Part 29

"Sorrow!" he echoed, interrupting her and springing to his feet with an impassioned gesture--"Woman,--genius,--angel, whatever you are, do not speak of _one_ sorrow for me! I have a thousand thousand sorrows!--aye a million million, that are as little flames about my heart, and as deeply seated as the centres of the universe! The foul and filthy crimes of men,--the base deceits and cruelties of women,--the ruthless, murderous ingratitude of children,--the scorn of good, the martyrdom of intellect, the selfishness, the avarice, the sensuality of human life, the hideous blasphemy and sin of the creature to the Creator--these are _my_ endless sorrows!--these keep me wretched and in chains, when I would fain be free. These create hell around me, and endless torture,--these bind and crush me and pervert my being till I become what I dare not name to myself, or to others. And yet, ... as the eternal God is my witness, ... I do not think I am as bad as the worst man living! I may tempt--but I do not pursue,--I take the lead in many lives, yet I make the way I go so plain that those who follow me do so by their own choice and free will more than by my persuasion!" He paused,--then continued in a softer tone--"You look afraid of me,--but be assured you never had less cause for terror. You have truth and purity--I honour both. You will have none of my advice or assistance in the making of your life's history,--to-night therefore we part, to meet no more on earth. Never again, Mavis Clare!--no, not through all your quiet days of sweet and contented existence will I cross your path,--before Heaven I swear it!"

"But why?" asked Mavis gently, approaching him now as she spoke, with a soft grace of movement, and laying her hand on his arm--"Why do you speak with such a passion of self-reproach? What dark cloud is on your mind? Surely you have a noble nature,--and I feel that I have wronged you in my thoughts, ... you must forgive me--I have mistrusted you--"

"You do well to mistrust me!" he answered, and with these words he caught both her hands and held them in his own, looking at her full in the face with eyes that flashed like jewels, "Your instinct teaches you rightly. Would there were many more like you to doubt me and repel me! One word,--if, when I am gone, you ever think of me, think that I am more to be pitied than the veriest paralysed and starving wretch that ever crawled on earth,--for he, perchance, has hope--and I have none. And when you pray for me--for I hold you to this promise,--pray for one who dares not pray for himself! You know the words, 'Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil'? To-night you have been led into temptation, though you knew it not, but you have delivered yourself from evil as only a true soul can. And now farewell! In life I shall see you no more:--in death,--well! I have attended many death-beds in response to the invitations of the moribund,--but I shall not be present at yours! Perhaps, when your parting spirit is on the verge between darkness and light, you may know who I was, and am!--and you may thank God with your last breath that we parted to-night--as we do now--forever!"

He loosened his grasp of her,--she fell back from him pale and terrified,--for there was something now in the dark beauty of his face that was unnatural and appalling. A sombre shadow clouded his brows,--his eyes had gleams in them as of fire,--and a smile was on his lips, half tender, half cruel. His strange expression moved even me to a sense of fear, and I shivered with sudden cold, though the air was warm and balmy. Slowly retreating, Mavis moved away, looking round at him now and then as she went, in wistful wonder and alarm,--till in a minute or two her slight figure in its shimmering silken white robe, had vanished among the trees. I lingered, hesitating and uncertain what to do,--then finally determining to get back to the house if possible without being noticed, I made one step, when Lucio's voice, scarcely raised, addressed me--

"Well, eavesdropper! Why did you not come out of the shadow of that elm-tree and see the play to a better advantage?"

Surprised and confused, I advanced, mumbling some unintelligible excuse.

"You saw a pretty bit of acting here," he went on, striking a match and lighting a cigar the while he regarded me coolly, his eyes twinkling with their usual mockery--"you know my theory, that all men and all women are purchaseable for gold? Well, I wanted to try Mavis Clare. She rejected all my advantageous offers, as you must have heard, and I could only make matters smooth by asking her to pray for me. That I did this very melodramatically I hope you will admit? A woman of that dreamy idealistic temperament always likes to imagine that there is a man who is grateful for her prayers!"

"You seemed very much in earnest about it!" I said, vexed with myself that he had caught me spying.

"Why, of course!" he responded, thrusting his arm familiarly through mine--"I had an audience! Two fastidious critics of dramatic art heard me rant my rantings,--I had to do my best!"

"Two critics?" I repeated perplexedly.

"Yes. You on one side,--Lady Sibyl on the other. Lady Sibyl rose, after the custom of fashionable beauties at the opera, before the last scene, in order to get home in good time for supper!"

He laughed wildly and discordantly, and I felt desperately uncomfortable.

"You must be mistaken Lucio--" I said--"That _I_ listened I admit,--and it was wrong of me to do so,--but my wife would never condescend ..."

"Ah, then it must have been a sylph of the woods that glided out of the shadow with a silken train behind her and diamonds in her hair!" he retorted gaily--"Tut Geoffrey!--don't look so crestfallen. I have done with Mavis Clare, and she with me. I have not been making love to her,--I have simply, just to amuse myself, tested her character,--and I find it stronger than I thought. The combat is over. She will never go my way,--nor, I fear, shall I ever go hers!"

"Upon my word, Lucio," I said with some irritation--"Your disposition seems to grow more and more erratic and singular every day!"

"Does it not!" he answered with a droll affectation of interested surprise in himself--"I am a curious creature altogether! Wealth is mine and I care not a jot for it,--power is mine and I loathe its responsibility;--in fact I would rather be anything but what I am! Look at the lights of your 'home, sweet home' Geoffrey!" this he said as we emerged from among the trees on to the moonlit lawn, from whence could be seen the shining of the electric lamps in the drawing-room--"Lady Sibyl is there,--an enchanting and perfect woman, who lives but to welcome you to her embracing arms! Fortunate man!--who would not envy you! Love!--who would, who could exist without it--save me! Who, in Europe at least, would forego the delights of kissing,--(which the Japanese by-the-by consider a disgusting habit),--without embraces,--and all those other endearments which are supposed to dignify the progress of true love! One never tires of these things,--there is no satiety! I wish I could love somebody!"

"So you can, if you like,"--I said, with a little uneasy laugh.

"I cannot. It is not in me. You heard me tell Mavis Clare as much. I have it in my power to make other people fall in love, somewhat after the dexterous fashion practised by match-making mothers,--but for myself, love on this planet is too low a thing--too brief in duration. Last night, in a dream,--I have strange dreams at times,--I saw one whom possibly I could love,--but she was a Spirit, with eyes more lustrous than the morning, and a form as transparent as flame;--she could sing sweetly, and I watched her soaring upward, and listened to her song. It was a wild song, and to many mortal ears meaningless,--it was something like this ..." and his rich baritone pealed lusciously forth in melodious tune--

Into the Light, Into the heart of the fire! To the innermost core of the deathless flame I ascend,--I aspire! Under me rolls the whirling Earth With the noise of a myriad wheels that run Ever round and about the sun,-- Over me circles the splendid heaven Strewn with the stars of morn and even, And I a queen Of the air serene, Float with my flag-like wings unfurled, Alone--alone--'twixt God and the world!

Here he broke off with a laugh. "She was a strange Spirit,"--he said--"because she could see nothing but herself ''twixt God and the world.' She was evidently quite unaware of the numerous existing barriers put up by mankind between themselves and their Maker. I wonder what unenlightened sphere she came from!"

I looked at him in mingled wonder and impatience.

"You talk wildly,"--I said--"And you sing wildly. Of things that mean nothing, and _are_ nothing."

He smiled, lifting his eyes to the moon, now shining her fullest and brightest.

"True!" he replied--"Things which have meaning and are valuable, have all to do with money or appetite, Geoffrey! There is no wider outlook evidently! But we were speaking of love, and I hold that love should be eternal as hate. Here you have the substance of my religious creed if I have any,--that there are two spiritual forces ruling the universe--love and hate,--and that their incessant quarrel creates the general confusion of life. Both contend one against the other,--and only at Judgment-Day will it be proved which is the strongest. I am on the side of Hate myself,--for at present Hate has scored all the victories worth winning, while Love has been so often martyred that there is only the poor ghost of it left on earth."

At that moment my wife's figure appeared at the drawing-room window, and Lucio threw away his half-smoked cigar.

"Your guardian-angel beckons!" he said, looking at me an odd expression of something like pity mingled with disdain,--"Let us go in."

XXX

The very next night but one after Lucio's strange interview with Mavis Clare, the thunderbolt destined to wreck my life and humiliate me to the dust, fell with appalling suddenness. No warning given!--it came at a moment when I had dared to deem myself happy. All that day,--the last day I was ever to know of pride or self-gratulation,--I had enjoyed life to the full; it was a day too in which Sibyl had seemed transformed to a sweeter, gentler woman than I had hitherto known her,--when all her attractions of beauty and manner were apparently put forth to captivate and enthrall me as though she were yet to be wooed and won. Or,--did she mean to bewitch and subjugate Lucio? Of this I never thought,--never dreamed:--I only saw in my wife an enchantress of the most voluptuous and delicate loveliness,--a woman whose very garments seemed to cling to her tenderly as though proud of clothing so exquisite a form,--a creature whose every glance was brilliant, whose every smile was a ravishment,--and whose voice, attuned to the softest and most caressing tones appeared in its every utterance to assure me of a deeper and more lasting love than I had yet enjoyed. The hours flew by on golden wings,--we all three,--Sibyl, myself and Lucio,--had attained, as I imagined, to a perfect unity of friendship and mutual understanding,--we had passed that last day together in the outlying woods of Willowsmere, under a gorgeous canopy of autumn leaves, through which the sun shed mellow beams of rose and gold,--we had had an _al fresco_ luncheon in the open air,--Lucio had sung for us wild old ballads and love-madrigals till the very foliage had seemed to tremble with joy at the sound of such entrancing melody,--and not a cloud had marred the perfect peace and pleasure of the time. Mavis Clare was not with us,--and I was glad. Somehow I felt that of late she had been more or less a discordant element whenever she had joined our party. I admired her,--in a sort of fraternal half-patronizing way I even loved her,--nevertheless I was conscious that her ways were not as our ways,--her thoughts not as our thoughts. I placed the fault on her of course; I concluded that it was because she had what I elected to call 'literary egoism,' instead of by its rightful name, the spirit of honourable independence. I never considered the inflated quality of my own egoism,--the poor pride of a 'cash and county' position, which is the pettiest sort of vain-glory anyone can indulge in,--and after turning the matter over in my mind, I decided that Mavis was a very charming young woman with great literary gifts, and an amazing pride, which made it totally impossible for her to associate with many 'great' people, so-called,--as she would never descend to the necessary level of flunkeyish servility which they expected, and which _I_ certainly demanded. I should almost have been inclined to relegate her to 'Grub Street,' had not a faint sense of justice as well as shame held me back from doing her that indignity even in my thoughts. However I was too much impressed with my own vast resources of unlimited wealth, to realize the fact that anyone who, like Mavis, earns independence by intellectual work and worth alone, is entitled to feel a far greater pride than those who by mere chance of birth or heritage become the possessors of millions. Then again, Mavis Clare's literary position was, though I liked her personally, always a kind of reproach to me when I thought of my own abortive efforts to win the laurels of fame. So that on the whole I was glad she did not spend that day with us in the woods;--of course, if I had paid any attention to the "trifles which make up the sum of life" I should have remembered that Lucio had told her he would "meet her no more on earth,"--but I judged this to be a mere trifle of hasty and melodramatic speech, without any intentional meaning.

So my last twenty-four hours of happiness passed away in halcyon serenity,--I felt a sense of deepening pleasure in existence, and I began to believe that the future had brighter things in store for me than I had lately ventured to expect. Sibyl's new phase of gentleness and tenderness towards me, combined with her rare beauty, seemed to augur that the misunderstandings between us would be of short duration, and that her nature, too early rendered harsh and cynical by a 'society' education would soften in time to that beautiful womanliness which is, after all, woman's best charm. Thus I thought, in blissful and contented reverie, reclining under the branching autumnal foliage, with my fair wife beside me, and listening to the rich tones of my friend Lucio's magnificent voice pealing forth sonorous, wild melodies, as the sunset deepened in the sky and the twilight shadows fell. Then came the night--the night which dropped only for a few hours over the quiet landscape, but for ever over me!

We had dined late, and, pleasantly fatigued with our day in the open air, had retired early. I had latterly grown a heavy sleeper, and I suppose I must have slumbered some hours, when I was awakened suddenly as though by an imperative touch from some unseen hand. I started up in my bed,--the night-lamp was burning dimly, and by its glimmer I saw that Sibyl was no longer at my side. My heart gave one bound against my ribs and then almost stood still--a sense of something unexpected and calamitous chilled my blood. I pushed aside the embroidered silken hangings of the bed and peered into the room,--it was empty. Then I rose hastily, put on my clothes and went to the door,--it was carefully shut, but not locked as it had been when we retired for the night. I opened it without the least noise, and looked out into the long passage,--no one there! Immediately opposite the bedroom door there was a winding oak staircase leading down to a broad corridor, which in former times had been used as a music-room or picture-gallery,--an ancient organ, still sweet of tone, occupied one end of it with dull golden pipes towering up to the carved and embossed ceiling,--the other end was lit by a large oriel window like that of a church, filled with rare old stained glass, representing in various niches the lives of the saints, the centre subject being the martyrdom of St Stephen. Advancing with soft caution to the balustrade overlooking this gallery, I gazed down into it, and for a moment could see nothing on the polished floor but the criss-cross patterns made by the moonlight falling through the great window,--but presently, as I watched breathlessly, wondering where Sibyl could have gone to at this time of night, I saw a dark tall Shadow waver across the moonlit network of lines, and I heard the smothered sound of voices. With my pulses beating furiously, and a sensation of suffocation in my throat,--full of strange thoughts and suspicions which I dared not define, I crept slowly and stealthily down the stair, till as my foot touched the last step I saw--what nearly struck me to the ground with a shock of agony--and I had to draw back and bite my lips hard to repress the cry that nearly escaped them. There,--there before me in the full moonlight, with the colours of the red and blue robes of the painted saints on the window glowing blood-like and azure about her, knelt my wife,--arrayed in a diaphanous garment of filmy white which betrayed rather than concealed the outline of her form,--her wealth of hair falling about her in wild disorder,--her hands clasped in supplication,--her pale face upturned; and above her towered the dark imposing figure of Lucio! I stared at the twain with dry burning eyes,--what did this portend? Was she--my wife--false? Was he--my friend--a traitor?

"Patience----patience!----" I muttered to myself--"This is a piece of acting doubtless----such as chanced the other night with Mavis Clare!----patience!----let us hear this----this comedy!" And, drawing myself close up against the wall, I leaned there, scarcely drawing breath, waiting for _her_ voice,--for _his_;--when they spoke I should know,----yes, I should know all! And I fastened my looks on them as they stood there,--vaguely wondering even in my tense anguish, at the fearful light on Lucio's face,--a light which could scarcely be the reflection of the moon, as he backed the window,--and at the scorn of his frowning brows. What terrific humour swayed him?--why did he, even to my stupefied thought appear more than human?--why did his very beauty seem hideous at that moment, and his aspect fiendish? Hush--hush! _She_ spoke,--my wife,--I heard her every word--heard all and endured all, without falling dead at her feet in the extremity of my dishonour and despair!

"I love you!" she wailed--"Lucio, I love you, and my love is killing me! Be merciful!--have pity on my passion!--love me for one hour, one little hour!--it is not much to ask, and afterwards,--do with me what you will,--torture me, brand me an outcast in the public sight, curse me before Heaven--I care nothing--I am yours body and soul--I love you!"

Her accents vibrated with mad idolatrous pleading,--I listened infuriated, but dumb. "Hush,--hush!" I told myself "This is a comedy--not yet played out!" And I waited, with every nerve strained, for Lucio's reply. It came, accompanied by a laugh, low and sarcastic.

"You flatter me!" he said--"I regret I am unable to return the compliment!"

My heart gave a throb of relief and fierce joy,--almost I could have joined in his ironical laughter. She--Sibyl--dragged herself nearer to him.

"Lucio--Lucio!" she murmured--"Have you a heart? Can you reject me when I pray to you thus?--when I offer you all myself,--all that I am, or ever hope to be? Am I so repugnant to you? Many men would give their lives if I would say to them what I say to you,--but they are nothing to me--you alone are my world,--the breath of my existence!--ah, Lucio, can you not believe, will you not realize how deeply I love you!"

He turned towards her with a sudden fierce movement that startled me,--and the cloud of scorn upon his brows grew darker.

"I know you love me!" he said, and from where I stood I saw the cold derisive smile flash from his lips to his eyes in lightning-like mockery--"I have always known it! Your vampire soul leaped to mine at the first glance I ever gave you,--you were a false foul thing from the first, and you recognized your master! Yes--your Master!" for she had uttered a faint cry as if in fear,--and he, stooping, snatched her two hands and grasped them hard in his own--"Listen to the truth of yourself for once from one who is not afraid to speak it!--you love me,--and truly your body and soul are mine to claim, if I so choose! You married with a lie upon your lips; you swore fidelity to your husband before God, with infidelity already in your thoughts, and by your own act made the mystical blessing a blasphemy and a curse! Wonder not then that the curse has fallen! I knew it all!--the kiss I gave you on your wedding-day put fire in your blood and sealed you mine!--why, you would have fled to me that very night, had I demanded it,--had I loved you as you love me,--that is, if you choose to call the disease of vanity and desire that riots in your veins, by such a name as love! But now hear _me_!" and as he held her two wrists he looked down upon her with such black wrath depicted in his face as seemed to create a darkness round him where he stood,--"I hate you! Yes--I hate you, and all such women as you! For you corrupt the world,--you turn good to evil,--you deepen folly into crime,--with the seduction of your nude limbs and lying eyes, you make fools, cowards and beasts of men! When you die, your bodies generate foulness,--things of the mould and slime are formed out of the flesh that was once fair for man's delight,--you are no use in life--you become poison in death,--I hate you all! I read your soul--it is an open book to me--and it is branded with a name given to those who are publicly vile, but which should, of strict right and justice, be equally bestowed on women of your position and type, who occupy pride and place in this world's standing, and who have not the excuse of poverty for selling themselves to the devil!"

He ceased abruptly and with passion, making a movement as though to fling her from him,--but she clung to his arm,--clung with all the pertinacity of the loathly insect he had taken from the bosom of the dead Egyptian woman and made a toy of to amuse his leisure! And I, looking on and listening, honoured him for his plain speaking, for his courage in telling this shameless creature what she was in the opinion of an honest man, without glozing over her outrageous conduct for the sake of civility or social observance. My friend,--my more than friend! He was true,--he was loyal--he had neither desire nor intent to betray or dishonour me. My heart swelled with gratitude to him, and also with a curious sense of feeble self-pity,--compassionating myself intensely, I could have sobbed aloud in nervous fury and pain, had not my desire to hear more, repressed my personal excitement and emotion. I watched my wife wonderingly--what had become of her pride that she still knelt before the man who had taunted her with such words as should have been beyond all endurance?