When Vansittart had spoken those awful words, in a light, almost rea.s.suring manner, "she kills him before the curtain falls on the last act," Joan first felt as if her whole mental and physical being were convulsed with a strange, almost unearthly, pain; then everything surged around her, and threatened to sink away into blackness, blankness.

Good heavens, she was going to faint! With an effort of will she fought against unconsciousness; gasped for breath, struggled to maintain her senses, and was rewarded by coming slowly back out of the mists, and seeing the plain, clever face of the dramatic critic appear opposite, seemingly from nowhere. Then she heard that Vansittart was expressing disapprobation of the play.

"I only happened to glance at the plot in your article in the _Parthenon_ just before we came," he was saying. "It was the very last kind of play I should have chosen for Miss Thorne to see had I known the story."

"Indeed?" Mr. Hunt smiled, but Joan thought he gave her a suspicious, enquiring look. It was enquiring; he was wondering whether this beautiful girl were not the prey of some latent but awful disease--her ghastliness, the expression of anguish on her face, was undeniably the effect of some secret suffering. But Joan could not read his thoughts.

She was frightened into bravado.

"I certainly prefer comedies to tragedies," she hazarded, and there was slight defiance in her glance at the dramatic critic. As for her voice, she wondered if it sounded as unnatural in her lover's ears as in her own. "A tragedy is such an exception in everyday life; and when it does occur, one would rather not hear about it."

"You differ from the bulk of humanity, Miss Thorne," said Mr. Hunt, good humouredly. "And I cannot agree with you that tragedy is such an exceptional thing in ordinary existence. My own belief, and it is shared by many others, is that the under-current of most lives has an element of the tragic in it. There are scores of crimes, too, that never come to light; myriads of unsuspected criminals. This I think is shown to be the case by the interest the public have for what is called the 'sensational.' They recognize instincts they possess themselves, although those instincts may be undeveloped, or held in check."

"Hunt! You suggest that we are all of us potential murderers," said Lord Vansittart, with an amused laugh.

Mr. Hunt shrugged his shoulders. "I suggest nothing; I a.s.sume a Socratian att.i.tude; I encourage others to suggest," he somewhat dryly returned. "What do you think of this much-belauded actress, Miss Thorne? I confess I am not infatuated, like the rest. She leaves me utterly cold; hasn't the power to quicken my pulse by a single beat, even in her most impa.s.sioned moments. I was wishing just now that the part had been played by a little girl I saw for the first time the other night--singularly enough, on the very night she became the heroine of a tragedy in real life. You must have read about it, Vansittart. You are not 'one who battens on offal?' I daresay not. Nor am I. I should not have been so interested in this affair if I had not been mixed up in it, and if a friend of mine were not destined, innocently enough, to become one of the strands of the rope which will a.s.suredly hang the murderer, or, I should say, the murderess."

"Please, Hunt, don't let us talk of such horrible things," cried Lord Vansittart. He had seen his darling shudder.

"Oh, pray go on!" said Joan, with a sudden mad effort to hear what there was to hear without a shriek of agony. So--so--something more had been discovered--was known.

"You have probably followed the case, Miss Thorne. There was the romantic element in it which appeals to most ladies," said Mr. Hunt, smiling at Joan. "Ah! I see; you know all about it. Well, to put it as briefly as I can, I was urged to go and see the performance of a young lady, a Miss Vera Anerley, who had made quite a commotion in the provinces. Her company, a touring one, was coming to a suburban theatre for a couple of weeks, and already the reporter of a London evening paper had fallen a victim to her fascination. Well, I went, and I was so astonished at the spontaneity of the girl, at the natural art which, imitating nature, we call genius, that I asked to be introduced. She refused; the manager said she must have a lover waiting round the corner. True enough, she had a lover, but not waiting for her round the corner, as it happened, but waiting for her at home, on the sofa, dead!

He was a bad lot, it seems, that Victor Mercier. You must have read the case, Lord Vansittart, it was 'starred' a bit because of its a.s.sociation with a girl rumour says is bound to make her mark, sooner or later. But even if he was the blackest of black sheep, justice is justice. One doesn't care for a.s.sa.s.sinations done in cold blood in the very heart of civilized London. I know it was brought in 'death by misadventure'; some of those jurymen were the densest of idiots. But the ball has not stopped rolling. As I said, a friend of mine has come into the case. I must tell you; it is so odd; it so proves the old saying that 'truth is stranger than fiction.' A fellow I know very well, one of your circle, I fancy, went with me to see Vera Anerley act, but left me when I went round to the stage door, and, finding it a fine night, elected to walk home. As he was making his way westwards by Westminster Bridge, his attention was attracted by a feminine figure in front, because, besides being tall and well made, there was a _cachet_ of belonging to a smart set about her, or he chose to think so. Then, every now and then the girl tottered. Was she drunk? he thought. What was she doing there? He followed her, and presently, seeing her peering here and there and glancing furtively about, felt sure he was on the track of something peculiar, especially when she flitted up some steps in the shadow, stooped, and seemed to deposit something she was carrying in the corner.

"Of course he at once jumped to the conclusion that she had abandoned an infant, living or dead. He naturally shied off being identified with a discovery of that sort, so he, I think, if I remember rightly, did not walk back, but waited for the first bobby that came along, and, telling him who he was, related what he had seen. Well, of course, when instead of a corpse or an infant they only found a bottle with some brandy in it, he felt rather small. But the bobby was sharper witted than he.

'There's summut rum about this, sir, or I'm very much mistaken,' he said; and he was right. There was something 'rum.' The brandy in that bottle was drugged with morphia; and there is a lot of interviewing of him going on which points, I believe, although he only winks at me and fences questions, that the detectives are on the track, and that the brandy bottle will hang that woman, whoever she is. Dear me! the curtain is going up. I must return to my friend below. _Entre nous_, the very fellow I was talking about is in the house to-night. _Au revoir_, my lord."

Joan contrived to return his bow; she held herself together sufficiently to wait until he was safely out of the box; then she clutched at Vansittart as wildly as if she were drowning in deep waters and he was the forlorn hope, the last available thing to grasp at.

"Take me home, or I shall die," she gasped.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

"Yes, certainly, we will go. Bear up, my dearest, you are safe with me.

I deserve to be shot for bringing you to see this cursed stuff,"

murmured Vansittart, as he supported Joan to the box door, and, sending the attendant for iced water, brandy, salts, anything, tended her lovingly until he saw a faint colour creep back into her cheeks and lips, when, thanking the damsel, who had not been unsympathetic, and slipping a gold coin into her hand, he took his beloved carefully down into the open air and once more drove her home in a hansom.

She clung feebly to him as she lay almost helpless upon his breast--the cool night air, the darkness of the silent street under the starry sky, thrice welcome after her agony in that hot, glaring theatre--clung, feeling as if all else in her life were shipwrecked, engulfed in an ocean of horror, only he, her faithful lover, the one rock that remained. And a word of confession from her, one d.a.m.ning incident that betrayed her guilt, and she would lose even that grip on life and be hopelessly submerged.

"I am so sorry--I was so silly," she feebly began, but he interrupted her with almost pa.s.sionate determination.

"My darling, I know, I understand!" he exclaimed. "That was your friend's story in a stage play. Joan, I feel I must protect you from yourself, for you have allowed an innocent, girlish freak of yours to lay hold of you in an unconceivable manner. It would be absurd, if it were not morbid."

He held forth eloquently on the folly of retrospection, of exaggerating the follies of youth, not only during the drive home, but when they were alone together in the cool dining room, for Sir Thomas was out, and Lady Thorne, not expecting them home so early, had retired for the night; and when he left her in Julie's hands, unwillingly obeying her behest, her demand, given with feverish energy, that her maid was not to be told that she had been attacked with faintness, he felt a little more at ease about her.

Suspect her he did not, except of being one of the most highly strung and sensitive creatures alive. And, being sure that this was so--feeling safe in his unbounded love and trust--she was able to rally.

Through all which might happen--even if Paul Naz changed his mind, and followed up his suspicions; if the man who found the bottle of drugged brandy happened to recognize her as the woman he had seen; if "that actress girl" could identify her as the person she pa.s.sed in the hansom; if, indeed, any sc.r.a.ps of her letters or some old photograph of her had been found among Mercier's belongings--nothing, she believed, would altogether alienate Vansittart's love.

She clung to the thought; it seemed her one anchor to life. But even as she gradually recovered from the shocks of that awful hour at the theatre, she regained a certain amount of hope.

The very pomp and circ.u.mstance of her wedding; the accounts in the papers; the laudation of herself, Vansittart, and their respective families--all must surely help to avoid exciting the suspicion that she, the heroine of the glorification, was a whited sepulchre; that she had stolen out by night and, alone in a poor room in a lowly dwelling-house with her lover, had poisoned him and then left him to die.

Conscience did not soften the facts of the case. She had to face them in all their unlovely turpitude and deal with them as best she might.

But that night when she had to see her own story partly enacted on the stage, and, worse still, hear it commented upon with unconscious brutality by the dramatic critic, Mr. Hunt, seemed the climax, the crisis.

As the night gave place to day--and the day was full of pleasing incidents as well as of fresh proofs of Vansittart's devotion; he arrived early, and took "her in hand," kept her cheerful, and, with his flow of joyous content, would not allow her a leisure moment for her "morbidity," as he called it--she seemed to settle down a little, as one respited for a time, who deliberately determines to make the most of the term of peace. The days went by quickly, for with such a function as a brilliant wedding imminent, there was a perpetual bustle, there were continual obligatory goings to and fro. Besides, Vansittart mapped out the days--rides, drives, receptions, dances, all formed part of his scheme to entertain her until she would be his wife, feeling his emotions, thinking his thoughts. Only the theatre was rigidly excluded.

He avoided even the subject of the stage, nor did he allow her to hear much music. He considered that of all the arts music had the greatest power to reproduce past sensations, to recall memories, especially undesirable ones. He was rewarded for his solicitude by seeing his beloved outwardly cheerful, and apparently at ease.

Joan was, indeed, as the days went quietly by, encouraged by the lack of disturbing elements, by the entire absence of any signs that the tragedy of Victor Mercier's death had any life left in it to torment her. She had promised herself that, if nothing happened before her marriage day, she might consider that she was practically safe. And at last the happy day dawned--a glorious summer morning--and, arising with grat.i.tude in her heart, she murmured a fervent "Thank G.o.d!"

The house was crammed full of visitors--mostly the bridesmaids and their chaperons. At an early hour these girls, attired in their delicate chiffon frocks and "picture hats," were fluttering about the mansion like belated b.u.t.terflies; for the marriage was to be early, for a fashionable one, to enable Lord and Lady Vansittart to start betimes for their honeymoon, which was to be spent on board Vansittart's yacht, but where, remained the young couple's secret. The bride was closeted in her room, Julie alone was with her. "I do not wish any one to see me before I appear in church," she had said, so decidedly, that her attendant maidens subdued their curiosity and started for the church in a couple of carriages--there were eight of them--without having had even a glimpse of the bridal attire.

Joan felt that she could not have borne the innocent chatter of those bright, unconscious girls, so happy in their unsullied ignorance of life and its undercurrent of horrors. Only in a silent, inward clinging to the thought of Vansittart--so soon to be her husband, her mainstay, her refuge, her only hope--could she endure the few hours before she would be safe--safe--alone with him on the high seas, no one knowing where they were or whither they were going.

Julie? Julie was her servant, of late quite her obsequious slave, with the prospect of being maid to "a great lady," and therefore a personage among her compeers before her. Julie was silent when she was silent. So no bride had ever been decked for the altar with greater show of solemnity than was Joan on her wedding morn.

"Am I good enough--do I look good enough--for him?" she asked herself as she gazed at her reflection in the long mirrors arranged by Julie so that she could see herself at all points--full face, back, profile. What she seemed to see was a pyramid of glistening satin, a quant.i.ty of lace, and a small pathetic face with a golden glimmer about it, under a frothy veil.

"A bride's dress is very unbecoming, after all," she somewhat gloomily said, as she accepted the bouquet Julie handed her--myrtle and delicate orchids; for she had told Vansittart, urged by the dread of being confronted with blossoms like the one she had seen in Victor Mercier's b.u.t.tonhole as he lay dead, that if there were any strongly perfumed flowers about she might faint; a threat which had driven Vansittart to the florist who was to decorate the church to veto all but scentless blossoms. "It seems strange, does it not, Julie? that weddings and funerals should have the same kind of flowers."

Julie gave a little shriek. "Mais, mademoiselle, to speak of death on your wedding-day!"

"There are worse things than death, Julie," said she, with a sigh. And she proceeded below, Julie carefully carrying her train, while wondering with some dismay at her young mistress's extraordinary _tristesse_, then, met by the somewhat agitated Sir Thomas in the hall, she drove with him to the church.

Policemen were keeping back the crowd. She went up the flight of crimson-carpeted steps, and, pa.s.sing into the church, dimly saw a double line of bridesmaids, with their pure white frocks and eager, blushing faces; then the officiating clergymen and choristers in their surplices.

"They meet a bride as they meet the dead," she thought, with a delirious instinct to burst into laughter. Then she heard the sweet, solemn strains of the wedding hymn, and she felt rather than saw Vansittart, his manly form erect, even commanding, standing at the altar awaiting her, his eyes fixed gravely on her, compelling her by some mesmeric influence to be calm.

How dreamlike it all was! The serious, holy words; the sacred promises; the ring placed upon her finger; the farce, to her who had lost the power to pray real prayers, of kneeling on bended knees with downcast eyes at her husband's side; then the fuss and fervour in the vestry, the cheery smiles of the clergy, the excited embraces, the tiresome congratulations. Suddenly she began to feel her carefully-acc.u.mulated patience give way, and in a terror lest she should betray herself, she turned to Vansittart.

"Cannot we go now?" she almost wailed, with a pathetic, entreating glance.

"Of course, my dearest!"

The registers were signed, the business of the ceremony completed, and, somewhat abruptly, bride and bridegroom left the vestry and the little crowd of their gaily dressed friends, and went quickly through the church, to return to the house.

What stares and murmurs she had pa.s.sed through, running the gauntlet of the crowded pews of sightseers! As she emerged on her husband's arm, the cool air made her gasp with relief.

Whispers, murmurs, policemen backing the crowd with commanding gestures.

There was the bridal carriage. She saw Vansittart's horses; they were plunging a little. What a monster bouquet the coachman had! She was pa.s.sing down the carpeted steps, she was about to halt to step into the landau, when someone came right in front of her, offering her some flowers.

Flowers! Those horribly white, thick-scented blossoms! She recoiled for an instant, then, remembering she must appear gratified, she took them, vaguely seeing a ghastly face, blazing blue eyes, a figure in deep black, a figure she did not know.

In another moment she was in the carriage; they drove off. "Horrible things; throw them out of window," she faintly said, recognizing the hideous fact that the posy was of the very flower Victor had worn when he died.