The Imaginary Marriage | Page 2

and cleanliness of his young manhood. He seemed to bring into the room a scent of the open country, of the good brown earth and of the clean wind of heaven.
"Hello, Hugh!" said Lady Linden.
"Hello, my lady," said he, and kissed her. It had been his habit from boyhood, also it had been his lifelong habit to love and respect the old dame, and to feel not the slightest fear of her. In this he was singular, and because he was the one person who did not fear her she preferred him to anyone else.
"Hugh," she said--she went straight to the point, she always did; as a hunter goes at a hedge, so her ladyship without prevarication went at the matter she had in hand--"I have been talking to Marjorie about Tom Arundel--"
His cheery face grew a little grave.
"Yes?"
"Well, it is absurd--you realise that?"
"I suppose so, but--" He paused.
"It is childish folly!"
"Do you think so? Do you think that she--" Again he paused, with a nervousness and diffidence usually foreign to him.
"She's only a gel," said her ladyship. Her ladyship was Sussex born, and talked Sussex when she became excited. "She's only a gel, and gels have their fancies. I had my own--but bless you, they don't last. She don't know her own mind."
"He's a good fellow," said Hugh generously.
"A nice lad, but he won't suit me for Marjorie's husband. Hugh, the gel's in the garden, she is sitting by the lily-pond and believes her heart is broken, but it isn't! Go and prove it isn't; go now!"
He met her eyes and flushed red. "I'll go and have a talk to Marjorie," he said. "You haven't been--too rough with her, have you?"
"Rough! I know how to deal with gels. I told her that I had the command of her money, her four hundred a year till she was twenty-five, and not a bob of it should she touch if she married against my wish. Now go and talk to her--and talk sense--" She paused. "You know what I mean--sense!"
A very pretty picture, the slender white-clad, drooping figure with its crown of golden hair made, sitting on the bench beside the lily-pond. Her hands were clasped, her eyes fixed on the stagnant green water over which the dragon-flies skimmed.
Coming across the soundless turf, he stood for a moment to look at her.
Hurst Dormer was a fine old place, yet of late to him it had grown singularly dull and cheerless. He had loved it all his life, but latterly he had realised that there was something missing, something without which the old house could not be home to him, and in his dreams waking and sleeping he had seen this same little white-clad figure seated at the foot of the great table in the dining-hall.
He had seen her in his mind's eye doing those little housewifely duties that the mistresses of Hurst Dormer had always loved to do, her slender fingers busy with the rare and delicate old china, or the lavender-scented linen, or else in the wonderful old garden, the gracious little mistress of all and of his heart.
And now she sat drooping like a wilted lily beside the green pond, because of her love for another man, and his honest heart ached that it should be so.
"Marjorie!" he said.
She lifted a tear-stained face and held out her hand' to him silently.
He patted her hand gently, as one pats the hand of a child. "Is--is it so bad, little girl? Do you care for him so much?"
"Better than my life!" she said. "Oh, if you knew!"
"I see," he said quietly. He sat staring at the green waters, stirred now and again by the fin of a lazy carp. He realised that there would be no sweet girlish, golden-haired little mistress for Hurst Dormer, and the realisation hurt him badly.
The girl seemed to have crept a little closer to him, as for comfort and protection.
"She has made up her mind, and nothing will change it. She wants you to--to marry me. She's told me so a hundred times. She won't listen to anything else; she says you--you care for me, Hugh."
"Supposing I care so much, little girl, that I want your happiness above everything in this world. Supposing--I clear out?" he said--"clear right away, go to Africa, or somewhere or other?"
"She would make me wait till you came back, and you'd have to come back, Hugh, because there is always Hurst Dormer. There's no way out for me, none. If only--only you were married; that is the only thing that would have saved me!"
"But I'm not!"
She sighed. "If only you were, if only you could say to her, 'I can't ask Marjorie to marry me, because I am already married!' It sounds rubbish, doesn't it, Hugh; but if it were only