An Eye for an Eye Part 31

The heart of man is an open page to women. Love, though greatest of all selfish ecstasies, must yet have self-forgetfulness. She had none. She glanced at me and seemed to divine my thoughts. She cast a furtive look across the room to the lawn beyond, and I read on her face the birth of some new design.

"I have been quite explicit," she laughed, with a strenuous attempt to preserve her self-control. "I merely give you advice to keep away from this house."

"Yes, but you give me no reason. You do not speak plainly and openly,"

I protested.

"One cannot speak ill of those of whose hospitality one is partaking,"

she answered with a calm smile. "Is it not sufficient for the present that you are warned?"

"But why?" I demanded. "I am always a welcome guest here."

Again she smiled, with a strange curl of the lip, I thought.

"I do not deny that," she answered. "Have I not, however, already pointed out that treachery may be marvellously well concealed?"

Did she really warn me of the danger of a.s.sociating with these intimate friends of hers merely because in her heart she really loved me? or had she some ulterior motive in getting me out of the way? She was hand-in-glove with this suspected family, therefore the latter seemed the theory most feasible.

Yes, she was undoubtedly playing me false.

A new thought suddenly arose within me, and with my eyes fixed upon her I said, in a voice hard and determined--

"Eva, just now you gave utterance to a remark which is to me full of meaning. You said that I had escaped death by little short of a miracle. True, I have." Then I paused. "Yet, if the truth were told, have you not also escaped a swift and sudden end by means almost as miraculous?"

Her face blanched instantly, her mouth, half-opened, seemed fixed. She was unable to articulate, and I saw what an effect this speech of mine had upon her. She tottered to the table and laid her hand upon it in order to steady herself. Her eyes glared upon me for an instant, like those of some animal brought to bay.

Yet, with a marvellous self-control, her white face a moment later relaxed into a smile, and she replied--"I really don't know to what you refer. In the course of our lives we have many hairbreadth escapes from death, for dangers are around us on every side." By this I saw what a consummate actress she was, and was filled with regret that I had thus referred to the tragedy at Kensington, fearing lest this revelation of my knowledge should hamper Boyd in his inquiries. Through all she kept a calm and steady judgment that was remarkable.

"Reflect at leisure," I responded, "and perhaps you will not find my words quite so puzzling as your own veiled references."

"A few minutes ago," she exclaimed reproachfully, "you declared that you loved me. Now, however, you appear to entertain a desire to taunt me."

"With what?"

She hesitated, for she saw how nearly she had been entrapped. Every woman is a born diplomatist, so she answered--

"With having endeavoured to mislead you."

"I only know that I love you, Eva," I said in softer tones, again tenderly taking her hand. "I only know that I think of no other woman in all the world besides yourself. I only know that I cannot live without your love."

Her bosom heaved and fell painfully, and from her large blue eyes tears sprang--quick, salt, bitter drops that burned her as they fell.

"Ah, no?" she cried protestingly. "Do not let us talk of that. Do not let us dream of the impossible."

"Then you really love me?" I cried in quick earnestness, bending over her, my arm about her slim waist.

But she shuddered within my grasp. Her frame was shaken by a convulsive sob, and gazing upon me with serious eyes she, in a low whisper, gave her answer.

"Alas! I cannot--I--I dare not!"

I drew back crushed and hopeless. Once again the strange thought possessed me that Mary Blain held her within her power; that although she actually loved me she feared the relentless vengeance of that woman who posed as her most intimate friend, who smiled upon us both, although in her heart was a fierce and jealous hatred.

Eva's was a strange character. She seemed a brilliant ant.i.thesis--a compound of contradictions--of all that I most detested, of all that I most admired. Her whole character seemed a triumph of the external over the innate; even though she presented at first view a splendid and perplexing anomaly, there was yet deep meaning and wondrous skill in the enigma when I came to a.n.a.lyse and decipher it. What was most astonishing in Eva's character was its ant.i.thetical construction, its consistent inconsistency, which rendered it quite impossible to reduce it to any elementary principles. The impression she gave was that of perpetual and irreconcilable contrast.

In those months I had known her she had enchanted me. Her mental accomplishments, her unequalled grace, her woman's wit and woman's wiles, her irresistible allurements, her starts of hauteur, her vivacity of imagination, her petulant caprice, her fickleness and her falsehood, her tenderness and her truth, all had dazzled my faculties and bewitched my fancy. She held absolute dominion over me.

My reference to that fatal night when I had discovered her apparently dead in that weird house in Kensington had utterly unnerved her. I had apparently, by those words, given her proof of the strong suspicion which she had entertained, and now she held aloof from me as from an enemy. Again and again Boyd's forcible words recurred to me. Try how I would I could not place from me the increasing belief that she had actually given me that fatal draught on the last occasion when we met.

Yet, after all, she had my welfare at heart to some extent, or she would not utter this strange inexplicable warning; she would not have so pointedly told me that the family whose guests she was were my actual enemies. The latest pa.s.sion of my love had long ago kindled into a quenchless flame, and again, after this declaration of fear which she had uttered, I repeated my inquiry as to its cause.

But she shook her head, and remained silent to all my entreaty, even though her panting breast plainly showed her agitation. Had she, I wondered, really perpetrated a deed of horror? Was she, although so pure-looking and so beautiful, one of those women with inexorable determination of purpose, an actual impersonation of the evil powers?

At her invitation we strolled together across the lawn to a shady spot at the river's brink, where we sat in long wicker chairs, tea being brought to us by the smart man-servant. Again and again I sought to discover some truth from her, but she was ever wary not to betray either herself or those under whose roof she was now living. As I lounged there by her, gazing upon her neat-girdled figure, so graceful and striking in every form, I could not help reflecting that, in a mind not utterly depraved and hardened by the habit of crime, conscience must awake at some time or other, and bring with it a remorse closed by despair, and despair by death.

Had her conscience been awakened that afternoon? To me it seemed very much as though it had.

"How strangely you talk, Eva," I said, when we had been conversing together a long time beneath the trees, and the sun was already sinking.

"You seem somehow to entertain an extraordinary antipathy towards me."

"Antipathy!" she echoed. "Oh, no, you are really mistaken. You ask me to love you, and I express myself unfortunately unable."

"But why unable?"

She sighed, but was silent. Her eyes were fixed far away down the tranquil river which ran with liquid gold in the sunset.

From my lips there poured swift, eager, breathless, unconsidered words in all their unreason, all their wisdom, their n.o.bility, their ignorance, their folly, their sublimity. Yet I meant to their very uttermost every syllable I uttered.

"Tell me now," I urged. "You wish me to leave you without a single word of hope. You give me a negative reply without reason or explanation."

"I have a reason," she answered in a low, mechanical tone, a voice quite unusual to her.

"What is it?"

"I am a stern fatalist in principle and in action," she responded.

"And is it that which prevents you from reciprocating my affection?"

"No," she answered, shaking her head sadly, and glancing at her rings.

"I know that happiness can never more come to me. To love would only be to increase my burden of remorse."

"Remorse?" I cried, in a moment recollecting all the mysterious past.

"Yes," she answered in a hard tone of melancholy and despair. "A remorse that arises from the pang of a wounded conscience, the recoil of the violated feelings of my nature, a horror of the ghastly past, a torture of self-condemnation strong as my soul, deep as my guilt, fatal as my resolve, and terrible as my crime."

"Your crime!" I gasped.

She had at last confessed. I sat gazing at her absolutely dumbfounded.

My brain seemed dead in me.