By Decree of Their Guardian Angel

by Anne Warner

 

By Decree of Their Guardian Angel

BY ANNE WARNER
Author of “Susan Clegg,” etc.

Jeovil came strolling in from the Pall Mall entrance at just about five o'clock. The Tea Room at the Carlton was quite as crowded as it always is at that hour and the music was going on—and the talk, too. Jeovil paused by the door and stood quite still, surveying the assembled company with a roving, but especially scrutinizing gaze. He was a big, heavily-built man with a face marred by dissipation and eyes that showed something might have gone right once if it had not gone wrong permanently instead.

The something that had gone wrong had gone wrong nine years previous. It had taken all the purpose out of his lordship's life and out of his walk as well. He had merely strolled since—but even strolling he was always much the observed of all observers, for he was too big to go unnoticed and too well tailored ever to be lightly forgotten after being once seen. There is something fearfully imposing about a big and well-dressed man. Jeovil was imposing.

And so, now, he had come into the Carlton for tea. Some people who knew him looked up and smiled; if he had chosen he might have joined any one of half-a-dozen little parties, but he only nodded and—after terminating his first scrutiny—began to move slowly through the middle space. One of the waiters laid his hand upon a chair-back and looked piercingly attentive, but Jeovil only shook his head. At the foot of the staircase he paused and turning, looked slowly and carefully all over the room again. Many were now directing their gaze towards him because he was so well-known and so badly talked about, but their gaze did not affect him in any noticeable degree; his big, dark, saddened eyes went from table to table all over the room once more and then he mounted the steps and began to look about him there.

There were only eight or nine small tables on the raised platform, and when his eyes had taken them all in he moved to the farther end where one of the huge palms half hid a single guest. It was a lady seated alone, with her back carefully turned to the room; a slender, girlish figure, dressed very simply, having her elbows on the mahogany and her cheeks resting on her clasped hands. Her lashes drooped so low that her eyes were perhaps shut, perhaps full of tears, but in either case they were quickly opened and quickly raised when Jeovil, coming close beside her, said in a low voice:

“Alix!”

She started, and looked straight up into his face.

“You saw him?” he said breathlessly.

“Who?”

“Sir William Codhurst.”

She pointed to the seat opposite her, dropped her face in her hands again, and made no answer. He dragged the chair up to the other side of the small mahogany circle, sank into it, leaned far towards her and said hoarsely—imperatively,

“What did he say?”

She did not reply.

There was a perfect storm of tragedy radiating between them, for this was the factor that might have set things going right for Jeovil in by-gone years, had a promise given at a death-bed not spoilt the dream. Nine years had passed since then—nine years. Nine years is a long while for life to go on separately when two people want to share it. A long—long while.

“What did he say?” the man asked again after a minute or two of waiting. “Go on, Alix, you know you must tell me.”

She put out one of her hands (they were behind one of the kindest-hearted of all the benevolently inclined Carlton palms,) and laid it on his.

“Dare,” she said (it was a nick-name of his), “he told me that I had just a month—or perhaps six weeks—to live!”

Jeovil's hand closed hard over hers. Into his eyes burst fiercely the light of will and power—a light that had been stranger there through all the hopeless past.

“I'm glad of it,” he said, “oh, I'm devilish glad of it—I don't care—do you?”

“Not for myself,” she said, still hiding her face.

“Who for?”

“I care for you. I'm afraid things will go worse than ever for you—afterwards.”

He seemed to be devouring her with his eyes; his hand pressed hers hard.

“Don't think about me; I'm going when you go.”

She looked up quickly.

“Going where?”

“Going to die.”

“Oh, don't say that!”

“But I am, little girl, just as sure as fate. I decided on that long ago.” He drew his breath through his teeth as he spoke, and his hand closed harder than ever upon hers. She kept her eyes on his. They had never even known an uninterrupted interchange of gaze in the long period. Finally he spoke, his tone almost sharp.

“Alix, do you know, what a 'special dispensation' is?”

She shook her head.

“I'm going in my car to get one now.”

“But what is it?”

“It will let us be married at once, dear; we'll be married tomorrow and leave London for the continent directly after. We'll have these five weeks together at least—won't we?”

She rose quickly at that, all trembling.

“Oh, no, no, I mustn't; I must not. I can't—you know that I can't. Please—please, pay him for the tea and—and let me go out into the air. I've been thinking so hard and now I can't think at all. Oh, Dare, I mustn't think of such a thing,—you know that I must not.”

When they went out everyone looked hard at them. A very few knew why. Her face was pale and his eyes were burning. At the entrance he waved his own chauffeur away and called a brougham.

“Oh, I mustn't—you know that I must not,” she said in a fresh access of dismay, hut he put her in, got in beside her, jerked down the silken runners, and then seized her in his arms. It was nine years since he had kissed her—nine bitter years of makeshift—and on her part nine years of pride and struggle. And she struggled again now.

“I mustn't, I must not,” she murmured, but the kisses conquered in the end, in that end at once so bitter and so sweet.

“Tomorrow at this time we'll be on the boat,” he said, in the midst of his fury, “and then a whole month of each other—a whole month. Girl! I never looked for anything again and I'm to have a month—four weeks—twenty-eight whole days! And when the end comes, Alix, I'll hold you just like this until it's over and wherever you find yourself afterward you'll know I'll he there, too, within half an hour—oh, we sha'n't mind dying, you and I. What's dying—to the way we've had to live?”

Then he kissed her again, and long before the carriage reached the park she had ceased to murmur and was lying quiet against his shoulder. He was to have at last, his way—and his love.

 

They were married the next morning, privately, within the silence and gloom of a great church. It was so strange and curious; these two people who could have had half the fashion of London to crowd the pews—and there was not one friend present.

And they were so happy! The clergyman felt his eyes fill as, at his final words, he saw the man stoop and fold to his breast the fragile, pale, sad-faced girl, who was covering her eyes with her handkerchief.

“We're very grateful to you,” said Jeovil, pressing some golden sovereigns into his hand—“for you, or your poor, or anyway you please, don't you know. And—and pray for us, please, don't you know.”

“I shall pray for you,” said the old man, “God bless you both.”

Then they went out to the carriage and drove straight to Charing Cross Station, sitting hand-in-hand and not daring to look at each other in the difficulty of retaining appearances.

“Only fancy,” he said once, “there's a Lady Jeovil now for the first time in thirty-three years—you know my mother died when I was born?”

“Yes,” Alix answered gently, “it often has seemed to me that people might have forgiven you some things, remembering that.”

“By George,” he exclaimed, “I don't mind anything—not anything. It's worth nine years—just this one day—just the seeing you there, just it all—” He was very nearly beside himself before they reached the station, so mad a bridegroom was never seen before. And the bride, with her pallor, overshot with a wonderful joyous rose, she in her way was also quite as far out of the ordinary life.

“We never expected to be happy, you and I,” she said over and over again, and when the train began to move, she crept up into the angle of his breast and arm and shoulder and sobbed like a child, saying, “Oh, to think of it!—oh, to think of it!”

Behind them, safe in the London post lay the missives announcing the runaway match, but they would be well out on the channel before anyone received the news.

Out on the channel, standing side by side at the rail, with the breezes of three nations blowing fair in their both thought together how the dear green of old England fading forever for them in that hour, and neither cared.

The only true measure for happiness is pain. A honeymoon that has looked hopeless for nine years is worth the waiting—if it come at last.

“By the way,” Jeovil said, after a few minutes, “I took the cabin there, if you want it. Do you want it?”

She looked up at him.

“I'll stand by you,” she said smiling, “now and to the end.”

It was a short passage and they stood by the rail all the way over; then in the train on the other side he took her in his arms and held her while she slept after the day's fatigue and excitement. It was wonderful to hold her thus, and looking downward, the man felt all the wildness of his youth pacified and purified by that pale, sweet trust lying upon his heart.

“I should have been a decent fellow, if I had had her,” he thought, and then in the sudden new ecstasy of thinking that he had really gotten her now he pressed her so closely in his arms that she woke with a little cry.

“Alix,” he said, “I can't realize it at all. If I had guessed how much I could love you I would have carried you off—kidnaped you, you know—years and years ago. The first week, that we knew each other, in fact.”

She put her hand upon his cheek. “Perhaps we needed the nine years,” she said, ever so softly. “Perhaps we would not have been happy then—we'll be happy now.”

“Yes, we'll be happy,” he declared. “Tomorrow afternoon I'll have an answer to my telegram for a country-place and we'll go straight down there and stay all alone by ourselves until—until—” he stopped—stammering at his own thoughtlessness.

“Never mind, Dare,“ she murmured, “it's so much more than we ever hoped.”

“Oh, I'm not complaining,” he answered, almost gaily, “but don't try to talk—let me kiss you.”

 

Six weeks later Lord and Lady Jeovil stood together one afternoon upon the terrace of Les Ombres, a charming villa of St. Svmphorien. It was very nearly half-past five and their solitude was to be invaded for the first time; my lady's face was troubled and her fingers played nervously upon the marble balustrade.

“You ought not to have done it, Dare,” she said, “it will cost so much, much money. And it can't change things for me. I sha'n't live an hour longer for having the stethoscope used again, and think of the good that we might have done with what Sir William will charge for coming here! You were so foolish, you are always so foolish; you are the most foolish man I ever have dreamed of.” Then she stood on tiptoe, drew his dark head down to her own level and kissed his eyes and lips.

Jeovil held her off and looked at her fondly.

“But I'll give the same sum in charity, my dear little girl—I'll give it twice over if you like—only I want to know if perhaps we can't have a fortnight more—a week more—in peace. You see, I was in at Sir William's that afternoon that you went—”

She started violently and looked at him affrightedly.

“Oh, you haven't heart-trouble, too—have you?” she cried.

He shook his head smiling.

“No—but it wouldn't matter if I had, as things are, would it? As a matter of fact, I only went in because Sir William is a distant relative of my mother and has always been mighty good to me ever since I was a little chap—boxing days and all that, you know. So I look in on him once in a month or so,and that day we fell to talking, and all of a sudden something that he said made me ask him about you. He spoke to me about you then—I guess everyone knows the story, don't you know—and about my mother and about my life. And I acted like a fool. Would you believe that in the end I had to go into one of his private rooms and wash my face for half an hour like a youngster that's been spanked rather too hard? And after I could go, the notion that you were there hearing hard things, too, maybe, held me there and I sat still—sat and thought a long time, and after a while Sir William sent in for me. He told me you had gone to the Carlton and needed me—me more than anyone—and I suppose I looked a bit knocked out, for he put his hand on my arm and shook it and then he said:

“Well—” he stopped.

“He said what?”

“He told me to marry you; he told me that I could turn to him to help put it through. And he said that for my mother's sake he—” He stopped again, then continued after a few seconds, “So I sent for him yesterday, it seemed to me that we needed him.”

She leaned against him with her eyes half-shut.

“But I didn't mind not knowing about how long it will last, Dare,” she said faintly,“and I dread—the certainty. We can't hope even from day to day, you know, after we know more surely.”

He kissed her reassuringly. “We're together anywhere, dear,” he said, “it's so much better—so far beyond the Nine Years, don't you know?”

She smiled.

It was very curious when, an hour later, they really sat at table with a third person, and a third person who was so closely interwoven in both of their lives, past and present. Sir William was a very grave, quiet, kind old gentleman, and one whose heart had never been hardened by other people's woes.

“The marriage has been a success, I take it,” he said, when they were left alone with the coffee and liqueurs. Jeovil smiled; his wife nodded with tears in her eyes. Then she arose quickly and went around to her husband and knelt beside him.

“I didn't want you sent for,” she said, looking straight at the guest. “I feel so well; we are so happy; I didn't want to have a limit set.”

“Is there a limit set?” asked Sir William.

Alix looked straight at him.

“Six weeks at the outside,” she answered smiling bravely; “Saturday it will be seven.”

“I wonder,” the famous specialist said slowly, “I wonder, if I gave you three months, if Dare could be trusted to continue being a model husband?”

Jeovil simply stared. He didn't comprehend.

His elderly friend smiled.

“Guardian angels take on many forms,” he said. “Perhaps Heaven has allowed me to appear as one.”

Lord Jeovil sprang up, his eyes staring:

“Sir William—do you—do you mean that—that Alix can live? Oh—you—you don't mean that.”

The old man stretched forth his hand.

“Dare,” he said, “you know why she had to promise not to marry you? I know, too. In the world's eyes you proved her mother right. In my eyes her mother condemned her more than she saved her. She has suffered to the limit for you; she will live now unless you choose to kill her. Remember.”

Jeovil stooped and swept his wife from her feet up into his arms.

“Alix,” he cried, “'you'll live to be a hundred!”