"You see, dear child," he resumed, with an unctuous air of patient kindness--"your ideas of love and mine are totally different. You want to live in a paradise of romance and tenderness--I want nothing of the sort. Of course, with a sweet caressable creature like you it"s very pleasant to indulge in a little folly for a time,--and we"ve had quite four months of the "divine rapture" as the poets call it,--four months is a long time for any rapture to last! You have--yes!--you have amused me!--and I"ve made you happy--given you something to think about besides scribbling and publishing--yes--I"m sure I have made you happy--and,--what is much more to my credit--I have taken care of you and left you unharmed. Think of that! Day after day I have had you here entirely in my power!--and yet--and yet"--here he turned his cold blue eyes upon her with an under-gleam of mockery in their steely light--"you are still--Innocent!"
She did not move--she scarcely seemed to breathe.
"That is why I told you it would be a good thing for you if you accepted Lord Blythe"s offer,--in his great position he would be able to marry you well to some rich fellow with a t.i.tle"--he went on, easily. "Now I am not a marrying man. Domestic bliss would not suit me.
I have sometimes thought it would hardly suit YOU!"
She stirred slightly, as though some invisible creature had touched her, and held up one little trembling hand.
"Stop!" she said, and her voice though faint was clear and steady--"Do you think--can you imagine that I am of so low and common a nature as to marry any man, after--" She paused, struggling with herself.
"After what?" he queried, smilingly.
She shuddered, as with keenest cold.
"After your kisses!" she answered--"After your embraces which have held me away from everything save you!--After your caresses--oh G.o.d!--after all this,--do you think I would shame my body and perjure my soul by giving myself to another man?"
He almost laughed at her saintly idea of a lover"s chast.i.ty.
"Every woman would!" he declared--"And I"m sure every woman does!"
She looked straight before her into vacancy.
"I am not "every woman,"" she said, slowly--"I am only one unhappy girl!"
He was still dabbing colour on his canvas, but now threw down his brush and came to her.
"Dear child, why be tragic?" he said--"Life is such a pleasant thing and holds so much for both of us! I shall always love you--if you"re good!" and he laughed, pleasantly--"and you can always love ME--if you like! But I cannot marry you--I have never thought of such a thing!
Marriage would not suit me at all. I know, of course, what YOU would like. You would like a grand wedding with lots of millinery and presents, and then a honeymoon at your old Briar Farm--in fact, I daresay you"d like to buy Briar Farm and imprison me there for life, along with the dust and ashes of my ancestor"s long-lost brother--but I shouldn"t like it! No, child!--not even you, attractive as you are, could turn me into a Farmer Jocelyn!"
He tried to take her in his arms, but she drew herself back from him.
"You speak truly," she said, in a measured, lifeless tone--"Nothing could turn you into a Farmer Jocelyn. For he was an honest man!"
He winced as though a whip had struck him, and an ugly frown darkened his features.
"He would not have hurt a dog that trusted him," she went on in the same monotonous way--"He would not have betrayed a soul that loved him!"
All at once the unnatural rigidity of her face broke up into piteous, terrible weeping, and she flung herself at his feet.
"Amadis, Amadis!" she cried. "It is not--it cannot be you who are so cruel!--no, no!--it is some devil that speaks to me--not you, not you, my love, my heart! Oh, say it isn"t true!--say it isn"t true! Have mercy--mercy! I love you, I love you! You are all my life!--I cannot live without you! Amadis!"
Vexed and frightened for himself at her sudden wild abandonment of grief, he stooped, and gripping her by the arm tried to draw her up from the floor.
"Be quiet!" he said, roughly--"I will not have a scandal here in my studio! You"ll bring my man-servant up in a moment with your stupid noise! I"m ashamed of you!--screaming and crying like a virago! If you make this row I shall go away!"
"Oh, no, no, no!--do not go away!" she moaned, sobbingly--"Have some little pity! Do not leave me, Amadis! Is everything forgotten so soon?
Think for a moment what you have said to me!--what you have been to me!
I thought you loved me, dear!--yes, I thought you loved me!--you told me so!" And she held up her little hands to him folded as in prayer, the tears raining down her cheeks--"But if for some fault of mine you do not love me any more, kill me now--here--just where I am!--kill me, Amadis!--or tell me to go away and kill myself--I will obey you!--but don"t--don"t send me into the empty darkness of life again all alone!
Oh, no, no! Let me die rather than that!--you would not think unkindly of me if I were dead!"
He took her uplifted hands in his own--he began to be "artistically"
interested,--with the same sort of interest Nero might have felt while watching the effects of some new poison on a tortured slave,--and a slight, very slight sense of regret and remorse tugged at his tough heart-strings.
"I should think of you exactly as I do now," he said, resolutely--"If you were to kill yourself I should not pity you in the least! I should say that though you were a bit of a clever woman, you were much more of a fool! So you would gain nothing that way! You see, I"m sane and sensible--you are not. You are excited and hysterical--and don"t know what you are talking about. Yes, child!--that"s the fact!" He patted the hands he held consolingly, and then let them go. "I wish you"d get up from the floor and be reasonable! The position is quite simple and clear. We"ve had an ideal time of it together--but isn"t it Shakespeare who says "These violent delights have violent ends"? My work calls me to Algiers--yours keeps you in London--therefore we must part--but we shall meet again--some day--I hope..."
She slowly rose to her feet,--her sobbing ceased.
"Then--you never loved me?" she said--"It was all a lie?"
"I never lie," he answered, coldly--"I loved you--for the time being.
You amused me."
"And for your "amus.e.m.e.nt" you have ruined me?"
"Ruined you?" He turned upon her in indignant protest--"You must be mad! You have been as safe with me as in the arms of your mother--"
At this she laughed,--a shrill little laugh with tears submerging it.
"You may laugh, but it is true!" he went on, in a righteously aggrieved tone--"I have done you no harm,--on the contrary, you have to thank me for a great deal of happiness--"
She gave a tragic gesture of eloquent despair.
"Oh, yes, I have to thank you!" she said, and her voice now vibrated with intense and pa.s.sionate sorrow--"I have to thank you for so much--for so very much indeed! You have been so kind and good! Yes! And you have never thought of yourself or your own pleasure at all--but only of me! And I have been as safe with you as in my mother"s arms, ... yes!--you have been quite as careful of me as she was!" And a wan smile flitted over her agonised face--"All this I have to thank you for!--but you have ruined me just the same--not my body, but my soul!"
He looked at her,--she returned his gaze unflinchingly with eyes that glowed like burning stars--and he thought she was, as he put it to himself, "calming down." He laughed, a little uneasily.
"Soul is an unknown quant.i.ty," he said--"It doesn"t count."
She seemed not to hear him.
"You have ruined my soul!" she repeated steadily--"You have stolen it from G.o.d--you have made it all your own--for your "amus.e.m.e.nt"! What remainder of life have you left to me? Nothing! I have no hope, no faith, no power to work--no ambition to fulfil--no dreams to realise!
You gave me love--as I thought!--and I lived; you take love from me, and I die!"
He bent his eyes upon her with a kind, almost condescending gentleness,--his personal vanity was immense, and the utter humiliation of her love for him flattered the deep sense he had of his own value.
"Dear little goose, you will not die!" he said--"For heaven"s sake have done with all this sentimental talk!--I am not a man who can tolerate it. You are such a pleasant creature when you are cheerful and self-possessed,--so bright and clever and companionable--and there is no reason why we shouldn"t make love to each other again as often as we like,--but change and novelty are good for both of us. Come!--kiss me!--be a good child--and let us part friends!"
He approached her,--there was a smile on his lips--a smile in which lurked a suspicion of mockery as well as victorious self-satisfaction.
She saw it--and swiftly there came swooping over her brain the horrible realisation of the truth--that it was all over!--that never, never again would she be able to dwell on the amorous looks and words and love-phrases of HER "Amadis de Jocelyn!"--that no happy future was in store for her with him--that he had no interest whatever in her cherished memories of Briar Farm, and that he would never care to accept the right of dwelling there even if she secured it for him,--moreover, that he viewed her very work with indifference, and had no concern as to her name or fame--so that everything--every pretty fancy, every radiant hope, every happy possibility was at an end. Life stretched before her dreary as the dreariest desert--for her, whose nature was to love but once, there was no gleam of light in all the world"s cruel darkness! A red mist swam before her eyes--black clouds seemed descending upon her and whirling round about her--she looked wildly from right to left, as though seeking to escape from some invisible pursuer. Startled at her expression Jocelyn tried to hold her--but she shook him off. She made a few unsteady steps along the floor.
"What is it?" he said--"Innocent--don"t stare like that!"
She smiled strangely and nodded at him--she was fingering the plant of marguerite daisies that stood in its accustomed place between the easel and the wall. She plucked a flower and began hurriedly stripping off its petals.
""Il m"aime--un peu!--beaucoup--pa.s.sionement--pas du tout!" Pas du tout!" she cried--"Amadis! Amadis de Jocelyn! You hear what it says?
Pas du tout! You promised it should never come to that!--but it has come!"
She threw away the stripped flower, ... there was a quick hot throbbing behind her temples--she put up her hands--then all suddenly a sharp involuntary scream broke from her lips. He sprang towards her to seize and silence her--she stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth.