Chapter XXI: Book VI: Fanny (3)

THE next evening Julia sat in her room divided between consternation and secret joy. The women of St. Kitts had given her a reception such as had never been offered to another woman in the history of the island. A military band had played a welcome as her boat approached the jetty, a committee of representative women had met her, and all Basse Terre, black as well as white, had turned out to escort her to the house of Mrs. Ridgley, the first lady of St. Kitts, where a select few had been invited to greet her at luncheon. The meeting itself had taken place in the ball-room of Government House, and been attended by every man and woman that could obtain entrance, irrespective of sympathies. All were eager to be instructed, but far more eager to see and hear the famous Julia France, to be able to talk about it for the rest of their lives.

Julia had talked to them for two hours. She instructed them to the full, and she related many of her personal experiences in and out of Holloway gaol. Never had she spoken more brilliantly, been more amusing and witty, and never before had she spoken with an unremitting sense of effort. Her speech had come from the head alone. It had felt like a wound-up mechanical toy. The personal passion with which she had infused her speeches and won her great following never stirred. It had retreated to her depths, and taken her magnetism with it. She entertained her audience and she converted no one. She concentrated her mind with a determination almost vicious, but more than once it slipped its anchor, and she failed utterly to reduce the brains below her into one relaxing helpless whole for the planting of her suggestions.

She alone, however, realized her failure. St. Kitts was delighted with the entertainment, to say nothing of the profound satisfaction of listening to the woman who had been introduced to the world in this very ball-room, and then gone forth to make their islands famous: St. Kitts and Nevis had more than once been pictured in the weekly press of England while Julia’s comet was playing about the heavens. As for Mrs. Edis she swelled with pride and treated the ladies of St. Kitts, who showed her almost as much honor as they did her daughter, with a haughty urbanity that made them feel humble and insignificant.

When the lecture was over, there was an informal reception, during which Julia had never been more gracious and talkative, while wishing them all at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. Then the wife of the Administrator had invited them into the dining-room for an elaborate tea; and it was six o’clock before release was sounded, and Julia found herself in the boat once more, listening to the congratulations and the rapt prophecies of her mother.

At dinner Fanny had stared with open mouth at her grandmother’s almost excited account of the day’s events, but she had finally turned to Julia with a laugh.

“Really, my famous aunt,” she said, “there can be no doubt as to what you were born for. It must be quite wonderful to have a career. Shan’t you change your mind and speak at Bath House?”

“No,” said Mrs. Edis, sharply. “Julia will devote the rest of her visit to me. It is quite enough to have two members of the family gadding at Bath House.”

“Upon my word,” said Mrs. Winstone, languidly, “I didn’t come to Nevis to chaperon a young girl. Chaperonin’s not my line. I think Julia had better take Fanny to the party to-morrow night.”

“Oh, no, Aunt Maria! Julia—Julia needs a good long rest.”

Fanny stared apprehensively at her young aunt, but was immediately reassured.

“I shall not go to Bath House at present. And you, Aunt Maria, you have your two old cronies, and bridge. Mrs. Morison will look out for Fanny—”

“All very well, but—ah—I shouldn’t advise you to stay away too long. Mr.—ah—the Morisons are getting impatient—say they’ll leave by the next steamer, if you don’t give them the benefit of your society. That, it appears, is what they came for.”

Julia saw Fanny frown at Mrs. Winstone, but could only interpret her aunt’s words as a warning that Tay was showing signs of impatience; by no means unwelcome news. She answered lightly:—

“I didn’t ask them to come. They must take the consequences.”

Mrs. Winstone shrugged her shoulders. “I take very little interest in other people’s affairs, as you know. And advice was always thrown away on you.”

Mrs. Edis’s dry sarcastic tones interposed before Fanny could speak. And Fanny’s breath was short, and her chair might have been sown with tacks.

“Really, Maria, you must grudge every moment spent away from Bath House and that young fool of yours. I wonder you can still talk of coming to your old home to rest.”

“Quite so!” Mrs. Winstone, recalled, fluttered her eyelashes, and glanced into an old concave mirror. “He grows more devoted every minute. One couldn’t imagine he had ever had a thought for another woman.”

“Good for you, Aunt Maria,” cried Julia, gayly, and escaped to her room.

Here she promptly forgot the conversation and sat down to face her own problem once more. Was her love for the great impersonal cause, which had commanded all the forces of her nature, extinct? Or was her appalling coldness but the natural result of her present state of mind—and the agitating nearness of the man? Surely, if she broke with him definitely, returned to England, submerged herself in work, became a part once more of the crowding incidents, triumphs, disappointments, problems, of a cause that could never write finis, all her old passionate interest would return.

But if they no longer needed her? She had inferred from Ishbel’s cablegram that the Government was about to surrender. But it was hard to believe that Mr. Asquith, in any circumstances, would become a convert to a revolution he abhorred and sincerely disbelieved in; and as for Lloyd-George, the cleverest man in England, it was far more likely that he was playing for a long respite, hoping to relegate the women quietly out of the public eye, to take the fight and courage out of them by degrees, while pretending sympathy, promising his personal assistance, advising them to abstain from demonstrations which forbade the Government to capitulate in a manner inconsistent with its dignity. Of course he would succeed for a brief interval only, for if he was clever and subtle, the women were as clever—and alert; but—well—on the other hand, did she care? From Nevis England looked like an old page of written history, shut up between calfskin. Moreover, the cause was bound to sweep on to victory with its own momentum—why should she—

Her subtle brain, unleashed, marched straight ahead, and in step with her desires. How were women to improve the world, if they progressed to that point of superiority and self-completion, of unity in the ego, where they could no longer marry and produce a worthy race to complete their work? Even to-day many a high-minded woman went through life unwedded rather than degrade herself in marriage with a man whom she was forced to admit her inferior in all but the common attraction of sex. But she had no such excuse. And if her power to devote herself to this cause, impersonally and wholly, had vanished, with her interest in it, now that her mind was recentred; if she must, did she return to England, resent her sacrifice, possibly with hatred, of what use her lip service? If the experience of to-day were prophetic, she could give to the work but a hypocritical shell, while her aching soul was on the other side of the globe. On the other hand, with Tay, even in an alien land, there was no question that she might be of service for the rest of her life.

And what of the immorality of loving a man irrevocably and not living with him? Morality was still of higher account than politics. And children? The inadequacy of Fanny, who almost repelled her, had renewed her intense longing for children of her own. And if she so desired these children, the children of one man out of all the millions of men on earth, did not this mean that they were clamoring for their right to live? What right hers to deny them, that being, after all, the first reason for which she had received life herself?

But at this point she went to bed.

“What is the use?” she thought. “I’m going to marry him, and that is the end of it. I’ll not give the matter another thought from this time forth.”

And for the first time since her arrival on Nevis she slept soundly.

X

SHE awoke at dawn, and rose at once, remembering that she had not had a walk since leaving the ship. No wonder these three long days of bodily inactivity and mental turmoil had played havoc with her nerves. She would walk for hours and then return and write to Tay, telling him that she would marry him on the day the next American steamer arrived, but begging him to make no attempt to see her until then. It was her duty to devote the few intervening days to her mother, as well as to prepare her by degrees for the staggering information that she intended to marry an American and desert her country. But if she could convince the old lady that the planets had reckoned with the United States of America, she should, if not reconcile her to a son-in-law of a race she despised, at least leave her with unbroken faith in a science full of compensations.

She went out to the kitchen and brewed herself a cup of coffee, then started for a brisk walk round the island. The night’s refreshing sleep, the strong drink, the awakening tropic morning, the peace of mind that follows a momentous and final decision, made her feel as if dancing on ether, almost as happy as if Tay were beside her. The sea was as blue as liquid sapphire, save near the shore, where it was as green as the beryl stone. The cloud that descends the slopes of Nevis at nightfall had rolled itself upward and floated lightly above the cone. In the distance were the outlines of other islands; and everywhere the royal palms with their long bladelike leaves rattling in the rising trade-wind that gives lightness to Nevis air on the hottest day, the bright green cane fields, the heavy dark groves of banana trees, the lime and shaddock orchards. Even the ruins of the deserted old estates, splendid masses of masonry in their day, a day of coaches, and knee-breeches, and gay brocades, had a new and more pictorial lease of life, for brilliant foliage burst from every crevice.

The negroes began to sing in the cane fields, women in bright cotton frocks, with brighter handkerchiefs about their heads, came from their huts along the shore and cooked in the open, boats danced on the water. She walked halfway round the island and was hungry once more. A little black boy, tempted by a bit of silver, “skinned” up the slim shaft of a tree and threw down a young cocoanut. She refreshed herself with its “wine” and then started along the stretch of road that passed Bath House, half hoping to meet Tay. In a moment she heard the sound of galloping hoofs, eight at least, and averse from meeting any one else, hid behind a clump of low palms.

The horses stopped abruptly, then struck the road more lightly as if their riders had dismounted. She parted the palm leaves and looked out. A man and a maid appeared round a bend of the road, each leading a horse. The girl took the man’s arm with a little gesture of confidence and looked up into his face, speaking rapidly. The man looked down at her, smiling, admiring, indulgent. The girl’s face was flaming with nothing short of adoration. They were Fanny Edis and Daniel Tay.

Julia, feeling as if she had received a blow in the pit of the stomach, sank limply to the ground and stared out over the dazzling sea. Monserrat quivered in its haze, and she wondered if it were in the throes of an earthquake. It usually was. She remembered that Mont Pelée, after untold years of “death,” had suddenly blown the lake from her summit and suffocated thirty-five thousand people in four minutes. Would that Nevis would awake, pour out her boiling lava, and extinguish her wretched mortals. Julia beat her brow with one of those instinctive gestures too natural for the modern stage; for perfect naturalism borders upon farce.

Tay—Fanny. She took it in finally. He had fallen in love with Fanny, the young, beautiful, glowing girl—What was it old Pirie had called her—“volcanic product”? No doubt she was far more beautiful and fascinating than any girl Tay had ever met,—and quite different from American girls. Julia recalled many of them; they had always seemed to her rather light; clever and charming, but scantily sexed. No wonder Tay had succumbed to this gorgeous tropic flower. Fanny might be selfish, soulless, brutal, but what man ever looked behind a beauty like that? She was the siren born, and men have gone down before sirens since the daughters of Eve came to rule the earth and laugh to scorn the god in man.

Julia felt quite sixty. No doubt Tay had realized that she was all of thirty-four the moment he had seen her beside Fanny. Men were always fools about the mere youth in woman. Hadn’t she noticed that years ago, before she had spent a week in London? No wonder Nature made women brutal and wholly selfish during its brief possession. Tay had loved her, oh, no doubt of that, but with his mind, with that greater half of his being which he had shown her that day in the Bavarian wood; but men are primal always and spiritual incidentally, when they are men at all; and her hold had been a flimsy silken string that had snapped the moment he met this radiant mate, unspoiled, untouched, awaiting him on a tropical island. He had loved her, but he was madly in love with Fanny, and that, after all, was the great passion mortals lived to experience, if only because the poets had taught them to expect it. And she—she must despise where she had almost worshipped. How did women survive the death of illusions? Material death was something to pray for.

But Julia’s brain, stunned for the first time in its active life, soon recovered its energies. She suddenly realized that she did not feel sixty, no, not by any means. She felt very young and very angry. A moment more and she sprang to her feet with a cry of fury. She fancied she heard her flame-colored locks crackle. Her slim fine hands worked. They looked like steel instruments of torture one may see among old relics of the Inquisition. What right had this raw silly girl to take her man from her? Tay was hers and she should have him. She should hold him to his word, marry him, make him forget this passing infatuation. He would not be long discovering that she had far more to give him than any callow girl. If not! Once more her fingers opened and shut. Well for Fanny that she was once more on her horse with a strong arm beside her. Julia’s fingers were ready for the slender stem upholding that triumphant arrogant head. Fanny! Why, Fanny was a fool. She would make Tay the most miserable of men, understand not the least of his ambitions, leave him, no doubt, for another the moment her passion had cooled. He had insinuated that she was a born wanton, although he appeared to have forgotten this virtuous impression.

Her next impulse was to run after Fanny, denounce her as a thief, a pirate, force her to see the dishonor of her conduct. But this impulse soon passed, for never would she, Julia France, make a fool of herself, no, not if they laughed in her face. But what, in heaven’s name, _should_ she do?

She peered out. The road was clear. She darted across it, and up into a cane field. The negroes were far away by the mill. She threw herself down in the dense green silence and wept a torrent. After all, what could she do? She could only recognize that she had lost Tay, the one man in the world for her; she, who had made herself so much more than mere woman, and to a girl who was her inferior in everything but beauty.

She wept stormily for her lost lover, for love, for herself. Then, once more, she despised him. Why should she regret a man who had proved himself weak and contemptible? Why indeed? Ask womankind. She did. The more convinced she grew that she had lost him, the more she wanted him. She abhorred him, she loathed him, she had never despised any mortal so utterly, and she loved him several thousand times more than ever.

She sat up and dried her eyes viciously. Why was she making a fright of herself? She had always laughed at women that cried and spoiled their eyes. He was not yet married to Fanny. Why should she not pretend to release him, then subtly reënter the lists and win him again? How could any girl survive in a close contest with a woman still young and beautiful, and with experience and knowledge of men? But she stirred uneasily. She had seen the automatic triumphs of girls more than once. Nature was always on their side.

She fell back on the ground with a sensation of despair. “Oh, what shall I do?” she thought in terror. “Have I come to this? How shall I live?”

But she sat up again in a few moments and deliberately composed herself, ordering her powerful will to rise and perform its office. She must return to the house before her mother sent servants in search of her, and her eyes must not be red. Nor her hair look as if she had tried to tear it out by the roots. She took down the braids, smoothed them with her hands, pinned them up, and pushed the short locks under her hat.

Her mother. She had risen to her feet, but stood staring out over the waving cane. Why had she given Fanny this sudden liberty, and not three hours after announcing her decision, with all the force of her obstinate old will, that Fanny should never marry, never be permitted even to meet, a young man? And why had she insisted that Julia remain at her side throughout her entire visit? Never was there a less sentimental woman. And the conversation at the dinner-table last night? It sprang vividly from her memory. She saw Fanny’s face, flushed, arrogant, anxious, her aunt’s faint satiric smile, heard her covert words of warning.

What a blind fool she had been.

“So,” she thought grimly. “We are all the victims of a plot, and one quite worthy of my mother. I have been managed as easily as if I had but a teaspoonful of brains in my head. And so has he. Idiots! Idiots!” And she hated everybody on earth.

She walked rapidly home, slipped into the house unobserved, bathed her eyes, until the outer signs of the most tempestuous hour of her life were obliterated, powdered the black rings under her eyes, and made a satisfactory appearance at the lunch table. Neither Mrs. Winstone nor Fanny was present. Mrs. Edis talked of naught but Suffrage.

“Great heaven!” thought Julia. “That I should live to hate the word!”

XI

AFTER luncheon, she told her mother that the sun had given her a headache, and that it was likely she should be obliged to go to bed for the rest of the day; she had no intention of appearing at dinner. Her own room seemed the one bearable spot on earth, and she was grateful that it was far from the other bedrooms, at the opposite end of the long house.

She locked her door, and ordered her brain on duty. This was no time for throes—she had the rest of her life to mourn and rage in; now was the time to act in a fashion that should be worthy of her, of all she had tried to make of herself, of those three years in India, of the succeeding four when she had risen so high above the mere female. She must face with dignity, both in public and in private, whatever ordeal still awaited her; that she owed to herself; and the best of all good friends is pride. Nor should she condescend to fight or scheme for a love that had turned from her, even for a moment. If it had turned once, it would turn again. She had always despised men that could be “managed,” and could imagine no happiness with a man who must inspire her with recurring contempt.

If she loved Tay, it was her part to make him happy, not to force him into a marriage with herself when he loved another woman. Of course he would insist upon keeping his engagement with her, for he was honorable, and, no doubt, as miserable at this moment as herself. But it had never entered her plans to balk and torment the man to whom she had given her love, and she could force his freedom upon him, persuade him that her cause had conquered. As for Fanny, what right had she to assume that she would make him unhappy? Were not all girls brutes? The most selfish and heartless of them often made the best of wives when they got the man they wanted. No doubt all that Fanny needed to become a good woman was a baby. The vision of Fanny, a placid domestic cow, fat at thirty, gave her comfort.

When a woman has made up her mind to be noble, she generally succeeds, for a time, at least; she admires herself in the rôle, and self-admiration giveth much consolation. But the duration of this attitude varies in different people. Nobility as a fixed attitude of mind is possible only to the stupid; it can find no vested place in the subtle active intellect. Julia remained noble and sacrificing—even unpacking her Koran and reading it diligently—until precisely eight o’clock. At that hour she heard the rustle of skirts in the corridor, then Fanny’s excited voice as she knocked on her door

“Oh, Julia! Julia! Look at me! I’m dressed for the party at Bath House. Please let me in!”

Julia ground her teeth. Her eyes emitted steel sparks. Once more her strong fingers opened and shut.

“Run along, dear,” she managed to articulate. “I have such a headache I can’t see. I know you will be the belle.”

“Oh, I know I shall!” Julia saw that triumphant face above her best gown. “Even Granny says I look beautiful and I can see it for myself. I’m wild with excitement—and so happy!”

This was the last straw, but it braced instead of breaking. Julia rose with the fixed smile of one who is walking to the scaffold, dignified to the last, and opened the door. There stood Fanny, looking more beautiful than any girl she had ever seen. Her hair was dressed high for the first time, and in it was a string of her grandmother’s pearls and a flaming hibiscus. The floating white gown was caught at her breast with another flower, and her neck and arms and the soft rise of her bust were as white as the cloud on Nevis. Her heavy eyes were glittering with excitement, and her cheeks and lips made the tropic flowers look old and wilted.

“I have never seen a girl as beautiful as you are,” said Julia, deliberately, “and you will certainly make all the pretty girls from St. Kitts turn green with envy. I don’t believe there is another West Indian girl with color. Of course you will be the belle, and of many more balls. What luck that a British cruiser is here.”

Fanny smiled, and a slight sarcastic inflection, not unlike her grandmother’s, sharpened her rich contralto voice. “Well, if _you_ find me beautiful, Julia, I must be. And I owe it all to you. Thank you again for this lovely frock. Good night. I’ll tell you lots of things in the morning.” And she lifted her head with a movement that would have been fatuous if she had been a few years older, and almost smirked in her proud satisfaction with herself and her looks, as she sailed off for conquest.

Julia flung the Koran across the room, herself face downward on the sofa, and wondered how on earth she was to stand it. “If it only were over and they were married and gone,” she thought. “Or if only the Royal Mail were due to-morrow instead of eleven days hence, and I could go! Or if I could go out and kill somebody, or get drunk like a man! Passive endurance! That is all the hell that any religion need promise us.”

She lay for three hours without moving, then heard the clatter of a horse’s hoofs. A moment later Denny knocked and handed her a cablegram. She opened it without interest. It was from Ishbel, and informed her that Nigel might take the next steamer for Nevis. Julia broke into hysterical laughter.

“Is my tragedy becoming a farce?” she thought. “But not if I can help it!”

She answered the cablegram at once, that the messenger might take it.

“Tell Nigel am leaving immediately.”

Then she returned to her sofa, too indolent to go to bed, and this time exhaustion gave her sleep.

XII

SHE was awakened by the rattling of her jalousie, and lifted her head, wondering if a storm were rising.

“Julia! Julia!” called an imperative voice.

She sprang to her feet and held her breath, not believing herself awake.

“Julia!” This time the voice was savage. “If you don’t come out, I’ll break in. What I’ve got to say won’t keep.”

Julia unfastened the jalousie. Tay stood there in his evening clothes, and without a hat. His face was distraught.

“Dan!” gasped Julia.

He put his hands about her waist and lifted her down. “Now,” he said, “take me to some place where we can talk, and as far from the house and the gates as possible. They’ll be coming home presently.”

She walked swiftly down a path, turned to the right, and pushing aside the heavy growth from an older path, long out of use, led the way to the ruins of a bath-house in a corner of the garden. It was surrounded by heavy palms, but its paneless windows admitted the full moon’s light. Julia sat limply down on the circular seat before the empty pool. Through the open doorway she could see and hear the sea. The moonlight was dazzling, Nevis having forgotten to shake out her night-robes. Her bewildered mind took note of details while Tay walked back a few steps to make sure they had not been followed.

He came in and stood before her.

“There’s the devil to pay!” he exclaimed. “Did you get a cable last Monday?”

“Yes. Didn’t you?”

“I did not, or I shouldn’t be wanting to shoot myself. Dark promised to cable the moment it happened, and only to-night, half an hour ago, I got a cable from Lady Dark telling me that France died last Monday, and that she had only just heard it. Confound Dark! Talk about the wrath of God. It’s chain lightning compared to an Englishman.”

“No doubt the duke suppressed the notice. It would be like him.”

“It was Dark’s business to find out. I should have employed a detective. When a thing’s to do, do it. Well, here’s the result! I’ve got myself into the devil of a mess—”

“You’ve been making love to Fanny.”

“I have—or rather—not been making love from my point of view—only she doesn’t see it in that light. I’ve been flirting like the deuce. When I got your note that morning, I took it for pure caprice. It seemed to me totally without excuse. You had promised faithfully to meet me every day. I had not a suspicion of the truth. Moreover, I had just received cables from California that stirred me up. They couldn’t understand my desertion at such a moment, and no wonder. To be told that I had come here for nothing—to be coolly asked to wait a week—to know that I had to stay whether I would or not—well, I felt as if hell had been let loose inside of me. Fanny brought the note—”

“Fanny!” Julia sprang to her feet. “Fanny? I didn’t give it to her.”

“She brought it all the same, and she looked something more than ripe for a flirtation, and beautiful—”

“You have fallen in love with her! I saw you this morning.”

“Oh, you did? Well, you didn’t see much. I am not in love with her, but—well, it’s got to be said—she’s in love with me, or thinks she is. I was treated to high tragedy an hour since in the garden of Bath House. I never for a moment thought she would take the thing seriously—have seen too many summer flirtations—American girls know exactly what that sort of thing means—but this girl might have Nevis inside of her. She wanted to elope with me to-night—threatens to drown herself—”

“Great heaven! What have you done?”

“I feel like Don Juan, of course, only as it happens I haven’t made downright love to her. I was on the edge of it once or twice, she’s so infernally pretty, but, well, hang it all, I’m in love with you to the limit, all the more so that you’re not dead easy game. If I hadn’t been, I’d have made love to her fast enough. But I flirted as hard as I know how, and she took that for love-making, thought I held back because I felt bound to you, and—well—it was the hateful things she said about you to-night that put me in a rage and made me hustle her back into the ball-room and into the arms of one of her other admirers. I had gone as far as I intended, and made up my mind, not two minutes before I got Lady Dark’s cable, to go to one of the other islands and wait for the steamer. When I got that cable, of course I understood. Now are you properly repentant? Why in thunder didn’t you tell me in your note—”

“Of course, I thought you knew—”

“Never take anything for granted where there are big things at stake. But what are we to do? I’m going to marry you to-morrow evening at seven o’clock over in Fig Tree Church, but what is to be done with Fanny? She’s all fixed for tragedy, and there’s no knowing just what a girl of that sort might do. I don’t care to begin our life with a horror. You must take her in hand to-morrow morning and talk her into reason. I gave her to understand that I didn’t love her, but a man has to say a thing of that sort so decently that a girl never believes him—particularly a girl like Fanny, who has a sublime confidence in herself I’ve never seen equalled. What’s to be done? What’s to be done?”

“Are you quite sure that you love me, that you haven’t really wavered—”

“Oh, lord! I’m more mad about you than ever.”

“Would you have married Fanny if you had met her first?”

“There’s no woman on earth I should ever have wanted to marry but you. Do you fancy a man thinks of marriage with every girl he puts in his time with? I’ve had a dozen flirtations—as hard and a good deal longer than this; and neither of us the worse, I may add. I’m no heart-breaker. Our girls know the game too well.”

“If I thought you were merely bent upon being honorable—”

“Julia, if I didn’t love you, I’d tell you so. Do you suppose I’m the man to jump into matrimony blindfolded? I’ve seen too many of my friends marry—and divorce four years later. I’m no candidate for the divorce court. What I want is a wife I can love and work with for the rest of my life. That wife is you, or will be this time to-morrow night. So cut all that out and set your wits to work.”

Julia moved her eager eyes from his face and looked out over the sea. She did not speak for several moments, and Tay saw her face set and grow whiter, her eyes shine until they looked like polished steel.

“Leave Fanny to me,” she said finally. “I’ll dispose of her. She will give no further trouble.”

Tay stirred uneasily. “Oh—you don’t mean—That is hardly fair—”

“_Fair?_” asked Julia, with unmitigated scorn.

“Couldn’t you give her a good womanly talking-to?”

“And what good do you suppose that would do? Did you ever hear of love being talked out of any woman?”

“I know—but you are clever enough without that—and after all it _isn’t_ fair. It’s a violent assault on personality—”

Julia whirled about and confronted him with blazing eyes.

“_Fair? Fair?_” she cried. “And do you suppose I’d think twice about what is fair with that treacherous little fool? Do you suppose I would let any scruple weigh a feather with me when the happiness of my whole life is at stake? If you didn’t love me, you could go and I’d not condescend to lift a finger; but you do, you do, and nothing shall stand between us; _nothing_, I tell you! If I could have caught her alone this morning, I’d have twisted her neck and held her under the water until she was dead. And yet you imagine I’d stop at hypnotizing her? For the matter of that it will be treating her far better than she deserves, for she will practically have forgotten you when I am finished with her. She deserves to be left here in sackcloth—oh, she’s not the sort that kills herself, she’s far too selfish and vain—but she’s noisy and stubborn and the sort that calf-love makes ungovernable. She’d turn the island upside down and run to my mother with the story that you had compromised her—there’s nothing she wouldn’t tell her. My mother is a very old woman. The excitement might make her so ill that I should be detained here for months. And I won’t! I won’t! I’ll leave this island with you!”

Tay brought his hands down on her shoulders and gripped them. “By God, Julia!” he said hoarsely, “you are the woman for me. Together we’ll conquer the earth.”

“Oh, you’ll find me useful to you in many ways you barely suspect now. I can do more than hypnotize! But I don’t wish you to misunderstand me. What I do to Fanny will be nothing more than the reputable scientific psychotherapeutists do every day to their patients. I shall give her an immediate suggestion that her will shall not be weakened, that she shall no longer be under my control after coming out of the hypnotic trance. And as I said before, she will benefit equally with ourselves. We don’t practise black magic, we initiates; not that we are above it, but because we don’t dare. It rebounds like an arrow and strikes our greater powers dead. I never have harmed any one and I never shall, but that leaves an enormous field for action.”

“Good. And she’d not think of going to Bath House before to-morrow night. She heard me accept an invitation to lunch on board the cruiser. By the way, you might plant in that ill-regulated head the suggestion that she be less anxious to fall in love. There are men of all sorts—”

“That would be unfair, if you like! Our impulses are our birthright. To alter personality would be unjust, almost criminal, for the impulses that make a fool or worse of us in certain circumstances may be necessary for our happiness. Fanny must work out her own destiny. I shall settle my income from France’s estate on her, and induce Aunt Maria to take charge of her as far as England. There Ishbel will introduce her—”

“That’s right!” interrupted Tay, viciously. “Turn her loose on Dark. Serve him right.”

“Dark is the best-managed man in England. Fanny’ll not get a chance at him. And she’ll have a husband before the season is over.”

“Good. But are you dead sure you can do it? You failed with me, you know.”

“Because I hated to do it, and because—well, you are you. But Fanny! To-morrow she’ll be sleepy and stupid from the excitement of to-night, and she will eat an enormous lunch, as she always does. She is curious about India. I’ll interest her in that subject at the table and then invite her to my room, and interest her more. She’s never heard of hypnosis. I’ll offer to put her to sleep. She’ll consent, not only because she’s worn out, and yet too excited and disturbed for sleep, but because I choose that she shall. I’ll tell her to fix her eyes on mine, and the moment she does that she’s lost. In just three minutes she’ll be a lump of wax. Now, are you satisfied? Why, if I had the least misgiving, I’d summon Hadji Sadrä.”

Tay laughed. “Oh, Julia! Julia! You’re all right. Now listen to me. To-morrow I shall take out a special license—”

“I’d rather you waited until just before we sail. My mother—”

“Don’t expect me to show any concern for your mother. She’s at the bottom of all this trouble. She set Fanny on me. I had already begun to suspect it before your aunt let it out—I have had more than one scene to-night!—I feel sure she saw us together the day I called at the house; at all events she got on to the facts. I didn’t suspect this earlier because I hadn’t really believed that she had kept Fanny so close—girls are always working on a man’s sympathies. Otherwise I shouldn’t have fallen for it. Now, to continue. I shall marry you to-morrow. You will meet me at Fig Tree Church at seven o’clock. Hardly any one is abroad at that hour. You can keep it from your mother until we are about to sail, if you choose. That is all one to me. But I’ll take no more chances. Now give me your hands and say that nothing on God’s earth shall prevent you from coming to Fig Tree Church to-morrow evening at seven o’clock.”

Julia gave him her hands. “I’ll be there,” she said. “I, too, shall take no more chances.”

* * * * *

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Hamilton’s Letters
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* * * * *

A NEW DANBY NOVEL

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* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York

* * * * *

_BY MRS. ATHERTON_

THE CONQUEROR A FEW OF HAMILTON’S LETTERS ANCESTORS THE GORGEOUS ISLE RULERS OF KINGS THE ARISTOCRATS THE TRAVELLING THIRDS THE BELL IN THE FOG PATIENCE SPARHAWK AND HER TIMES SENATOR NORTH HIS FORTUNATE GRACE TOWER OF IVORY

_CALIFORNIA SERIES_

REZÁNOV THE DOOMSWOMAN THE SPLENDID IDLE FORTIES A DAUGHTER OF THE VINE THE CALIFORNIANS AMERICAN WIVES AND ENGLISH HUSBANDS A WHIRL ASUNDER THE VALIANT RUNAWAYS (A BOOK FOR BOYS)

* * * * *

Transcriber’s Notes:

The list of other works by the author has been moved from the front of the book to the end. Spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the original. A few obvious typesetting errors have been corrected without note.

[The end of _Julia France and her Times_ by Gertrude Atherton]

End of Project Gutenberg's Julia France and Her Times, by Gertrude Atherton