Chapter 29

DUO

At some distance from the village street he dismissed the vehicle which had brought him from Verneuil, a rickety affair drawn by an emaciated horse, and suitcase in hand strode up the hill toward the house of Madame Guégou, the garden wall of which was visible beyond the flowering orchard. The air was laden with odors, sweet with the smell of the fruit blossoms and early shrubs. In the meadow to the left some goats were grazing and, as he passed, the wether raised his head and examined him incuriously, its bell clanking solemnly. The sun was already beyond the profile of the forest; beyond the sleepy village and against the warm sky thin threads of purple smoke ascended in perpendicular lines and then drifted lazily down to the mist of the valley below. Nature breathed slowly, deeply, as though aware that its state was not a matter of days or even of years, but of an eternity, during which its evolution must not be hurried.

After the turmoil of steamer and railroad this silence was oppressive. Minute sounds came to Markham across the distances, the bark of a dog, the lowing of cattle, a shutter closing, human voices near and far, each one distinct, but each mellowed and softened as though strained through a silver mesh. He missed the shudder of the steamer, the rattle of the train, the jolting even of the station wagon from which he had just descended; for they were all a part of the fever of his voyage made in such mad haste, sounds which had soothed and given him patience, their very turbulence assuring him that he was losing no time upon the way. And now that he had reached his destination, a violent reaction had set in. He was still moving forward toward the house with the walled garden, but a fear obsessed him that perhaps after all there had been a mistake. What if, after all, Hermia were not here? His suitcase gained in weight and he perspired gently. Why hadn't he cabled her at the first moment of his decision to sail or why hadn't he relayed his wireless across when the opportunity had offered? All his hopes seemed to be slipping from his finger ends. Was this Vagabondia? It seemed different somehow. He was aware of his neatly creased trousers, his bowler hat, his gloves, and the leather bag which reeked of sophistication. He was an anachronism, or Vallécy was. They were not attune. He and Vallécy clashed discordantly.

Timorously, almost upon tiptoe, he reached the village street. A dog emerged from a field, sniffed at the crease of his trousers suspiciously and growled. At this moment Markham desired anything but commotion, so he chirped to the animal and stroke on, his head bent, his gaze on the portal of the _ancien_, which, as he noted, was forbiddingly closed. He paused a moment, eyeing the cur which stopped when he stopped, still regarding him uncertainly. And then summoning his courage he went to the door and knocked. This noise, which sounded faintly enough to Markham, seemed to be the demonstration of hostility the dog was waiting for, and it began barking furiously, snapping almost at Markham's immaculate heels, a signal which was taken up immediately, near and far, by every cur in the village. Curious heads were poked out of windows, and at last after a few moments his door was opened just wide enough for the head of his former hostess to inspect him.

"Madame Guégou," he began uncertainly and then paused.

The door opened a trifle wider.

"It is I," she remarked, her gaze on the suitcase. "I can buy nothing, Monsieur."

He laughed uneasily.

"You do not remember me, Madame?" he asked.

She relinquished the door-knob and emerged, inspecting his clothing.

"You are from Paris, of course. Last year perhaps, you came--"

"I did--last summer, Madame. I am Philidor--the artist."

"You! Monsieur! _You_ Philidor!" She leaned forward upon the step, her eyes searching his face. "Philidor was not such as you. He wore a beard and--" She suddenly caught him by the shoulder and turned him toward the sunset. "I might think--and yet--"

"I am Philidor," he repeated, laughing. "I came in search of--of Yvonne."

"You--are he! It is true. The saints be praised!" She threw the door inside open and called: "Jules! Jules! He is come. Monsieur Philidor is here!"

The _ancien_ limped forward from the inner darkness, showing his gums.

"I knew it," he cried triumphantly. "Did I not say that he would return?"

Markham took the bony fingers, his anxious gaze going past them toward the glow of the kitchen.

"And Yvonne?" he asked feverishly. "She is within?"

"She is here, yes, she is here--waiting for you."

He dropped his valise and strode past them eagerly. A pot simmered upon the fire, the table gave evidence of a recent repast, and a pile of dishes nearby stood mutely in evidence, but of Hermia there was no sign.

"_Tiens_!" Madame Guégou was muttering. "She was here but a moment ago. In the garden, perhaps--"

He dashed out of the rear door and down the graveled walk.

"Hermia!" he called, and then again, "Hermia!"

He reached the arbor just in time to see her speed across the lower end of the meadow and vanish into the trees. Hatless he leaped the low wall and followed, joy giving him wings, while the old couple wonderingly watched from the doorway. They were mad, these two. She had been waiting for him a month and now--she fled. Mad? But what was love but madness?

Markham sprang into the cover of the trees where he had seen her disappear and followed the path up the hill breathlessly. She would escape him now, even, when she had sent for him and he had come to her! She could not go far. The cover was thin. He would have called again, but he spared his breath, for he knew that she would not reply. He reached the end of the path and scanned the hill beyond. She could not have gone that way. He turned and plunged among the pine trees to his right where the woods were thicker. It was getting darker, but he saw her white skirt, gray in the shadows--saw it--lost it and found it again in the deep wood. He sprang forward over fallen trees, through brambles, over rocks, down the slope to the streamside and caught her behind a tree where she had hidden away from him.

"Hermia!" he cried. "Hermia, you witch! What a dance you've led me! But I have you now--I have you--"

And so he had--in both of his arms, his lips seeking hers. But she denied him.

"Did you think you could escape me--again?" he laughed, "when I've come half across the world for you?"

"You--you frightened me," she gasped.

"How did I frighten you?"

"I did--didn't expect you--"

"You sent for me?"

"I--I thought you would have cabled--"

He laughed joyously.

"Cabled the hour of my arrival, and found you--missing! I know you now, you see. I took no chances. As it is, you tried to get away--"

"I didn't get far--"

"That wasn't your fault. You tried. Why did you run?"

She was silent, her head still hidden. He repeated the question.

"I--I don't know."

"Do I frighten you now?"

"Not so much."

He held her more closely in his arms, and kissed the crown of her head, which was the only object offered.

"I know," he whispered, "because you had given me everything except yourself--and you knew that I would take that."

"No, no."

"What, then?"

Silence.

"I had feared--" she paused.

"What had you feared?"

"That you might not come. You didn't reply--"

"This is my reply."

He raised her lips slowly to his own and took them. Her eyes were closed as though she feared to open them, and show him the dawn of her womanhood. But in a moment her figure relaxed in his arms and her head sank upon his shoulder in token of surrender.

"Mad little Hermia!" he whispered.

"Mad no longer," she sighed.

"You must prove it. I'll not let you go until I'm sure you won't go flying from me again."

"I don't want you to let me go. I want you to hold me tight. It is--rest. I'm tired of going. I want to stay--here."

"You love me?"

This time she opened her eyes wide and let him see that what she said was true. She had outgrown her adolescence--her madness, unless it could be called madness to love as she did. Her eyes were deep wells of mystery, in which he saw, as from the distant brink above, his own image, clear amid the shadows. There were signs of trouble in them, too, as though she had thought long and distressfully, but greater than the marks of pain were the sweeter tokens of a love and trust unalterable.

She sank upon a rock, he beside her, her head on his breast. The dusk fell swiftly, its shadows enfolding them. He kissed her again and again, her lips trembled upon his as she murmured the words so long unspoken.

"Philidor, I love you--I love you. It was so long--the waiting."

"You needn't have waited, dear," he said gently.

"Oh, don't reproach me! I can't bear it. It had to be. Olga--she smirched us--your love and mine--made--"

He stopped her lips with kisses, smiling inwardly and thinking of the wisdom of Mrs. Hammond.

"There is no Olga--" he murmured, "no gossip but the whisper of the stream which knows the truth."

"Yes--the truth. That is all that matters, isn't it? But that play--shall I ever forget it?"

"Sh--child. You must forget. A lie never lives."

"I will forget. I don't care--now. Let them say what they choose. But I _did_ suffer, Philidor."

"And I. You were cruel, dear."

"I had to be cruel. I feared that you--that I--"

She paused and he questioned gravely.

"I feared that you, too, might have misjudged me--there in the woods at Sées--that I had cheapened myself to you--that I had been unwomanly."

"Hermia!"

"I don't know what possessed me after Olga appeared. She poisoned the very air with doubt. I was desperate. I didn't seem to care what happened. I don't know what I wanted. I think if you had taken me then and held me--as you do now--held me close to you and had not let me go, as you did, you might have had me to do as you willed. But you relinquished me--"

"I had to, dear."

"Yes, I understand now. I couldn't then. I wanted to hurt you--as I was hurt. Your sanity made me desperate. I couldn't understand why you should be so sane while I was not. You were greater than I--and though I loved you for it (O Philidor, how I loved you!) I meant that you should pay for my heart-throbs--that you should pay for Olga--for everything."

"I have paid."

"Forgive me. I suffered doubly in knowing that you suffered. I fled from you and hid my heart as a miser would buy his treasure. But your letters, forwarded from Paris, followed me. O Philidor! I did not read them--not at first. I saw Olga telling that story at the dinner table and my pride revolted. I put them away--unopened, and kept them concealed--from others, from myself and tried to forget them. I couldn't. They were you. I would take them out and look at them. I slept with them under my pillow. At last I could stand it no longer. I took them and disappeared for a whole day from the rest of my party. I read them alone on the summit of a mountain." She broke off with a sigh. "Ah me! If you had come to me there you would not need to have pleaded, Philidor."

"My Hermia!"

"You were with me that day. Didn't you know it?"

"I was with you every day, child."

She smiled happily.

"When I got down to Evian at nightfall they were searching for me. They thought that I had fallen and been killed. They reproved me. I was calm and smiling, my spirit still soaring to you across the distances. I had made up my mind to go to you the next day."

"Oh, if you had--!"

"In the morning," she went on, "came your letter telling me that you were sailing for New York. It wasn't like the other letters. You were reproachful and you were going away from me. It chilled me a little--after the day before. Olga's face interposed--again. And so I let you go. You see I'm telling you everything."

"Go on, dear."

"I got no more of your letters for a time--for a long time--"

"I wrote you--"

"Yes--from New York. There was some mistake. I didn't get those letters until long after--until I reached New York--until after I had seen you. Meanwhile, I feared--that you had cooled--that Olga had done something to change you--"

"Not that--"

"I feared her. I knew then that she was capable of anything. I heard that she was again in New York and sensed that you must have seen her--"

"I did see her," he put in grimly.

"I didn't know what had happened. I made up my mind to ignore her--to ignore _you_--to forget you and to make you forget, if I could, what had happened."

"That was impossible."

"I knew it, but I tried. O my dear, if you had known my pains at making you suffer! It was hard. But I did it. When you came to the house--"

"Don't speak of that," he muttered. "It was not Hermia that I saw."

"Not _this_ Hermia. It was a girl that even _I_ did not know. I had rehearsed that conversation and I carried it through to the end."

"The end--of all things, it seemed."

She drew more closely into the shelter of his arms and drew his lips down to hers.

"Yes--but we shall make a new beginning----And then," she went on, after a moment, "I saw Olga and cut her. I hadn't meant to--but I couldn't help it. The sight of her turned me to ice. And Pierre de Folligny--" She stopped again, her brows tangling. "That man! He remembered me. He presumed. He was odious. I had the butler show him the door. I--I wasn't very wise, I think. But I couldn't, Philidor,--I simply _couldn't_ temporize with a man of his caliber."

"D--n him!" said Markham.

"He told--I think--of Olga did--"

"It was De Folligny," he groaned. "But I couldn't do anything. That would have made things worse."

"Oh, yes--and then the play--that dreadful play! That was Olga's doing. I was _there_, Philidor, at Rood's Knoll. I saw it all. Listened in terror to every word of the dreadful sacrilege. It _was_ sacrilege!--to see my love and yours pictured the dreadful thing that that love was. I got out somehow. They were talking of me--lightly. I heard them; as they talked of--of other women who do not know right from wrong--as they would have talked of that dreadful Frenchwoman who--who was killed."

She was sobbing gently on his shoulder, her slender body quivering and drawing closer. "Oh, I have paid--paid in full for my fault--"

He soothed her, but she started back, holding him at arm's length, her eyes the more lovely through their tears, "But I regret nothing. I would suffer more, if I might, to know what I know. I have learned the meaning of life, Philidor. I bless my pain for the new meaning it has given my joy. I bless _your_ pain even, dear, for the new meaning it has given your unselfishness. You thought only of me, of my happiness when I had paid you only misery."

"There shall be no more pain," he murmured. "There is no room for it. Joy shall crowd it out."

"Will you forgive me?" she asked.

"I'll try," he smiled. "Will you promise never to run away from me again?

"Where should I run?"

He meditated a moment and then said with a smile:

"To Trevelyan M--"

But she put her fingers over his lips before he could finish.

"Don't Philidor. Wherever I went, I should not go to Trevvy." She laughed. "He cast me off, you know."

"Cast _you_ off?"

She nodded. "He heard that story at Rood's Knoll after I had gone. The next day he came to my house in town. I saw him. He wore a woe-begone expression and silently presented a clipping from a paper." She laughed again. "He looked like a virtuous undertaker presenting a bill, long overdue, for the interment of some lightly mourned relative. He asked me if the story were true. I said it was--and he went out of the house--casting not even one longing, lingering look behind!"

"But it _wasn't_ true."

"That's just the point--but he thought so. Would _you_ have believed me that kind of a girl? You could have, you know, and didn't." She sighed happily, and sank back into his arms. "I think I don't want people to be _too_ excellent, Philidor. Just human--"

"Were you"--he hesitated a moment--"were you engaged to him, Hermia?"

She gazed at him wide-eyed.

"Never," she asserted, and then repeated, "Never, never, never!"

"But the newspapers--"

"O Philidor! How could I have been engaged to Trevvy when I--I was already engaged to you?"

"Engaged."

"Yes, promised. After the forest at Sées I knew it then. I could never have loved anyone else. Why, Philidor, you held me like this, and kissed me--"

"You loved me then--and before--?"

She hesitated demurely.

"Yes--before."

"Before, Alençon?"

"Y--yes."

"Before Verneuil?"

She smiled and nodded.

"Here--at Vallécy?"

"Before that."

"You adorable child! Passy?"

"Yes?"

He was now really astounded. What she added astounded him still more.

"I think it began before 'Wake Robin'?"

"Thimble Island?"

She stammered. "I--I think it really began in your studio."

"In New York?"

"You interested me--and you snubbed me so completely. You were so impolite, John Markham. I was curious about you. You were like no man I had ever met. You told me the truth. I didn't like it, but I respected you for telling it. When I went away I remember wanting to see you again. AT Thimble Island--"

"Yes?"

She hid her face in his breast and the words came slowly.

"My visit to--to Thimble Island--I--I knew you were there. My m--motor _didn't_ miss fire, Philidor?"

He raised her head and made her look at him. Even in the wan light her face was rosy with her confession. But she laughed joyously.

"I wanted to snub you for being so rude to me. Alas! I ended by--by scrubbing your floor."

"Diana of the Tubs! How you scrubbed!"

"I liked it. You were very nice at Thimble Island, Philidor." She paused a moment. "Then Olga came--and the others. She quite owned you, then, didn't she?"

"No," he replied slowly.

"I don't think I really liked Olga's face-powder on your coat, dear."

He was silent.

"I knew you didn't love her. You couldn't. She wasn't your sort."

More silence.

"You didn't care for her, did you?" jerkily.

He looked down into her eyes tenderly but made no reply. She sighed but asked no more questions. And, when he knew that she understood the meaning of his silence, he took her head between his hands and made her look at him.

"Isn't it enough for me to say to you that I love you better than all the world, dear, that I am yours--wholly and indivisibly--my past, my future--"

"Oh, I am content," she whispered quickly. "Your past--shall be what you have made it. I'm not afraid. But your future--"

She caught one of his hands in both of her own and held it to her heart. "That is mine."

There was a silence rich with meaning. The stream, the whispering boughs, the rising breeze in the tree-tops joined in the soft chorus of their nuptial-song. The night fell, shrouded in mystery. Behind them over their shoulders a new moon rose, a harbinger of good fortune, but they did not turn to look at it. It could not foretell them a fortune that was already theirs. Its light flowed through the shadows, paling the silhouette of the leaves against the afterglow, bathing them both in liquid silver. He told her many of the things that she already knew, but each reiteration had a new meaning and a new delight. The same immortal questions and answers, ever new, ever mystifying. The touch of hands, of eyes, the physical contact, outward tokens of the spiritual pact made already, the welding of the bonds which were to make them one! The moments of their more intimate confessions past, he told her of the friendship of Mrs. Hammond and what she had done to set the story right, but she did not seem to hear him. Her gaze was upon the pale rim of light along the hill-top beyond, a gaze which looked and saw nothing beyond the rosy aura of her thoughts.

"What does it matter now?" she murmured. "What does anything matter--after this?"

"You will marry me--soon?" he urged her.

She sighed softly and laid her hand in his.

"Whenever you want me to," she said, with eloquent simplicity.

"To-morrow?"

She smiled mischievously.

"I must, I think, Philidor. Would you have me compromised?"

He laughed happily.

"Yes. Compromised by reverence, pilloried by tenderness--"

"Not reverence, Philidor. I'm only a little devil, after all."

"Then devils are angels in Vagabondia. Your wings are white, Hermia."

"They're trailing now--"

"Brave wings--fluttering--weary of flight. They shall fly no more--"

"Not alone--broader ones shall bear them company."

A pause.

"After to-morrow--shall we go?"

"Afoot, Philidor--as before."

And then. "Poor Clarissa!"

He laughed. "You shall have her."

She started up in delight.

"You mean that you--?"

"Clarissa is languishing in a stable in Paris>"

She spoke of Cleofonte and the Signora.

"We must find them, too, Philidor. And Stella--I promised her. We must do something for Stella."

It was growing late. There was a sound in the thicket behind them. They started up and were confronted by the _ancien_, who hobbled toward them, with his stick and lantern, like _Diogenes_ searching for an honest man.

"God be praised!" he croaked. "You are here. We feared you might have fallen among the rocks."

"Among the roses, Père Guégou. _Thy_ roses--" said Yvonne, her hand in Philidor's.

The old man stared at them witlessly, then turned and lighted them upon their way.

The End