A Pasteboard Crown Part 26

Steadily she resumed: "I will not act against the law. Collusion is illegal!"

He picked up a book, and bent it back and forth unconsciously.

"You are my husband!"

"That is false!" he said, sharply.

"In the eyes of the law," she went on, unheedingly, "if I choose to condone your offences, that is sufficient. Your light o' love is naught to me. _I_ have been a faithful wife!" Thrall laughed aloud.

"Hereafter I shall live here at your side. I will not divorce you, and so give you to another. I shall remain Mrs. Stewart Thrall, while I live and while I die. I am a good woman, and therefore you cannot be divorced by any law on earth!"

Glancing down at the book, Thrall saw it was Milton's "Paradise Lost,"

and, flinging it on the table, he cried: "I wonder why Milton didn't make a virtuous woman the keeper of the gate of h.e.l.l!"

As he left the room he added: "Lettice, against your hard, repellent virtue a generous sinner shines like an angel!" And he went forth to the bitterest hour of his life--his next meeting with Sybil Lawton.

CHAPTER XXV

"TO LOVE IS TO FORGIVE"

The troubles of the young are tragic in their intensity, and during that night of despair Sybil had suffered keenly, cruelly, hopelessly. It seemed to her that she had fallen into an abyss from which rescue was impossible. For the first time she realized that in the recklessly generous giving of her love there had been destroyed something more precious even than the "alabaster box" so recklessly shattered, centuries ago, by a loving woman in the eager doing of a more sacred homage.

The bitterness of her fall revealed to her how great her pride had been, and at first a furious resentment filled her heart against the man who in love's name had so humbled her. Looking back through the golden light of that time of perfect joy, she tried to see what path had led her to the precipice, to understand why she had not resisted and held back.

Then slowly, very slowly, it dawned on her that _opportunity_ had been the lure that gently led her into a laxity that almost imperceptibly through remissness became lat.i.tude. Her daily carefully guarded companionship with Stewart Thrall at Mrs. Van Camp's home had placed her upon a friendly footing of perfect confidence, and he was so great he must, she thought, be good; and so she had scarcely noticed when at Stivers's house he first read her her Tennyson, sitting at her feet, leaning against her knee, and had paid no heed to the increasing frequency of those afternoon demands for Stivers's presence at the theatre wardrobe-room; and when she played for him upon the little upright piano, standing across the corner of the room, it had not startled her, when he was turning her music, to feel him drop a kiss into her wavy, up-gathered hair. Experience and opportunity as against inexperience and foolish trust!

Again the words of Juliet came to her lips: "Known too late! known too late!" And Juliet thought herself unhappy--unhappy, when she was not shamed, when she was loved!

"Oh!" she wrung her hands hard, "he seemed--he truly seemed to love me!

His beautiful eyes glowed so! His lips had a smile that seemed for me alone! But then, dear G.o.d! I forget now, as I forgot then, he is an actor!" She laughed contemptuously. "A great actor! and I have helped to pa.s.s away those weary hours, when he was bereft of the gayety of the joyous Mrs. Thrall!"

For women know one another well, and, as Sybil had pa.s.sed on Stivers's arm that night, Mrs. Thrall had sent a merry laugh forth, apropos of nothing spoken, but simply to pierce the lonely girl's heart with jealous pain--and she had succeeded perfectly.

The long, sleepless night of agony and shame had left its mark on the girl, young and strong as she was. Her room, made bower-like with ferns and palms and many scarlet poinsettias (Thrall taboo'd all perfumed, growing plants there) seemed to accentuate the languor and the weariness of its girlish occupant. Wrapped in a j.a.panese kimona, white and gold outside and peachy pink within, with wavy, densely dark hair tucked up carelessly with a big sh.e.l.l comb, the bluish shadows beneath her heavy eyes, the level brows drawn close, and the sullen, red mouth all unsmiling, she looked a very tragic young figure and pitiful withal, to the haggard gaze of Stewart Thrall, the man who loved her and had wronged her.

He stood before her, very erect, very pale. His dark-blue eyes, guiltless of amorous droop, wide and bright, had in them a strained intensity of regard that was painful. Raw soldiers, under waiting orders, though yet in sight of action, wear just that expression of strained vision--of desperate self-control. At first sight of him Sybil had felt her tired heart give a glad upward spring in her breast, and her impulse was to fly into his arms for shelter, and there to weep, and weep, and weep--while he, in fond, foolish fashion, kissed and beat her slim hand softly against his cheek--just as might the mother of a little wailing child. But suddenly she seemed to see beside him the pale, ashen-blonde woman, who, from the shadowy box, had so tormented her, and who later stood beneath the blazing lights, and, holding fast the arm of this man--her husband--had sent forth that mocking, triumphant laugh, that, like a hate-sped arrow, had fairly reached its victim's heart, where it would rankle for many a day to come! And she checked the impulse, and asked, instead, "What brings you here?"

"Sybil! Sybil!" the man pleaded.

She looked at him with gloomy eyes, and said, slowly: "My father is an old man, esteemed weak even by his family; yet, being one of those old-fashioned absurdities--a gentleman--he values the honor of his daughters so highly that if he knew the truth he would surely kill you, Mr. Thrall!"

"And he would be within his rights," gravely a.s.sented Stewart.

"But," continued the girl, in coldly contemptuous tones, "after all, we are not properly located, geographically, for such a deed. I lack, too, the instinctive love of carnage that makes the shedding of an enemy's blood necessary to the girl of the tropics, when the wrecking of her honor has been the amus.e.m.e.nt of some married man!"

Thrall stood as if he had received the cut of a whip, but said nothing--not one word.

"Why are you here?" she broke out then more hotly. "Your coming is an insult to me! Perhaps, pitying my loneliness and now having made me a fit companion for the Manice, you may be about to remove the embargo formerly placed upon my a.s.sociation with her!"

He turned pained eyes upon her and said, faintly: "Child, you strike hard and deep, but don't turn the knife!"

"Oh!" she cried, "so highly placed, so powerful, so flattered and so sought, why could you not pa.s.s _me_ by? Why need you stoop to break so poor and lowly a thing? You were cowardly! you were cruel! No wonder you are silent--had you no truth, no honor, no love?"

He answered, still very low: "Of truth and honor, very little, but love?" he looked at her with devouring eyes, "dear G.o.d, _love_?"

And she repeated bitterly, jeeringly: "Love? You, a married man?"

He smiled a little and answered, gently: "Love comes as it wills, and--and--" There he stopped, for he saw by the horror in her eyes that for the first time she saw in their relations simply sin, bereft of all sophistry, and he was dumb--he, the clever, the brilliant, usually so full of subtlety and finesse, who in a like situation in the past would have laughingly denounced the folly of blushing for an undiscovered sin, or have gayly taught his fair companion in guilt that eleventh commandment, so dear to the worldly man and the light woman: "Be ye not found out, for of such is the kingdom of the Successful." He stood with all the artifices stricken from him, incapable of specious argument, of trick or wile of any kind. Erstwhile, where money had had power to tempt, he had seen that money had power to comfort, too--but not here!

not here! Where grief and pa.s.sionate reproach looked from eyes that yesterday had shone all radiant with love--her glory then--her shame to-day! And all there was of manhood in him was roused to vehement longing to honor publicly the creature whom he had secretly dishonored.

"Oh!" she moaned, helplessly, "what shall I do with my life! I am ashamed to look back--I am afraid to look forward! They said there was no s.e.x in art! And when you showed such patience with me and my ignorance, I almost worshipped you, and hoped art might make me as generous in time! But it was your approval I toiled for! It was your acting that I strove to emulate! Perhaps you thought I was not grateful; but, oh, I was! I was! And I used to think if I ever wore the dramatic crown I yearned for, I'd proudly tell to all the world whose hand had placed it in my reach! Perhaps if you had known how humbly grateful I was, you would not have made me pay this awful price!"

The man's jaws clenched so tightly that their outlines showed white on his cheeks.

"As a conquest, Mr. Thrall, I am scarcely worthy of your skill, and yet my being a 'society debutante' may add a slight fillip of novelty to the old, old story of ruined girlhood--such trifles help, no doubt, to keep up an actor's popularity!"

"You are very cruel!" he groaned.

"_I?_" she cried, accusingly, "_I_ am cruel?"

"Yes; it is cruel to take pleasure in another's pain, but--" He closed his eyes an instant, and then went on very patiently. "I may not ask you for mercy. Being guilty, it is right I _should_ suffer!"

"Suffer?" she repeated, unbelievingly. "You? Why should you suffer, pray? You have hung a millstone about _my_ neck for life! But you go lightly enough along the conqueror's path! _You_ suffer--from what? You have done nothing to unfit you for your world! You will be feasted and banqueted as usual; you are quite secure with your fashionable clientele of women, who will applaud you rapturously, while looking upon me as forever defiled!" Then, rather wildly, she added: "You said the crown you promised me was pasteboard, but you did not tell me it was wreathed inside with thorns! Oh, why have you betrayed my adoring faith in you!

What have I ever done to harm you? Why--why in G.o.d's great name--why have you so deceived me?"

Slowly he answered: "I thought you----"

"Do not dare!" gasped Sybil, "do not dare add a last infamous insult to cruel injury by telling me you thought I knew you were married!"

"At first," he persisted, "I supposed you knew; then when I found you did not, I--I--was in the grasp of a merciless pa.s.sion. Dear, I _could_ not speak! I _could not_, I tell you! Sybil! beloved! I would step between you and death without the flicker of an eyelash! I would give my life's blood for you as freely as a cup of water! Yet, I--who would gladly defend you from a world, was not strong enough to defend you from myself--from the love that possessed me utterly--at whose fire I relit ambition--romance--the desire for high achievement! You believe me guilty of a mere base pa.s.sion; you are wrong! Doubtless there are men in the world who, loving even as I loved you, could have held their feelings well in leash, sealed their lips for honor's sake, but that power would come from long training and much practice in self-denial--not from one sporadic effort of self-control! And I, oh, child, flattered by the world--vain, egotistical, and spoiled--when had I acquired strength through patient endurance or through temptations resisted? I was incapable of self-abnegation; I, who had denied myself nothing all my life long, could not begin by denying my desperate love the possession that it longed for! For men are like that, dear, in spite of your contemptuous unbelief. Be they good or be they bad, be they ever so reverently true, their senses will demand possession of the beloved.

And I was so desolate--so lonely! There was not even friendship within the whited sepulchre of my domestic life."

The girl shrank. "Don't!" she cried, "don't add to cruelty and cowardice--treachery to her! She is very cruel, but then a good wife who suspects a wrong to her love has a right to be cruel!"

"Oh, you innocent, just soul!" the man cried. "Yes, she is cruel in very deed, since being a wife in name alone these years past she yet clings tenaciously to that empty t.i.tle. She has not enough womanly pride to free the man who earnestly pleads to be released, whose chill indifference protects her from temptation. She is technically a loyal wife, but practically a foe--a sort of satiric keeper of the records of my life. 'A wrong to her love,' you said. You generous child, she does not know what love means, but she does know her legal rights; and to my agony will maintain them to the last, since the shibboleth of her life is: 'What will the world say?' Yes, she is very cruel!"

Sybil shivered as she recalled the contemptuous slow smile, the unrelenting, inquisitorial, pale eyes, but answered: "I suppose I should be cruel, too, if I were a wronged wife." She stopped; the blood rushed in a scarlet tide over all her shamed, pained face. "A wife?"--she gave a gasp and put her hand to her throat as if to remove some stricture there. "I may never be a wife! Marriage is honorable! Dorothy may wed, but I--" And then an agonized cry rang through the house: "Dorothy! oh, Dorothy! Little sister! I have lost you! I shall not dare to look into your honest eyes, lest you should see the sin in mine! I may not kiss your lips or touch your cheek, nor ever again pillow your dear head upon my arm the long night through because of the pollution on my life that makes me base, unworthy, and unfit a.s.sociate for innocence like yours!"

"Be silent!" savagely interrupted Thrall, with death-white face.

"I have fallen to a level with the creatures you pity in the street, little sister! I am defiled forever!" And she fell p.r.o.ne upon the couch in an agony of tears.

Thrall sprang at her like a tiger; he dragged her to a sitting position among the tumbled cushions, and, grasping her shoulders, he rocked her back and forth in savage rage, crying: "How dare you? how dare you, I say? You have been pleased to call me coward many times to-day, but you have the bitter right to say what you will to me, and I must bear it patiently because I merit more even than you say; but I am not coward enough to stand by and hear you blaspheme against yourself! I, by every wile at my command, by the compelling charm and strength of a great love, and by your ignorance of human nature, have led you into a breach of the law! Well, the fault is mine--G.o.d knows that! You vile? you defiled? how dare you? You are as pure in heart as any earthly creature can be! Your sense of honor, your respect for duty, your high ideals have made deception and falsehood hateful to me! Your quick sympathy for those who suffer has made me more considerate of the feelings of those about me! What have you done--what have you to blush for? You have been guilty of a generosity that brings me to my knees in adoration! All glorious as the morning, without suspicion, without fear, having given your great heart, with royal prodigality you gave yourself! You obeyed the instinct nature placed in you, in loving so! How dare you, then, compare yourself to those unfortunates who sell their forced and painted smiles? How dare you--you, pure-hearted, proud, gifted, clean-minded?

Have I been rough to you? Forgive me, sweet, but you nearly drove me mad, and--and I suffer, Sybil!"

He sank at her feet, and laid his brow against her knees.