CHAPTER VI.
EVE IN THE GARDEN.
But that clear voice recalled me ere I had taken a dozen steps.
“What is it? Whither do you go?” she asked. “Not forward to Poitiers at this hour!”
“Oh, no!” I answered. “I was merely going to—to think—to fight it out. But I was rude. Pardon me. I—I did not realize what I was doing.”
“You are pardoned,” she said; and her voice was siren-sweet. “Perhaps I can help you to fight it out, my friend—at least I should like to help you. Besides I have not yet done talking to you. I have some further advice at your disposal, if you care for it.”
“I do care for it,” I said; and turned instantly back to her. “You are very kind.”
“I wish to be kind,” she murmured; and looked up at me with a smile that set my head to whirling. “But before I proceed,” she added, “you must sit here beside me. I can’t talk to you when you are prowling up and down like that. I feel as though I were tête-à-tête with a wild animal, and it disconcerts me.”
She patted the seat with an inviting hand, and smiled again that alluring smile. I sat down obediently and looked at her, noting how the moonlight touched her hair with silver and gave a strange glory to her face.
“Since you are betrothed to another, M. de Tavernay,” she began, turning in the seat so that she faced me, “doubly betrothed, with a tie there is no breaking, and since I have satisfied myself that you are a man of honor, I feel that I can be quite frank with you—almost as I should be with my own brother, did I have one. What is it?” she asked, noticing the cloud which swept across my countenance.
“Nothing, nothing,” I hastened to say. “Only there was a sting in the words, as well as kindness.”
“A sting?” she repeated. “I fear you are very thin-skinned, M. de Tavernay.”
“Perhaps I am,” I admitted humbly. “I shall try to remedy the fault.”
“Do,” she urged. “But I was about to say that you have not yet wholly explained yourself.”
“I think I have told the whole story,” I said, casting my mind back over its details. “I can think of nothing that I have omitted.”
She sat for a moment looking at me, her lips parted, the color coming and going in her cheeks.
“You said some time ago,” she went on at last, “that I was concerned with this story—that it was for that reason you desired my advice.”
“Yes, that is true, mademoiselle.”
“Well, you have not yet explained to me what you meant by that, my friend.”
A sudden trembling seized me as I met her eyes.
“I thought you knew,” I began hoarsely. “I thought you guessed.”
“I am not good at guessing,” she said, looking up at me, her eyes radiant, her hands against her heart.
“I meant,” I stammered, “I meant——”
But my lips refused to form the words; my heart turned faint——
“Oh,” she said, in a low voice. “I understand;” and she played for a moment with the rose at her bosom. “You mean, then, that it is I who have wrought this change in you?”
“Yes,” I assented; and caught my breath to choke back the sob which rose in my throat.
She looked at me with a little frown, which changed in an instant to an arch smile.
“Come,” she said, “confess that you are easily impressed, and that you will forget as easily.”
“I shall never forget!”
“Remember the proverb—‘That which flames at a touch dies at a breath.’”
“I care nothing for proverbs. I know my own heart.”
“But consider, my friend;” and she leaned forward in her earnestness until she almost touched me, until the sweet glow of her body penetrated to me. “You have known me only a few hours. I am the first woman you have met on riding forth into the world. You mistake a goose for a swan. I assure you that there are many women beside whom you would not give me a second glance. Indeed, it is very possible that your betrothed may be one of them. So you will soon recover from this madness; in a day or two it will have quite passed away. The path of honor leads you to Poitiers and there you will find happiness as well. In time you will come to wonder at this night’s emotion, and to laugh at it. You will look back and you will say to yourself, ‘What a fool I was!’”
“It is true,” I said slowly, “that I may be a fool in desiring what I can never hope to possess; but at least, mademoiselle, do me the justice to believe that I shall never cease to desire it. I do not know how to tell you, for I have no skill in the phrases of love. I only know that you have touched in me a chord which will never cease to beat until the heart itself is still. It is not your beauty, though you are very beautiful; it is not the tone of your voice, though that is very sweet; it is not your smile, though that drives me to madness. It is something beyond and behind all that; it is something which for want of a better name I call your soul—that which looks out of your eyes so clear and pure that I tremble before it, knowing my own unworthiness. It is your soul that I love, mademoiselle, and no lapse of time, no chance of fortune—nothing in earth or heaven—can alter that love one atom.”
I have heard that love gives eyes to the blind, ears to the deaf, a tongue to the dumb. I know that at that moment, as my heart burned within me and the words rushed unbidden to my lips, the world appeared a small and trivial thing, with nothing worthy in it save me and this woman and the love I had for her. I have no words to describe the emotion which shook me, the passion which flowed in my veins and took possession of my being. It was as if a sudden miracle had been wrought in me, a sublimation of everything unworthy; it was as though I had climbed a mountain peak and come out under the clear stars, in the thin pure air, with nothing between myself and God. I have never again reached a height quite so sublime, or experienced a bliss quite so poignant.
I was too blinded for the moment by my own emotion to see my companion clearly; only her starry eyes I saw, and her parted lips, and her clasped hands. Then she drew away from me and seemed to shake herself as though awaking from a dream; and a cold breath blew upon me, and I, too, awoke. The spell was broken, the vision ended, the glorious moment gone.
“Indeed,” she said, her voice not wholly steady, but her eyes instinct with mischief, “it seems to me that you are fairly eloquent, M. de Tavernay, despite your lack of practise. I tremble to think what you will be in a year’s time.”
“I shall be just what I am now,” I said doggedly, wounded at her tone. “You have sounded the height and depth of my eloquence.”
“And am I to believe all this?”
“If you do not, mademoiselle, it is not because it is not true.”
“But your betrothed,” she persisted, “has she no attractions?”
“I have not seen her since she was a child of eight,” I answered coldly. “I remember only that she had white hair and a red nose.”
She burst into a peal of laughter which shook her from head to foot, and which I thought exceedingly ill-timed.
“Many children have,” she said, when she could speak articulately. “I should not allow such little things as those to prejudice me against her. No doubt her hair is darker now, and that redness of the nose may have been only temporary. Perhaps her memory of you is no more complimentary.”
“That is very likely,” I admitted.
“Think, then,” she cried, “how agreeably she will be surprised when she sees you! Unless indeed she has already lost her heart to some handsome fellow of Poitiers.”
“I trust not,” I said. “I trust not.”
“And why?” she queried sharply.
“I would not wish her to be unhappy also.”
She sat a moment silent at that.
“You mean that even if she has,” she asked at last, “you will hold her to the betrothal?”
“Oh, no!” I answered, instantly; “she would be free—that is, if she chose to be free.”
“If she chose to be?”
“Her father would hold her to her oath,” said I.
“And you believe he would have a right to do that?” she demanded, wheeling upon me fiercely. “You believe that he would have a right to compel her obedience, to force her into this marriage, to make her miserable?”
“Yes,” I answered, after a moment’s thought, “I am sure he would. The law is very clear.”
“Oh, the law!” she cried, impatiently. “I was not thinking of the law—I care nothing for the law—a poor, stumbling device of stupid men, whose meaning even they do not understand! Would he have the right?”
“Yes,” I repeated, “I believe he would. He had passed his word.”
“And his word is of more importance than his daughter’s happiness?” she demanded, her eyes blazing.
“Undoubtedly,” I answered, feeling myself on firm ground at last. “His honor is of more importance to him than anything else on earth.”
“Honor!” she echoed, contemptuously. “An empty word men frighten women with!”
“No!” I cried. “A rock to cling to in time of storm, even as I am clinging to it now.”
She sat for a moment looking at me darkly.
“You men are all alike,” she said at last. “Lords of creation, before whom we women must bow in all humility.”
“Even as you are doing at this moment,” I retorted.
She laughed at that, and the cloud vanished from her face.
“Thank you,” she said. “After all, I was tilting at windmills. There is small danger that your betrothed has given her heart into another’s keeping. More probably she is guarding it sacredly for you. A girl has not a man’s opportunities for falling in love—nor a man’s temptations. Besides—oh, I can be frank with you, for I feel almost like your sister!—permit me to tell you, monsieur, that I think you a very handsome fellow, quite capable of consoling her for the loss of any girlish flame!”
I did not like the words, nor the tone in which they were uttered. They lacked that sympathy, that consideration, which I felt I had the right to expect from her. Perhaps, too, my vanity was wounded by my very evident failure to touch her heart.
“You are not treating me fairly, mademoiselle,” I said, “nor kindly.”
“You will pardon me,” she retorted, her face fairly beaming, “if I fail to see the situation in such tragic light as you. It has for me an element of humor.”
“It is fortunate that I at least continue to amuse you,” I said grimly.
“Yes; there are not many people who amuse me. Besides, I am quite certain that a year hence, when you look back at this night, you also will be amused. I am flattered by your passion, since it proves that under certain favorable circumstances I am not devoid of attraction. But I should be extremely foolish to take it seriously—more especially since you are already betrothed.”
“You are right,” I assented bitterly. “I am a coward to try to entangle you.”
“Oh, you will not entangle me,” she answered easily. “I shall take good care to keep a tight grip on my heart. But all that does not prevent me liking you immensely, M. de Tavernay. I have often wished,” she went on, gazing at me from under half-closed lashes in a most provoking fashion, “that it were possible for me to have as a friend a man in whom I could wholly trust—a man young enough to understand the illusions of youth—young enough not to adopt toward me that paternal attitude which I detest—one whose kindness and sympathy I could always count upon and in whom I could confide. But I told myself that such a wish could never be fulfilled; that such friendships were too dangerous, that such a man did not exist. And yet, behold, here I have found him and he is bound in such a manner that there is no danger for either of us.”
“I would not be too sure of that, mademoiselle,” I interrupted. “The bonds have not yet been forged which could not somehow be broken.”
“But bonds of honor!” she protested. “It is your word!”
“Yes, even those! There is a limit to endurance;” and I gripped my hands together to keep them away from her.
“Well, that limit shall not be passed, M. de Tavernay,” she assured me, her lips breaking into a smile, and, quite regardless of her danger, she leaned nearer to me. “Besides I have a deep confidence in you. The sentiments you have to-night expressed completely reassure me—I see now how foolish I was to think there could be any risk in coming here with you.”
It was a two-edged compliment and I did not relish it, but she was gazing up at me with eyes so guileless and trusting that I choked back the words which rose in my throat. Perhaps, had I been older and more experienced with women, I might have seen the flicker of mischief which I suspect dwelt in their depths. Guilelessness is a favorite snare of Circe’s.
“Let me whisper you a secret,” she added, leaning toward me, a little quirk at the corner of her lips, “your betrothed is a charming girl!”
“Oh, you know her!” I said, and stared at her gloomily, for she seemed to delight in torturing me.
“No—I have never met her—have never even seen her,” and she laughed to herself as she uttered the words; “but I have heard her spoken of. With her, you will soon forget this poor Charlotte de Chambray—you will fall in love with her even more desperately than you have with me, and she will make you happy.”
“And will you regret that, mademoiselle?” I asked, realizing the folly of the question, but unable to suppress it.
“Not in the least!” she retorted, and burst into a peal of laughter at sight of my crestfallen countenance—though it seemed to me that her face showed traces of crimson, too.
But there is, as I had said, a limit to endurance. Her mockery raised in me suddenly a fierce madness—a carelessness of what might follow. I groped for her blindly, my arms were about her, crushing her to me with a sort of savage fury. The mockery was gone from her eyes now; she tried to beat me off, then, with a little sob, hid her face upon my shoulder. But pity was not in me, only a fierce exulting, and I raised her face, I lifted her lips to mine and kissed them desperately, passionately, again and again.
Then I released her and stood erect, my blood on fire, a great joy at my heart.