The Masque of Love/Chapter 7

HEY said good-bye to each other at the corner of the square. So far he had accompanied her without question, but there she had stopped and held out her hand, smiling.

“We'd better say good-bye now,” she said. “Our ways part here, don't they?”

For a minute, he could only gaze down at her in aghast silence. More than her words, careless though they sounded, her smile hurt him by its emptiness, its conventional sweetness. She appeared to him as someone he did not know, a stranger with a mocking resemblance to a woman he loved.

“Do you realize it's the end of the term?” he asked at last. “How shall we see each other, Margaret?”

“We are not going to see each other,” she answered, with the same forced lightness. “I am going away with my new companion, Miss East. We are going to travel—”

“Margaret!” He controlled his voice by a great effort and went on hurriedly. “Dear, I don't understand. You've changed. Something has happened. How long will you be away?”

“Months, perhaps.”

“And then—you are coming back—here?”

“No—never. I've given it up. I'm—going to be married.”

He stood there as though he had been turned to stone, the youth, the life stamped out of his face, leaving it a white mask of pain. She looked away from him, the smile frozen on her lips.

“Geoff, don't take it like that! I've been trying to persuade myself that it's all been very silly—a boy and girl affair—that neither of us is serious—let's think of it in that way—help me—”

“You can think of it as you like, he burst out. “I shan't help you to humbug yourself.” He seized her hands roughly. “You know as well as I do that for me, at any rate, this is either the beginning or the end of all things. I am not a boy any longer, but even if I were—boys also have their constancies. It's you or no one in this life, Margaret. I'd storm heaven itself for you. Dear, you can't mean what you say? Was it my idiotic pride? I don't care how rich, how great you are. I'd marry you if you were the king's daughter—”

She laughed with a bitterness which choked his passionate enthusiasm in an icy grip.

“Would you, Geoff? Oh, I daresay you would. But that's not going to help us. I've thought things over, too. You yourself said there was a barrier—”

“One I'll surmount,” he ground out between his teeth.

“You can't—it's bigger than you know. I wouldn't ask you to surmount it. I wouldn't do it myself. I've my own pride—”

“You mean—I'm not good enough?”

She turned her dry, wide-open eyes to his face.

“Yes, perhaps that's the best way to put it.”

“And this man—you're going to marry? He's rich, I suppose—your class. He knows who you are? You didn't play with him, pretend to be something you're not, lying to him—”

She put up her hand with such a gesture of appeal that even his jealous-goaded madness yielded to it.

“Yes—I haven't deceived him. He knows everything about me. He's going to give me what I need most—name—position—things I wouldn't take from you. I've treated him fairly, anyhow. I'm trying to treat you fairly now. I did deceive you—more than I meant. But you won't be deceived any more. It's all over—done with—”

She stopped, battling for breath; and he released her hands.

“That's all right,” he said, harshly: “It's no use making words about it. I was a fool not to understand what you meant when you took me home that day. Well, I've grasped it now. Let's make an end. There's a taxi coming. You look pretty rotten. You'd better drive back.”

“Geoff—you don't hate me?”

He held open the taxi-door with an icy courtesy.

“Hate you? No. Why should I? It's been a pleasant little comedy—I shall be able to laugh about it soon—”

Then suddenly, as he saw her face, his young cynicism broke down. “Margaret, don't be unhappy. It's been the most glorious thing in my life—a glorious bit of color in all the grayness. I shall never forget—never change—never cease to thank God for the brief vision of you—don't cry, Margaret—don't cry!”

The door closed. He drew back, and watched the commonplace taxi as it passed out of sight. He was shaking from head to foot, battling with the first tragedy of his life. A passer-by might have seen that his cheeks were wet, might have heard the harsh, drawn breath, but he himself knew nothing save his own agony.

As for Margaret Monkhouse, she sat upright in her corner of the taxi, the tears dried, her eyes hard and expressionless. The servant who opened the door to her a few minutes later saw no sign of trouble on the slightly flushed but untroubled face, and even when she reached her room she was still unyieldingly composed. The source of her first tears was frozen. For the moment she seemed without heart, and every emotion stunned and lifeless. She amazed herself with her own tranquillity. She took up Gilbert Haig's letter to her and read it through, indifferently, as though it had been written to some third person, and then, equally indifferently, she prepared to answer him. It was at that moment that Ray East entered the room. Margaret looked up. She liked this strange and unexpected companion who had been thrust upon her. She was the first friend to whom the mystery and trouble of her life were known fully—the first woman, older than herself, on whom she had been able to depend without reserve. To the girl, brought up amidst servants and people: whose attitude towards her had always been one of half good-natured curiosity, this friendship had been the sheet-anchor in her bad hour: And yet now she looked up into the beautiful face with something of antagonism in her eyes. Ray East stopped short, looking at her.

“You have been crying, Miss Monkhouse,” she said quietly.

The girl laughed out loud.

“Why don't you call me Margaret as you did the other evening when you helped me to keep my head? Monkhouse isn't my name really, you know—heaven knows what it is—I haven't got one—but I'm going to have one—one of my very own. And I'm not crying. Why should I cry? I'm going to be married. That's not a crying matter, is it?”

Ray East made no answer for a minute, but she came and sat by the girl's side, leaning her delicate oval face on her hand in an attitude of grave thoughtfulness.

“Whom are you going to marry?” she asked.

“Mr. Haig—Gilbert Haig. I've only met him twice—but he seemed to like me, and he knows all about me—and he can set me free.”

“And you—?”

“Me? Oh, you mean—do I care? No, I don't. If I did I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't burden any man I cared for. But I've got to get away from here, somehow. I shall die here—suffocate with horror and shame and hatred—” She picked up her pen. “And so I am going to tell him that if he wants me—”

A hand laid itself on hers. She looked up truculently into eyes that met hers with a tender determination.

“Is there anyone you care for—Margaret?”

“What right have you to ask that question?” The note of dawning hysteria rang louder in the girl's voice. “I don't know who you are or—why you've come into my life. Were you sent to spy on me—watch me—?”

She tried to wrench her hand free, but the gentle clasp was immovable.

“I came here because I wanted to,” Ray East answered. “I meant to come here—months ago. I planned and plotted for it. I wanted to be with you—at this crisis.”

“With me—what do you mean? You know nothing of me—”

“I knew of you for the first time seventeen years ago. I knew your mother, Margaret—and I loved her.”

A deep silence widened out between them. Margaret looked at the woman beside her for the first time with seeing eyes, and saw the delicate lines which care and pain had drawn about the lovely features. Her own lips quivered with the first storm-rush of reawakened feeling, and the frozen fountain of grief melted, yielding a merciful flood of tears. She buried her face in her hands, and the next moment a woman's arm was about her shoulder.

“I loved your mother more than anyone on earth,” the low voice went on steadily. “She was very good and very beautiful—you bear her features, Margaret. There was nothing in her life which made her seem less perfect in my eyes. Dishonor there was, but it was not hers. It belonged to the man she loved—the worst, blackest dishonor of all—and it was that shattering of faith which drove her to her death. I tell you this because you have got to be like her—as loyal, as good, as high-souled—and because you must trust me as you would have trusted her.” She waited an instant and then added: “You can't marry this man, Margaret. You don't care for him—and there is someone else in your life.”

Margaret Monkhouse lifted her face from her hands. It was tear-stained, but the look of stony, angry misery had melted.

“Yes, there is,” she said, simply. “He's just a painter whom no one's ever heard of—the son of shopkeepers. But I love him—and this morning I told him I should never see him again.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I wouldn't burden him.”

“You thought so little of him—of his love for you?” Ray East threw back her head with a movement that made her seem scarcely older than the girl beside her. “Child, do you think that matters for people who love each other?”

A faint glimmer of youthful triumph shone in the girl's eyes.

“No, I don't—that was only an excuse. I knew he wouldn't care. But he's poor. He couldn't marry me—not for many years. But if I told Geoff the truth he would want to marry me, and I should yield because I love him and I should be like a millstone round his neck—crushing all the youth and hope out of him. I couldn't do that—I'm not selfish enough—and I must get away from here—I must—I can't owe him anything more—”

Ray East nodded, her eyes fixed sternly ahead.

“You are going to get away from here, but with the man you love and no one else on earth. Tear up that letter. No, don't argue—try and trust me, Margaret; seventeen years ago I was scarcely more than a child myself, but I swore two things to myself, and one of them was that one day I should seek you out when you were grown up and would most need me—that I should protect you from the past and make you happy. I'm going to keep that vow.”

Margaret gazed at her, fascinated by the strength and resolution which had revealed itself behind her companion's serene beauty.

“And the other vow—?”

“That is my secret,” was the somber answer.

“And you're lived for these two things. You—who understand love so well—haven't you ever loved anyone?”

Ray East sat very still, gazing at her own white hands clasped in front of her. Her features had lost their mobility. They seemed to keep guard over some deep-imprisoned emotion. Then she rose quietly to her feet.

“I had something for you, Margaret,” she said. “It was an old ring that belonged to your mother. I had a strand of her hair set in it. But on the night of the wreck I gave it to the man who saved my life. My life was very dear to me for your sake—it seemed the greatest thing I could give him. It was an impulse—but he gave his life for mine. Do you forgive me?”

“You are more to me than the ring,” Margaret answered, brokenly.

Ray East smiled and came and stood by the girl's side. She laid her hand gn the still quivering shoulder.

“And now you can trust—tell me about the young and unknown painter,” she said, with a tender mockery.