Beyond The Rocks Part 13

Then he told her about it all, he charmed her fancy and excited her imagination, and by the time they came to their goal the feeling of jar had departed, and the dangerous sense of attraction--of nearness--had returned.

It was nearly seven o'clock, and here among the trees all was in a soft gloom of evening light.

"Is not this still and far away?" he said, as they sat on an old stone bench. "I often stay the whole morning here when I spend a week at Versailles."

"How peaceful and beautiful! Oh, I would like a week here, too!" and Theodora sighed.

"You must not sigh, beautiful princess," he implored, "on this our happy day."

The slender lines of her figure seemed all drooping. She reminded him more than ever of the fragment of Psyche in the Naples Museum.

"No, I must not sigh," she said. "But it seems suddenly to have grown sad--the air--what does it mean? Tell me, you who know so many things?"

There was a pathos in her voice like a child in distress.

It communicated itself to him, it touched some chords in his nature hitherto silent. His whole being rushed out to her in tenderness.

"It seems to me it is because the time grows nearer when we must go back to the world. First to dinner with the others, and then--Paris. I would like to stay thus always--just alone with you."

She did not refute this solution of her sadness. She knew it was true.

And when he looked into her eyes, the blue was troubled with a mist as of coming tears.

Then pa.s.sion--more mighty than ever--seized him once more. He only felt a wild desire to comfort her, to kiss away the mist--to talk to her. Ah!

"Theodora!" he said, and his voice vibrated with emotion, while he bent forward and seized both her hands, which he lifted to his face--she had not put on her gloves again after the tea--her cool, little, tender hands! He kissed and kissed their palms.

"Darling--darling," he said, incoherently, "what have I done to make your dear eyes wet? Oh, I love you so, I love you so, and I have only made you sad."

She gave a little, inarticulate cry. If a wounded dove could sob, it might have been the noise of a dove, so beseeching and so pathetic. "Oh, please--you must not," she said. "Oh, what have you done!--you have killed our happy day."

And this was the beginning of his awakening. He sat for many moments with his head buried in his hands. What, indeed, had he done!--and they would be turned out of their garden of Eden--and all because he was a brute, who could not control his pa.s.sion, but must let it run riot on the first opportunity.

He suffered intensely. Suffered, perhaps, for the first time in his life.

She had not said one word of anger--only that tone in her voice reached to his heart.

He did not move and did not speak, and presently she touched his hands softly with her slender fingers, it seemed like the caress of an angel's wing.

"Listen," she said, so gently. "Oh, you must not grieve--but it was too good to be true, our day. I ought to have known to where we were drifting, I am wicked to have let you say all you have said to-day, but oh, I was asleep, I think, and I only knew that I was happy. But now you have shown me--and oh, the dream is broken up. Come, let us go back to the world."

Then he raised his eyes to her face, and they were haggard and miserable.

How her simple speech, blaming herself who was all innocent, touched his heart and filled him with shame at his unworthiness.

"Oh, forgive me!" he pleaded. "Oh, please forgive me! I am mad, I think, I love you so--and I had to tell you--and yes, I will say it all now, and then you can punish me. From the first moment I looked into your angel eyes it has been growing, you are so true and so sweet, and so miles beyond all other women in the world. Each minute I have loved you more--and all the time I thought to win you. Yes, you may well turn away, and shrink from me now that you know the brute I am. I thought I would make you love me, and you would forgive me then. But I have suddenly seen your soul, my darling, and I am ashamed, and I can only ask you to forgive me and let me worship you and be your slave--I will not ask for any return--only to worship you and be your slave--that I may show you I am not all brute and may earn your pardon."

And then Theodora's blindness fell from her and she knew that she loved him--she had faced the fact at last. And all over her being there thrilled a mad, wild joy. It surged up and crushed out fear and pain--for just one moment--and then she too, in her turn, covered her face with her hands.

"Oh, hush! hush!" she said. "What have you done--what have we both done!"

It was characteristic of her that now she realized she loved him she did not fence any longer, she never thought of concealing it from him or of blaming him. They were sinners both, he and she equally guilty.

Another woman might have argued, "He is fooling me; perhaps he has said these things before--I must at least hide my own heart," but not Theodora. Her trust was complete--she loved him--therefore he was a perfect knight--and if he was wicked she was wicked too.

Her gentian eyes were full of tears as she let fall her hands and looked at him. "Oh yes, I have been asleep--I should have known from the beginning why, why I wanted to see you so much--I should never have come--and I should have understood in the wood that we could not leave it without bringing Love with us--and now we may not be happy any more."

And then it was his turn to be exalted with wild joy.

"Do you know what you have said," he whispered, breathless. "Your words mean that you love me--Theodora--darling mine." And once again pa.s.sion blazed in his eyes, and he would have taken her in his arms; but she put up her hands and gently pushed him from her.

"Yes," she said, simply, "I love you, but that only makes it all the harder--and we must say good-bye at once, and go our different ways. You who are so strong and know so much--I trust you, dear--you must help me to do what is right."

She never thought of reproaching him, of telling him, as she very well could have done, that he had taken cruel advantage of her unsophistication. All her mind was full of the fact that they were both very sad and wicked and must help each other.

"I _cannot_ say good-bye," he said, "now that I know you love me, darling; it is impossible. How can we part--what will the days be--how could we get through our lives?"

She looked at him, and her eyes were the eyes of a wounded thing--dumb and pitiful, and asking for help.

Then the something that was fine and n.o.ble in Hector Bracondale rose up in him--the crust of selfishness and cynicism fell from him like a mask.

He suddenly saw himself as he was, and she--as she was--and a determination came over him to grow worthy of her love, obey her slightest wish, even if it must break his heart.

He dropped upon his knees beside her on the greensward, and buried his face in her lap.

"Darling--my queen," he said. "I will do whatever you command--but oh, it need not be good-bye. Don't let me sicken and die out of your presence. I swear, on my word of honor, I will never trouble you. Let me worship you and watch over you and make your life brighter. Oh, G.o.d!

there can be no sin in that."

"I trust you!" she said, and she touched the waves of his hair. "And now we must not linger--we must come at once out of this place. I--I cannot bear it any more."

And so they went--into an _allee_ of close, cropped trees, where the gloom was almost twilight; but if there was pain there was joy too, and almost peace in their hearts.

All the anguish was for the afterwards. Love, who is a G.o.d, was too near to his kingdom to admit of any rival.

"Hector," she whispered, and as she said his name a wild thrill ran through him again. "Hector--the Austrian Prince at Armenonville said life was a current down which our barks floated, only to be broken up on the rocks if it was our fate; and I said if we tried very hard some angel would steer us past them into smooth waters beyond; and I want you to help me to find the angel, dear--will you?"

But all he could say was that she was the angel, the only angel in heaven or earth.

And so they came at last to the Bason de Neptune, and on through the side door into the Reservoirs--and there was the widow's automobile that moment arrived.

XII

Every one behaved with immense propriety--they said just what they should have said, there was no _gene_ at all. And when they went up the stairs together to arrange their hair and their hats for dinner, the elder woman slipped her arm through Theodora's.

"I am going to marry your father, my dear," she said, "and I want you to be the first to wish me joy."

The dinner went off with great gayety. The widow especially was full of bright sayings, and Captain Fitzgerald made the most devoted lover. Not too elated by his good-fortune, and yet thoroughly happy and tender. He continually told himself that fate had been uncommonly kind to mix business and pleasure so dexterously, for if the widow had not possessed a cent, he still would have been glad to marry her.