"You will go somewhere for change of air?" he says, entreatingly, going up to her and laying his hand upon her shoulder. "It is of this, partly, I wish to speak to you. You will find this house lonely and uncomfortable (though doubtless pleasanter) when I am gone. Let me write to my aunt, Lady Monckton. She will be very glad to have you for a time."
"No; I shall stay here. Where are you going?"
"I hardly know; and I do not care at all."
"How long will you be away?"
"How can I answer that question either? There is nothing to bring me home."
"How soon do you go?" Her voice all through is utterly without expression, or emotion of any kind.
"Immediately," he answers, curtly. "Are you in such a hurry to be rid of me? Be satisfied, then: I start to-morrow." Then, after an unbroken pause, in which even her breathing cannot be heard, he says, in a curious voice, "I suppose there will be no occasion for me to write to you while I am away?"
She does not answer directly. She would have given half her life to be able to say, freely, "Write to me, Dorian, if only a bare line, now and then, to tell me you are alive;" but pride forbids her.
"None, whatever," she says, coldly, after her struggle with her inner self. "I dare say I shall hear all I care to hear from Clarissa or Sir James."
There is a long silence. Georgie"s eyes are fixed dreamily upon the sparkling coals. His eyes are fixed on her. What a child she looks in her azure gown, with her yellow hair falling in thick ma.s.ses over her shoulders. So white, so fair, so cruelly cold! Has she no heart, that she can stand in that calm, thoughtful att.i.tude, while his heart is slowly breaking?
She has destroyed all his happy life, this "amber witch," with her loveliness, and her pure girlish face, and her bitter indifference; and yet his love for her at this moment is stronger, perhaps, than it has ever been. He is leaving her. Shall he ever see her again?
Something at this moment overmasters him. Moving a step nearer to her, he suddenly catches her in his arms, and, holding her close to his heart, presses kisses (unforbidden) upon her lips and cheek and brow.
In another instant she has recovered herself, and, placing her hands against his chest, frees herself, by a quick gesture, from his embrace.
"Was that how you used to kiss _her_?" she says, in a choked voice, her face the color of death. "Let me go: your touch is contamination."
Almost before the last word has pa.s.sed her lips, he releases her, and, standing back, confronts her with a face as livid as her own.
In the one hurried glance she casts at him, she knows that all is, indeed, over between them now; never again will he sue to her for love or friendship. She would have spoken again,--would, perhaps, have said something to palliate the harshness of her last words,--but by a gesture he forbids her. He points to the door.
"Leave the room," he says, in a stern commanding tone; and, utterly subdued and silenced by his manner, she turns and leaves him.
CHAPTER x.x.xIII.
"A goodly apple, rotten at the heart.
Oh, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!"--_Merchant of Venice._
"No hinge nor loop To hang a doubt on."--_Oth.e.l.lo._
Dorian has been two months gone, and it is once again close on Christmas-tide. All the world is beginning to think of gifts, and tender greetings, and a coming year. Clarissa is dreaming of wedding garments white as the snow that fell last night.
The post has just come in. Clarissa, waking, stretches her arms over her head with a little lazy delicious yawn, and idly turns over her letters one by one. But presently, as she breaks the seal of an envelope, and reads what lies inside it, her mood changes, and, springing from her bed, she begins to dress herself with nervous rapidity.
Three hours later, Sir James, sitting in his library, is startled by the apparition of Clarissa standing in the door-way with a very miserable face.
"What on earth has happened?" says Sir James, who is a very practical young man and always goes at once to the root of a mystery.
"Horace is ill," says Miss Peyton, in a tone that might have suited the occasion had the skies just fallen. "Oh, Jim, what shall I do?"
"My dearest girl," says Scrope, going up to her and taking her hands.
"Yes, he is very ill! I had not heard from him for a fortnight, and was growing wretchedly uneasy, when to-day a letter came from Aunt Emily telling me he has been laid up with low fever for over ten days.
And he is very weak, the doctor says, and no one is with him. And papa is in Paris, and Lord Sartoris is with Lady Monckton, and Dorian--no one knows where Dorian is!"
"Most extraordinary his never getting any one to write you a line!"
"Doesn"t that only show how fearfully ill he must be? Jim, you will help me, won"t you?"
This appeal is not to be put on one side.
"Of course I will," says Scrope: "you know that--or you ought. What do you want me to do?"
"To take me to him. I want to see him with my own eyes."
"To go yourself?" says Sir James, extreme disapprobation in his tone.
"You must be out of your mind."
"I am not," returns she, indignantly. "I never was more in it. And I am going, any-way."
"What will your father say?"
"He will say I was quite right. Dear, _dear_, DEAR Jim,"--slipping her hand through his arm, and basely descending from _hauteur_ to coaxing,--"do say you will take me to him. It can"t be wrong! Am I not going to be his wife in a month"s time?"
Sir James moves a chair out of his way with most unnecessary vehemence.
"How that alters the case I can"t see," he says, obstinately.
"You forsake me!" says Miss Peyton, her eyes filling with tears. "Do.
I can"t be much unhappier than I am, but I did depend on you, you were always so much my friend." Here two large tears run down her cheeks, and they, of course, decide everything.
"I will take you," he says, hastily. "To-day?--The sooner the better, I suppose."
"Yes; by the next train. Oh, how obliged to you I am! Dear Jim, I shall never forget it to you!"
This is supposed to be grateful to him, but it is quite the reverse.
"I think you are very foolish to go at all," he says, somewhat gruffly.
"Perhaps I am," she says, with a rueful glance. "But you cannot understand. Ah! if you loved, yourself, you could sympathize with me."
"Could I?" says Sir James, with a grimace that is meant for a smile, but as such is a most startling specimen of its cla.s.s.
So they go up to town, and presently arrive at the house where Horace lies unconscious of all around him. The door is opened to them by an unmistakable landlady,--a fat, indolent person, with sleepy eyes, and a large mouth, and a general air about her suggestive of perpetual beef-steaks and bottled stout.