Camelia grew white. Though Perior spoke no word, his stillness equalling hers, she felt a fixed stare turned upon her. Unforeseen catastrophe!
She had hoped to glide noiselessly from the cardboard stage, to pack up and send away the useless, even though misused puppets; and now the whole scenery, heavy too, fell crushingly upon her, pinning her in the very centre of the stage. There she was held--the mimic properties were stone-like--there she was held in the full glare of the footlights; and he was staring at her.
She drew herself together and clasped her hands behind her back. Her little head, with the intent resoluteness of its look, had never been more beautiful. Even Perior, in the frozen fury of his stupefaction, was aware of that. The mute, white cameo on the dim, rosy background gazing with not a tremor at its own perfidy, stamped itself ineffaceably on his memory as a Medusa type of splendid, pernicious courage. For one brief moment she wondered swiftly--and her thoughts flew like sharp flames--if a round, clear lie would save her, save her in Perior"s eyes, for she saw herself as he saw her, was conscious only of him, and cared not a b.u.t.ton for Mr. Rodrigg, the ugly raven merely who had croaked out the truth. The uselessness, the hopelessness of a lie, and too--in justice to her struggling better self be it added--shame for its smirch between her and him on the very threshold of true life--this hopelessness, this shame nerved her to the perilous truth-telling. Better his scorn for the moment, than a scorn delayed, but sure to find her out. Could she not explain--confess--on his breast, with tears? She did not look at Perior.
Keeping fixed eyes on Mr. Rodrigg, an unpleasant but necessary medium for the communication, "Yes, Mr. Rodrigg, I did," she said.
Perior at her side gave a short laugh, a cruel laugh. The moment was horrid; let it be hurried on, and Mr. Rodrigg, tool of the avenging G.o.ds, hurried out.
"Have you anything to say, Mr. Rodrigg?" she asked, conscious of hating Mr. Rodrigg, and, even at that moment, of a shoot of emphasized irritation with his nose, which caught the firelight bluntly.
"May I ask you, Miss Paton, if during these past weeks, you have always had that intention?" he inquired, speaking with some thickness of utterance.
"No, Mr. Rodrigg, you may not ask me that," she returned.
The revelation of the man"s hopes was no longer to be evaded; she drank down the bitter draught perforce, her eyes on that squarely luminous nose-tip.
During the pause that followed Mr. Rodrigg"s eyes travelled up and down her with mingled scorn, wrath, and humiliation.
"Allow me to congratulate you," he said at last, most venomously, "and to take my leave of you, Miss Paton. I have not understood, I perceive, the part I was supposed to play here."
And Camelia was left alone with Perior. With an impression as of strong boxings on the ears she could only cry out "Odious vulgarian!" She tingled all over with a sense of insult.
"I, too, will bid you good-evening, Camelia," said Perior. He could have taken her by the throat, but in the necessary restraint of that desire his glance, only, seized her as if it would throttle her.
"No! no!" she caught his arm, all thought of Mr. Rodrigg and his slaps burnt from her. "Listen to me--you don"t understand! Wait! I can explain everything! everything--so that you must forgive me!"
"I do understand," said Perior, who stood still, scorning, as she felt, to touch and cast her off. "You are engaged to Arthur. You are disgraced--and I am disgraced."
"Through me, then! You were ignorant! But wait--only listen--I am engaged to him; but I love you--don"t be too angry--for really I love you--only you--Oh! you must believe me!"
He retreated before her clasped imploring hands, she almost crying, following, indifferent to the indignity of her protesting supplication.
"Indeed, I love you!" she reiterated, her chin quivering a little as the cruelty of his withdrawal brought the tears to her eyes.
Perior took the clasped hands by the wrists and held her off. "You love me?--and you love him too?"--she shook her head helplessly. "No; you have accepted him, not loving him, and you dared,"--the cruelty was now physical, as his clench tightened on her wrists--"you _dared_ turn to me, to debase me with yourself, you false, you miserable creature!"
Under the double hurt she closed her eyes. "But why--but why did I turn?" she almost sobbed.
"You ask me why? Can I tell what folly, what vanity prompted you? Those are mild words."
"Oh!--how you hurt me!" she breathed; the feminine sensitiveness was a refuge--a reproach. He released her wrists. "Because I love you," she said, and standing still before him she looked at him through tears.
"You may be angry, despise me, but I only want to tell you everything.
You are so brutal. It was a mistake--I did not know--not till this evening.
I accepted him because you would not prevent me--because you didn"t come--nor seem to care, and--yes, because I was bad--ambitious--vain--like other women--and I did like him--respect him. But now!"--the appealing monotone, broken by little gasps, wailed up at the inflexibility of his face--"it isn"t folly, it isn"t vanity--or why should I sacrifice everything for you, as I do--Oh! as I do!"
"Sacrifice everything for me? Go away!"
"Oh!--how can you!" She broke into sobs--"how can you be so cruel to me--when you love me!"
"Love you!"
"You cannot deny it! You know that you love me--dearest Alceste!"--her arms encircled his neck.
Perior plucked them off. "Love you?" he repeated, looking her in the face. "By Heaven I don"t!"
And with the negative he cast her away and left her.
CHAPTER XVIII
But he did love her. That was the worst of it, as he told himself through the night that followed. His love and his disgrace pursued him.
Disgraced, though cruel enough to clearly see her as the temptress, disgraced by the weakness of his yielding to a moment of enchantment, disgraced by having given her the right to reproach him--the woman he loved, but the woman only fit to kiss. He was innocent of real disloyalty, and her perfidy might well exonerate his ignorance; but even Camelia"s perfidy could not excuse that kiss. He met the morning jaded, from torturing hours. When the first pa.s.sion of his rage against her had died away the thought of her astounding declaration, her reiterated devotion, chilled him with the new fear of final yielding. Camelia, imagining herself in love with him, became an ominously alluring figure.
She could claim him only through his weakness, but his dishonor gave her power. He accepted the morbid accusation, scourged himself with it, and the thought of her power urged him to escape. She was only fit to kiss, that was the final verdict. To marry such a woman meant a permanent disablement of all that was best in life. The kiss could not bind him to that atonement. It was she, rather, who owed him an infinity of reparation. He determined to treat himself to a trip through Italy, and, alone with the beauty of the past, to shake his soul free from the choking entanglement of the present. He felt sick, battered, bereft of all security; and through everything throbbed the worst hurt of all--that Camelia should have proved herself worthless so utterly.
Early in the afternoon of a day spent in hurried preparations for departure, he heard a horse"s hoofs outside, and looking from the library window he saw Arthur Henge dismounting.
Perior felt the blood rush to his head. The first impulse of his thought was to see in Arthur the righteously angered friend come to heap upon him the shame of his discovered betrayal. He would of course bear the responsibility as the chiefly false and traitorous. The woman would shield herself; it was the right of her weakness, and his deep, unreasonable loyalty to Camelia, a loyalty paternal in its force and helplessness, accepted the vicarious position, rushed over and confused every self-a.s.serting instinct. It was with almost the illusion of guilt that he stood upright, waiting. Then, this last straw he s.n.a.t.c.hed at, despising it, as he heard Arthur"s step in the hall; was it possible that he had discovered nothing?--possible that he had come to announce his engagement?--possible that Camelia, in the bewilderment of her rejection, had returned to a doubly false, a dastardly allegiance? The irony of such a supposition did not make it by any means impossible. But one look at Arthur"s face dismissed the tragic-comic surmise.
It was a face of stiffened gloom, a face difficult for the moment to interpret. Camelia had told the truth, then. Told more than the truth?
b.u.t.tressed her falseness with his act of folly?
Perior expected nothing less than this craven insincerity. To shield her he must bare his breast for Arthur"s shafts. Arthur might as well know that he loved her, but Camelia should never know it, so Perior grimly promised himself as he met his friend"s look with some of the sternness necessitated by his pitch of unpleasant resolution.
But Henge"s first words proved that Camelia, at all events, had not been cowardly.
"Perior--she has broken our engagement! She accepted me yesterday--and to-day she has broken our engagement!" and the quick change of expression on Perior"s face moving him too much, he dropped into a chair, and leaning his arms on the table, bowed his head upon his hands.
Perior"s first feeling was a crumbling sense of baseness. The lie between him and his unfortunate friend scorched him, and his recognition of Camelia"s courage was swept away by the realization of her cruelty, by the avenging consciousness that owing to her he feared to meet his friend"s eyes.
He kept silent, studying the surrendered reticence of the bent head.
"She accepted me yesterday, Perior." Henge repeated it helplessly.
Perior put his hand on his shoulder. "My dear Henge," he said.
Arthur looked up. "I don"t know why I should come to you with it. I am broken. I could cry like a baby. I love that child, Perior! You saw her yesterday; yes, that is why I came. She accepted me yesterday, you know.
Did she say anything to you about it?--when you saw her? You see"--he smiled miserably--"I want you to turn the knife in my wound."
"I heard it," said Perior, feeling that a rigid adherence to perhaps deceptive truth was all that was left to him.
"But she gave you no reason to think that she had changed her mind?"
"What has Camelia said to you, Arthur? One may interpret it differently," said Perior, detesting himself.
Sir Arthur"s face resumed the blankness of its helpless wonder.
"I got back this morning and she sent for me. I found her white, woeful, resolute. She said, "I made a mistake. I can"t marry you. I am unworthy of you." That to me, Perior! to me! and only yesterday! Oh!--I could have sworn she cared for me! I don"t blame her; don"t think it. It was all pity--a fancied tenderness; the shock of realization showed her the difference. She can"t love me. She unworthy! The courage--the cruelty even, were worthy; but she repeated that again and again."