CHAPTER FOUR.
THE MAN WHO WAITED FOR LOVE.
Behind his tired eyes and general affectation of indifference Rupert Dempster hid an overwhelming ambition. He longed for love--not for the ordinary springtide pa.s.sion experienced by ninety-nine men out of a hundred; nor for the ordinary "living-prosaically-ever-after" which is the ultimate sequel to such affairs. The desire of his heart was for the experience of the hundredth man,--an experience as far distinguished from the amours of the ninety-nine, as is the romance of the suburban Algernon and Angelina, from the historic pa.s.sion of a Dante and Beatrice. Rupert searched not so much for a wife as for a mate, a woman who should be so completely the complement of himself that to meet would be to recognise, and after recognition life apart would become an impossibility and a farce. In his own mind the conviction remained unshaken that the day _would_ dawn when he should meet this dearer self, and enter into a completeness of joy which would end but with life itself. Yet the years pa.s.sed by, and his thirty-fifth birthday came and went, and found him no nearer his goal. Once and again as the years pa.s.sed by, Rupert awoke, breathless and panting, from a dream, the same dream, wherein he had met his love, and they had spoken together. The details of the dream seemed instantly to fade from his mind, leaving behind an impression of mingled joy and pain. She had been beautiful and sweet; he had been proud and glad, yet there had been a shadow. It had not been all joy that he had felt as he had welcomed the well-beloved; his emotion on awaking had been tinged with something strangely resembling fear. But the dream-face had been fair. His longing to meet it was but whetted by the consciousness of mystery.
He met her at last at a garden-party and gained an introduction by accident. "Do find Lady Belcher, and bring her to have some tea," his hostess bade him, and supplemented her request with a brief description: "A tall, dark woman, dressed in yellow. She was on that bench a few minutes ago. Anyone will tell you..."
Rupert crossed the lawn in the direction indicated; he was in the mood of resigned boredom which possesses most men at a garden-party, and for the moment the Dream Woman had no place in his thoughts. Lady Belcher was plainly a guest of importance, for whose refreshment the hostess felt herself responsible. She was probably elderly, and, as such, uninteresting from a young man"s standpoint. He looked for the gleam of a yellow dress, caught it defined sharply among the surrounding blues and pinks, and drew up in front of the seat.
"Lady Belcher, I think? Mrs Melhuish has sent me to ask you if you will have some tea?"
Lady Belcher was talking volubly to an acquaintance on the subject of the shortcomings of her friends, and was much bored by the interruption.
She lifted a face like an elderly rocking-horse, and made short work of the invitation.
"Thanks! Couldn"t possibly. I abhor tea," she said curtly, and immediately resumed the interrupted conversation.
Dempster turned, faintly smiling. He was accustomed to the rudeness of the modern society woman, and it had no power to hurt him. On the contrary, he congratulated himself on having escaped an unwelcome task.
He turned aside with a sigh of relief, and even as he turned, the ordered beating of his heart seemed for a moment to cease, and leave his being suspended in s.p.a.ce. Cut sharply in twain, as by the sweep of a scythe, the old life fell from him and the new life began, for there, but a couple of yards away, stood the Dream Woman, her eyes gazing steadily into his!
She was a tall, slim woman, no longer in her first youth, but her face had a strange, arresting beauty. Hair and eyes were dark, and there was something curiously un-English in the modelling of the features, something subtly suggestive of a fiercer, more primal race. So might a woman have looked whose far-off ancestor had been an Indian brave, bequeathing to future generations some spark of his own wild vigour.
The lips were scarlet, a thin, curved line in the pallor of her face; her eyes were fringed with black, straight lashes. She wore a gown of cloudy black, and there came to Rupert, with a cramping of the heart, the swift conviction that she was unhappy.
She was looking at him, half frowning, half smiling, having, it would appear, overheard his invitation and its rebuff; but as his face came more clearly into view a look of bewilderment overspread her features.
She started, and involuntarily bent her head in salutation.
The next moment Rupert was by her side, and her hand lay in his. He had extended his own, and hers had come to meet it without hesitation. For a long moment they looked at one another in silence, then he spoke in commonplace greeting:
"Good afternoon. Can I get _you_ some tea?"
She shook her head, but at the same time took a slow step forward, which had the effect of turning the refusal into an invitation.
"I"m so tired; I don"t want anything, but a seat; away from that band!"
"Come this way. There"s a summer-house at the end of the shrubbery that is probably empty. No one knows of it but the intimates. You can rest there quietly."
He spoke eagerly, walking beside her, eager to lead her away from the crowd, and have her to himself. The group of visitors among whom she had been standing stared after them curiously, and one elderly, stout woman took a tentative step forward, as if about to follow, thought better of it, and stood aside. Dempster had a fleeting suspicion of sharp eyes scanning his face; then he forgot everything but his companion. He was conscious of every movement, of every curve of the slim, graceful figure, but no word was spoken until they seated themselves within the shelter of the arbour, and faced each other across its narrow span. Was it the shadow of the trailing branches which made her face so white? She narrowed her eyes, as if searching in the store-room of memory, and a faint smile curved her lips. Once again the pain cramped Rupert"s heart as he realised that smiles came but hardly to her lips. A note of interrogation quickened her voice:
"I know you so well... We have met before?"
He leaned forward, elbows on knees, chin cupped between finger and thumb, tired eyes aglow with life.
"Yes!"
"When? Where?"
"Always!" he told her. "In our dreams."
She shrank at that, edging back into her corner, holding out a quick, protesting hand. "No! Please! Don"t make fun... We have met on more substantial ground. I know your face. I knew it the moment you turned.
We have met years ago, and have forgotten--"
Rupert sat motionless, his eyes riveted upon her face. "Think!" he urged softly. "Think! Ask your own heart, and let it answer. It spoke clearly enough a minute ago. You have _always_ known me! You have been waiting, as I have been waiting. It has been long, and we are both tired, but now it is over, and we can forget. Our summer has begun!"
He stretched out his hand towards her.
"I"ve been keeping myself for you. From this moment I am yours, and all that I have. The world would call me crazy to make such a vow to a woman I have known in the flesh for only a few minutes, but _you_ understand! _You_ know that it is the simple, absolute truth. Give me your hand!"
Like a homing-bird the small hand fluttered and fell, nestling softly against his own. He pressed his lips to it in a long, sacramental kiss, then raised himself to look into her eyes. "What is your name?"
"Eve. And yours?"
"Rupert. I am glad that you are Eve. The first woman; the only woman.
No other name could have fitted you so well. Eve! look in my eyes, and answer what I ask. Do you trust me, Eve? Do you believe that I am speaking the truth?"
White as a dead woman, she faced him across the shadow; the scarlet of her lips was like a stain of blood, but as she gazed her face quivered into an inexpressible tenderness, for on Rupert Dempster"s features nature had printed the hall-mark of truth, and no one had yet looked into his eyes and doubted his word. The Dream Woman accepted it so simply that she did not trouble to answer his question. "I am not worth it," she said instead; "I am too old; too sad. It ought to have been a lovely, radiant girl who could have given you her youth."
"I have thought of her like that," he answered simply, "but I see now that it could not have been. I needed more. She could not have satisfied me, if she had not suffered. I should have missed the greatest joy of all, if she had not needed my comfort."
"I wish I were beautiful!" she sighed again. "She should have been beautiful to be worthy of you. I wish I were beautiful!"
"Are you not beautiful?" he asked her. "It is strange; I had thought so much of how you would look, but when our eyes met I forgot all that. We belong; that is everything. The beginning and the end. You are Eve."
"Ah, you are good!" she sighed. "You are good! I did not know there were such men in the world... It is true, Rupert. You must have been with me in my dreams, for there is nothing new about you, nothing strange. I know your face as I know my own, and it is rest to be with you--rest and peace. It must have been meant that we should meet to-day, for it is the first time for--oh, so long, that I have been to any public place!" She cast a quick glance at her black dress, and an involuntary shudder shook her frame. "But to-day I felt better, and it was so bright, and they persuaded me. I have dreaded meeting people, but to-day I didn"t mind. I think I _wanted_ to come. And then I saw you, and your face was so familiar that I thought I had met you long ago and had forgotten."
"You had not forgotten. You had never remembered anything so well. In that first moment you _knew_ that I was different from the rest. It was written on your face, dear; there was no need for words! There is something else written there which hurts me to see. I think you have needed me, Eve!"
She drew her hand from his and pressed it to her head with a gesture more eloquent than words. Rupert"s presentiment of trouble had been true; it now remained to discover the nature of her grief.
He was conscious of steadying himself mentally and morally, before he possessed himself of the disengaged left hand, which lay on her lap.
Deftly, tenderly, his fingers felt hers, moving tentatively upwards over the joints, feeling with trembling anxiety for the presence of rings, of _the_ ring! The shock at finding the tell-tale third finger bare was almost as largely compounded of surprise as of joy, so strong had been the presentiment of a husband in the background. The eyes which he raised to hers were radiant with joy, but there was no answering gleam in the depths into which he gazed. Their sombre gloom chilled him in the midst of his ecstasy.
"Eve," he cried softly, "smile at me! I was wrong to conjure up dead ghosts to-day when we ought to think of nothing but the happiness of meeting. Eve! I have been preparing for you all these years; now I am free to do as you will. It is for you to order, and I shall obey. We will go where you will, live where you choose--"
"You will take me away?" She bent forward, her eyes peering into his, so that he saw more closely than he had done before the beautiful, ravaged face, with its slumbering pa.s.sion, its deep, overmastering gloom. There shrilled through her voice an almost incredible joy.
"_You_--_will_--_take_--_me away_?"
Dempster laughed happily. Ay, indeed, he would take her away. She was free, there was no barrier between them; openly, honourably, before all the world he could claim her as his own--could make her his wife with all the stately ritual of the Church.
"Of course I will take you away! Do you imagine, after all these years, I will wait a day longer than I can help? Now that I have found you, I shan"t easily let you go." And, with his whole being thrilling in answer to her appeal, "You _want_ to come to me, Eve?" he asked her.
"Yes," she sighed softly, "yes!" Her lips parted in a long-drawn sigh of content. "You are so good. Your goodness rests me. That"s what I need more than anything else--rest!" With the same tragic gesture she pressed her fingers against her brow, then, with a sudden impulse, sweet, and girlish, and unexpected, clasped his hand in hers, and repeated the gesture, bending her head to meet the healing touch.
There was no need of words to explain the meaning of the action, the message flashed from eye to eye with silent eloquence. For the moment the shadow lifted, and Dempster gazed into a face illumined by love and tenderness. Only for a moment; then suddenly came the sound of unwelcome footsteps, and peering through the trailing branches Rupert beheld a middle-aged couple pacing slowly by, glancing curiously to right and left, yet remaining happily unconscious of the arbour behind the trees. He recognised the woman as the one who had been standing by Eve"s side in the garden, and wondered with a pa.s.sing amus.e.m.e.nt if curiosity had sent her to see what had become of her companion. How far she was from guessing the high happenings of those short moments!
In the midst of his amus.e.m.e.nt he felt Eve grasp his arm, and draw him back into the shadow. It was joy to feel that her dread of interruption was as keen as his own, and he turned to her a look of glad understanding, but the tragic misery on her face chilled him once more.
It was inconceivable that the annoyance of a temporary interruption could call forth such intensity of feeling, and Dempster, regarding her, felt his own nerves thrill with a kindred fear. For one glad moment he had believed that his happiness was a.s.sured; now he realised that he had rejoiced too soon. There _were_ barriers to be overcome--mysterious barriers which loomed before him, dark and lowering. He caught the slight form in his arms, cradling it with pitiful tenderness.