"Really? What a lucky accident! So you are not the sly designing schemer I supposed. Ah, well, you are the soul of honour, and that is infinitely better."
Certainly to her mind in the present case that was what appearances would seem to indicate; but the poor wretches who were tending slowly toward the brink of some indefinable horror, more awful to their imaginations than the great cataract itself, thought not so much upon the means by which they were brought into their present painful position, as upon the impossibility of escape from it. To the eye of a casual wayfarer these handsome young people, driving abroad through the dewy freshness of the morning, with the long lovely day before them, could not be considered objects of pity.
For a while they took refuge in commonplaces, relieved by lapses of eloquent silence; then as the winding road conducted them by easy gradations into greener depths of leafy solitude they looked involuntarily into each other"s eyes, and realized that, beneath all the bitterness and pride and cruel estrangement, their love was the truest, most unalterable, part of their life.
"Perhaps," said Edward, speaking as though the words were wrung from him, "it is better that we should meet once more alone, though it be for the last time."
The girl gave a low murmur of a.s.sent. Her eyes were looking straight forward. The solitude was permeated by the deep thunder of the Falls, and it voiced the depth of her despair. "For the last time," she said within herself, "for the last time."
"I have a favour to ask," he continued, "a favour that I verily believe a man never yet asked of the woman he loved; and I do love you, my darling--there, let me say it once, since I can never say it again--I love you with all my heart and soul." He bowed his head, and she could see the blue vein in his temple growing bluer and swelling as he spoke. He had not laid a finger upon her, he could not so much as lift his eyes up to her face, but a mocking breeze suddenly blew a fold of her raiment against his cheek, and he kissed it pa.s.sionately.
Helene held her hands tightly together; they were trembling violently.
"I want to beg of you," he said, still without looking up, "to look upon me with suspicion, aversion, and distrust; to disbelieve any good you may hear of me; to hate me if you can; to treat me as long as you live with uniform coldness and indifference."
"I understand," she replied with icy brevity, "you think there is danger of my treating you otherwise."
Now, since the discovery of the locket, and its tell-tale contents, this was precisely the danger that Edward had feared, but he was a diplomatist.
"Have you ever given me the slightest reason to think so?" he demanded. "At my least approach your natural pride changes to haughtiness, arrogance, and scorn. But the one thing greater than your pride is my love. Ah, you know nothing about it--you cannot imagine its power. Madmen have warned those who were dearest to them to fly from their sight, lest in spite of themselves an irreparable injury be inflicted. And so I urge you to continue avoiding me, to cast behind not even a single glance of pity, lest in spite of your pride, in spite of my reason, I should bend all my power to the one object of winning you."
This calamity, it may be supposed, was not quite so great and horrible to the mind of the young lady as it was in the excited imagination of her lover. "I do not understand you," she said quietly. "What is it you wish to ask of me?"
"Only this: that you will never think of me with the slightest degree of kindness; that you will drop me from your acquaintance; that you will forget that I ever existed."
"Very well;" her tones were even quieter than before, and a great deal colder! "I promise never to think any more of you than I do at this moment." And all the time she was crying with inward tears, "O, darling, darling, as though I could think any more of you than I do now! As though I could, as though I could!"
"Thank you," said Edward, "you are removing a terrible temptation from my way, and helping to make me stronger and less ign.o.ble than I am.
Let me tell you all about it, Helene. Do you remember that night in the conservatory last winter, when you treated me so cruelly? Yes, I own I was a wild animal; but you might have tamed me, and instead you infuriated me. I went from you to Wanda, the Indian girl with whom I flirted last summer. She was in civilized garb, in my mother"s home, quiet as a bird that has been driven by the storms of winter into a place of shelter. I too had been tempest-driven, and her warm welcome, her beauty and tenderness, stole away my senses. She soothed my injured vanity, satisfied my desperate hunger for love, and I lived for weeks in the belief that we were made for each other. But with the return of summer the untamed spirit of her race took possession of her, and when I saw her with you,--ah, dearest, is there need for me to say more? I cannot marry her; every fibre of my being, every sentiment of my soul, revolts from it; but neither am I such a monster of iniquity as to try to win any one else, and found my lifelong happiness upon that poor girl"s broken-hearted despair. No, Helene, you have no right to look at me in that way. I never wronged her in the base brutish sense of the word--never in a way that the spirit of my dead mother might not have witnessed--but I have robbed her of her heart, and find too late that I do not want it. I cannot free her from her suffering, but at least I shall always share it."
And I too, was Helene"s internal response. Aloud she suggested that it was time for them to return. Her indifference was precisely what Edward had begged for, but now in return for his confidence it chilled him. She noticed his disappointment, and with a sudden impulse of sympathy, she laid a tiny gloved hand upon his arm. "Oh, you are right," she breathed, "perfectly right. It is infinitely better to suffer with her than to be happy and contemptible and forget her.
Believe me I shall not be a hindrance to you."
He took in his own the little fluttering hand, and held it in what he believed to be a quiet friendly clasp. It was an immense relief to unburden his mind to any one, and her approval was very sweet to a heart that had been torn for weary days and nights by self-accusation and self-contempt. Unconsciously he leaned nearer to her, still holding the little hand, which its owner did not withdraw, because it was for "the last time." In the reaction from the severe strain of the days and weeks gone past they were almost light-hearted. Before re-entering the village Edward stopped the horse in a leafy covert, where for a few minutes they might be secure from observation.
"It is only to say good-bye, my heart"s idol," he explained. "Since I have proved myself unworthy even of your liking I must go away from you forever. But our parting must be here in private." He held both her hands now in a tight, strong grasp, and looked into her face with unutterable love. "Ah, heaven," he groaned, "I cannot give you up! I cannot, I cannot!" He bowed his face upon the lilies in her lap, but the languid bloodless things could not cool the fever in his cheeks.
For her life she could not help laying her hand tenderly upon his head--the young golden head that lay so wearily close to her empty arms; but she said nothing. A woman"s heart is dumb, not because it is created so, but because society has decreed that that is the only proper thing for it to be. "Helene," he murmured, lifting his head with a strange dazed look, "I believe I have been delirious all the morning. What possible good could my suffering be to Wanda? I don"t know what I have said, but I wish you would forget it all. I wish you would remember nothing except that I love you--love you--_love you_!"
The girl laughed aloud and bitterly. "So that is the length of a man"s remorse! No! You have begged me to despise you, and now I shall beg you not to make it dangerously easy for me to do so."
Her contempt was a tonic. It reminded the young man that he deserved, not only that but his own contempt as well. They drove home without exchanging another word.
CHAPTER XX.
THE COMING OF WANDA.
The spectacle of a pair of lovers equally pale and proud alighting at her door was rather dispiriting to Lady Sarah Maitland, but she did not lose heart. This she rightly considered to be the proper thing for _them_, not for her to do. At least they should not escape "the solitude of the crowd," and opportunities for bringing them into this sort of solitude were not lacking. The same afternoon an English lord, who had recently been making a tour of the States, with some officers of His Majesty"s 70th Regiment, then stationed at York, arrived at Stamford Cottage, and in their honour a large number of guests were a.s.sembled that evening. The soft radiance of mingled moonlight and candle light, the artistic luxury of the place and its surroundings, the exquisite robes of soft-voiced women, the cultivated tone and manner of the men, with a sort of subtle and distinguished aroma of British n.o.bility shed over the whole--all of these things held for Edward Macleod a potent witchery. This evening he was in unusually good spirits, and was entertaining a group of gentlemen, who had gathered about him in the centre of the large drawing-room, by an amusing account of his hunting experiences in the backwoods. The sounds of subdued mirth that followed his recital induced a pa.s.sing bevy of ladies to join them. Lady Sarah took the arm of Helene, and gave him her flattering attention along with the rest. A young man never talks poorly from the knowledge that he has gained the ear of his audience.
"Really, a remarkably bright young fellow," confided Lord E---- to Sir Peregrine, at the close of another story, which was accentuated by little bursts of gentle laughter.
A slight breeze blew from a suddenly opened door upon the wax tapers, and the next moment a strange figure made its way through that brilliantly dressed a.s.semblage, and laid its hand upon the arm of Edward. With his face flushed and eyes brightened by the sweetly breathed flattery that, like wine, was apt to go to his brain, he turned and beheld Wanda. She had evidently walked all the way from her home for the express purpose of finding him. Her dress, made up of various coloured garments, the cast-off raiment of those whose charity had fed and lodged her on the way, was covered with dust; her magnificent hair lay in a great straggling heap upon her shoulders.
"My father has gone to the spirit-land," she said, "and now I come to you." Lady Sarah and Rose advanced immediately, with protestations of pity and sympathy, and entreaties that she would go at once with them to find food and rest. But she was immovable as granite. "I have come to _you_," she said, her beautiful eyes fixed upon Edward, and she uttered a few words of endearment in the Huron tongue. n.o.body understood them but the young man, his sister, and hostess. The latter lady felt herself growing very cold, but she accompanied the pair to a private parlour, and returned to her guests with an amused smile upon her lips.
"Poor thing!" she said in a clear voice, distinctly audible to all.
"Her foster-father died last week, and left no end of messages and requests to Mr. Macleod, his friend and constant companion in his hunting expeditions. The girl has that exaggerated idea of filial duty common to the Indian races. She could not rest until she had fulfilled his dying wishes."
No; Lady Sarah certainly did not merit the compliment she had given her husband--she was not the soul of honour--but what would you? With her cheery voice and confident laugh she had dispelled at a breath the vile suspicion of scandal. The company experienced a wonderful relief, and the conversation naturally turned to the peculiarities of savages.
Rose had vanished, and it was generally supposed that she was with her brother and that queer Indian girl. In reality she was locked in her room, saturating her pillow with her tears.
Edward was alone with Wanda. For a moment the blood ran hot in his veins, and he longed to act the part of a man. He longed to take the hand of this beautiful travel-stained savage, and lead her back into the midst of those fashionably dressed, superficially smiling, ladies and gentlemen. He longed to declare, nay, rather to thunder forth, the words: "This is my promised wife! Through weary days and nights, with sore feet and sorer heart she has been coming to me. Burned by the sun and blinded with the dust, hungry and thirsty, and aching in every fibre, her trust never faltered, her love never failed. And her love is matched by mine. The loyalty and devotion of my life I lay at her poor bleeding feet."
That would have satisfied his imagination, but in real life imagination must always go a-hungering. He sat down beside her with a face far more weary than her own.
"Wanda," he burst forth, "my poor fatherless, friendless child, what can I say to you? I am a villain, a coward, a reptile! I thought I loved you, and I do not. No, though my heart aches for you, I do not love you. Oh, you look as though I were murdering you, and it is better for me to murder you now by a few sharp terrible words, than by a life-time of neglect and loathing."
The colour had all ebbed from her face. She fell on her knees beside him, and her liquid childish eyes and sweet lips were upraised to his.
"No, no, my little fawn, I must not kiss you. It is wicked to kiss what we do not love. And I do _not_ love you." He was sheltering himself behind that a.s.sertion, but of a sudden he broke into crying, and his tears fell upon her face. "Child," he said, rising and pacing the room, "do you know what it is to many a man, who cares a great deal for your lips and eyes, and nothing for your mind and soul? It is to marry a beast! You would be wretched with me. We should grow inexpressibly tired of each other. Tell me," he cried, stopping short in his swift walk to and fro, and confronting her with parched lips and wet eyes, "could you endure to have me say cruel things to you every day? Could you bear to have me think bitter things of you in my heart, though I left them unsaid? How could you live under my coldness and neglect? You must learn to hate me--to scorn me,--to think as harshly of me as I shall always think of myself."
She was faint and dizzy, but she rose to her feet, and groped feebly to the door, cowering from him as she went, with her hands over her eyes. Then she turned back with a low wail of irrepressible anguish.
"I cannot leave you," she said, "I cannot give you up!"
Again he was bound in her chains. Her feverish hands held his, her burning eyes drank up the dew in his own, her pathetic presence thrilled him with a sense of love stronger than any he had dreamed of or imagined. Neglect, cruelty, bitterness, scorn! What did the words mean? Like poisonous weeds they had grown fast and rank before his eyes, but in the burning face of this all-conquering love they had shrunk, withered and dead to the earth. Yes, it was the vile earth from which they had sprung, and it was in the radiant heavens that this great love was shining. Wanda"s victory was nearly complete. The only thing lacking to make it so was that she should renounce it altogether. And this she did--not with conscious art but by that sure instinct of womanliness which teaches that a man won by other than indirect methods is not won at all. Then she said, pushing him gently aside, "I will go away now, and never see you again, because I am a burden to you. No," for he had put his hand upon her wrist, "you must not touch me, because--" the words choked her for a moment, and then they fell from her lips with a sound of fathomless despair--"it is as though you were my little child that I was forced to leave forever."
Again she had reached the door, but this time it was his arm around her that brought her back, his protestations of undying affection that revived her drooping frame.
There was a light tap at the door, which opened to admit Lady Sarah Maitland. "My maids will attend to this poor child," she said, addressing Edward. "She will have a bath, and food, and a bed.
Meantime, I want you to help to entertain my guests."
"Really?" The young man frowned at the idea of rejoining that gay throng. He was in a state of mental exaltation--so far up in the clouds that the idea of attending a reception given by his brilliant hostess seemed by contrast spiritless and earthy.
"It would be a great kindness to let me off," he pleaded.
"It would be the greatest kindness to compel you to come," she insisted. There was a significance in the eye and tone of this thorough-bred woman of the world that were not without effect upon Edward, who at once accompanied her. His bright face, collected manner, and ready speech, lessened the impression made upon the company by the episode which had drawn general attention to him early in the evening. Not till after the guests had begun to retire did he again see Wanda. Running upstairs to get a wrap for the fair shoulders of a young lady, who preferred a moonlit seat on the lawn to the rather oppressive warmth within doors, he chanced into a little sitting-room in which Wanda, left alone for a moment, was resting with closed eyes in a great easy chair. Fresh from her bath, with her damp heavy hair lying along the folds of a loose white _neglige_, she looked almost too tired to smile. Edward advanced with beating heart, but stopped half-way, suddenly smitten by the sight of a pair of little bruised feet, carefully bandaged, resting upon a stool--the little feet that had travelled such a long hard road, that had been torn and wounded for his sake. A great wave of shame swept over him.
"I am not worthy to stand in your presence," he said penitently, kneeling at her side.
A low murmur of joy escaped the Indian Maiden"s lips.
She drew his head down for a moment under the dusky curtain of her overhanging hair, and then her eyes closed again.
Edward rose and beheld in the open doorway Helene DeBerczy; her large gaze, darker than a thunder cloud, was illumined by a long lightning flash of merciless irony.