Loe raamatut: «Daughters of Belgravia; vol 3 of 3», lehekülg 6
CHAPTER VIII.
“DON’T YOU KNOW ME, DELAVAL?”
“And where the red was – lo! the bloodless white,
And where truth was – the likeness of a liar,
And where day was – the likeness of the night,
This is the end of every man’s desire!”
The world seems very dark to Lord Delaval to-day – a terrible chaos, in fact, in which right is hopelessly, inextricably, mingled with wrong.
He hates and scorns himself for this passion for Marguerite Ange, which gives him neither rest nor peace.
He swears he will leave Paris and never set eyes on her again; then he believes it is Kismet, bows to the inevitable, and resolves not to struggle against a feeling that is evidently stronger than himself.
Then comes a reaction once more.
“There is nothing to be done but to go right away. There’s not much fear she’ll break her heart, or that I have really inspired a grande passion. Her sort are not much given to fretting after one man, when a dozen are at her beck,” he says to himself sardonically. “But I will go and wish her good-bye. That much will be but gentlemanly.”
So he goes, a few days after the supper party, to the Rue Tronchet.
The lovely cause of so much heartburning leans back as usual among her vivid scarlet cushions, doing nothing, as is her wont – like the lilies of the field, she neither toils nor spins, but she looks in her shady, luxurious room, provokingly cool and languid, and far away from the troubles and perplexities of this work-a-day world.
But the dreaminess of her eyes is lost in the radiant light that transfigures her face as Lord Delaval enters, and starting up, she holds out two hands without a word, but with a smile that is more than a welcome.
He takes them absently and seats himself beside her in rather an abstracted way, and when he speaks, it is of the subject that is uppermost in his mind.
“I’ve come to say good-bye, Marguerite.”
“Good-bye?” she repeats in a startled voice.
“Yes. I am going away.”
“Where?”
Her accents tremble, her face blanches. It dawns upon her at once that this is no ordinary leave-taking.
“Oh, somewhere! Anywhere! What does it matter where, since it will be where I shall not see your face?” he asks, and he bites his lip to hide its quivering.
Not a word falls from her at this speech. She sits quite still and as white as snow, her hands clench together, and her breath comes quick and hard.
“But I couldn’t go away without coming to see you once more, Marguerite – without carrying away with me one more glimpse of your face.”
In spite of him he falters, and with the perverse nature of his sex, is angry with himself for rolling the stone to his own sepulchre.
“Why must you go?” she pleads, looking up wistfully. “Why can’t you stay? If you go I shall feel that I shall never, never see you again.”
“Are you sorry to lose me, Marguerite?” he asks softly. “I believe you are. I believe you really care for me just a little.”
“A little! Oh, Heavens!” she murmurs with her face all set and drawn, and her figure rigid, as if despair had turned her into stone. “You dare to say that!” she cries suddenly and fiercely. “You dare to say that, when you know – ay, must know – that all my life, all my love – ah! what am I saying?”
Then her passion, her bitterness, melts, and she wails out:
“Have you no mercy, Lord Delaval? Am I so low —so low, that you cannot even feel pity for me? See! I am praying here for clemency, for pity at your hands! Praying you not to break my heart! – not to ruin my life for ever and ever!” and she flings herself down on her knees and lifts up a face still more wondrously beautiful through the emotion that lives in every feature.
“Marguerite! Oh! what have I said?” he cries in an agony of remorse. “I would not give you a moment’s pain for the world. You say I deem you ‘low,’ Marguerite! Ah! if you could see into my heart, you would find that it is because I not only love you, but honour you, that I have come to say good-bye!”
He tries to draw away the hands with which she has hidden her face – the face that has undone him – but she droops her head, while her whole frame trembles with uncontrolled passion.
“You must not mind what I say,” she whispers, after a moment, in a low, hoarse voice; “it’s only my own folly – only I cannot help – oh! how can I help loving you? Listen to me!” she goes on, pouring out her words in an eager, impetuous torrent. “I shall never see you again, you say – shall never speak to you! I will tell you all the truth then, and after that we shall part, and you will forget my madness, and I – never mind what I shall do – anyway, I shall not blame you; it isn’t your fault that you are yourself! and that I could not help loving you. You have been the one man in all the world to me. Ah! you can’t imagine how I have worshipped you, how you have seemed to me as the light of Heaven, as a being of another world who had deigned to speak, to look, to smile on me. It was idolatry I felt when I first looked on your face, the germ of a love that was to wreck my whole life. It has been my one ambition that you should do justice to the attraction I possess; you have been my religion, my conscience; and all I have wanted was to prove to you that I was capable of winning men’s hearts, though yours might be denied me. I have gloried in my beauty because I believed it had won you; I thanked God only yesterday on my knees that my life was crowned with your love! But it’s all over now! I have hung on every word you have spoken, I have clung to every kindly look, believing, hoping, praying that at last – at last! – no one could come between us two!”
She drops his hand, and, springing up, stands opposite him, speaking fast and almost incoherently now.
“It has come to this now —now, that you have decided to part – that I, who thought myself strong and brave, cry out in my weakness to you, tearing open the wound that you may see me writhe under it. You may scorn me, despise me, hate me if you will! I have been wicked, treacherous, unscrupulous, but if you had loved me and stayed with me I should have become a better woman. You have wrecked my whole life, but through it all, through everything, through heartlessness, caprice, falsity, dishonour, and even insult, I have loved you – loved you as no woman will ever love you in this world! I have given you my life, my soul, everything! Don’t you know me now, Delaval?”
Dazed, almost stunned, he stares at her aghast, while his face grows ashy white, even to his lips, from which no word issues, only – only, as he gazes, in his mind dawns a misty memory, a doubt, a repulsion.
“Is there so little of love’s instinct in your heart that a paltry mask of pink and white, a little Golden Wash, has hidden from you that I am – ?”
“Gabrielle!”
He almost shouts in a voice that has a sharp ring of pain and horror in it, and he shrinks back from her, while the warmth and tenderness his face had worn fade right away, and in their place comes a cold, hard, pitiless, passionless look that stings her to the very core.
She shivers from head to foot, with a dumb agony in her eyes that might touch a heart of granite, but it does not touch this man, who only cries:
“Thank God! – Thank God! I have been saved in time!”
She falls upon her knees once more, grovelling at his feet.
“Oh, Delaval! my love! – my love! don’t despise me! don’t loathe me! Have you no pity for me? —one word!”
But he spurns her from him with a rough gesture, and rising, she stands a little apart.
“No!” he says, in a hard, metallic tone, “I have no word for you —not one! If there are things I hate, they are lies and deceit. If there is a thing I never forgive, it is being made a fool of. Thank Heaven you have told me now who you are. What you are, I do not care to know! Under the mask of youth and guilelessness you had nearly made me your slave, you had fired the train that was to bring me to everlasting shame and disgrace. Oh! I could kill myself for my cursed folly, my credulity, my utter blindness! But I am saved! – saved from being a dupe to a base woman, who scruples at nothing, not even the ruin of her sister’s home and life, just to salve a paltry wound to her vanity, to hold in her chains a man who had set her aside long ago, knowing her to be —what she is!”
Clear and cutting, like a knife, his words fall on the shady, luxurious, silent room.
Silent for one moment only, while he goes towards the door without one backward glance.
Before he reaches it, however, a sharp click breaks the silence and Lord Delaval falls across the threshold —
Shot!
Gabrielle Beranger stoops down and gazes at the face of the man who has insulted her, then she kisses his lips, and, closing the door after her, steals noiselessly away.
* * * * *
The stars cluster thickly in the clear sky, and lights twinkle at each other across the broad bosom of the Seine, when a woman comes slowly and, pausing, looks down on the shimmering water.
“Better to die so,” she mutters. “I am not good, neither was he, so we two may yet meet again!”
A dull sound like a break in the water, a glint of golden hair on the edge of a ripple —
* * * * *
Her face is fair even in death, as she lies here, in the terrible Morgue, among ghastly things that bring horror and shrinking to human hearts.
“Sapristi! C’est Marguerite Ange! La Blonde aux Yeux Noir,” a man in a blouse says in a hushed voice, as he peers through the little glass window.
“Elle est belle à faire peur!” answers his companion.
And this is her requiem.
CHAPTER IX.
THROUGH THE SHADOWS
“It is not much that a man can save
On the sands of life – in the straits of Time,
Who swims in sight of the third great wave,
That never a swimmer shall cross or climb.
Some waif washed up with the strays and spars
That ebb-tide throws to the shore and the stars.
Weed from the water – grass from a grave —
A broken blossom – a ruined rhyme!”
Through the mantle of dusk the lights shine brightly in the Place Vendôme, but the room in the Hotel Bristol looks dark and dreary, save for the fitful flame of the fire, when Zai, who has grown tired of her own society, hears footsteps on the stairs.
All the long afternoon she has been alone; even “Baby,” her resource on most occasions, has slept through the hours as sound as the Seven Sleepers.
So, when a human tread falls welcome on her ear, she forgets that it is not quite the thing for a countess to rush out on the landing of a hotel.
“Is that you, Delaval?” she cries in a bright ringing voice, for she is longing to see him again, longing with a great longing that will not allow her to study the convenances. But she draws back as the figure of a stranger, a tall, handsome man, with a face after Velasquez, confronts her.
“Pardonne, Madame!” he says in a very low voice – and there is a gentle sympathetic ring in it, for De Belcour is a thorough gentleman by nature as well as by birth – “I have a mission to fulfil, a mission which pains me more than I can say,” he adds earnestly, as he looks on the fair sweet young face of his rival’s wife.
But Zai does not speak, something – a dreadful instinct – seems to gather round her heart, like an iron band. She stands as white as an image of marble and as motionless as if she were rooted to the ground – with the glad laugh on her pretty lips hushed into an awful silence, and with a terrible fear filling her big grey eyes, as, slowly passing her, they bear their burden into the room, and place it upon the very couch where she had lain this afternoon full of hope and happiness and with the sunshine of life dancing in her eyes and breaking into smiles on her mouth, for Zai is young and lovely and rich, and she adores her husband and the child that God has given her.
Not a word falls from her now, and she never stirs from the spot where she stands, but all the while she vigilantly watches the movements of the men, and follows them with great piteous looks, and her little hands clench and twist together in terror and despair.
“He is not dead!” De Belcour whispers, “but —dying, I fear.”
“Not dead!” The words break from her almost in a shout of joy, and she springs past him and crouches down beside what they have brought her – beside all that is left of him. Her eyes are quite dry, and glitter, undimmed by a single tear, as she sways backwards and forwards in the plenitude and abjectness of her suffering.
Then she raises a white, forlorn face, and falters:
“Is no one coming to him?”
And De Belcour, who feels himself moved to a great compassion for this slender bit of a girl, stricken down in the very beginning and flush of her life, bows his head in answer.
She forgets his presence then. Bending over her husband, she touches his closed lids and his cold cheeks very softly and caressingly, as if her little fingers loved to linger in their task. She puts her hand on his heart, which beats, but so faintly as if each throb were its last, and she keeps on murmuring tender words to the ears which do not hear them.
“Delaval, darling, speak to me, only one word – one little word, Delaval, that I may just hear your voice. Oh, God! won’t he speak to me again? shall I never hear him speak kind, dear words as he did to-day – before he went away to – die? Die! Oh! you won’t die, Delaval, darling, my own darling, you have not left me – left me —for ever!”
The last words go out from her in a wail loud enough, and piteous enough, to reach the sky.
Faint and dizzy with fear, she stretches out her trembling hands, like a blind woman, towards the form lying before her with the rigidity of death, but, before they reach it, she falls back and drops senseless on the floor.
* * * * *
Maybe her piteous cry has reached beyond the sky, for he has not left her “for ever.”
The shot of a vengeful woman, wounded in her terrible love, driven to the phrensy of a wild beast, has grazed the right lung, and for a long time he hovers between life and death, while his wife nurses him unwearyingly night and day with a devoted unselfish love that is not often to be found in the worldly daughters of Belgravia.
Then, after a little, when they tell him he has crept slowly – slowly, but surely – out of the shadows – and that life (not the old life, but one twin with suffering perchance) yet lies before him, he feels that he will regain health and strength sooner if the burden of a secret is removed from him.
It is very hard to face Zai as he makes a clean breast of it, but he does it.
“My pet,” he murmurs, in a low weak voice which is very unlike his old accents, and the sound of which goes right to her heart, “I have something to say to you.”
So she kneels down beside him. It is the place she likes best now in the world.
“Do you love me very much, Zai?” he asks her, while his thin white hand rests on her shining chesnut hair, and, looking up, she sees that there is an actual mist of tears in his handsome ultramarine eyes.
“Ah, don’t I?” she whispers, catching hold of his hand and kissing it passionately, and he reads plainly enough the love that is patent on her face.
“But would you love me so much, Zai, if you knew that I had been unfaithful – that I had forgotten you just for a little while?” he asks, his lips quivering and his heart beating very fast. For somehow he holds on to her love with a strange tenacity. It seems, in truth, to be the only – only – thing worth living for.
She does not answer for a moment, but she has his hand still clasped close in her own, while her face grows deathly white, and there is a startled, stricken look in her grey eyes that cuts him to the heart.
“It is quite true, Zai. For a little while I did forget you. Another woman’s face came between us, and for the life of me I couldn’t shake off its power over me, though I tried. Upon my soul I tried!”
He pauses, breathless, and a pallor creeps over his face – a face as handsome as Apollo’s, in spite of suffering.
“Well, Zai, I saw her, not more than half-a-dozen times, perhaps, but each time she seemed to draw me closer and closer to her, and further – from – you – till the —last time.”
Zai listens to it all – to this confession of sin and wrong – her gaze never swerving from his face, and her heart full to bursting.
“Did you kiss her, Delaval?” she whispers at last in a faint, scared voice, and on the impulse of the moment she puts up her little fingers to stop her ears, in dread of his saying “Yes.” Then she drops them desolately.
“No! thank God I never did!” he says quite heartily, and Zai breathes more freely. And, the tension gone, she lays her head down on his arm and cries like a child, but the tears are more of relief than of bitterness, and the world does not look half as dreary to her as it did a few minutes ago.
“No! I thank God, that you have nothing to forgive on that score, though I am bound to say that both the spirit was willing and the flesh was weak; but a lucky fate prevented it. No! it was only my heart, Zai! Pshaw! fancy my calling it my heart. It was only my senses, Zai!”
She ponders a moment. It is dreadful to know that he has been caring for another woman; but still it is a great comfort – a very, very great comfort – to know that he has not kissed her. So she lifts up her face with a smile, half-piteous, half-glad, on her mouth, and her arm steals round his neck.
Poor fellow, he looks so thin and white and haggard, she could not be angry with him for the world.
“Well, my little one?” he says, but he knows quite well that she loves him so much she will never be hard on him, and, after all, it was only a venial sin, he thinks, with the self-indulgent complacency so common to the style of man he is.
“I forgive you!” she whispers between fond fervent kisses on his lips, “for you know, darling, that ‘to err is human.’ ”
“Yes! my own, own love! And ‘to forgive – divine!’ ”
But there is one secret yet that Lord Delaval keeps religiously from his wife’s innocent ears. It is, that the woman who tempted him was —Gabrielle!
