You Took My Heart (8 page)

But still Joan did not look at him, did not speak. She was very pale now, her lips held tightly together, her dark lashes drooped and shadowy on her soft cheeks. He took her hand gently from its resting place in the rough grass and it was icy cold to his touch.

“It will all come right, Joanna, baby,” he whispered. “It’s more nearly right now than ever it was. Can’t you see that? Vera will divorce me ... and then I shall be free at last to come to you. You do love me, don’t you, darling?”

She turned to him, her blue eyes steady in spite of the trembling of tears in them. She didn’t answer his question. She said quietly, “If Vera divorces you it will hurt you, Garth. Hurt your work, I mean. There is the Hospital Committee, for instance. What are they going to say to all this?”

He gave her a quick, troubled look. “I’ve considered that. They won’t like it, of course. They’re a pretty sticky, old-fashioned crowd on the Board at present. It may mean my having to resign from St. Angela’s.”

“That would be a pity,” Joan murmured flatly. “And then there’s Ivan,” she went on through stiff, dry lips. “You can’t just abandon him entirely, can you?”

She saw his face quiver. “Ivan will be all right,” he said a shade too hurriedly. “He won’t miss the father he’s never known. We’ve decided not to tell him anything about me, you see. So my clearing out can’t possibly affect him. I’ll look after him in the background, of course, see to his schooling and that kind of thing. I’m looking after him now in a way, paying a monthly sum into Vera’s account for him. I’ll see that the little chap gets as fair a deal as we can manage in the circumstances, Joanna. You can trust me for that.”

They were silent then for a moment, a throbbing unhappy silence. Presently Garth said, “Don’t let’s talk any more about the past, sweetheart. I’ll fix it all. For the first time I’ve got a chance to fix it ... that’s why it isn’t going to count any more. The main thing is that soon now I shall be free to marry you, if you’ll have me, Joanna? Will you?”

She turned away from him at that. She couldn’t bear the hunger in his grey eyes; Garth waiting for her to speak, to reassure him, waiting as though his very life depended on what she might say. Her senses reeled. She tried to think clearly, to sort out of the welter of her emotions the truth of what she felt. She loved him. Oh, there was no doubt about that! She wanted him as much as ever she had done. The past weeks with their nightmare of forgetting him—hating him even—were as nothing suddenly, here in this dear familiar spot. It would be heaven to lean there beside him in the long, salty grass, sink into his arms, throw to the winds this story of youthful foolishness. In a way it was so different a story to the one she had braced herself to hear! Poor Garth, so young, so impetuous and chivalrous. Garth no more than a romantic baby at the age of twenty-one rushing to the rescue of the cold-hearted Russian girl. Well, Vera Petrovna had got no more than she asked for if the marriage had been a failure. She ought to have had more sense, more kindliness than to have embarked on it. Let her go now. Let Ivan go. Let there be divorce. It couldn’t be wrong in these quite unusual circumstances. It wasn’t as though they would be breaking up anything real or important—just putting straight a stupid muddle of years ago.

She looked at him waveringly, not knowing quite what to say, not yet knowing quite what to think.

“I wish you’d told me about Vera long ago,” was all she managed to bring out in a small voice.

He looked dashed. “I wanted to ... hundreds of tunes, ’ he said apologetically. “But somehow I couldn’t. I kept on hoping things would right themselves, that Vera would write and ask me to divorce her, that
something
would happen, something miraculous. But of course nothing miraculous did turn up. It doesn’t in this logical old world. One makes a bad mistake—and there it is. There’s no turning back, is there?”

“No, there is no turning back,” Joan agreed sadly.

She stood up then with a definite and final air, shaking the sand out of her skirts. She did not trust herself to look at Garth’s anguished, pleading face. She said in a dull tone, “Shall we get back now? We’ve all of three miles to walk before lunch and it is just on noon.”

“And you aren’t going to answer my question?” Garth demanded humbly. “I’ve been trying to propose to you all morning in my own clumsy fashion, Joanna, darling. I don’t know if you quite realize that ... rather a queer kind of proposal, I’m afraid!” he ended with an unhappy laugh.

A strange proposal indeed, Joan thought with a stab of bitterness. She had imagined it so differently, so beautifully different in her girlish dreamings. Not this bleak, half-shamed thing—with a wife in the background to be disposed of, a small son to be ignored.

She said, “Will you let me think about it all a little while, Garth? Will you not hurry me?”

He agreed a little wistfully that she could take all the time she wanted, and they turned back to the sandy cart track. As they rounded the corner of the lane there was a sudden outbreak of pandemonium, horses and scarlet-coated huntsmen and yapping hounds streaking across the track and away over the marshes

“The hunt!” Garth exclaimed. “I’d forgotten it was meeting at Dipley today.”

They stood back to let the tornado pass, and after that the lane filled up miraculously with bicycles and small cars and excited errand boys. There was no more opportunity for conversation. In the crowd assembled now there were many of their friends, and after they had watched the huntsmen’s fruitless attempt to dislodge the fox who had gone to earth on the edge of the marshes a neighbor with a car took them home.

CHAPTER EIGHT

At
l
unch
Joan was as quiet and subdued as she dared to be. Mrs. Perros, with her beaming smile, announced over the hot roast that Mr. Sparkes, the rector, had popped across to say they would be so glad if Joan and Garth would go over for tea that afternoon.

Mr. Sparkes even thinking of them together that way, Joan reflected. That was Mrs. Perros’ doings. She always talked of her son and his friend, Joan Langden, as though their engagement were an established thing, something that would inevitably be announced as soon as Garth’s prospects were quite settled and he was in a position to marry. If only the poor darling knew the amount of “settling” there had to be before anything of the kind were possible! And what would Dipley say to the news of the divorce—the discovery of Vera’s existence? What would the doctor and his romantic, trusting little wife have to say to it all?

Wretchedly now Joan toyed with her delicious meal, her hearty appetite all vanished.

In the blustering, cloudy afternoon which followed the sun-filled morning she went with Garth across the familiar rectory, garden. Mrs. Sparkes’ greeting was effusively kind. In the cosy, old-fashioned drawing room that Joan knew with such heartbreaking thoroughness, tea was served. Mr. Sparkes and Garth talked politics mildly. Mrs. Sparkes told Joan snippets of village gossip. And after the meal the children were brought in, a rumpled, curled, adorable baby girl of two and a solemn, thin little boy of seven.

It was a pleasant half hour that followed in the firelit room with the dusk deepening outside in the windblown garden, the fierce autumnal gale now lashing at the bare tree branches, whistling at the windows, sending sudden sprays of hard rain against the panes.

The children were friendly, unspoiled, delightfully unselfconscious. Small Margot sat on Joan’s lap. Peter told Garth proudly about his new school. He was going by train every day now to Shadworth, the county town grammar school. And later, the rector put in, Peter would go to Harrow. His name had been down on the rolls of that illustrious place since the week he was born.

Garth was interested at once. Did one really have to enter a child’s name as early as that, he asked, or wasn’t it possible sometimes to find a vacancy at one or other of the great public schools when the pupil was of a more mature age?

He was thinking of Ivan, Joan guessed, sitting there with Peter leaning against his knee, waiting so eagerly for the rector’s advice about schools and schooling.

There were sometimes vacancies, of course, owing to illness or change of plan in a family, the rector was assuring him. Had he any special case in mind?

“A boy I’m interested in,” Garth said quietly. “I wanted to advise his mother about his education. This child is seven, too, just about your Peter’s age.”

“Well, if he’s going to get into one of the larger schools it is high time something was done about it,” Mr. Sparkes asserted.

They began to talk of costs and fees and entrance examinations.

Joan and Mrs. Sparkes went away to the loft out in the windy yard to see about the trunks. Alone, presently, in the warm, odorous barn Joan unfastened straps and searched among her jumble of possessions for her riding clothes. In the shadowed place, lit with its one storm lamp, her face was small and pale, her eyes great hollows of pain.

Garth and Peter, she was thinking ... the beautiful gentle way Garth had with the child and the quick response there was to it, as though small Peter knew how much a little boy of seven could appeal to this big, broad shouldered young man with the twinkling grey eyes. Peter hadn’t been five minutes in the drawing room before he had told the stranger all about his puppy, his bicycle, his new pony—and then his school. Peter who had so much that it was right for a boy to have! Peter who had everything, a home, security, a devoted mother, a watchful father. Peter was living the way it was right to live; and Ivan in his shabby Bloomsbury flat was merely a boy Garth was “interested” in.

Uneasily Joan wrapped her jodhpurs, her jersey, her coat together and turned to search for boots. She had imagined herself being emotionally stirred by this moment among her old possessions; seeing the stacked pictures with their faces to the wall, the Queen Anne writing desk she had kept, the grandfather clock that was eight feet high and had faded roses painted on its smooth and priceless panels. There was her mother’s workbox with the pearl inlay, her father’s folio of youthful water colors. She had thought to be so moved, seeing these things cast out in their homelessness, but now she had hardly a glance to spare for them, hardly a thought. There was enough of pain to fill her heart without these small voices from a peaceful past—enough of puzzlement and misery!

She was fastening the trunks again when Garth came to look for her. Under the soft lamplight she turned to meet him, a tall, slender child, the light tangled in her aureole of hair and sharpening the fine pure bones of her face. She looked so young, so tender, so forlorn here in this lonely place of shadows that his heart smote him suddenly and he moved close to her, impulsively, as though he would take her in his arms.

“What is it, Joanna, baby?” he asked brokenly. “I’ve hurt you terribly I’m afraid—and I didn’t mean to hurt you today. I meant to clear everything up. Can’t you forgive me for my muddle with Vera? It was all so long ago, so unreal—” Diffidently he put an arm about her and she did not stir away from him. He stroked her silken hair and gently pressed her head against his strong young shoulder.

She was very quiet, very yielding, leaning there in his arms. She said, “I’m not angry about Vera—not even hurt any more. I do understand the way it all happened now and—and I like Vera. I think she’s a grand person.”

“What is it that is troubling you then, sweetheart?” Garth murmured caressingly.

“I don’t know, Garth!” Her voice was a little wild, her blue eyes were wild looking up at him, her sweet lips parted. Because it was too much of ecstasy to be here in this dim, lamplit room with Garth so close, his heart beating beneath her own, his arms crushing her. Outside the storm raged on and the trees shook and the brown leaves whirled in their dance of death. In the yard below doors slammed and creaked. There was a sound of tearing, rushing wind everywhere; the old barn trembled with it, the storm lamp swayed so that its rays went waveringly across the wooden floor golden and dim like running water. And still they clung there. And suddenly with a fierce hunger their lips met, and for Joan the world went crashing and dissolving in glory and in pain.

When she pushed Garth away from her at last she was very pale. And she trembled, moving away from him, seating herself on the broad old trunk. He came and sat beside her hot touching her now, just watching her quietly. He said after a while warmly, triumphantly, “You do love me then, Joanna!” Not asking it, just stating it that way. She put out a small hand and laid it on his arm, but she did not look at him. She said, “Were you thinking of Ivan just now when you talked to Mr. Sparkes about Harrow?”

He looked a little surprised at the turn her thoughts had taken, a little troubled. “Yes, I was thinking of Ivan,” he admitted. “Why?”

“You must think of him a great deal, Garth, don’t you? You must find it rather wonderful having him belong to you.”

“It
is
wonderful,” he said.

“Tell me about it,” she invited. “Tell me what you felt when you first saw him—first knew about him?”

He stirred uneasily. “That’s rather a hard thing to ask, Joanna. I felt—oh, I don’t know—very stirred, I suppose.” He laughed shortly. “It’s a little odd finding oneself a ready-made parent so to speak, with no sort of preparation.”

“I wonder,” Joan said, “what
he
would feel like if he knew you were his father.”

Garth didn’t reply to that, and presently Joan was asking about Vera. “Does she know you want to marry me?” she enquired abruptly.

“No. But she knows there is somebody I love.”

“Does
she
want to marry again?” Joan asked, still in that desperately quiet, rather shaken little voice.

Garth shook his head. “Vera’s wrapped up in the boy—body, soul and spirit,” he said. “I don’t think she ever gives a thought to anyone else.”

“Then, if I didn’t exist maybe there would be no divorce,” Joan suggested.

“No divorce? Why not?” Garth’s tone was sharp.

“I mean there might be no need,” Joan faltered. “You might stay With—Ivan.”

“I might—but I won’t, darling, for you see you
do
exist—very much so. You’re the most important person in the world as far as I’m concerned.”

“More important than Ivan?”

For the fraction of a second Garth hesitated, then he said, “Ivan is, naturally, very important indeed to me, but—well, he isn’t
you
, Joanna. It’s you I want to be with.”

“I see,” Joan said quietly. “It’s a question of divided loyalties then, divided loves.”

“Not at all,” Garth put in quickly. “There need be no division. I’ll always see Ivan, be with him as much as possible, get him the best this world can give in the way of education, amusement, pleasant surroundings. He’ll be a drain on us, darling; I mean financially. But you’d put up with that, wouldn’t you?”

“But he will never know why you are doing it all,” Joan said with a troubled air. “He’ll never know he is your son.”

Garth looked unhappy. “In time he would know, I suppose. But not yet. He’s such a little chap, it hardly seems fair to drag him into all this, the way things are. It would be different if Vera and I had made up our minds to carry on together for his sake, patch up our differences and live under one roof as a couple of polite friends might live. We could have told Ivan in that case, without hurting him, that I am his father. But as it is it’s much better to tell him nothing.”

“Have you considered that course seriously then—going back to Vera?” Joan whispered.

“We did discuss it—for Ivan’s sake, of course. Neither of us wanted it for ourselves. But we decided against it.”

Because of me, thought Joan with a hollow feeling, and hurriedly got to her feet. “Let’s go down, Garth,” she said in a tight little voice. “It will look so queer to the Sparkes if we spend too long up here talking—after all, we’re supposed to be their guests this afternoon!”

All the evening she was gay with a wild gaiety. There were festive cocktails at the doctor’s, and a party afterwards which included all the young people in the neighbourhood. Joan, in her golden-brown velvet frock with her blue eyes shining, danced and laughed and played the childish parlor games one after the other, with a lovely zest that made it an enchanted evening for everybody, a memorable evening, in fact one of the best parties sober little Dipley had ever known. Garth couldn’t take his eyes off her, couldn’t be near enough to her, hovering at her side forever to the immense satisfaction of the romantic Mrs. Perros.

It was late when the party broke up and the guests departed. It was later still when after a last comforting hot drink by the dying fire in the drawing room the Perroses abandoned their animated discussion of the evening and Joan was free to go to her room.

And suddenly there, all the sparkle was gone from her. She was very thoughtful laying away her velvet dress, abstractedly brushing her hair. In her luxurious bed with its fat down quilt she lay in the darkness listening to the storm outside, her eyes wide open. Tomorrow she would ride with Garth, she supposed, and soon after lunch he would have to get out his car and go back to Town. She herself had yet another whole day’s holiday before her, but Garth would go tomorrow afternoon and before he went she must sort out this hot and bitter tangle in her mind. She did not even hear the clocks downstairs marking the passing of that strange night of vigil—her thoughts were too busy, too fevered turning this way and that way distractedly as the hours stole on.

In the morning she was limp and pale, her eyes hollowed with weariness, so that there was no need for eye shadow at all, and great need indeed for the carefully rubbed-in rouge and peach pink powder with which she tried to hide her exhausted air. For Garth must never know of the agony of the night that had passed. No one must know. Just for a little while longer she must be brave and gay. Just for a very few hours she must be strong. Then Garth would be gone, and it would be all right. She told herself this feverishly, running down the stairs to a late breakfast. She told it to herself more than once through the wild, sweet morning as they rode over the marshes with the sea wind tugging at their hair, whipping the blood into their cheeks. Joan’s new filly was restive, difficult to handle, altogether thrilling. There was, blessedly, in this outing, no opportunity for deep conversation of any kind. Then they were home again, and in the stable they unsaddled their horses and Joan was very busy indeed rubbing down the troublesome, sweating little filly, fetching a snug blanket for her, filling the manger in the stall with crisp, golden oats.

Garth in his riding clothes, his tanned face glowing with exercise, leaned casually against the low door watching.

He said presently, “I’ve got to be off by three, Joanna, so it’s good-bye for a little while. But it’s been a glorious weekend!”

She turned to him with a hunted little smile. “It’s been nice, Garth,” she said.

“Is that
all
it has been, sweetheart?” His voice was pleading.

She gave him a frantic look and turned hurriedly to fondle the filly. “Garth, it’s not going to be easy to say this to you, but it’s got to be said. I’ve made up my mind about—what you asked me yesterday. About marrying you, I mean. I can’t do it. Please don’t try to persuade me—don’t talk to me any more about it. It’s no good.”