CHAPTER XXIV.

A LAST WORD.

Every one knows Noel Paton's 'Dante and Beatrice'--the picture of the two lovers caught together in a supreme moment of passion--their faces irradiated with the magical halo of a glowing twilight. His, tender, entreating, wistful, worshipful; hers, full of the unconscious sweetness and superb repose of a rare and exalted beauty. His eyes are upturned to hers; but hers dwell vaguely on the western glow of colour. And there is in the picture more than one thing which suggests the strange dissociation and the sadness, as well as the intercommunion and fellowship, of the closest love.

Why, asks the impatient reader, should not a romance be always full of this glow, and colour, and passion? The warm light that touches the oval outline of a tender woman's face is a beautiful thing, and even the sadness of love is beautiful: why should not a romance be full of these supreme elements? Why should not the romancist cut out the long prose passages of a man's life, and give us only those wonderful moments in which being glows with a sort of transformation?

The obvious reason is, that a romance written in such an exalted key would be insufferably unreal and monotonous: even in the 'Venetianisches Grondellied,' full of pure melody as it is, one finds jarring chords, which are only introduced to heighten the keen delight of the harmony which is to follow. Add to this the difficulty of setting down in words any tolerable representation of one of those passionate joyous moments of love-delight which are the familiar theme of the musician and the painter.

That moment, however, in which Will Anerley met Annie Brunel's eyes, and took her hand, and sat down beside her, was one of these. For many past days and weeks his life had been so unbearably dull, stagnant, prosaic, that the mere glad fact of this meeting drove from his mind all consideration of consequences. He looked in her eyes--the beautiful eyes that could not conceal their pleasure--and forgot everything else. For a time, neither of them spoke--the delight of being near to each other was enough; and when they began to recall themselves to the necessity of making some excuse to each other for having broken a solemn promise, they were driving along Piccadilly; and, away down in the darkness, they could see the luminous string of orange points that encircle the Green Park.

"I only returned to London to-day," he said, and there was a smile on his face, for he half-pitied his own weakness; "and I could not help going to see you. That was how I kept my promise. But you are not very angry?"

"No," she said, looking down.

There was no smile upon her face. The events of the last few weeks had been for her too tragic to admit of humorous lights.

"You ought not to have come," she said the next minute, hurriedly. "You ought to have stayed away. You yourself spoke of what might happen; and the surprise and the pain of seeing you--I had no thought of your being there--and I was sufficiently miserable at the time not to need any other thing to disturb me--and now--and now you are here, and you and I are the friends we have been----"

The passionate earnestness of this speech, to say nothing of its words, surprised and astounded him: why should she have reason to be disturbed?

"Why should we not be friends?" he said.

She looked at him, with her big, tender, frank eyes, with a strange expression.

"You force me to speak. Because we cannot continue friends," she said, in a voice which was almost harsh in its distinctness. "After what you said to me, you have no right to see me. I cannot forget your warning; and I know where you ought to be this evening--not here, but down in St. Mary-Kirby."

"That is true enough," said Will, gloomily. "I couldn't have gone down to St. Mary-Kirby to-night: but, as you say, I have no business to be near you--none whatever. I should not have gone to the theatre; I ought to have stayed at home, and spent the time in thinking of you--why shouldn't I say it, now that you have been so frank with me? You and I know each other pretty well, do we not? There is no reason, surely, why we may not regard each other as friends, whatever may happen. And why should I not tell you that I fear to go down to St. Mary-Kirby, and meet that poor Dove who has given me her heart?"

She said nothing: what could she say? It was not for her to blame him.

"And when I went to the theatre, I said, 'It is the last time!' I could not help going. I did not intend to meet you when you came out."

"You did not?" she said.

There was, despite herself, a touch of disappointment in her tone. The strange joyous light that had passed over her face on seeing him was the result of a sudden thought that he loved her so well that he was forced to come to her.

"No," he answered, "I did not intend to meet you; but the sudden pleasure of seeing you was so great that I had not the heart to refuse to come into the cab. And, now you know my secret, you may blame me as you please. I suppose I am weaker than other men; but I did not err wilfully. And now the thing is done, it is Dove whom I most consider. How can I go to her with a lie in every word, and look, and action? Or how could I tell her the truth? Whichever way one turns, there is nothing but sadness and misery."

And still there was no word from the young girl opposite.

"I have not even the resource of blaming destiny," he continued. "I must blame my own blindness. Only you, looking at these things in your friendly and kindly way, will not blame me further for having indulged myself a last time in going to see you to-night. You will never have to complain again--never; and, indeed, I went to-night in a manner to bid you good-bye--so you won't be hard on me----"

He was surprised to see, by the gleam of the lamp they passed, that the girl was covertly sobbing, and that the large soft eyes were full of tears. At the same moment, however, the cabman pulled up at the corner of the little square in which Annie Brunel lived; and so they both got out. When Will turned from paying the cabman, she had walked on a bit in advance, and had not entered the square. He overtook her, and offered her his arm. The night was fine and still; a large lambent planet lay like a golden bell-flower in the soft purple before them, and a large harvest-moon, bronzed and discoloured, glimmered through the tall elms on the other side of the way, as it slowly rose up from the horizon.

"I have something to say to you," he heard the soft low voice say, "which I had hoped never to have said. It is better it should be said."

"If you have cause to blame me, or if you wish to prevent my seeing you again, by upbraiding me for having spoken honestly to you, I beg of you to say nothing that way. It is not needed. You will run no danger whatever of being annoyed again. I blame myself more than you can; and since we must part, let us part friends, with a kindly recollection of each other----"

"Don't speak like that!" she said, imploringly, with another convulsive sob, "or you will break my heart. Is it not enough that--that--oh! I cannot, cannot tell you, and yet I must tell you!"

"What have you to tell me?" he said, with a cold feeling creeping over him. He began to suspect what her emotion meant; and he shrank from the suggestion, as from some great evil he had himself committed.

"You will think me shameless; I cannot help it. You say this is our last meeting; and I cannot bear to have you go away from me with the thought that you have to suffer alone. You think I ought to give you my sympathy, because I am your friend, and you will not be happy. But--but I will suffer too; and I am a woman--and alone--and whom have I to look to----?"

He stopped her, and looked down into her face.

"Annie, is this true?" he said, sadly and gravely.

He got no answer beyond the sight of her streaming eyes and quivering lips.

"Then are we the two wretchedest of God's creatures," he said.

"Ah, don't say that," she murmured, venturing to look up at him through her tears. "Should we not be glad to know that we can think kindly of each other, without shame? Unhappy, yes!--but surely not the very wretchedest of all. And you won't misunderstand me? You won't think, afterwards, that it was because I was an actress that I confessed this to you----?"

Even in such a moment a touch of Bohemianism!--a fear that her mother's profession should suffer by her weakness.

"Dearest!" he said, tenderly--"for you are, God help me! my very, very dearest--we now know each other too well to have to make excuses for our confidence in each other."

They walked on now quite silently; there was too much for both of them to think about to admit of speech. As they walked southward, down the long and sombre thoroughfares, the large moon on their left slowly rose, and still rose, at every minute losing its ruddy hues, and gaining in clear, full light. They knew not whither they were going. There was no passer-by to stare at them; they were alone in the world, with the solitary houses, and the great moon.

"You have not told me a minute too soon," he said, suddenly, with a strange exultation in his tone.

"What do you mean?"

"You and I, Annie, love each other. If the future is to be taken from us, let us recompense ourselves _now_. When you walk back to your house to-night and the door closes, you and I see each other no more. To-morrow, and all the to-morrows after that, we are only strangers. But for the next half-hour--my dearest, my dearest! show me your face, and let me see what your eyes say!--why should we not forget all these coming days, and live that half-hour for ourselves? It is but a little time; the sweetness of it will be a memory to us. Let us be lovers, Annie!--only for this little time we shall be together, my dearest! Let us try to imagine that you and I are to be married to-morrow--that all the coming years we are to be together--that now we have nothing to do but to yield ourselves up to our love----"

"I am afraid," she said, in a low voice, trembling.

"Why afraid, then?"

"That afterwards the recollection will be too bitter."

"Darling, nothing that you can imagine is likely to be more bitter than what you and I must bear. Just now, we have a little time our own; let us forget what is to come, and----"

"Whisper, then," she said.

He bent down his head to her, and she came close to his ear:

"_Will, I love you, and if I could I would be your wife to-morrow._"

"And you will kiss me, too," he said.

He felt a slight, warm touch on his lips; and when he raised his head his face was quite white, and his eyes were wild.

"Why, we _are_ to be married to-morrow!" he said. "It will be about eleven when I reach the church, and I shall walk up and down between the empty pews until you come. I see the whole thing now--you walking in at the door with your friends, your dear eyes a little frightened, looking at me as if you wanted me to take you away at once from among the people. Then we shall be off, dearest, sharp and fast, up to your house; you will hurry to change your things, and then, with a good-bye to everybody, we are off--we two, you and I, Annie, away anywhere, so that we may be alone together. And I wish to God, Annie, that you and I were lying down there beneath that water, dead and drowned!"

They had come to the river--the broad smooth river, with the wonderful breadths of soft light upon it, and the dark olive-green shadows of the sombre wharves and buildings on the other side.

"Will, Will, you frighten me so!" she said, clinging to his arm.

"You needn't be frightened," he said, sadly. "I am only telling you what might happen. Can't you see all these things when you try to see them? For many a night past--ever since the evening we spent overlooking the Rhine--I have seen that marriage-scene before my eyes, and it is always you who are there. You remember that evening when you sate up in the balcony, among the vine-leaves, with the moon hanging up over the river? There's a German song I once heard that warns you never to go near the Rhine, because life is too sweet there; and we have been there, and have received the curse of this discontent and undying regret."

Then he broke out into a bitter laugh.

"We were to be lovers; and this is pretty lovers' talk."

"You really do frighten me, Will," she said. "I never saw you look so before. Oh, my dear, don't be so very, very sad and despairing, for I have nothing to comfort you with--not even one poor word; and it seems so wretched that we two should not be able to comfort each other."

He was fighting with the bonds of circumstance; and his impotence embittered him. The spectacle of these two wretched creatures--despairing, rebellious, and driven almost beyond the bounds of reason by their perplexity--walking along the side of the still and peaceful stream, was one to have awakened the compassion, or at least the sympathetic merriment, of the most careless of the gods. What a beautiful night it was! The deep olive shadows of the moonlight hid away the ragged and tawdry buildings that overhung the river; and the flood of yellow-tinged light touched only here and there on the edge of a bank or the stem of a tree, and then fell gently on the broad bosom of the stream. The gas-lamps of the nearest bridge glimmered palely in that white light; but deep in the shadows along the river, the lamps burned strong and red, and sent long quivering lines of fire down into the dark water beneath. Farther up the stream lay broad swathes of moonlight, vague and indeterminate as the grey continents visible in the world of silver overhead. In all this universe of peace, and quiet, and harmony, there seemed to be only these two beings restless--embittered, and hopeless.

"Let us go home," he said, with an effort. "I can do nothing but frighten you, and myself too. I tell you there are other things pass before my eyes as well as the marriage-scene, and I don't want to see any more of them. It will be time enough to think of what may happen when it does happen."

"And whatever happens, Will, shall we not at least know that we sometimes--occasionally--think tenderly of each other?"

"So you wish us to be lovers still!" he said. "The delusion is too difficult to keep up. Have you reflected that when once I am married, neither of us may think of each other at all?"

"Will! Will! don't talk like that! You speak as if somebody had cruelly injured you, and you were angry and revengeful. Nobody has done it. It is only our misfortune. It cannot be helped. If I am not to think of you--and I shall pray God to help me to forget you--so much the better."

"My poor darling!" he said, "I am so selfish that I think less of what your future may be than of my own. You dare not confide your secret to any one; and I, who know it, must not see you nor try to comfort you. Is not the very confidence that prompted you to tell me, a proof that we are--that we might have been happy as husband and wife?"

"Husband and wife," she repeated, musingly, as they once more drew near home. "You will be a husband, but I shall never be a wife."

"And yet, so long as you and I live," he said, quite calmly, "you will have my whole love. It cannot be otherwise: we need not seek to conceal it. Whatever happens, and wherever we may be, my love goes with you."

"And if mine," she whispered, "could go with you, and watch over you, and teach your heart to do right, it would lead your love back to the poor girl whom you are going to marry, and make her happy."

At parting he kissed her tenderly, almost solemnly. Then she quickly undid from her neck a little brooch, and put it in his hand with these words:

"Give that to her, with my love, _and with yours_."