"He told me that, face to face--told me that it was the anniversary of the day on which you had consented to become his mistress!"
"And you?"
"If we had been alone," John answered simply, "I should have killed him.
I drove the words down his throat. I threw him back to the place he had left, and hurt him rather badly, I"m afraid. Sophy took me home somehow, and now I am here."
She leaned a little forward on the couch. She looked into his face searchingly, anxiously, as if seeking for something she could not find.
His lips were set in hard, cold lines. The likeness to Stephen had never been more apparent.
"Listen!" she said. "You are a Puritan. While I admire the splendid self-restraint evolved from your creed, it is partly temperamental, isn"t it? I was brought up to see things differently, and I do see them differently. Tell me, do you love me?"
The veins swelled for a moment upon his forehead, stood out like whip-cord along the back of his hands, but of softening there was no sign in his face.
"Love you?" he repeated. "You know it! Could I suffer the tortures of the d.a.m.ned if I didn"t? Could I come to you with a man"s blood upon my hands if I didn"t? If the prince lives, it is simply the accident of fate. I tell you that if we had been alone I should have driven the breath out of his body. Love you!"
She rose slowly to her feet. She leaned with her elbow upon the mantelpiece, and her face was hidden for a moment.
"Let me think!" she said. "I don"t know what to say to you. I don"t know you, John. There isn"t anything left of the John I loved. Let me look again!"
She swung around.
"You speak of love," she went on suddenly. "Do you know what it is? Do you know that loves reaches to the heavens, and can also touch the nethermost depths of h.e.l.l? If I throw myself on my knees before you now, if I link my fingers around your neck, if I whisper to you that in the days that were past before you came I had done things I would fain forget, if I told you that from henceforth every second of my life was yours, that my heart beat with yours by day and by night, that I had no other thought, no other dream, than to stay by your side, to see you happy, to give all there was of myself into your keeping, to keep it holy and sacred for you--John, what then?"
Never a line in his face softened. He looked at her a moment as he had looked at the woman in Piccadilly, into whose hand he had dropped gold.
"Are you going to tell me that it is the truth?" he asked hoa.r.s.ely.
She stood quite still, her bosom rising and falling. Even then she made one last effort. She held out her hands with a little trembling gesture, her eyes filled with tears.
"Think for a single moment of that feeling which you call love, John!"
she pleaded. "Listen! I love you. It has come to me at last, after all these years. It lives in my heart, a greater thing than my ambition, a greater thing than my success, a greater thing than life itself. I love you, John. Can"t you feel, don"t you know, that nothing else in life can matter?"
Not a line in his face softened. His teeth had come together. He was like a man upon the rack.
"It is true? It is true, then?" he demanded.
She looked at him without any reply. The seconds seemed drawn out to an interminable period. He heard the rolling of the motor-buses in the street. Once more the perfume of the lilacs seemed to choke him. Then she leaned back and touched the bell.
"The prince spoke the truth," she said. "I think you had better go!"
x.x.xVII
Before the wide-flung window of her attic bedchamber, Sophy Gerard was crouching with her face turned westward. She had abandoned all effort to sleep. The one thought that was beating in her brain was too insistent, too clamorous. Somewhere beyond that tangled ma.s.s of chimneys and telegraph-poles, somewhere on the other side of the gray haze which hung about the myriad roofs, John and Louise were working out their destiny, speaking at last the naked truth to each other.
Somehow or other, during those few minutes every thought of herself and her own life seemed to have pa.s.sed away. John"s face seemed always before her--the sudden, hard lines about his mouth; the dull, smoldering pain in his eyes. How would he return? Louise had guarded the secret of her life so well. Would he wrest it from her, or--
She started suddenly back into the room. There was a knocking at the door, something quite different from her landlady"s summons. She wrapped her dressing-gown around her, pulled the curtains around the little bed on which she had striven to rest, and moved toward the door. She turned the handle softly.
"Who is that?" she asked.
John almost pushed his way past her. She closed the door with nerveless fingers. Her eyes sought his face, her lips were parted. She clung to the back of the chair.
"You have seen Louise?" she exclaimed breathlessly.
"I have seen Louise," he answered. "It is all over!"
She looked a little helplessly around her. Then she selected the one chair in the tiny apartment that was likely to hold him, and led him to it.
"Please sit down," she begged, "and tell me about it. You mustn"t despair like this all at once. I wonder if I could help!"
"No one can help," he told her grimly. "It is all finished and done with. I would rather not talk any more about it. I didn"t come here to talk about it. I came to see you. So this is where you live!"
He looked around him, and for a moment he almost forgot the pain which was gnawing at his heart. It was such a simple, plainly furnished little room, so clean, so neat, so pathetically eloquent of poverty. She drew closer together the curtains which concealed her little chintz-covered bed, and came and sat down by his side.
"You know, you are rather a silly person," she whispered soothingly.
"Wait for a time and perhaps things will look different. I know that Louise cares. Isn"t that the great thing, after all?"
"I would like not to talk about it any more," said John. "Just now I cannot put what I feel into words. What remains is just this: I have been a fool, a sort of _Don Quixote_, building castles in Spain and believing that real men and women could live in them. I have expected the impossible in life. It is perhaps a good thing that I can see the truth now. I am going to climb down!"
She clasped her hands tighter around his arm. Her eyes sought his anxiously.
"But you mustn"t climb down, John," she insisted. "You are so much nicer where you are, so much too good for the silly, ugly things. You must fight this in your own way, fight it according to your own standards.
You are too good to come down--"
"Am I too good for you, Sophy?"
She looked at him, and her whole face seemed to soften. The light in her blue eyes was sweet and wistful. A bewildering little smile curled her lips.
"Don"t be stupid!" she begged. "A few minutes ago I was looking out of my window and thinking what a poor little morsel of humanity I am, and what a useless, drifting life I have led. But that"s foolish. Come now!
What I want to persuade you to do is to go back to c.u.mberland for a time, and try hard--very hard indeed--to realize what it means to be a woman like Louise, with her temperament, her intense intellectual curiosity, her charm. Nothing could make Louise different from what she is--a dear, sweet woman and a great artist. And, John, I believe she loves you!"
His face remained undisturbed even by the flicker of an eyelid.
"Sophy," he said, "I have decided to go abroad. Will you come with me?"
She sat quite still. Again her face was momentarily transformed. All its pallor and fatigue seemed to have vanished. Her head had fallen a little back. She was looking through the ceiling into heaven. Then the light died away almost as quickly as it had come. Her lips shook tremulously.
"You know you don"t mean it, John! You wouldn"t take me. And if you did, you"d hate me afterward--you"d want to send me back!"
He suddenly drew her to him, his arm went around her waist. She had lost all power of resistance. For the first time in his life of his own deliberate accord, he kissed her--feverishly, almost roughly.
"Sophy," he declared, "I have been a fool! I have come an awful cropper, but you might help me with what"s left. I am going to start afresh. I am going to get rid of some of these ideas of mine which have brought me nothing but misery and disappointment. I don"t want to live up to them any longer. I want to just forget them. I want to live as other men live--just the simple, ordinary life. Come with me! I"ll take you to the places we"ve talked about together. I am always happy and contented with you. Let"s try it!"
Her arms stole around his neck.