I have asked for your advice in all simplicity and loyalty, acknowledging the sin I have committed and asking you to help me in atoning for it, in a way useful to your friend. This appeal for advice you have met with sneers and bitter mockery: on my soul, milor if I could now act without your a.s.sistance I would do so, for in all the humiliation which I have had to endure to-day, none has been more galling or more hard to bear believe me, than that which I must now endure through finding myself, in a matter essentially vital to my heart and even to my reason, dependent upon your help."
He could hear her voice trembling a little in spite of her efforts at self-control. He knew quite well that at this moment she spoke the truth, and these last words of hers, which for many a long day afterward rang persistently in his ears, represented to him ever afterward the very acme of mental--aye! and physical--pain which one human being could inflict on another. At the time it absolutely seemed unendurable: it seemed to him that under the blow, thus coldly dealt by those same beautiful lips, for which his own ached with an intensity of pa.s.sionate longing, either his life or his reason must give way. The latter probably, for life is more tenacious and more cruel in its tenacity: yet if reason went, then Heaven alone could help him, for he would either kill her or outrage her beyond the hope of pardon.
"Therefore, milor," she resumed after a slight pause, unconscious evidently of the intense cruelty of her words, "I will beg of you not to make it harder for me than need be. I must ask this help from you, in order to succeed, if humanly possible, in outwitting the infamous work of a gang of traitors. Will you, at least, give me this help I need?"
"If it lies within my power," he replied; "I pray you to command Madame."
"I am thinking of sending a messenger post haste to the commander of _Le Monarque_ with orders to set sail at once for Scotland," she continued in matter-of-fact tones. "I should want a fresh copy of the map where Prince Charles Edward is in hiding, and to make a.s.surance doubly sure a letter from you to the prince, asking him to trust Captain Barre implicitly. _Le Monarque_ I know can reach Scotland long ere _Le Levantin_ is ready for sea, and my idea had been originally to commission her to take the prince and his friends on board, and then to skirt the west coast of Ireland, reaching Brittany or mayhap the Pyrenees by a circuitous route. I have firm belief that it is not too late to send this messenger, milor, and thus to put my original plan into execution. And if you will give me a new map and full directions and your signet ring for the prince, I feel confident that I can find someone whom I could thoroughly trust . . ."
"There is no one whom you could thoroughly trust with such an errand, Madame!" he said drily.
"I must risk that, milor. The crisis has become so acute that I must do something to avert that awful catastrophe."
"Betrayal would be the inevitable result."
"I entreat you to leave that to me," she urged firmly. "I know I can find someone, all I ask is for the map, and a word and signet ring from you."
She was leaning forward now, eager and enthusiastic again, self-willed and domineering, determined that he should do what she wished. Her eyes were glowing, the marble was indeed endowed with life; she gleamed like a jewel, white and fragile-looking, in this dull and sombre room, and he forgetting for the moment her cruelty of awhile ago was loth to let her go, to speak the harsh words which anon would have to be said, and which would send her resentful, contemptuous, perhaps heartbroken, out of his sight again.
Would it not have been ten thousand times more simple to throw pride, just anger, reason to the winds, to fall at those exquisite feet, to encircle that glittering marble with pa.s.sionately tremulous arms, to swear fealty, slavery, obedience to her whims.
How she would smile, and how softly and tenderly would the flush of victory tinge those pale cheeks with delicate rose! to see it gradually chase away the pearl-like tone of her skin, to see her eyes brighten at his word, to feel perhaps the tiny hand tremble with joy as it lay for sheer grat.i.tude a few brief seconds in his, was not that well worth the barren victory of a man"s pride over a woman"s self-will?
She had thought that he would have yielded at her first word, would at once have fawned at her feet, kissing her hand, swearing that he was her slave. He had done it once . . . a year ago, and why not now again? Then she had smiled on him, had allowed him to kneel, to kiss her gown, anon had yielded her cold fingers to his kiss; he had reaped a year of misery for that one moment"s joy, and now, just for the s.p.a.ce of a few seconds he was again a.s.sailed with an awful temptation to throw prudence and pride away, to enjoy one golden hour--less perhaps--but glorious and fulsome whilst it lasted, until it gave way once more to humiliation, far worse to bear than heretofore.
The temptation for those few brief seconds was overwhelming, and "twas fortunate that he stood in shadow, else she had seen signs of an awful conflict in that young and handsome face which she had been wont to see so gentle and so placid. But he knew that in her, pride had by now absolutely got the upper hand: sorrow had laid down her arms and const.i.tuted herself a prisoner of war, following meekly behind the triumphal chariot of her conquering rival.
And because of that, because he knew that there was not one spark yet in her heart which Love had kindled, that Love itself was still lying dormant within her, gagged and bound even in his sleep, kept in subjection thus pinioned and helpless by masterful self-will and by obstinate pride, he would not yield to the temptation of culling the Dead Sea fruit, that would inevitably turn to ashes, even as his lips first tasted its fleeting, if intoxicating savour.
She had half risen from her chair leaning across the bureau, eager, excited, tremulous, sure of victory. Paper and pen lay close to her hand, smiling she pointed to these:
"Oh! I pray you, milor," she said with pa.s.sionate fervour, "do not delay! Every hour, every minute is precious . . . I swear to you that I"ll find a messenger. He"ll not know the purport of his errand. . . .
Oh! I a.s.sure you I"ll play the part of indifference to perfection!
. . . The packet to the commander of _Le Monarque_ will seem of the most insignificant kind. . . . I"ll not even order the messenger to hurry . . . just to guard the packet as inviolate as any secret of State. . . . Nay! hundreds of such messages have to be trusted to indifferent hands, in the course of a single transaction of the nation"s business. Believe me, milor, there is not cause for fear! _Le Monarque_ can put to sea within an hour of receiving my orders, and Prince Charles Edward Stuart and his friends will be safely out of reach, ere _Le Levantin_ unfurls her sails, and pins to her masthead the pennant of traitors. . . ."
"But you do not speak, milor," she said suddenly changing the tone of her voice, all eagerness gone from her manner, a strange, nameless anxiety gripping her heart, "will you not do this little I ask? . . ."
"It is impossible, Madame," he said curtly.
"Impossible? . . . Why? . . ."
Her voice now was harsh, trenchant, as it had been when she hurled a loud insult at Gaston de Stainville through his wife. She was on her feet, tall and erect; a statue once more, white to the lips, cold and haughty, rigid too, save for the slight trembling of her hands and the tremulous quiver of her mouth when she spoke.
As he did not reply to her question, she said impatiently:
"Will you give me a reason for this unexplainable refusal, milor?"
"No. I refuse, that is all."
"This is not your last word?"
"It is my last word."
"Would you have me think that you are at one with the treacherous scheme, milor? and that you do not desire the safety of the Stuart prince?"
She had raised her voice, boldly accusing him, inwardly knowing that the accusation was groundless, yet wishing to goad him now into pa.s.sion, into explanation, above all into acquiescence if it still lay in her power to force it.
But he took the insult with apparent calm, shrugged his shoulders and said quietly:
"As you please."
"Or is it . . . is it that you do not trust me? . . . that you think I . . . ?"
She could not finish the sentence, nor put into words the awful suggestion which had sprung like a stinging viper straight across the train of her thoughts. Her eyes dazed and burning tried to pierce the gloom wherein he stood, but the flickering light of the candles only threw weird, fantastic gleams upon his face, which suddenly seemed strange, unknown, incomprehensible to her. His figure appeared preternaturally tall, the sober gray of his coat looked like the pall of an avenging ghost. He was silent and had made no sign of protest, when she framed the terrible query.
A bitter, an awful humiliation overwhelmed her. She felt as if right within her heart something had snapped and crumbled, which nothing on earth could ever set up again.
She said nothing more, but she could not altogether repress a heartbroken moan, which rose from the intensity of her mental agony.
Then she turned and with head thrown back, with silent, trembling lips and half-closed eyes she walked slowly out of the room.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE FATE OF THE STUART PRINCE
Lydie hardly knew how she reached her apartments. Earlier in the day she had thought once or twice that she had reached the deepest abyss of sorrow and humiliation into which it was possible for a woman of pride to descend. When her husband first asked an explanation from her, and taxed her with lending an ear to the King"s base proposals; when she found that her own father, whom she respected and loved, had himself delved deeply in the mire of treachery; when she stood face to face with Gaston de Stainville and realized that he was an infamous liar and she a weak, confiding fool; when Irene had accused her publicly of scheming that which she would have given her life"s blood to avert, all these were moments when she felt that the shame of them was more than she could bear.
Yet how simple and childish, how paltry seemed the agony of those mental tortures in comparison with that she endured now.
She felt as if she had received a blow in the face, a blow which had left a hideous, disfiguring mark on her which everyone henceforth would see: the scarlet letter of ignominy with which in the New World beyond the seas a puritanic inquisition branded the shameless outcasts. By her husband"s silence rather than by his words she had been branded with a mark of infamy.
Ye saints and angels above, how terribly it hurt!
Yet why did she suffer so? Was it only because she had failed to obtain that which she almost begged for on her knees? Lydie, proud, dictatorial, domineering Lydie, felt that she had humiliated herself beyond what she would have thought possible less than twelve hours ago, and she had been refused.
Was it that, that made her heart, her head, her very limbs ache with almost unendurable agony?
Her mind--though almost on the verge of madness--retained just one glimmer of reason. It answered "No! the pain has deeper roots, more mysterious, at present incomprehensible, and death-dealing in their tenacity."
Her husband thought that if he entrusted her with a letter for the Stuart prince, she might use that letter for treacherous ends. That was the reason of his refusal. He so hated, so despised her that his mind cla.s.sed her as one of the most ign.o.ble of her s.e.x!
Well! Awhile ago, in the Queen"s antechamber, Irene de Stainville had publicly accused her of selling her royal friend for gold. Most people there had believed Irene readily enough! That had hurt too, but not so much.
Then why this? Why these terrible thoughts which went hammering in her mind? whispers of peace to escape from this racking torture? peace that could only be found in death!