on very well since you came home—eh, Marie Celeste?"

Her dark eyes were raised to his face.

"Oh, Chris! Of course!"

He frowned a little.

11 "I mean—do you think we should always get on as well?" he asked, with an effort.

She was miles away from understanding his meaning, but something in his voice set her heart beating fast. When she tried to answer, her voice died away helplessly.

Christopher looked down at her, then he said with a rush: "The fact is—I mean—will you marry me?"

Marie stopped dead. All power of movement had deserted her. A wave of crimson surged over her face, rushing away again and leaving her as white as the little rose which she wore in her black frock.

Chris slipped a hand through her arm. He was afraid that she was going to faint. He was feeling pretty bad himself.

"Well, is it so dreadful to think about?" he asked with a mirthless laugh.

"Dreadful!" She found her voice with a gasp. The sudden rapture that flooded her heart was almost unbearable. But for his arm in hers, she was sure she would have fallen.

There was a seat close by, and Chris made her sit down. He sat beside her and stared at his feet while she recovered a little, then he looked up with a strained smile.

"Well, do you think you could put up with me for the rest of your life?" he asked.

Marie's face was radiant. Nobody could ever have said then that she was not pretty. Her eyes were like stars. She seemed to have blossomed all at once into perfect womanhood.

She wanted to say so many things to him, but no words would come. She just gave him her hand, and his fingers closed hard about it.

For a little they sat without speaking, while through the open doors of the cathedral came the wonderful strains of the organ. Then suddenly it ceased, and Chris took his hand away as if the spell that had been laid upon them was broken.

He rose to his feet, looking a little abashed.

"Well, then—we can tell Aunt Madge that we're engaged?" he said.

12 "Yes."

But even then she could not believe it She dreaded lest with every moment she would wake and find it all a dream.

But it was still a reality when they got back home, and Aunt Madge pretended to be surprised, and cried and kissed them both, and said she had never been so glad about anything.

She wanted them to have a glass of wine to celebrate the occasion, though, as a rule, she was a staunch teetotaler, but Chris said no, he could not stay—he had an appointment. He went off in a great hurry, hardly saying good-night, and promising to be round early in the morning.

At the doorway he stopped and looked back at the two women.

"I'll—er—you must have a ring, Marie Celeste," he said. "I'll—er—I'll tell them to send some round," and he was gone.

It was a strange wooing altogether, but to Marie there was nothing amiss. She was in the seventh heaven of happiness. When she went to bed she looked out at the starry sky, and wished she were clever enough to write a poem about this most wonderful of nights.

She saw nothing wrong with the days that followed either. To be awkwardly kissed by Chris—even on the cheek—was a delirious happiness; to wear his ring, joy unspeakable; to be out and about with him, all that she asked of life.

The wedding was to be soon. There was nothing to wait for, so Chris and Aunt Madge agreed. They also agreed that it must of necessity be quiet, owing to their mourning. Marie Celeste agreed to everything—she was still living in the clouds. She could hardly come down to earth sufficiently to choose frocks and look at petticoats and silk stockings.

Aston Knight, a friend of Christopher's, was to be best man, and Marie's special school chum, Dorothy Webber, was to be maid of honor.

"I hope you won't mind such a quiet wedding, my dear child." Miss 13 Chester said anxiously to Marie. "But if one starts to invite people, Chris has so many friends, it will be difficult to know where to stop. So I thought if Mr. Knight and Dorothy came, and just your father's lawyer and myself … "

"I don't mind—arrange it as you like," Marie said. She would not have minded going off with Chris alone to church in her oldest frock if it had to come to that. There was not a cloud in her sky.

The wedding was fixed for a Friday.

"Oh, not Friday," Miss Chester demurred. "It's such an unlucky day! Surely Thursday will do just as well."

"I'm not superstitious," Chris answered. "Are you, Marie Celeste? I think Friday is a good day. We can get away then for the week-end."

Marie laughed. She thought Friday was the best day in all the week she said—of course, she was not superstitious!

But his Friday proved unkind, for, though it was the end of July, it rained hard when Marie woke in the morning and there was a chill wind blowing.

She sat up in bed and stared at the window, down which the raindrops were pouring, with incredulous eyes.

How could the weather possibly be so bad on such a day! It was the first faint shadow across her happiness.

The second came in the shape of a wire from Dorothy Webber, to say she could not possibly come after all. Her mother was ill, and she was wanted at home. Marie was bitterly disappointed, but she was young and in love; the world lay at her feet, and long before she was dressed to go to church her spirits had risen again and she was ready to laugh at Aunt Madge, who showed signs of tears.

"If you cry I shall take it as a bad omen," she told the old lady, kissing her. "What is there to cry for, when I am going to be so happy?"

Miss Chester put her arms round the girl and looked into her face with misty eyes.

14 "Darling—are you sure, quite sure, that you love Chris?"

"Do I love him?" The brown eyes opened wide with amazement. "Why, I have always loved him," she said simply.

But she held Miss Chester's hand very tightly as they drove to church in the closed car, and for the first time her child's face was a little grave. Perhaps it was the dismal day that oppressed her, or perhaps at last she was beginning to realize that she was taking a serious step by her marriage with Chris.

"It's for all your life, remember," a little warning voice seemed to whisper, and she raised her head proudly a her heart made answer: "I know—and there could be no greater happiness."

It was raining still when they reached the church, and the chauffeur held an umbrella over Marie as she stepped from the car into the porch. She wore a little traveling frock of palest gray, and little gray shoes and stockings, and a wide-brimmed hat with a sweeping feather.

Though she had never felt more grown-up in her life, she had never looked such a child, and for a moment a queer pang touched the heart of young Lawless as he turned at the chancel steps and looked at her as she came up the aisle with Miss Chester.

But Marie's face was quite happy beneath the wide-brimmed hat, and her brown eyes met his with such complete love and trust that for a moment he wavered, and the color rushed to his cheeks.

But the parson was already there, and the service had begun, and in less than ten minutes little Marie Celeste was the wife of the man she had adored all her life, and was signing her maiden name for the last time with a trembling hand.

And then they were driving away together in the car, to which Aston Knight, with a sentimental remembrance of other weddings, had tied an old shoe, and it flopped and dangled dejectedly in the mud and rain behind as the car sped homewards.

And Christopher looked at his wife and said:

15 "Well, we couldn't have had a worse day, could we?"

Marie smiled. "What does it matter about the Weather?"

Christopher thought it mattered the deuce of a lot, but then he was a man, and a man—even a bridegroom—never sees things through the same rose-colored glasses as a woman.

It was such a little way from the church to the house that there was no time to say much more, and then they were home, and Miss Chester, who had followed hard on their heels in another car, was crying over Marie and kissing her again, and Marie woke to the fact that she was really a married woman!

There was a sumptuous lunch, to which nobody but Aston Knight and the lawyer did justice, and then Marie went upstairs and changed her frock, because it was still pouring with rain, and wrapped her small self into a warm coat, and there were many kisses and good- bys, and at last it was all over and she and Chris were speeding away together.

Perhaps it is sometimes a merciful dispensation of Providence that the eyes of love are blind, for Marie never saw the strained look on Christopher's face or the way in which his eyes avoided hers. She never thought it odd when in the train he provided her with a heap of magazines and the largest box of chocolates she had ever seen in her life, and unfolded a newspaper for his own amusement.

She ate a chocolate and looked at him with shy adoration. He was her husband—she was to live with him for the rest of her life!

There would be no more partings—no more dreary months and weeks during which she would never see him. He was her very own—forever!

He seemed conscious of her gaze, for he looked up.

"Tired?" he asked

"No."

"Hungry, then? You ate no lunch."

"Oh, I did. I had ever such a lot."

16 "We'll have a good dinner to-night, and some champagne." he said.

"Yes." Marie had never tasted champagne until her wedding lunch to- day, and she did not like it, but to please Chris she would have drunk a whole bottleful uncomplainingly.

For their honeymoon they were going to a seaside town on the East Coast.

"Wouldn't it be nicer in Devonshire or at the lakes, Chris?" Miss Chester had asked timidly, but Chris had answered:

"Good lord, no! There's nothing to do there. We must go somewhere lively."

So he had chosen the liveliest town on the East Coast and the liveliest hotel in the town—a hotel at which he had stayed many times before, and was well known.

He was the kind of man who knew scores of people wherever he went, and in his heart he was hoping that he would meet scores of them now.

He gave an unconscious sigh of relief when, later, he saw Marie carried up to her room in the lift in the company of an attentive chambermaid, who knew that they were newly married. He went off to the buffet and ordered himself the strongest brandy he could get; while upstairs Marie was looking out her prettiest dinner frock and trembling with excitement at the thought of this new life into which she had so suddenly been plunged.

She was just ready when Chris came knocking at her door. He had changed into evening clothes, and was very immaculate altogether.

"Ready?" he asked. His blue eyes wandered over her dainty person.

"You look like a fairy," he said.

"Do I?" she smiled happily. "Do you like my frock?"

She turned and twisted for his admiration.

Chris said it was topping. They went downstairs together, the best of friends.

"I met some fellows just now that I know," he said, as they sat down to table. "I'll introduce you later. They're stopping here."

17 She flushed sensitively. "Did you? Did they know you were married?" she asked.

"I told them."

"Were they very surprised?"

"Well, they were—rather," he admitted, and frowned, recalling the very downright criticism which he had received from at least one of them.

At dinner Marie obediently drank one glass of champagne, and got a headache. She was rather glad to be left to herself for a little afterwards in the coolness of the lounge outside, while Chris went in search of his friends. She chose a chair that was not prominent, and sat down with closed eyes.

She had never stayed in a hotel before, and the noise and bustle of it all rather confused her. She was wondering how she would ever find her way through all the corridors to her room again, when she caught the mention of her husband's name.

It was spoken in a man's voice and spoken with a little laugh that sounded rather contemptuous, she thought.

She sat up instantly, headache forgotten. Probably this was one of the friends of whom Chris had spoken to her before dinner. She leaned a little forward, trying to see the speaker, but a group of ornamental palms and flowers successfully obscured him.

The man, whoever he was, was talking to another, for presently Marie heard a laugh and a second voice say: "Chris Lawless! Oh, yes, I know him! Is he really married?"

"Yes—married a girl he's known all his life. Quite a child, so they say."

"How romantic!"

"Romantic!" The man echoed the word rather cynically. "There's not much romance in it from all accounts—just a business arrangement, I should call it."

Marie sat quite still. She was not conscious of listening, but there seemed no other sound in all the world than this man's rather hard voice as he went on:

"Lawless was old Chester's adopted son, you know, and the girl was 18 Chester's daughter. There was a stack of money to leave, it seems, and when the old man died he left it in his will that they were to have half each on condition they married—but if they didn't, the whole lot went to the girl! Well, you know what Lawless is? He wasn't going to let a good thing like that escape him, you bet! So he just made up to the girl and married her. They're down here on their honeymoon."

"You mean—he's not keen on the girl?"

"Of course he's not! He's not the sort. Never cared for women! Have you ever heard of him being mixed up with one? I never have! Of course, I don't know what the girl's like—I'm rather curious to meet her, I admit—but from what I know of Chris, and his way of living, I'm dashed sorry for her! She'll find she's married a bachelor husband, and no mistake."

Marie sat perfectly still, her eyes fixed on her white slippers as if she saw them now for the first time; her hands loosely clasped in her lap, her new wedding ring shining in the light above her head.

It was strange that she never for one moment questioned the truth of what that voice had said. In her heart she knew that she had always thought her happiness too great to last. She drew a long, hard breath, as if it hurt her. The end had come sooner than she had expected, that was all!

"Don't think I'm running him down, you know," the voice went on emphatically. "I think he's the best old chap in the world; but some men are made like that, you know! Born bachelors."

Marie smiled faintly. Poor old Chris! What an awful position for him. She shut her eyes tightly with a quick feeling of giddiness.

What could she do now? What could she say to him? Ought she to tell him?

She tried to think, but somehow her brain felt woolly and would not work. There was a queer little pain in her hand, and looking down blankly, she saw that her nails had cut deeply into her flesh, 19 their clasp of one another had been so cruel.

"The money was left between them on condition they married—otherwise she got it all."

The words beat against her brain as if daring her to forget them.

Poor Chris! He had always been fond of money. He had never had enough to spend! She could remember when he first went to Oxford, how often he wrote home for extra money.

It had never been refused, either. She knew that her father had always preferred him to herself, strange as it might seem, and had encouraged him in his extravagances.

Incidents out of the past flitted before her like panoramic pictures; Chris as a long-legged schoolboy as she had first seen him, Chris in cricketing flannels, making her do all the bowling and fielding while he had the bat, Chris in his first silk hat, daring her to laugh at him—and, last of all, Chris as he had looked at her that day outside Westminster Abbey when he asked her to marry him.

She could remember that he had said, "Well, is the idea too dreadful?" and she supposed now he had said that because the idea had been dreadful to him.

A bachelor husband! It seemed so completely to sum up the situation, and before her eyes rose a dreadful picture of the future in which Chris would be nothing more to her than he had been during the past five years.

He would never want to be with her. He would still go his own way. He would make his own friends and his own amusements, and she—what could she do with the rest of her life?

"He's on his honeymoon here, you know," the voice went on with just a shade of amusement in it. "Fancy a honeymoon in this hotel! He didn't mean to be dull, did he? I suppose he knew he was morally certain to meet half his pals down here."

Marie's hands were tearing a little lace handkerchief she carried—20 it had been her wedding handkerchief—Aunt Madge had given it to her just before they started for church, and had told her that her mother had carried it at her wedding.

"But I hope you will be much, much happier than your mother, darling child," so Aunt Madge had said as she kissed her.

Poor Aunt Madge! And poor mother! Maria knew that her mother's marriage had been anything but happy, and she was glad when she saw that unconsciously she had torn the little lace handkerchief to rags. At least now it could not be handed on to any other poor little bride as an omen of ill-luck.

"What about that game of billiards?" the voice asked with a yawn, and there was a movement on the other side of the bank of ferns which hid the speaker from Marie.

She could not see him as he moved away, and she sat on, numbed and cold, until presently Chris came looking for her and found her out.

"Here you are then! I thought you were in the drawing-room. I want to introduce you to Dakers, Marie Celeste!" He seemed conscious all at once of her pallor. "Don't you feel well?" he asked.

She rose to her feet, forcing a smile.

"My head aches a little. I think it was the champagne."

Chris laughed.

"Silly kid! It will do you good."

He slipped a careless hand through her arm and led her across the lounge to where a group of men stood chatting and laughing together.

He touched one of them on the shoulder.

"Dakers—I want to introduce you to my wife——"

He rushed the last two words nervously. "Marie, this is Dakers—otherwise Feathers. I hope you'll be friends."

Marie gave him her hand. Was this the man who had brought her castle tumbling down? she wondered, and her brown eyes were full of 21 unconscious pathos as she raised them to his face.

What an ugly man, she thought, with a sudden feeling of aversion, with blunt, roughly-cut features, and a skin burnt almost black by constant exposure to wind and weather, but his face when he smiled was kindly, and involuntarily she returned the pressure of his fingers.

And then he spoke, and she recognized his voice instantly as the voice of the man who, with careless indifference, had blasted her happiness.

"Delighted to meet you," he said. "I know your old rascal of a husband well, Mrs. Lawless. Many a good time we've had together in the past."

"And shall have in the future," Chris struck in casually. "Don't put it so definitely in the past."

He turned to a boyish-looking youth who had been standing looking on rather sheepishly. "Marie, this is Atkins."

The boy blushed and grinned. He gripped Marie's hand with bearlike fervency.

"Awfully pleased to meet you," he said. "Shall we go and look on? Chris and Feathers are going to play pills."

Marie raised dazed eyes to him.

"Feathers—who is Feathers?" she asked helplessly.

"I'm Feathers," Dakers explained casually. "So-called on account of my hair—which invariably stands up on end. You may have noticed."

He passed a big hand over his shaggy head, and Marie smiled.

"Anyway, I don't know what the game of pills is," she said.

The boy Atkins began to explain.

"It's billiards. They're rotten players, both of them, and we shall get some fun out of watching them. I'll find you a good seat."

Chris looked at his wife dubiously.

"If you're tired—if you'd rather I didn't play," he began diffidently, but the girl shook her head.

"Oh, no, please! I should love to watch." 22

Whatever he had done, she never for one moment lost sight of the fact that she loved him—that he was everything in the world to her, and though as yet she could not realize the full enormity of what she had just discovered, her one dread was lest she should still further alienate him. She knew that Chris was so easily bored and annoyed; she knew that he hated headachy people. He liked a woman to be a pal to him—that was, when he considered the sex at all.

It was odd that during the last half-hour the relationship which she had imagined had existed between them since the moment when he asked her to marry him had been utterly wiped out of her mind. He was once again just the Chris whom she had always blindly adored, without hope of reciprocity; the Chris who occasionally condescended to be kind to her—as a man might occasionally be kind to a lost dog which has attached itself to him.

She went with young Atkins to the billiard room and sat beside him on a high leather couch, and tried to listen while he explained the game, but it all sounded like double Dutch. The smoke of the many cigars and cigarettes of the men around her made her eyes smart, and the subdued light made her feel giddy. She did her best to be interested, but it was difficult.

Chris had taken off his coat to be more free to play, and he looked a fine figure of a man in his shirt-sleeves, she thought, as he stood chalking his cue and laughing with Feathers.

He never once glanced at his wife. She supposed he thought that she was quite happy and entertained by young Atkins.

And this was the first night of her honeymoon? She realized it in a pitying sort of way, as if she were considering the case of some girl other than herself. It seemed dreadfully sad, she thought, and then smiled, realizing that she was the little wife whom she was pitying, and that the tall man over the other side of the room, so engrossed in his game, was her husband.

What other wife in the world had spent the first evening of her 23 married life watching a game of billiards she wondered? And a little helpless laugh escaped her.

Young Atkins looked down quickly.

"I beg your pardon. What did you say?"

"Nothing—I only laughed."

She bit her lip to prevent the laugh from coming again. How stupid she was, because nothing amusing had happened.

Only once Chris came across to her.

"Would you like some coffee?" he asked.

"No, thank you."

"Do your head good." he said, but without looking at her. His eyes were watching the table the whole time, and without waiting for her to speak again he went off back to the game.

"Chris really plays a thumping good game," Atkins confided to her. "I always tell him he's a rotten player, but he isn't a rotten player at anything, really! Fine sportsman, you know."

Marie nodded. She knew everything there was to know about Chris. At home she had a scrapbook, her most treasured possession, carefully pasted up with every little newspaper cutting that had ever been printed about him, from the first long jump he had won at a local school to an account of a wedding a few months back at which he had been best man.

She had whispered to Aunt Madge as they kissed good-bye, to be sure to cut the announcement of their wedding from the newspapers so that she could add it to her collection, and Aunt Madge had promised. Somehow it made her feel sick now to think of it! Such a farcical wedding—no real wedding at all! No wonder they had wanted it quiet!

Though she hardly looked at the table before her she seemed to see nothing but those smooth, ivory balls, and the only sound in the world was their monotonous click, click!

Chris was winning, young Atkins whispered to her. Poor old Feathers 24 was not in the running at all. He bent a little closer to her.

"Have you seen Chris play tennis?" he asked. "Gad! He can serve! As good as any Wimbledon 'pro'! I'll bet my boots … I say, what's the matter? Here, Chris!"

He called sharply across the room to Chris, but it was too late, for Marie had slipped fainting from the high leather couch.

25