"Am I intruding?" he asked.
"We were thinking of you, and speaking of you," I replied, "just before you came in."
"_We?_" he repeated, turning toward Susan once more. After a pause, he offered me his hand--and drew it back.
"You don"t shake hands with me," he said.
"I am waiting, Rothsay, until I know that we are the same firm friends as ever."
For the third time he looked at Susan.
"Will _you_ shake hands?" he asked.
She gave him her hand cordially. "May I stay here?" she said, addressing herself to me.
In my situation at that moment, I understood the generous purpose that animated her. But she had suffered enough already--I led her gently to the door. "It will be better," I whispered, "if you will wait downstairs in the library." She hesitated. "What will they say in the house?" she objected, thinking of the servants and of the humble position which she was still supposed to occupy. "It matters nothing what they say, now." I told her. She left us.
"There seems to be some private understanding between you," Rothsay said, when we were alone.
"You shall hear what it is," I answered. "But I must beg you to excuse me if I speak first of myself."
"Are you alluding to your health?"
"Yes."
"Quite needless, Lepel. I met your doctor this morning. I know that a council of physicians decided you would die before the year was out."
He paused there.
"And they proved to be wrong," I added.
"They might have proved to be right," Rothsay rejoined, "but for the accident which spilled your medicine and the despair of yourself which decided you on taking no more."
I could hardly believe that I understood him. "Do you a.s.sert," I said, "that my medicine would have killed me, if I had taken the rest of it?"
"I have no doubt that it would."
"Will you explain what you mean?"
"Let me have your explanation first. I was not prepared to find Susan in your room. I was surprised to see traces of tears in her face. Something has happened in my absence. Am I concerned in it?"
"You are."
I said it quietly--in full possession of myself. The trial of fort.i.tude through which I had already pa.s.sed seemed to have blunted my customary sense of feeling. I approached the disclosure which I was now bound to make with steady resolution, resigned to the worst that could happen when the truth was known.
"Do you remember the time," I resumed, "when I was so eager to serve you that I proposed to make Susan your wife by making her rich?"
"Yes."
"Do you remember asking me if I was thinking of the play we saw together at Rome? Is the story as present to your mind now, as it was then?"
"Quite as present."
"You asked if I was performing the part of the Marquis--and if you were the Count. Rothsay! the devotion of that ideal character to his friend has been my devotion; his conviction that his death would justify what he had done for his friend"s sake, has been _my_ conviction; and as it ended with him, so it has ended with me--his terrible position is _my_ terrible position toward you, at this moment."
"Are you mad?" Rothsay asked, sternly.
I pa.s.sed over that first outbreak of his anger in silence.
"Do you mean to tell me you have married Susan?" he went on.
"Bear this in mind," I said. "When I married her, I was doomed to death.
Nay, more. In your interests--as G.o.d is my witness--I welcomed death."
He stepped up to me, in silence, and raised his hand with a threatening gesture.
That action at once deprived me of my self-possession. I spoke with the ungovernable rashness of a boy.
"Carry out your intention," I said. "Insult me."
His hand dropped.
"Insult me," I repeated; "it is one way out of the unendurable situation in which we are placed. You may trust me to challenge you. Duels are still fought on the Continent; I will follow you abroad; I will choose pistols; I will take care that we fight on the fatal foreign system; and I will purposely miss you. Make her what I intended her to be--my rich widow."
He looked at me attentively.
"Is _that_ your refuge?" he asked, scornfully. "No! I won"t help you to commit suicide."
G.o.d forgive me! I was possessed by a spirit of reckless despair; I did my best to provoke him.
"Reconsider your decision," I said; "and remember--you tried to commit suicide yourself."
He turned quickly to the door, as if he distrusted his own powers of self-control.
"I wish to speak to Susan," he said, keeping his back turned on me.
"You will find her in the library."
He left me.
I went to the window. I opened it and let the cold wintry air blow over my burning head. I don"t know how long I sat at the window. There came a time when I saw Rothsay on the house steps. He walked rapidly toward the park gate. His head was down; he never once looked back at the room in which he had left me.
As he pa.s.sed out of my sight, I felt a hand laid gently on my shoulder.
Susan had returned to me.
"He will not come back," she said. "Try still to remember him as your old friend. He asks you to forgive and forget."
She had made the peace between us. I was deeply touched; my eyes filled with tears as I looked at her. She kissed me on the forehead and went out. I afterward asked what had pa.s.sed between them when Rothsay spoke with her in the library. She never has told me what they said to each other; and she never will. She is right.