"I don"t know, Camelia, but--my wife would have to be."
"She _will_ be."
"Don"t make me hurt you--don"t be so cruel to yourself."
"She will be," Camelia repeated.
"I beg of you--I implore you, Camelia." He hardened his face to meet her look, searching, eager, pitiful.
"How could I say this unless I believed you loved me--had always loved me? Don"t speak; don"t say no; don"t send me away. You are angry. You have the right to be; but, ah! if you only knew what I feel for you."
"Don"t tell me, Camelia."
"But I must. I love everything about you--I always have. When you were near me I saw every gesture you made, heard every word you spoke, knew every thought you had about me. I love your little ways--I know them all; that wag of your foot when you are angry, the look of your teeth when you smile, your hands, your face, your dear rough hair----"
Perior had turned from red to white, and still looking at him, shaking her head a little, she finished very simply on a long sigh--
"I can"t live without you. I _can"t_."
"Camelia, I can"t marry you," he said; and then, taking breath in the ensuing silence, "You are mistaken. I don"t love you. I have your welfare at my heart; I wish you all happiness, all good. I am sorry, terribly sorry for you; but I do not love you. You must believe me. I do not love you. I will not marry you.--G.o.d forgive me for the lie," he said to himself; "but no, no, no, I can_not_ marry her, poor impulsive, wilful, half n.o.ble, half pitiful child, a thousand times no." The strong rebellion of his very soul steadied him. He could yield without a tremor to his pity, could take her hands and hold them in a clasp convincingly paternal and pitying.
Camelia closed her eyes, drawing in a long breath, too sharp in its accepted bitterness for the break of a sob. Her face, with this tragedy of still woe upon it, was almost unrecognizable. Until now it had been a face of triumph. Defeat--and that at last she recognized defeat he saw--changed its very lines; the iron entered her soul, and something left her face for ever. For a long time she did not speak, and her voice seemed dimmed, as though spoken from a great distance, when she said, her eyes still closed, "Then you never loved me!"
"Never," said Perior, who, encompa.s.sed by the saving lie, could freely breathe in the tonic atmosphere of his resolute pain.
"But--you are fond of me?" said Camelia; and as she spoke, from under the solemn pressure of her eyelids, pressed down as on a dead hope, great tears came slowly.
"Great Heaven! Fond of you? _Fond_ of you? Yes--yes, my dear Camelia."
He leaned forward and kissed her forehead above the closed eyes.
"Ah!" she murmured, "I was so sure you loved me!" More than its rigid misery, the humble bewilderment on her face, as of a creature stricken helpless, and not comprehending its pain, hurt him, warned him that every moment made it more difficult to keep down the fluttering of a longing he would not, must never satisfy. He seemed to crush a harsh hand on its delicate wings as he said--
"And now you will go. You will let me walk home with you?"
She shook her head. "No, no."
She went towards the door, her hand still in his.
"You should not go alone. I beg of you, dear, to let me come."
"I would rather go alone."
They were in the hall, and she had not looked at him again. She put her hand out to the door and then she paused. Perior had also paused.
"Will you kiss me good-bye?" she said.
"Will I? O Camelia!" At that moment he felt himself to be more false than he had been during all the scene with her, for as he kissed her the fluttering wings beat upward with the exultant throb of a released desire. And she did not know. She believed him. All her hope was stricken in the dust. And yet they clung together--lovers; he ashamed of his knowledge; she pathetic, tragic, in her chastened, her humiliated, trust and ignorance.
CHAPTER XIX
Mrs. Fox-Darriel was walking across the hall on her way to the staircase when Camelia entered. She had not seen Camelia since the morning"s catastrophe, a catastrophe as yet unannounced, but plainly discernible in the departure of the Henges, in Lady Paton"s retirement, Camelia"s disappearance, and Mary"s heavy silence. Mary herself hardly knew as yet, could only suspect, with a sickening droop of disappointment following a hope, unreasonable perhaps, but delicious while it so briefly lasted.
Mrs. Fox-Darriel plied her with profitless questions during tea-time; she only knew that Sir Arthur had ridden away, that Lady Henge had followed with the boxes, that Aunt Angelica was in her room, and that Camelia had gone out. Mrs. Fox-Darriel was not disposed to let Camelia off easily; and now, undeterred by the almost vacant stare her young hostess bent upon her, she rushed at her imperatively.
"You look quite half mad, Camelia! What is the matter? The Henges are gone, she as gloomy as a hea.r.s.e. I have not seen your mother since breakfast. Has a thunderbolt struck the house? You accepted Arthur Henge yesterday, and to-day you give him his _conge_. Is it possible?"
Camelia"s hand waved her aside. What did this chattering, rattling creature want of her? She belonged to a dim primeval age, the age of yesterday, before the cataclysm had changed everything.
"No; you are not going to get rid of me like that!" Mrs. Fox-Darriel followed her swiftly up the stairs. "That would be a little too bad, to leave me, all curiosity, frying in my own ignorance. Now, Camelia, let me have the whole truth of it. What has happened?" She confronted her in her room.
"Yes, I have broken my engagement."
"Why? great heavens, why?"
"I don"t love him. Please go, Frances."
Mrs. Fox-Darriel crossed her arms and surveyed her friend in an exasperated silence.
"Was that so necessary?" she asked presently, while Camelia, sitting in a low chair half turned from her, unb.u.t.toned her muddy boots and gaiters.
"Yes, it was. I wish you would go away."
"You know what every one will think--you know what _I_ think!--that you accepted him to prove you could throw him over. You try him on to show that you can fit him, and then kick him away, precisely as you kick away that muddy boot. It is an unheard-of thing. It is distinctly nasty."
Camelia leaned back with closed eyes, hardly hearing, certainly not caring for the words, though their sound was an importunate jangling at her ears, wearisome, irritating.
"As for the egregious folly of it! well, my dear, you may have plans into which I am not initiated, but the day will come, I think, in which you will own that you have behaved like a horrid little fool." Mrs.
Fox-Darriel moved towards the door, not caring to outstay her climax, yet urged to an addenda by the exasperating, almost slumbering indifference of Camelia"s face. "I will go. You want to finish your cry.
Have you been walking about the lanes crying? I am off to the Dormers to-morrow; I only stayed on here because of you; my occupation now is decidedly gone."
"Good-bye," said Camelia.
When she was alone she rose and bolted the door. Her ten miles had tired her physically, and she sank back into her chair, her stockinged feet stretched out, her muddy skirts clinging damply about her ankles.
Yes, let the whole truth surge over her, and find her unresisting.
He did not love her; had never loved her. He despised her. The remembrance of his scorn crept over her like a gnawing flame. The shame of last night"s dancing, of his reluctant embrace, that she had courted, came upon her in an awful revelation; and the wilful, desperate pa.s.sion of to-day, sure of the hidden treasure he withheld from her in punishment only--a child pounding at a locked door. And the room was empty; there had been no treasure. She had forced him to open to her the dreadful vacancy. His sad friendship, smarting still from its momentary debas.e.m.e.nt, had sheltered her from the keenest pang; it was as if he had held her hand as, together, they went into that vacant room; now, alone, the realization of her own abas.e.m.e.nt stunned her. But she loved him. It had not been for her love that he had scorned her, though misinterpreting it so cruelly. She had made it impossible that she should ever retrieve herself, or that he should ever see the truth; her falseness had blinded him to her only worth, yet even now the consciousness of that worth held her from utter loss of self-respect, the consciousness of the intrinsic n.o.bility of her devotion, rejected alas! seen with darkest disfigurements, but standing upright and unashamed at the centre of her life. This great love was like an over-soul, a n.o.bler self looking with sad eyes at the prostrate, the utterly confounded Camelia.
Then came throbs of loneliness and terror. He was going away! She sprang up under the knife-like thrust of the thought. Oh! if at least he had believed her! If at least he had seen tragedy, not a poor, silly farce, the only n.o.ble thing in her life distorted to a wretched folly. Only outwardly had she been a child screaming for an unattainable toy. She walked up and down the room, her hands wrung together, until a quivering weakness of fatigue came over her, and she flung herself face downwards on the bed.
Sobs came with the despairing posture. Her whole body shook with them.
A tiny, timid knock at the door broke in on the miserable satisfaction of woe expressed.
Camelia held back her weeping and listened silently.