To Love

"TO LOVE"

CHAPTER I












"You don't believe in marriage, and I can't afford to marry"—Gilbert Stanning laughed, but the sound was not very mirthful and his eyes, as he glanced at his companion, were uneasy and not quite honest. "We are the right sort of people to drift together, aren't we, Joan?" His hands as he spoke were restless, fidgeting with a piece of string which he tied and untied repeatedly.

Joan Rutherford sat very straight in her chair, her eyes looking out in front of her. His words had called just the faintest tinge of colour to her cheeks. It was not exactly a beautiful face, but it was above everything else lovable and appealing. Joan was twenty-three, yet she looked still a child; the lines of her face were all a little indefinite, except the obstinacy of her chin and the frankness of her eyes. Her one claim to beauty, indeed, lay in those eyes; wide, innocent, unfathomable, sometimes green, sometimes brown flecked with gold. They seemed to hint at tragedy, yet they were far more often laughter-filled than anything else. For the rest, Joan was an ordinary independent young lady of the twentieth century who had lived in London "on her own" for six months.

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How her independence had come about is a complicated story. It had not been with the approval of her people; the only people she possessed being an old uncle and aunt who lived in the country. All Joan's nearer relations were dead; had died when she was still a child; Uncle John and Aunt Janet had seen to her bringing up. But at twenty-two and a-half Joan had suddenly rebelled against the quiet monotony of their home life. She had broken it to them gently at first, with an obstinate resolve to get her own way at the back of her mind; in the end, as is usually the case when youth pits itself against age, she had won the day. Uncle John had agreed to a small but adequate allowance, Aunt Janet had wept a few rather bitter tears in private, and Joan had come to London to train as a secretary, according to herself. They had taken rooms for her in the house of a lady Aunt Janet had known in girlhood, and there Joan had dutifully remained. It was not very lively, but she had a sense of gratitude in her heart towards Aunt Janet which prevented her from moving. Joan was not thinking of all this as she sat there, nor was she exactly seeing the sweep of grass that spread out in front of them, nor the flowering shrubs on every side. Hyde Park was ablaze with flowers on this hot summer's day and in addition a whole bed of heliotrope was in bloom just behind their chairs. The faint sweet scent of the flowers mixed with Joan's thoughts and brought a quick vision of Aunt Janet. But more deeply still her mind was struggling with a desire to know what exactly it was that swayed her when Gilbert Stanning spoke to her, or when—as more often than not—he in some way or other contrived to touch her. She had met him first at a dance that she had been taken to by another girl and she had known him now about four months. It was strange and a little disturbing the tumult his eyes waked in her heart. The first time he had kissed her, one evening when they had been driving home from the theatre in a taxi, she had turned and clung to him, because suddenly it had seemed as if the whole world was 

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sweeping away from her. Gilbert had taken the action to mean that she loved him; he had never wavered from that belief since. He possessed every spare minute of her days, he kissed her whenever he could, and Joan never objected. Only oddly, at moments such as this, her mind would suddenly push forward the terse argument:

"Do you love him, or is it just the little animal in you that likes all he has to give?"

Joan was often greatly disturbed about what she called the beast side of her. During her year in London, under the guidance of another girl far older and wiser than herself, she had plunged recklessly into all sorts of knowledge, gleaned mostly from books such as Aunt Janet and even Uncle John had never heard of, far less read. So Joan knew that there is a beast side to all human nature, and she was for ever pausing to probe this or that sensation down to its root. Her books had taught her other theories too, and very young, very impetuous by nature, Joan rushed to a full acceptance of the facts over which older women were debating. The sanctity of marriage, for instance, was a myth invented by man because he wished to keep women enslaved. Free love was the only beautiful relationship that could exist between the sexes. Frankness and free speech between men and women was another rule Joan asserted, in pursuance of which she had long since threshed out the complicated question of marriage with Gilbert. It was all rather childish and silly, yet pathetic beyond the scope of tears, if you looked into Joan's sunlit eyes and caught the play of dimples round her mouth. Rather as if you were to come suddenly upon a child playing with a live shell.

What Gilbert Stanning thought of it all is another matter; Joan with all her book-learned wisdom had not fathomed his character. He was a man about thirty-two, good-looking, indolent and selfish. He had just enough money to be intensely comfortable, provided he spent it all on himself, and Gilbert certainly succeeded in being comfortable. There had been a good many women in Gilbert's

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 life of one kind and another, but he had never known anyone like Joan before. At times her startling mixture of knowledge and innocence amazed him, and she had fascinated him from the first. He was a man easily fascinated by the little feminine things in a woman. The way Joan's hair grew in curls at the nape of her neck fascinated him, the soft red of her mouth, the way the lashes lay like a spread-out fan on her cheeks and the quick changing lights and colours in those eyes themselves. With Gilbert, when he wanted a thing he generally got it, by fair means or foul; for the moment he wanted Joan passionately, almost insanely. But the way in which she made the path easy for his desire sometimes startled him; he could not make up his mind whether she was playing some very deep game at his expense or whether she really loved him to the exclusion of all caution.

It was this problem which he had been more or less trying to solve this afternoon. At Joan's continued silence he leaned forward and put his hand over hers where they lay on her lap.

"What are you dreaming of, little girl?" he asked.

The odd flutter which his touch always caused was shaking Joan's heart; she tried, however, to face him indifferently, summoning up a smile.

"I was thinking," she corrected, "not dreaming."

"Well, the thoughts, then," asked the man, his fingers moved caressingly up and down her hand, "what were they?"

"I was thinking," began Joan slowly; her eyes fell from his and she stirred restlessly. "What did you mean just now when you spoke about drifting together?" she asked.

"Little Miss Pretence," he whispered, "as if you didn't know what I meant. If I were well off," he said suddenly (perhaps for the moment he really meant it), "I would make you marry me whether you had new ideas about it or not."

"Being well off wouldn't have anything to do with it,"

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 Joan answered, "it is more degrading to marry for money than anything else."

"Sometimes I believe you think that we are degrading altogether," the man said; he watched the colour creep into her face, "God knows we are not much to boast of, and that is the truth."

Joan struggled with the problem in her mind. "There ought not to be anything degrading about love," she said finally, and this time it was his eyes that fell away from hers.

For a little they sat silent, Joan, for some reason known only to herself, fighting against a strong inclination to cry. Gilbert had taken away his hands, he sat back in his chair, his feet thrust out, head down, eyes glooming at the dust. Joan stole a glance at him and felt a sudden intense admiration for the beauty of his clean-cut profile, his sleek, well-groomed head. Instinctively she put out a timid hand and touched him.

"Are you angry with me about something?" she asked.

It may have been that during that pause Gilbert had been forming a good resolution with all that was best in him to keep from spoiling this girl's life. Her eyes perhaps had touched on some slumbering chord of conscience. Her movement though, the little whispered words, drove all thoughts except the ones which centred round his desire from his mind.

"Joan," he said quickly, his hands caught at hers again, "let us stop playing this game of make-believe. Let us face the future one way or another. I love you, I want you. If you love me, come to me, dear, as you say there can be nothing degrading in love. Let us live our lives together in the new best way."

It was all clap-trap nonsense and he did not believe a word of it, but the force of his passion was unmistakable. It frightened and held Joan.

"You mean——" she whispered.

"I mean that I want you to come and live at my place,"

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 he answered. "I have a decent little flat, as you know. That is not living on my money, O proud and haughty one"—he was so sure of his victory that he could afford to laugh—"you shall buy your own food if you like. And you shall be free, as free as you are now, and—I, Joan," his voice thrilled through her, "I shall love you and love you and love you till you waken to see the world in quite a new light. Joan!"

His face was very close against hers, the scent of the heliotrope had grown on the sudden stronger and more piercingly sweet, perhaps because the sun had vanished behind the distant line of trees and a little breeze from the oncoming night was blowing across the flower-beds towards them. The quick-gathering twilight seemed to be shutting them in; people passed along the path, young sweethearting couples too happy in each other to notice anyone else. The tumult in Joan's mind died down and grew very still, a sense of well-being and content invaded her heart.

"Yes"—she spoke the word so softly he hardly heard—"I'll come, Gilbert." Then she threw back her head a little and laughed, gay, confident laughter. "It will be rather fun, won't it?" she said.