Part 9

"Ah, you do not love me!" cried Damier, and all his youth was in the cry. "You sacrifice _me_ with such composure! You give yourself to have your life sucked out of you by this vampire shape of the past. And it is me you rob! It is my life you immolate, as well as your own! What of my claim on life--my claim on you? You have no conception of what you are to me, or you could not speak of shutting me out from you; you could not think of sending me away! You could not speak so--think so--if you loved me!"

From her chair she now looked up at him, not with weariness, with a look curiously vivid and tender. "You speak like a boy," she said.

Damier flung himself on his knees beside her. "And you think that I can leave you when you can look at me like that--love me like that!"

"Because I do." She let him take her hands, and went on, almost smiling at him: "Because I love you like that, and because you love me like that, and because I am so much older than you--can't you feel it? how like a little boy--passionate, unruly in his grief--you seem to me! And because, in spite of my age and your boyishness, we do yet love each other so greatly that the very greatness of our love makes the question of our being together or apart really of not such significance."

"Of not such significance!" poor Damier cried. "I am to find you in heaven, then!"

"Probably." She did smile now, but he guessed that it was the brave smile she could summon over anguish. He guessed that her feeling of his boyishness was less apparent to her than her feeling of his power over her, his right to her. She might never yield to the power, never own to the right, but to guess that she felt them was assurance enough for the moment, and the pallor of the face that smiled at him was a reproach to him.

"No, no," he said; "I shall keep you there--and I shall keep you here, too. I will rescue you. I will find out the way. And I will leave you now and give you peace for a little while. You are terribly tired."

"Terribly," she assented. "It is kind and generous of you to go now."

"But my going is to be taken as no token of submission. I will return."

"To say good-by."

"So you say."

"So you will do." And she still smiled, all tenderness, all inflexibility.

"Never, never, never!" said Damier.

XVII

DAMIER, for his own part, felt no need of peace. A passionate protestation, a passionate determination, filled him. At his hotel, as if in answer to vague plans and projects, the figure of Monsieur Daunay, rising from a chair, confronted him. From Monsieur Daunay's relief and alacrity he guessed that he had been waiting there for some time--ever since, he further guessed, his conversation with Claire.

"You have heard?" asked Monsieur Daunay, and a host of questions looked from his eyes.

"That you have proposed to Mademoiselle Vicaud, yes; and that she has answered you, I fear, not favorably; yes, I have heard."

"You have seen her?"

"I was with her mother, speaking with her of it, when Claire came."

"I have intruded thus upon you," said Monsieur Daunay, "in the faint hope that you might be able, after seeing her, to give me some encouragement, since from her I could elicit none. She was sullen, silent, reproached me for my haste. After all these years!" Monsieur Daunay groaned, and dropped again into his chair, folding his arms and bowing his head in a despairing acquiescence to fate's cruelty. "After all these years!" he repeated.

Damier saw down a long vista of them, sunny with the encouraging smiles of the charming Claire.

"You have assured me," Daunay presently said, "that you were not the cause of this change in Claire."

It was a rather perplexing question, but Damier was able truthfully to answer it with: "I can again assure you that it is only through her relation with her mother that Claire interests me."

"And so she has assured me, again and again, and that all her affection was for me. And yet, now that I can claim her--now that I come, trusting and hoping, she turns from me; she mutters that I am too old; not rich enough. Ah, _mon Dieu_!"

Claire, clearly, Damier also saw, had never endangered her certain hold upon Monsieur Daunay's usefulness by confessing to him her expectation of larger achievements. She would evade him, and hold him, as long as she had need of him.

Part of her anger to-day had, no doubt, been due to the fact that the sudden crisis had forced her into a decisive attitude toward him while yet uncertain that she could with safety give him up. Yet, indeed, she had been able to avoid absolute decisiveness--so Monsieur Daunay's next words proved:

"She told me that all her affection was still mine, but owned to higher ambitions; she had never, she said, hidden from me that she was ambitious, and life now was opening new possibilities to her. Could affection and ambition be combined, had I a large fortune to gild my middle age and my unimportance, she would at once marry me."

"She is utterly unworthy of you," said Damier.

At this a faint, ironic smile crossed the Frenchman's face. "Ah, _mon ami_," he said, "you need not tell me that. If I love Claire, do not imagine, as I told you last night, that I am blinded by my love. I love her _d'un amour fou_--and I recognize it. She possesses me; she can do what she will with me; I should forgive her anything. But I know that I am a captive--and to no noble captor."

"Just heavens!" Damier broke out, indifferent, in his indignant pity, to his own interests, "shake off this obsession--and her with it! Leave her; go away; do not see her again. What misery if you were to marry her!"

"What will you? I adore her!" His helplessness seemed final. He presently went on: "But I came to-day to ask for your help. You occupy a peculiar position toward Madame Vicaud and her daughter; you have influence with them both. Use it in my favor, I beg of you. Intercede for me."

"Any influence I have shall, I promise you, be devoted to that purpose. I can hardly hope that your hopes will be realized; their realization could not be for your happiness. Pardon me, but have you never suspected that Claire is like her father--that she, too, is a miserable creature?"

For a long moment Daunay looked at him.

"She is like her father," he then said; "but have you never suspected, or, rather, do you not now see, that, because of that, my claim is all the stronger? What man not knowing it, marrying her in ignorance of it, would not repent? I should never repent. She is like him, if you will, but she is, irrevocably, the woman I love. More than that, she is the child I love; I have watched her grow up. From the beginning, she has been _ma petite Claire_; so she will be to the end--whatever that end may be."

Monsieur Daunay spoke with a profound feeling, a profound sincerity that the emotional tremor of his voice, the emotional tears in his eyes, only made the more characteristic and touching to Damier. He got up and grasped the Frenchman's hand in silence.

A knock at the door broke upon this compact of sympathy; a garçon brought a card to Damier and said that the lady waited for him in the salon below. The card was Lady Surfex's, and on it was written:

Must see you at once, on most important matter concerning Madame V.

"Wait for me here," Damier said to Monsieur Daunay. "This may concern you as well as me."

He found Lady Surfex in the drearily gaudy salon, her face ominous of ill tidings.

"My dear Eustace," she said,--they were alone, yet her voice was discreetly low,--"a horrid thing has happened--or is going to. I thought it best to come to you at once. Claire Vicaud runs away to-night with Lord Epsil."

And, as he stared at her in stricken silence:

"I found it out by chance. I was at Mrs. Wallingham's. They were there--Mademoiselle Vicaud and Lord Epsil. I watched them, indeed, with some uneasiness, as they sat, with ostentatious retirement, in a dim corner. I saw them go out together. Do you know, Eustace, my distrust of that girl and of that man--in justice to her, I must say it--was so great that I really was on the point of following them--asking her to let me drive her home; but I hesitated, people I knew came in, I had to speak to them, and so some time went by. Then, about half an hour after they were gone, Mrs. Wallingham came to me and whispered that a maid--a discreet English person who was dispensing tea in the dining-room--had overheard Lord Epsil saying to Mademoiselle Vicaud that they would take the night train to Dinard, and that his yacht was there. The woman came at once to her mistress. And now, Eustace, what can be done to save _her_?" They both knew to whom the pronoun referred; a conventional saving of Claire had significance only in reference to her mother.

Damier was steadying his thoughts.

"The night train." He looked at his watch. "There is time," he said.

"For what, Eustace?"

"There is only one chance. One can't appeal to her heart, or conscience--or even, it seems, to her ambition; but one might to her greed--offer her some firmer, surer competence. I had thought of it dimly before. I could catch that Dinard train--go with them--find some opportunity for seeing her alone before they reach Dinard--or before they reach the yacht."

"But, Eustace," her helpless wonder reproached his baseless optimism, "what _could_ you do? You can't beard the man; she is of age--goes willingly. What a situation!"

"I could offer her half of my income for life, if she would consent to return with me, and to marry a man who is devoted to her--who, I think, would forgive anything."

"Eustace, it would leave you almost poor!"

"Not quite, since the half is large enough, I trust, to tempt her! The whole would not be too much to give to save _her_ from this final blow."

"But can you--this man--will he?"

"He is up-stairs. I will see him, and start at once."

"And, Eustace--wait; can't we keep it from her--can't we think of some good lie?"

He had almost to smile at her intently thoughtful face.

"What possible lie can we think of? Claire will not come back to-night--she must know, sooner or later."

"But it is for to-night I want to spare her. Ah, I have it--no lie, either. I merely send a telegram, 'Claire may not return to-night: will explain to-morrow,' signed with my name; she will think Claire is passing the night with me; and then, you know, the girl may, at the last moment, decide not to go."

Damier had to yield to her eagerness. Up-stairs the words he had with Daunay were short, bitter, decisive. Averting his eyes from the unfortunate man's face, he put the case before him. He turned his back on him when he had spoken, went to the window, left him to an unobserved quaffing of the poisonous cup.

Monsieur Daunay's first words showed that he had quaffed it bravely and that his reason still stood firm.

"She must be mad," he said; "it is not like her."

"No, it is not like her. And I may tell you that I suspect revenge to be in part her motive. She had a terrible quarrel with her mother this afternoon."

Damier turned now and faced him.

"And now, Monsieur Daunay, are you willing to save her?"

"I am ready," the Frenchman said quietly; "with your help, I am ready to save her."

"I go at once, and with that assurance, then?"

"Yes; I am ready. Tell her that. Tell her, too, that if her mother will not receive her, she will find a home at my cousin's until our marriage can take place."

"Her mother will receive her," said Damier. "As you have forgiven, so she will forgive."

XVIII

THE long, hot, rushing hours had passed, for Damier, in a sort of stupor, the anæsthesia of one fixed idea. In the stuffy railway-carriage, his eyes on the dark square of the open window, where one saw vaguely the starlit depths of a midsummer night, he thought, with the odd detachment of a crisis, of the past day: the sunny morning walk with Claire--green leaves, purple shadows; the afternoon's supreme moment--a deep pulse of wonder in his heart, hardly to be seen in images; Lady Surfex among the palms and monstrous gilded pottery of the hotel salon; Monsieur Daunay's quiet, white face; the crowded Paris railway-station, and the glimpse he had caught in it of Claire and Lord Epsil. This most recent impression was also the most vivid, threw all the others into a blurred background where, with a new look of woe, only Madame Vicaud's face glimmered clearly.

The enforced pause at the height of his resolution made both the past and the future half illusory. The present, with not its usual flashing impermanence, had, for hours, been the same, had stopped, as it were, at an instant of vigilant alertness, and held him in it rigidly. Until the object of that vigilance, that alertness, were attained, he could not look forward or make projects. The chance for seeing Claire alone could not come, probably, until Dinard was reached. There, in the hurry of arrival, he might snatch a word with her. It would only be necessary to speak the word, to put the alternative before her. Entreaty would be useless; all the argument possible was the chink of gold in two hands; all the hope, that his chink might be the louder.

Shortly after ten o'clock the train drew up in the Rennes station. Damier had let no such opportunity escape him, and he again stepped from his compartment and stood looking toward the part of the train where he knew were Claire and her cavalier. As he looked he saw the tall figure of the Englishman stroll across the platform to the refreshment-buffet. The light fell full on his long, smooth, pink face,--a papier-mâché pink,--on his long, high nose and whity-brown mustache. Damier darted forward. In an instant he was at the door, still ajar, of the compartment that Lord Epsil had just left. He saw, under the yellow glare of the lamp, a confusion of traveling-bags, rugs, bandboxes (Claire had evidently shopped), newspapers and magazines; a large box of bonbons lay on a seat, its contents half rifled, its papers strewing the floor; and, settled back in a corner, her shoulders huddled together in a graceful sleepiness, was Claire. A long silk traveling-cloak fell over her white dress; the winged white hat of the morning was pushed a little to one side as her head leaned against the cushioned carriage; a drooping curve of loosened hair, shining in the light like molten brass, fell over her cheek and neck; her profile, half hidden, was at once petulant and relaxed with drowsiness.

Damier did not hesitate. He sprang into the carriage. Not touching the girl, he leaned over her. "Claire," he said.

In an instant she had started into erectness, staring stupefied, too stupefied for shame or anger.

"I have only a moment," said Damier, speaking with a clear-cut dryness of utterance. "If you will come back with me, and marry Monsieur Daunay,--he knows all and will marry you,--half of my income is yours for life."

After the first stare she had blinked in opening her eyes to the light and to the sudden apparition; the eyes were now fixed widely on him; they looked like two deep, black holes.

"It is a bribe," she said.

"Call it so if you will."

"It shows your scorn for me."

"Comprehension of you, rather."

"And if I don't?"

"If you don't I will challenge this man--and fight him. I am an excellent fencer, an excellent shot."

She looked at him, half scoffing, yet half believing. "Englishmen don't fight duels."

"This one will."

"He might kill you."

"I might kill him; you would have to take the risk."

She shrugged her shoulders. "_Bien!_ I understand, too. I will fulfil myself." She half rose, then sank again. "How much?" He mentioned the sum--not a small one. "Make it two thirds," said Claire, keeping her dilated eyes upon him with an effect of final and defiant revelation.

"Two thirds, then," he assented, in the steadied voice of one who does not dare hurry indecision. Yet, even now, she did not rise.

"One more condition, please. I do not see my mother again. Let us say, if you like, that I am ashamed to meet her."

"She has not been told--of this."

"Yes, she has," said Claire. "I wrote and told her." There was the satisfaction of achievement in the way she said it. "Oh, yes; she knows."

"Yet, even after that,--your vengeance, I suppose,--I hardly dare make the promise for her,--she can forgive--even this."

"Ah," and the hoarse note was in Claire's voice, "but I can't take forgiveness from her. I have left the world where such episodes as this need forgiveness. Tolerance is now all that I will endure--and she will never tolerate. No; I will not come with you; I will not return to Monsieur Daunay and to respectability--unless you promise that I shall never see her again."

"I promise it, then, if it is the condition."

"You accept? _Bien!_" Claire sprang up, and ripping an illustration from a magazine, she scribbled on the blank back, "Have decided, after all, that I won't come," transfixed it with a hat-pin to the cushioned back of Lord Epsil's vacated seat, then, as rapidly, reached for two of the bandboxes, pulled them, rattling, from the racks, stooped and jerked a large pasteboard box from under a seat, and, encumbered as she already was, caught up from among the rugs and bags several smaller packages, dexterously holding them to her sides with her elbows.

Damier, who had stared, hardly comprehending, gripped her wrist. "Put them down." She gazed round in sincere amazement; then, with quite a humorous laugh, dropped the booty. "I really forgot! No, it wouldn't be fair play, would it?--though, I confess, I should like to take a little vengeance; he has irritated me, been too complacent, too assured. This, too?" She touched the silk traveling-cloak. Damier, without speaking, stripped it off her; then, catching her by the arm, he almost dragged her from the carriage, for her feet stumbled among the dressing-cases and the abandoned boxes.

He found, as they almost ran along the dim platform across to the one opposite, and as he pushed her into a compartment of the Paris train that stood there, that she was laughing. The adventure of it, the excitement, Lord Epsil's discomfiture, appealed, evidently, to her sense of mirth.

There were other occupants of the carriage, and Damier was thankful for it. He did not want to talk to Claire. To reproach her would make him as ridiculous as beating a tin pan in the expectation of response other than a mocking cachinnation; not to reproach might seem to condone by comprehension. Yet, as she sank back into a corner, settled her shoulder in it, he saw that there was emotion under the laughter, that it was not only the tin-pan rattle. He could interpret it as almost a regret--a regret for something against which she had always rebelled, from which she had now finally freed herself, a sudden realization that forever she had lost the standing upon which he had found her. Yet, over this trace of emotion and suffering, that, to Damier, was more piteous than anything he had yet seen in her, she smiled at him, with half-dropped lids. It was the look, with her a new one, of brazening a shame. Already her nature had retaliated upon the wrong she had done it by fixing in her face a more apparent ugliness of expression. She glanced round at the sleepy, respectable occupants of the carriage, their sleepiness, however, keeping an eye upon this startling young person in her white dress.

"Before we relapse into an irrevocable silence," she said, "let me inform you--it will complete your evil opinion of me--that I didn't really care about him; I cared for his caring about me--though at moments even that fatigued me, _il m'embêtait quelquefois_; but then, I was glad to be revenged."

"Upon whom? For what?"

"Upon you both--for making me feel that I was not of your world."

"We did not make you feel it, Claire."

For some moments they were silent, as the train moved slowly from the station, and then she said:

"Where will you take me?"

"To his cousin's, Mademoiselle Daunay's. I have arranged all with him."

A look, almost tremulous under its attempt at a light sneer, crossed her face.

"What forgiveness! _Il est un peu lâche, vous savez._"

"Try, Claire, to deserve such touching _lâcheté_."

Again Claire was, for some moments, silent; then, yawning slightly, yet, again his acuteness guessed, affectedly, she said, settling her shoulder more decisively in her corner:

"There is the more hope for my deserving it since now I am rich. You may make your mind easy about my future. I have got all that I ever really wanted." It was the new and brazen note over the new shame; but as he looked at the face that first pretended to sleep, and that eventually did sleep, was not the brass the curious, anomalous shield that nature put around something growing--around a soul that at last, with a faint, half-conscious thrill, felt upon it the awakening breath of suffering?

XIX

THE morning was still fresh when Damier walked down the Rue B---- next day. Clear early sunlight fell upon the houses opposite Madame Vicaud's, glittering on their upper windows, gilding their austerity; but the depths of the street were still cool and unshadowed.

The concierge was sweeping out the courtyard, and fixed on Damier a cogitating eye; his early visit and Claire's absence were, no doubt, to her vigilant curiosity, symptoms of something unusual. The cogitation, though mingled with relief, was repeated at the door above in Angélique's look. She was plainly glad to see him. Madame Vicaud had sat up all night, she volunteered, quite as if accepting him as a member of the family, privileged to confidences; she thought that madame had hoped for mademoiselle's return, and she feared that the letter that had arrived from mademoiselle an hour before had much distressed madame. Perhaps Monsieur Damier could persuade her to have some coffee; she had eaten no dinner the night before, nor breakfast this morning. Damier promised to persuade, and Angélique ushered him into the salon.

He had never before seen it flooded with sunlight,--for this was his first morning visit,--and the windows overlooking the garden faced a radiant sky.

His eyes were dazzled, and the dark figure that rose to meet him seemed to waver in the light.

The calamity that had befallen her, at variance with the joyous setting in which he found her, showed in her white face--her eyes, still, as it were, astonished from the shock, dark with misery and a night of watching. On the table near which she had been sitting were a burnt-out candle, Lady Surfex's telegram of the night before, and a letter, opening its large displayal of vigorous handwriting to the revealing day: Claire's handwriting, Claire's letter of farewell. Damier took Madame Vicaud's hands and looked at her; the astonishment of her eyes hurt him more than their dry misery: after all, then, she had been so unprepared.

"I know all," she said.

"Not all."

"She has left me--with that man; she has written to me."

"Not all," he repeated.

"Is there more? There cannot be worse."

"There is better. She is safe."

"Safe? Do you mean that she did not go?"

Her eyes, with their sudden leap of light, burned him.

"No; she did go. But I followed them; I brought her back."

"Back to me? She was frightened at what she had done?" she again asked, her eyes still burning, but more dimly, upon him. His eyes dropped before them; looking down at the wasted hands he held, he said:

"No, dearest, not to you--to Monsieur Daunay. She is to marry him. She is with his cousin now."