She gave a little frown. "And yet your name, Hume--I think you said it might be French?"
"No, mademoiselle; but my mother was a Parisienne. That will account to you perhaps for the foreign "air" you have marked in me."
She nodded her head, and half closing her eyes she began in a low voice of melting sweetness to hum to the tune of a famous little chansonette, whose refrain is inexpressibly mournful and pathetic, Maeterlinck"s exquisite little poem, "Et s"il revenait un jour!"
Knowing well the sadness in her which the sadness of her song expressed, I felt my heart ache and my eyes grew strangely blurred.
Of a sudden she stopped and, leaning forward, gave me a look which seemed to reveal a longing to be comforted.
"Ah, sir!" she said in French. "I see you have a heart that might vibrate to woman"s tears. And yet you cannot know how sad I am, how very, very miserable!"
And as she gazed at me her eyes overflowed with two such tears as she had spoken of.
There are times when a pa.s.sion of insensate anger seizes me to look back upon my folly. Ah! woman"s wiles, woman"s wiles! The greatest and the least of us have been their victims. And who am I to rave of my undoing, when a Sampson, a Nelson, and even a Napoleon, that man of iron, shared my fate.
But I was blind, blind! Pierced by the sight of those tears to the very fibres of my being, I sprang up, then falling on my knee before her, I seized and pa.s.sionately kissed her hand.
"Mademoiselle, you spoke justly," I cried in French. "Here is a heart that only beats to serve you, without seeking, ay, even without desiring a reward, except that which you must give me of your pleasure or without, when I shall see upon your face some promise of your happiness repaired!"
The glance of involuntary horror that she gave me, and the swift withdrawal of her hand from my embrace, should have warned me of my fatuous self-betrayal. But there is no limit to the errors of a truly clever mind astray in seeking to retrieve itself. I thought that I had angered her in venturing to hint that her disease of sorrow might be cured.
"Pardon me," I pleaded earnestly, "I have offended you with words. If any part of me could so offend, that member I would straightaway destroy."
She looked at me more kindly, and even now I believe that she was touched by the sincerity and singleness of my devotion.
"Rise, monsieur!" she murmured with an effort. "I thank you for your sympathy, but it is not seemly that you kneel to me."
I obeyed, and at her nod resumed my chair. She closed her eyes, and for a long period was deathly still. Her lovely face was extraordinarily pallid and she scarcely seemed to breathe. Then I thought her in the throes of reawakened grief for Cavanagh"s death, and my pain to watch her was intense. Now I know that in her silence she was struggling with herself. Or rather that pity in her, a woman"s unfailing pity for a loving being, however wretchedly unworthy of compa.s.sion, was striving to silence her ideas of duty.
At last her eyes opened and she looked at me. Her regard was mysteriously wistful, cold, and it seemed to me a little self-ashamed.
Indeed, she faintly blushed.
"Sir William Dagmar does not know that you can speak French!" she murmured. "You have deceived him, monsieur! That is wrong. I think that you should go away."
Thrice triple fool I was. Her pity had cajoled her conscience and she was offering me a chance to escape. I, in my infatuation, only thought that she chided me for my deceit.
"Ah! mademoiselle," I muttered. "It is true that I deceived him, but when I did so I was penniless and starving. I pray you from my soul that you will not bid me leave you nor inform Sir William Dagmar of my sin."
"You do not wish to go?"
"Mademoiselle!" I cried, "not though it were to Paradise a.s.sured!"
She blushed deeply, nevertheless her eyes hardened and she frowned. She was doubtless thinking--
"He has had his opportunity. His fate henceforth must be upon his own head! I wash my hands of it!"
I dreamed she was offended at my too ardent gaze. I lowered my eyes at once in sad humility.
"Stay then!" she said, and her voice a.s.sumed a tone of witching tenderness.
I looked up in quick delight to meet a dazzling smile. With such a smile Judith lured Holofernes to destruction. But it needed not that with me; I was destroyed already.
"My friend," she said, and she extended me her hand. "I thank you for your company, but, alas! the hours speed, and I have much to do. Good night!"
I tried to reply, but I could not. She permitted me to kiss her hand, however, and even smiled again. I left the room in a delirium of happiness, poor fool, and not one of my enraptured dreams that night disclosed to me the precipice upon whose brink I stood.
The days that followed were over full of strange, untried experiences for me to properly describe them. Marion was by my side whenever chance allowed. But every hour she showed to me a different mood, a varied and elusive distortion of her inmost self; so that I came to wonder more and more whether I knew truly aught of her except that she was beautiful in all her moods, and that I loved her irretrievably. One moment she was sad and steeped in cold unbending gloom. The next she was a gay companion, chattering of this and that as lightly and as brightly as a bird on sunlit bough. Again she was both grave and friendly at a time, and we conversed together of men, and books, and serious philosophies like two grey-haired, sober-minded savants.
Sometimes, yet more infrequently, she forced upon me quarrels in caprice, to give her opportunity to scorch me with her scorn. And yet, again, more rarely still, she led me on with shy, alluring glances, or even bolder looks, provocative of pa.s.sion, to woo her as I could; whereon, her will too readily achieved, she swiftly changed from melting fire to ice, and I was left in agonized confusion, swung like Mahommed"s coffin between despair and hope.
So another week elapsed, and a third began. My master"s life no longer stood in any danger, and his health and strength slowly but steadily improved. Sir Charles Venner still paid him daily visits, but they were more to satisfy the claims of friendship than of need. The great surgeon had always a smile and kindly word for me. It seemed that his suspicions had long ago been utterly eradicated, and that a liking had usurped their place. Sometimes I wondered if his penetrating insight had remarked my love for Marion. But he was far too profound an enigma for me to solve; and in any case Marion engrossed my life and mind so utterly that I had neither room nor inclination for any other problem.
A sort of madness had come over me. Apart from her I dreamed; standing, sitting, or reclining as the case might be, idle and immovable as stone. I awoke to look upon her face, or listen to her voice, on instant a creature of pulsating pa.s.sion; yet her humble and devoted slave, responding to her slightest will, as swiftly and obediently as a needle to the pole. And slowly but surely hope grew stronger in my breast. A thin wild hope it was at first, the veritable offspring of despair. But fostered by my pa.s.sion and her wayward moods, it developed force and form, and I could at last no more deny it place in my imaginings. I hoped to win her. Yes; I hoped to win her! There were times when I forgot the gulf dug between us by her purity and my too criminal unworthiness, and I remembered only that she was a woman and I a man. The law of s.e.x is hard to supersede. It recognizes neither morals nor conventions. It despises ethical distinctions, and it laughs with love at every human effort to confine its boundaries. At its command I began not only to hope, but to aspire. One morning Marion came to me and said: "Monsieur, Sir Charles Venner, who has just departed, has ordered me to take a holiday to-morrow. He says that I am looking pale, and that I need a little open air and sunshine. I think that he is wise, and I shall comply with his command!"
"But," I stammered, for the thought of losing her even for a day was a torture hardly to be borne, "what of Sir William Dagmar? How will he get on without you?"
"Sir Charles has promised to send another nurse this evening, who will take my place."
"I trust, mademoiselle, that you--that you will enjoy yourself," I muttered in a trembling voice. "The house will be dull without you, though--for me."
She gave me a swift, shy glance, then cast down her eyes, folding and unfolding her hands before her.
"How could I enjoy myself--do you think--alone?" she whispered. "It will be a sad day also for me."
"Let me go with you," I blurted out. "I am not needed here. Ah! I am mad to dream that you would condescend so far. Forgive me of your pity, and forget the insolence of my presumption!"
But she clapped her hands and laughed as blithely as a child. "Will you come?" she cried. "But that will be magnificent. Ah! let us see!" She darted across the room and perched herself upon the dresser. "Come here, monsieur, quite close to me. Nay, not too close. So! Now we shall plan our day. At sunrise we shall wake and dress, and we shall have an early breakfast here, so as not to waste a single moment of our day, our day!"
I gazed at her as a Peri might at Paradise, and she rippled on.
"Afterwards we shall drive to the station, and take a train to somewhere in the country, where we may wander through green fields and flower-scattered meadows, hand in hand like children. Shall we not, monsieur?"
I nodded, lost in a perfect dreamland of delight.
"But, no!" she cried quite suddenly. "It is beautiful, that picture, yet not so beautiful as this. Listen, monsieur--but you can row a boat, of course."
I nodded again.
"Then, listen! We shall go by train to Hampton, and there we shall take boat. The river is most lovely thereabouts, and you shall slowly row me up the stream towards Staines and Windsor through the hottest hours; slowly, slowly past the green-lawned banks and pretty houses, and among the darling little osier islets. And as you row I"ll sing. And we"ll forget our cares and open wide our hearts to the sunshine and to happiness without an afterthought. And when the noon comes we shall eat our lunch upon an island; a merry interlude between two golden dreams.
For afterwards we"ll float upon our way again. And when the day is done and twilight falls we shall land at the loveliest place of all. I know it well. It is an old, old park garden, thick planted with many great solemn trees. A private park, but lonely, for the house is haunted, so they say. And there I shall lead you by the hand into a little marble, many pillared temple, open to the stars, wherein a tiny spring is born within a pool, a wishing well. And you shall look therein and I, and we shall see fresh mirrored on its surface--the faces of our loves. Shall we do all this, monsieur?"
I could but bend my head, for her siren voice had woven round my faculties a spell of charmed silence, and not one of Circe"s victims was ever more powerless than I was then. When I looked up she had gone.
How I lived through that day and night I scarcely know. I can in fact remember nothing clearly of the hours that followed until the moment came when I saw her seated before me in the boat, the rudder lines slipping slowly through her folded hands. It was early in the morning of an absolutely perfect day. Of the river, the witching scenery, I knew but noted little, for I looked only upon her face. She was simply and yet elegantly clad in some rich clinging stuff of purest white; her loveliness it is beyond me to portray. But this I know--she seemed to love me, and her mood was yielding and submissive to the point of tenderness. Very generously did she fulfil her promise. As I rowed, she sang to me the sweetest songs of France, and Italy, and love songs all.
It was indeed a rapturous, golden dream. When at times she ceased to sing we neither of us spoke, but gazed silently into each other"s eyes, until the music in her woke to song again.
We came at noon to the pretty little island she foretold; and I made her sit upon a rug while I prepared our lunch. It was strange indeed how truly all her prophesies came true. The lunch was a very merry interlude. We both ate heartily, and we pledged each other often in champagne. Afterwards we started on our way again, and only when we came upon a lock did I remember that there was a world of living people near us. So slow and idle was our journeying that twilight had already fallen as we pa.s.sed by Staines. About that time I noticed that Marion maintained a longer silence than her wont, and a little later I felt a sudden thrill to see her shivering. She was looking over the side of the boat, gazing sadly on the rippled surface of the stream.
"Are you cold, dear one?" I asked, and I paused to watch her, leaning on the sculls.
She shook her head.