"And will you not come back again?" she added, breathlessly almost. The news was so sudden that it made her breathless. This was the last time--the very last!
They might never see each other again in this world, and if they did ever chance to meet, Priscilla Gower would be his wife. And yet he was standing there now, only a few feet from her, so near that her outstretched hand would touch him. The full depth of misery in the thought flashed upon her all at once, and drove the blood back to her heart.
"Why?" she gasped out unconsciously, through the very strength of her pangs. "You are going away forever."
She scarcely knew that she had uttered the words until she saw how deathly pale he grew. The beads of moisture started out upon his forehead, and his nervous hand went up to brush them away.
"Not forever, I trust," he said, huskily. "Only until--until--"
"Until July," she ended for him; "until you are married to Miss Priscilla Gower."
She held up one little, trembling, dusky hand, and actually began to tell the intervening months off her fingers. She was trying so hard to calm herself that she did not think what she was doing. She only knew she must do or say something.
"How many months will it be?" she said. "It is February now; March, April, May, June, July. Five months--not quite five, perhaps. We may not be here then. Lady Throckmorton intends to visit the Spas during the summer."
From the depths of her heart she was praying that some chance might take them away from Paris before he returned. It would be his bridal tour--Priscilla"s bridal tour. Ah, if some wildly happy dream had only chanced to make it her bridal tour, and she could have gone with him as Priscilla would, from place to place; near him all the time, loving and trusting him always, depending on him, obedient to his lightest wishes.
Miss Priscilla was far too self-restrained to ever be as foolishly, thrillingly tender and fond, and happy as she, Theodora North, would have been. She could have given a little sob of despair and pain as she thought of it.
As it was, the hopeless, foolish tears rose up to her large eyes, and made them liquid and soft; and when they rose, Denis Oglethorpe saw them. Such beautiful eyes as they were; such ignorant, believing, fawn-like eyes. The eyes alone would have unmanned him--under the tears he broke down utterly, and so was left without a shadow of control.
He crossed the hearth with a stride and stood close to her, his whole face ablaze with the fierceness of his remorseful self-reproach and the power of his love.
"Listen to me, Theo," he said. "Let me confess to you; let me tell you the truth for once. I am a coward and a villain. I was a villain to ask a woman I did not truly love to be my wife. I am a coward to shrink from the result of my vanity and madness. She is better than I am--this woman who has promised herself to me; she is stronger, truer, purer; she has loved me, she has been faithful to me; and G.o.d knows I honor and revere her. I am not worthy to kiss the ground her feet have trodden upon. I was vain fool enough to think I could make her happy by giving to her all she did not ask for--my life, my work, my strength--not remembering that Heaven had given her the sacred right to more. She has held to our bond for years, and now see how it has ended! I stand here before you to-night, loving you, adoring you, worshipping you, and knowing myself a dishonored man, a weak, proved coward, whose truth is lost forever.
"I do not ask you for a word. I do not say a word further. I will not perjure myself more deeply. I only say this as a farewell confession. It will be farewell; we shall never see each other again on earth perhaps; and if we do, an impa.s.sable gulf will lie between us. I shall go back to England and hasten the marriage if I can; and then, if a whole life"s strenuous exertions and constant care and tenderness will wipe out the dishonor my weakness has betrayed me into, it shall be wiped out. I do not say one word of love to you, because I dare not. I only say, forgive me, forget me, and good-by."
She had listened to him with a terrified light growing in her eyes; but when he finished she got up from her seat, shivering from head to foot.
"Good-by," she said, and let him take her cold, lithe, trembling hands.
But the moment he touched them, his suppressed excitement and her own half-comprehended pain seemed to frighten her, and she began to try to draw them from his grasp.
"Go away, please," she said, with a wild little sob. "I can"t bear it. I don"t want to be wicked, and perhaps I have been wicked, too. Miss Gower is better than I am--more worth loving. Oh, try to love her, and--and--only go away now, and let me be alone."
She ended in an actual little moan. She was shivering and sobbing, hard as she tried to govern herself. And yet, though this man loved her, and would have given half his life to s.n.a.t.c.h her to his arms and rain kisses of comfort upon her, he let the cold little hand drop, and in a moment more had left her.
CHAPTER VIII.
THEO"S FIRST TROUBLE.
He had been gone three days, and, in their lapse, Theo felt as if three l.u.s.trums had pa.s.sed. Their parting had been so unexpected a one, that she could not get used to it, or believe it was anything else but a painful dream. After all, it seemed that Fortune was crueller than she had imagined possible. He was gone, and to Priscilla Gower; and she had never been able to believe that some alteration, of which she had no very definite conception, would occur, and end her innocent little ghost of a love-story, as all love-stories should be ended. It had never been more than the ghost of a story. Until that last night he had never uttered a word of love to her; he had never even made the fine speeches to her which she might have expected, and, doubtless, would have expected, if she had been anybody else but Theodora North. She had not expected them, though, and, consequently, was not disappointed when she did not receive them. But she found herself feeling terribly lonely after Denis Oglethorpe left Paris. The first day she felt more stunned than anything else. The second her sensibilities began to revive keenly, and she was full of sad, desperate wonder concerning him--concerning how he would feel when he stood face to face with Priscilla Gower; how he would look, what he would say to her. The third day was only the second intensified, and filled with a something that was almost like a terror now and then.
It was upon this third day that Lady Throckmorton was unexpectedly called away. A long-lost friend of her young days had suddenly made her appearance at Rouen, and having, by chance, heard of her ladyship"s presence in Paris, had written to her a letter of invitation, which the ties of their girlhood rendered almost a command. So to Rouen her ladyship went, for once leaving Theo behind. Madam St. Etunne was an invalid, and the visit could not be a very interesting one to a young girl. This was one reason why she was left--the other was the more important one, that she did not wish to go, and made her wishes known.
She was not sorry for the chance of being left to herself for a few days--it would be only a few days at most.
"Besides," said Lady Throckmorton, looking at her a trifle curiously, "you do not look well yourself. Theo, you look feverish, or nervous, or something of the kind. How was it I did not notice it before? You must have caught cold. Yes, I believe I must leave you here."
Consequently, Theo was left. She was quiet enough, too, when her ladyship had taken her departure. It was generally supposed that Miss North had accompanied her chaperon, and so she had very few callers. She spent the greater part of her time in the apartment in which Denis Oglethorpe had bidden her farewell, and, as may be easily imagined, it did not add to her lightness of spirit to sit in her old seat and ponder over the past in the silence of the deserted room. She arose from her ottoman one night, and walked to one of the great mirrors that extended from floor to ceiling. She saw herself in it as she advanced--a regal-like young figure, with a head set like a queen"s, speechful dark eyes, and glowing lips; a face that was half child"s, half woman"s, and yet wholly perfect in its fresh young life and beauty. Seeing this reflection, she stopped and looked at it, in a swift recognition of a new thought.
"Oh, Pam!" she cried out, piteously. "Oh, my poor, darling, faded Pam.
You were pretty once, too, very dear, pretty and young. And you were happier than I can be, for Arthur only died. n.o.body came between your love and you--n.o.body ever could. He died, but he was yours, Pam, and you were his."
She cried piteously and pa.s.sionately when she went back to her seat, rested her arm upon a lounging-chair near her, and hid her face upon it, crying as only a girl can, with an innocent grief that had a pathos of its own. She was so lovely and remorseful. It seemed to her that some fault must have been hers, and she blamed herself that even now she could not wish that she had never met the man whose love for her was a dishonor to himself. Where was he now? He had told Lady Throckmorton that business would call him to several smaller towns on his way, so he might not be very far from Paris yet. She was thinking of this when at last she fell asleep, sitting by the fire, still resting her hand upon the chair by her side. It was by no means unnatural, though by no means poetic, that her girl"s pain should end so.
But when the time-piece on the mantle chimed twelve with its silver tongue, she found herself suddenly and unaccountably wide awake. She sat up and looked about her. It was not the clock"s chime that had awakened her she thought. It must have been, something more, she was so very wide awake indeed, and her senses were so clear. One minute later she found out what it was. There was some slight confusion down-stairs; a door was opened and closed, and she heard the sound of voices in the entrance-hall. She turned her head, and listening attentively, discovered that some one was coming up to the room in which she sat. The door opened, and upon the threshold stood a servant bearing in his hand a salver, and upon the salver a queer, official-looking doc.u.ment, such as she did not remember ever having seen before.
"A telegram," he said, rapidly in French, "for milady. They had thought it better to acquaint Mad"moiselle."
She took it from him, and opened it slowly and mechanically. She read it mechanically also--read it twice before she comprehended its full meaning, so great was the shock it gave her. Then she started from her seat with a cry that made the servant start also.
"Send Splaighton to me," she said, "this minute, without a moment"s delay."
For the telegram she had just read told her that in a wayside inn, at St. Quentin, Denis Oglethorpe lay dying, or so near it that the medical man had thought it his duty to send for the only friend who was on the right side of Calais, and that friend, whose name he had discovered by chance, was Lady Throckmorton.
It was, of course, a terribly unwise thing that Theodora North decided upon doing an hour later. Only such a girl as she was, or as her life had necessarily made her, would have hit upon a plan so loving, so wild and indiscreet. But it did not occur to her, even for a second, that there was any other thing to do. She must go to him herself in Lady Throckmorton"s stead; she must take Splaighton with her, and go try to take care of him until Lady Throckmorton came, or could send for Priscilla Gower and Miss Elizabeth.
"Ma"mselle," began the stricken Splaighton, when, as she stood before the erect young figure and desperate young face, this desperate plan was hurriedly revealed to her. "Ma"mselle, you forget the imprudence--"
But Theo stopped her, quite ignorant of the fact, that by doing so, she forfeited her reputation in Splaighton"s eyes forever.
"He is going to die!" she said, with a wild little sob in her voice.
"And he is all alone-and--and he was to have been married, Splaighton, in July--only a few months from now. Oh, poor Priscilla Gower! Oh, poor girl! We must save him. I must go now and try to save him for her. Oh, if I could just have Pamela with me."
The woman saw at once that remonstrance would be worse than useless.
Theo was slowly revealing to her that this despairing, terrified young creature would not understand her resistance in the slightest degree.
She would not comprehend what it meant; so, while Splaighton packed up a few necessary articles, Theo superintended her, following her from place to place, with a longing impatience that showed itself in every word and gesture. She did not dare to do more, poor child. She had never overcome her secret awe of her waiting-woman. In her inexperienced respect for her, she even apologized pathetically and appealingly for the liberty she was taking in calling upon her.
"I am sorry to trouble you," she said, humbly, and feeling terribly homesick as she said it; "but I could not go alone, you know--and I must go. There is a lace collar in that little box that you may have, Splaighton. It is a pretty collar, and I will give you the satin bow that is fastened to it."
Scarcely two hours later they were on their way to St. Quentin. It never occurred to Theo, in the midst of her fright and unhappiness, that she was now doing a very unwise and dangerous thing. She only thought of one thing, that Denis was going to die. She loved him too much to think of herself at all, and, besides, she did not, poor innocent, know anything about such things.
It was a wonderful trial of the little old French doctor"s calmness of mind, when, on his next visit to his patient, he found himself confronted by a tall, young creature, with a pale, desperate face, and lovely tear-fraught eyes, instead of by the majestic, elderly person, the perusal of Lady Throckmorton"s last letter to Denis had led him to expect. It was in the little inn parlor that he first encountered Theodora North, when she arrived, and on seeing her he gazed over his spectacles, first at herself, and then at the respectable Splaighton, in a maze of bewilderment, at seemingly having made so strange a blunder.
"Lady Throckmorton?" he said, at last, in English, or in a broken attempt at it. "Oh! _Oui_--I understand. The sister of monsieur? Ah, milady?"
Theo broke in upon him in a pa.s.sionate impulse of fear and grief.
"No," she said. "I am not Lady Throckmorton. I am only her niece, Theodora North. My aunt was away when your telegram arrived, and--and I knew some one must come--so I came myself. Splaighton and I can take care of Mr. Oglethorpe. Oh, monsieur, is it true that he is dying?--will he never get well? How could it happen? He was so strong only a few days since. He must not die. It cannot be true that he will die--he has so many friends who love him."
Monsieur, the doctor, softened perceptibly under this; she was so young and innocent-looking, this girlish little English mademoiselle. Monsieur up-stairs must be a lucky man to have won her tender young heart so utterly. Strange and equivocal a thing as the pretty child (she seemed a child to him) was doing, he never for an instant doubted the ignorant faith and love that shone in the depths of her beautiful agonized eyes.
He bowed to her as deferentially as to a sultana, when he made his answer.
"It had been an accident," he commenced. "The stage had overturned on its way, and monsieur being in it, had been thrown out by its falling into a gully. His collar-bone had been broken, and several of his ribs fractured; but the worst of his injuries had been a gash on his head--a sharp stone had done it. Mademoiselle would understand wherein the danger lay. He was unconscious at present."
This he told her on their way to the chamber up-stairs; but even the gravity of his manner did not prepare her for the sight the opening of the door revealed to her. Handsome Denis Oglethorpe lay upon the narrow little bed with the face of a dying man, which is far worse than that of a dead man. There were spots of blood on his pillow and upon his garments; he was bandaged from head to foot, it seemed, with ghastly red, wet bandages; his eyes were glazed, and his jaw half dropped.