Part 20

"Have you come to take me for a ride before lunch?" she asked. "Do you know, I think that I should really like it! We might lunch at Ranelagh on our way home."

The words stuck in his throat. From where she was, she saw now the writing on his face. She stopped short.

"What is it?" she exclaimed.

"Ever since I knew you," he said slowly, "there have been odd moments when I have lived in torture. During the last fortnight, those moments have become hours. Last night the end came."

"Are you mad, John?" she demanded.

"Perhaps," he replied. "Listen. When I left you last night, I went to the club in Adelphi Terrace. There was a well-known critic there, comparing you and Latrobe. On the whole he favored you, but he gave Latrobe the first place in certain parts. Latrobe, he said, had had more experience of life. She had had a dozen lovers--you, only one!"

She winced. The glad freshness seemed suddenly to fade from her face. Her eyes became strained.

"Well?"

"I found Graillot. I cornered him. I asked him for the truth about you. He put me off with an evasion. I came down here and looked at your window. It was three o'clock in the morning. I dared not come in. A very demon of unrest was in my blood. I stopped at a night-club on my way back. Sophy was there. I asked her plainly to put me out of my agony. She was like Graillot. She fenced with me. And then--the prince came!"

"The prince was there?" she faltered.

"He came up to the table where Sophy and I were sitting. I think I was half mad. I poured him a glass of wine and asked him to drink with me. I told him that you had promised to become my wife. He raised his glass--I can see him now. He told me, with a smile, that it was the anniversary of the day on which you had promised to become his mistress!"

Louise shrank back.

"He told you that?"

John was on his feet. The fever was blazing once more.

"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 damned 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 hell? 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 hoarsely.

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!"

XXXVII

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 mass 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 passed 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 Cumberland 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.

"If only you cared, John!" she sobbed.

"But I do," he insisted. "I love to have you with me, I love to see you happy, I shall love to give you pretty things. I shall be proud of you, soothed by you--and rested. What do you say, Sophy?"

"John," she whispered, hiding her face for a moment. "What can I say? What could any poor, weak, little creature like me say? You know I am fond of you--I haven't had the pride, even, to conceal it!"

He stood up, held her face for a moment between his hands, and kissed her forehead.

"Then that's all settled," he declared. "I am going back to my rooms now. I want you to come and dine with me there to-night, at eight o'clock."

Her eyes sought his, pleaded with them, searched them.

"You are sure, John?" she asked, her voice a little broken. "You want me really? I am to come? You won't be sorry--afterward?"

"I am sure," he answered steadfastly. "I shall expect you at eight o'clock!"

* * * * *

John went back to his rooms fighting all the time against a sense of unreality, a sense almost of lost identity. He bought an evening newspaper and read it on the way. He talked to the hall-porter, he talked to a neighbor with whom he ascended in the lift--he did everything except think.

In his rooms he telephoned to the restaurant for a waiter, and with the menu in his hand, a few minutes later, he ordered dinner. Then he glanced at his watch--it was barely seven o'clock. He went down to the barber-shop, was shaved and had his hair cut, encouraging the barber all the time to talk to him. He gave his hands over to a manicure, and did his best to talk nonsense to her. Then he came up-stairs again, changed his clothes with great care, and went into his little sitting room.

It was five minutes to eight, and dinner had been laid at a little round table in the center of the room. There was a bowl of pink roses--Sophy's favorite flower--sent in from the florist's; the table was lighted by a pink-shaded lamp. John went around the room, turning out the other lights, until the apartment was hung with shadows save for the little spot of color in the middle. An unopened bottle of champagne stood in an ice-pail, and two specially prepared cocktails had been placed upon the little side-table. There were no more preparations to be made.

John walked restlessly to the window and gazed at the curving line of lights along the Embankment. This was the end, then--the end of his strenuous days, the end of his ideals, the end of a love-story which had made life for a time seem so wonderful! He could hear them talking about him in a few days' time--the prince's subtle sneer, the jests of his acquaintances. And Louise! His heart stopped for a moment as he tried to think of her face when she heard the news.

He turned impatiently away from the window and glanced at the clock. It was almost eight. He tried to imagine that the bell was ringing, that Sophy was standing there on the threshold in her simple but dainty evening dress, with a little smile parting her lips. The end of it all! He pulled down the blind. No more of the window, no more looking out at the lights, no more living in the clouds! It was time, indeed, that he lived as other men. He lifted one of the glasses to his lips and drained its contents.

Then the bell rang. He moved forward to answer its summons with beating heart. As he opened it, he received a shock. A messenger-boy stood outside. He took the note which the boy handed him and tore it open under the lamp. There were only a few lines:

John, my heart is breaking, but I know you do not mean what you said. I know it was only a moment of madness with you. I know you will love Louise all your life, and will bless me all your life because I am giving up the one thing which could make my life a paradise. I shall be in the train when you read this, on my way to Bath. I have wired my young man, as you call him, to meet me. I am going to ask him to marry me, if he will, next week.

Good-by! I give you no advice. Some day I think that life will right itself with you.

SOPHY.

The letter dropped upon the table. John stood for a moment dazed. Suddenly he began to laugh. Then he remembered the messenger-boy, gave him half a crown, and closed the door. He came back into the room and took his place at the table. He looked at the empty chair by his side, looked at the full glass on the sideboard. It seemed to him that he was past all sensations. The waiter came in silently.

"You can serve the dinner," John ordered, shaking out his napkin. "Open the champagne before you go."

"You will be alone, sir?" the man inquired.

"I shall be alone," John answered.

XXXVIII

It was a room of silence, save for the hissing of the green logs that burned on the open hearth, and for the slow movements of Jennings as he cleared the table. Straight and grim in his chair, with the newspaper by his side, Stephen Strangewey sat smoking stolidly. Opposite to him, almost as grim, equally silent, sat John.

"Things were quiet at Market Ketton to-day, then, John?" Stephen asked at last.

"There was nothing doing," was the brief reply.

That, for the space of a quarter of an hour or so, was the sole attempt at conversation between the two brothers. Then Jennings appeared with a decanter of wine and two glasses, which he reverently filled. Stephen held his up to the light and looked at it critically. John's remained by his side, unnoticed.

"A glass for yourself, Jennings," Stephen ordered.

"I thank ye kindly, sir," the old man replied.

He fetched a glass from the sideboard, filled it, and held it respectfully before him.

"It's the old toast," Stephen said glumly. "You know it!"

"Aye, Master Stephen!" the servant assented. "We've drunk it together for many a long year. I give it ye now with all my heart--confusion to all women!"

They both glanced toward John, who showed no signs of movement. Then they drank together, the older man and his servant. Still John never moved. Jennings drained his glass, placed the decanter by his master's side, and withdrew.

"So the poison's still there, brother?" Stephen asked.

"And will be so long as I live," John confessed gloomily. "For all that, I'll not drink your toast."

"Why not?"

"There was a little girl--you saw her when you were in London. She is married now, but I think of her sometimes; and when I do, you and old Jennings seem to me like a couple of blithering idiots cursing things too wonderful for you to understand!"

Stephen made no protest. For a time he smoked in silence. Curiously enough, as they sat there together, some of the grim fierceness seemed to have passed from his expression and settled upon John. More than once, as he looked across at his younger brother, it almost seemed as if there was something of self-reproach in his questioning look.

"You dined at the ordinary in Market Ketton?" Stephen asked at last.

"I did."

"Then you heard the news?"

"Who could help it?" John muttered. "There wasn't much else talked about."

"Bailiff Henderson has been over here," Stephen went on. "There's a small army of painters and decorators coming down to the castle next week. You saw the announcement of the wedding in the _Morning Post_, maybe?"

John assented without words. Stephen smoked vigorously for a few moments. Every now and then he glanced across to where John was sitting. Once again the uneasiness was in his eyes, an uneasiness which was almost self-reproach.

"You mind what I called her once, John--a witch-woman? She is that, right enough. This marriage of hers proves it. Although he is half a Frenchman, the Prince of Seyre is the greatest landowner in the county. He is the worst landlord, maybe, but the blood's there. He is a man who has lived among women all his life. He should know something about them, and be proof against their wiles. Yet he's going to marry her next Thursday!"

John moved a little restlessly in his chair.

"Let's drop it, Stephen," he begged. "We both know the facts. She is going to marry him, and that's the end of it. Fill your glass up again. Here's mine untouched. I'll drink your toast with you, if you'll leave out the little girl who was kind to me. I'll give it to you myself--confusion to all women!"

"Confusion to--" Stephen began. "What on earth is that?"

They both heard it at the same time--the faint beating of a motor-engine in the distance. John set down his glass. There was a strange look in his eyes.

"There are more cars passing along the road now than in the old days," he muttered; "but that's a queer sound. It reminds one--good Heavens, how it reminds one!"

There was a look of agony in his face for a moment. Then once more he raised his glass to his lips.

"It's passed out of hearing," Stephen said. "It's some one on the way to the castle, maybe."

Still their glasses remained suspended in mid air. The little garden gate had opened and closed with a click; there were footsteps upon the flinty walk.

"It's some one coming here!" John cried hoarsely. "Why can't they keep away? It's two years ago this week since I brought her up the drive and you met us at the front door. Two years ago, Stephen! Who can it be?"

They heard the front door open, they heard Jenning's voice raised in unusual and indignant protest. Then their own door was suddenly flung wide, and a miracle happened. John's glass slipped from his fingers, and the wine streamed out across the carpet. He shrank back, gripping the tablecloth. Stephen turned his head, and sat as if turned to stone.

"John!"

She was coming toward him exactly as he had dreamed of her so many times, her hands outstretched, her lips quivering, with that sweet look in her face which had dwelt there once for a few days--just a few days of her life.

"John," she faltered, "it isn't the car this time--it is I who have broken down! I cannot go on. I have no pride left. I have come to you. Will you help me?"

He found himself upon his feet. Stephen, too, had risen. She stood between the two men, and glanced from one to the other. Then she looked more closely into John's face, peering forward with a little start of pain, and her eyes were filled with tears.

"John," she cried, "forgive me! You were so cruel that morning, and you seemed to understand so little. Don't you really understand, even now? Have you ever known the truth, I wonder?"

"The truth!" he echoed hoarsely. "Don't we all know that? Don't we all know that he is to give you your rights, that you are coming--"

"Stop!" she ordered him.

He obeyed, and for a moment there was silence--a tense, strained silence.

"John," she continued at last, "I have no rights to receive from the Prince of Seyre. He owes me nothing. Listen! Always we have seen life differently, you and I. To me there is only one great thing, and that is love; and beyond that nothing counts. I tried to love the prince before you came, and I thought I did, and I promised him at last what you know, because I believed that he loved me and that I loved him, and that if so it was his right. Look down the road, John! On that night I was on my way to the castle, to give myself to him; but I broke down, and in the morning the world was all different, and I went back to London. It has been different ever since, and there has never been any question of anything between the prince and me, because I knew that it was not love."

John was shaking in every limb. His eyes were filled with fierce questioning. Stephen sat there, and there was wonder in his face, too.

"When you came to me that morning," she went on, "you spoke to me in a strange tongue. I couldn't understand you, you seemed so far away. I wanted to tell you the whole truth, but I didn't. Perhaps I wasn't sure--perhaps it seemed to me that it was best for me to forget, if ever I had cared, for the ways of our lives seemed so far apart. You went away, and I drifted on; but it wasn't true that I ever promised to marry the prince. No one had any right to put that paragraph in the newspaper!"

"But what are you doing here, then?" John asked hoarsely. "Aren't you on your way to the castle?"

She came a little nearer still; her arms went around his neck.

"You dear stupid!" she cried. "Haven't I told you? I've tried to do without you, and I can't. I've come for you. Come outside, please! It's quite light. The moon's coming over the hills. I want to walk up the orchard. I want to hear just what I've come to hear!"

He passed out of the room in a dream, under the blossom-laden boughs of the orchard, and up the hillside toward the church. The dream passed, but Louise remained, flesh and blood. Her lips were warm and her arms held him almost feverishly.

"In that little church, John, and quickly--so quickly, please!" she whispered.

* * * * *

Jennings hastened in to where Stephen was sitting alone.

"Mr. Stephen," he cried, "what's coming to us? There's that French hussy outside, and a motor-car in the drive, and the chauffeur's asking where he's to sleep. The woman wants to know whether she can have the same bedroom for her mistress as last time!"

"Then why don't you go and see about it, you old fool?" Stephen replied. "Pick up those pieces of glass there, lay the cloth, and get some supper ready."

Jennings gazed at his master, dumbfounded. No power of speech remained to him.