"Ah, don"t shirk it!" her hand pressed heavily on his shoulder. "Her disease made her tell me, I grant you, but you could not have doubted had you heard her!--as I did! You understand that she must never know--that I have told you."
"I understand that, necessarily, and I must ask you from what motive you think your revelation justified; it must be a strong one, for I confess that the revelation seems to me unjustifiable--cruelly so."
"I have a strong motive."
"You did not come to pour out to me the full extent of poor Mary"s misfortune for the selfish sake of relieving, by confession, your self-reproach? And, indeed, in this matter I cannot see that you are responsible. It is a cruelty of fate, not yours."
Camelia looked away from him for a moment, looked at the microscope. A swift flicker of shame went through her, one thought of self, then, resolutely raising her eyes, she said, "Am I not at all responsible? Are you sure of that?"
"Responsible for Mary loving me?" Perior stared, losing for a moment, in amazement, his deep and painful confusion.
"No; that is fate, if you will. But had I not come back last summer, had I not claimed you, monopolized you, absorbed you. Ah! you are flushing; don"t be ashamed for me! I swear to you, Michael, that I am not giving myself a thought, had I not set myself to work to make love to you--there is the fact;--don"t look away, I can bear it--can you tell me that Mary might not have had the chance she so deserved, of slipping sweetly and naturally into your heart--becoming your wife?"
"Camelia!" Perior turned white. "I never loved Mary, never could have loved her. Does that relieve you?" He keenly eyed her.
"Don"t accuse me of seeking relief! That is a cruelty I don"t deserve.
If you never could have loved Mary, it is even more dreadful for me--for it is still crueller for Mary. That she should love you. That you should not care! could never have cared!"
At this Perior rose and walked up and down the room. "Don"t!" he repeated several times. His wonder at Camelia interfused intolerably his sorrow for Mary.
Camelia followed him with steady eyes. The eagerness of decisive appeal seemed to burn her lips as she said slowly--
"Ah, had you seen her! Had you heard her crying out that she was dying--that she loved you--that you did not care!"
"You must not say that." Perior stopped and looked at her sternly, "I am not near enough. It is a desecration."
"Ah! but how can I help her if I don"t? How can _you_ help her? For it is you, Michael, _you_. Can"t you see it? You are n.o.ble enough.
Michael--you will marry Mary! Oh!"--at his start, his white look of stupefaction, she flew to him, grasped his hands--"Oh, you must--you _must_. You can make her happy--you only! And you will--say you will.
You cannot let her die in this misery! Say you cannot, Michael--oh, say it!" And, suddenly breathless, panting, her look flashed out the full significance of her demand. In all its stupefaction Perior"s face still retained something of its sternness, but he drew her hands to his breast. "Camelia, you are mad," he said.
"Mad?" she repeated. Her eyes scorned him; then, rapidly resuming their appealing dignity, "You can"t hesitate before such a chance for making your whole life worth while."
"Quite _mad_, Camelia," he repeated with emphasis. "I could not act such a lie," he added.
"A lie! To love, cherish that dying child! A better lie than most truths, then! You are not a coward--surely. You will not let her die so."
"Indeed I must. Any pretence would be an insult. As it is, if Mary could see you here, she would want to kill us both."
"Not if she understood," said Camelia, curbing the vehemence of her terrified supplication, the very terror warning her to calm. "And what more would there be in it to hurt her?"
"That _I_ should know--and should refuse. Good G.o.d!"
"Where is the disgrace?" Camelia"s eyes gazed at him fixedly. "Then we are both disgraced--Mary and I." Her smile, bitterly impersonal, offered itself to no interpretations, yet before it he steadied his face with an effort. He could not silence her by the truth--that he loved her, her alone; loved now her high, frowning look, her pa.s.sionate espousal of another"s cause. Mary"s tragic presence sealed his lips. He said nothing, and Camelia"s eyes, as they searched this chilling silence, incredulous of its cruel resolve, filled suddenly and piteously with tears.
"Oh, Michael," she faltered. Scorn and defiance dropped from her face; he saw only the human soul trembling with pity and hope. He did not dare trust himself to speak--he could not answer her. Holding her hands against his breast, he looked at her very sorrowfully.
"Listen to me, Michael. I mustn"t expect you to feel it yet as I do--must I? That would be impossible. I only ask you to _think_. You see the pathos, the beauty of Mary"s love for you! for years--growing in her narrow life. Think how a smile from you must have warmed her heart--a look, a little kindness. She adores you. And this consciousness of death, this nearing parting from you--you who do not care--leaving even the dear sight of you. Think of her going out alone, unloved, into the darkness--the everlasting darkness and silence--with never one word, one touch, one smile, to hold in her heart as hers, meant for her, with love. Oh, I see it hurts you!--you are sorry; oh, blessed tears! You cannot bear it, can you? Michael, you will not let her go uncomforted?
She is not strong, or brave, or confident. She is sick, weak, terrified--a screaming, shuddering child carried away in the night.
Michael!"--it was a cry; she clasped his hands in hers--"you will walk beside her. You will kiss her, love her, and she will die happy--with her hand in yours!" Her eyes sought his wildly. He had never loved her as he loved her now, and though his tears were for Mary, the power, the freedom of his love for Camelia was a joy to him even in the midst of a great sadness. He could not have kissed her or put his arms around her; the dignity of her abas.e.m.e.nt was part of the new, the sacred loveliness, and it was more in pity than in love that he took the poor, distraught, beautiful face between his hands and looked at her a negation, pitiful and inarticulate. She closed her eyes. He saw that she would not accept the bitterness.
"I will do all I can," he then said; "but, dear Camelia, dearest Camelia, I cannot marry her."
It was a strange echo. Camelia drew away from him.
"What can you _do_? She knows you are her friend; that only hurts."
"Does it?" He saw now, through the unconscious revelation, the greatness of her love for him, and saw that in the past he had not understood. She loved him so much that there was left her not a thought of self. Her whole nature was merged in the pa.s.sionate wish that he should fulfil her highest ideal of him. He saw that she would have laid down her life for him--or for Mary, as she stood there, and, for Mary, she expected an equal willingness on his side.
"It would only be an agony to her," Camelia said; "she would fear every moment that she would betray herself to you, as she betrayed herself to me. Can"t you see that? Understand that?" Desperately she reiterated: "You must pretend! You must lie! You must tell her that you love her!
You must marry her, take her away to some beautiful country--there are places where they live for years; make a paradise about her. You _must_." She looked sternly at him.
"No, Camelia, no."
"You mean that basest no?" She was trembling, holding herself erect as she confronted him; her white face, narrowly framed by the curves of loosened hair, tragic with its look of reprobation.
"I mean it. I will not. You will see that I am right. It would be a cruel folly, a dastardly kindness, a final insult from fate. And I do not think only of Mary--I think of myself; I could not lie like that."
Her silent woe and scorn, frozen now to a bleak despair, dwelt on him for a long moment, then, without another word, she turned from him and left him, making, by the majesty of her defeated wrong, his victorious right look ugly.
CHAPTER XXVI
Camelia galloped home furiously. The tragedy was then to be consummated.
He would not put out a finger to avert it. Mary would go down into the pit of nothingness, and her love, her agony, her strivings after good, would be as though they had never been.
"And _I_ live," thought Camelia, as she galloped, and her thoughts seemed to gallop beside her; they were like phantom shapes pressing on her from without, for she did not want to think. "_I_, thick-skinned, dull-souled I. Yes, materialism wins the day. Morality is a lie, evolved for the carpeting of lives like mine, for the preservation of the fittest!--_I_ being fittest! To those that have shall be given, and from those who have not shall be taken away--the law of evolution. Oh!
hideous, hideous! Oh, horror!--not even the ethical straw of development to grasp at; Mary"s suffering has warped her, lowered her. She has been tortured into rebellion against her own sweet rect.i.tude; she, who only asked to love--hates; she, who lived in a peaceful renunciation, now struggles, thinks only of herself."
It was this last thought that seemed to lean beside her, look into her eyes with the most intolerable look. Mary--inevitably lowered. The blackness shuddered through her. Camelia on that ride tasted the very dregs of doubt and despair, and knew the helplessness of man before them. She could have killed herself, had not a sullen spark, the last smouldering from the fire of resolution that had burned in her as she rode to Perior, still lit one path through the darkness. She must throw herself at Mary"s feet, seek and give comfort through her own extreme abas.e.m.e.nt. She must cling to Mary, supplicating her to believe in her infinite love and pity. Could not that love, when all errors were explained, reach and hold her? Camelia felt her defiance of eternity clasp Mary forever. But when she reached home Mary was not there.
Camelia panted as she ran from room to room; her desire, thrown back, rose stiflingly. She was afraid of seeing her mother, for at a look, a question, she felt that her suspense of hard self-control would break down; she might scream and rave. She sent a few words to Lady Paton by a servant; she was tired and was going to rest--must not be disturbed--then she locked herself into her own room.
Some hours pa.s.sed before she heard Mary"s voice outside demanding entrance, hours that Camelia was to look back on as the blackest of her life, so black that all in them, every thought and impulse, made an indistinguishable chaos, where only her suffering, a trembling leaf tossing on deepest waters, knew itself. In looking back, she remembered that she had not once moved until the knock came, and that, on going to open the door, her hand had so shaken that it fumbled for some moments with the key.
Mary stood on the threshold. She was splashed with mud. Beside the whiteness of her face, Camelia"s was pa.s.sive in its pain. Mary closed the door, and, as Camelia retreated a little before her, leaned back against it. Her eyes went at once over Camelia"s wet habit and dishevelled hair; she had expected a careful effacement of all signs of the guilty errand; Camelia could not now deny the ride. The thought of a brazen avowal made Mary close her eyes for a moment. She had to struggle with a sick faintness, as she leaned against the door, before she could put that monstrous thought aside and say, returning to her first impulse, and opening her eyes as she spoke--
"I know where you have been."
Camelia stood still. This unexpected blow confused the direct vision of appeal and abas.e.m.e.nt that upheld her. She must face an unlooked-for contingency, and her mind seemed to reel a little as she faced it.
"You followed me, Mary?" she asked, with a gentleness bewildered.
"Yes, I followed you."
Camelia was now becoming conscious of the definiteness of Mary"s heavy stare. It was like a stone, and under the weight of it she groped, staggering, in a wilderness of formless conjectures. Mary could not know why she had gone. A pang of terror shot through her. Mary"s next words riveted the terror.
"I saw you. I know why you went. I know everything," said Mary.