Nicanor - Teller of Tales Part 22

The words died upon his lips. He had reached a gla.s.s door, leading into the small room formed by the angle of the north and east galleries which flanked the court. This room, screened like the gallery, by gla.s.s walls from the outer air, was filled with plants, answering in some sort to a conservatory. Such rooms, used for different purposes and varied as to furnishing, were at all the angles of the galleries. Marius, looking through the half-open door, thought that the place seemed unfamiliar, and began to fear he had taken the wrong way. Yet he had followed closely the directions of Eudemius. He was about to turn back when his eye fell on some one asleep close by the window which overlooked the court.

"My lady herself, in very fact. This will be the second time I have waked her. Without doubt, Fate hath willed it so. What may she be doing here at this hour, without her women? Watched to see some one enter the court, perhaps, and dropped asleep. To see whom? Did she know, by chance, that I must pa.s.s this way from her father's rooms?"

He opened the door softly and entered. But the slight noise aroused Varia. She sat up, rubbing her eyes.

"Is it not late for such solitary communing, sweet friend?" Marius asked, approaching. He saw that she was in a plain robe of sheerest white, ungirdled; that her hair fell loose, undecked with jewels, that her feet were bare. "Perhaps you wait for some one?"

She sat on the edge of the couch, her hands clasped in her lap, betraying no smallest consciousness of the unconventionality of her appearance. Her white feet against the deep crimson of the rug held his eyes.

"Oh, no!" she said sweetly. "Besides, if I did, should I tell you?"

He found himself again in the att.i.tude of treating her as a child; felt again his baffled perplexity at her glance, veiled and sidelong, which was not a child's glance.

He bent toward her. The time had come to crown his schemes of high ambition, and the G.o.ds had thrown opportunity in his way.

"Was it for me you waited?" he asked boldly. He was prepared for indignation, repulsion, anything except what followed. She dropped her eyes, leaning a trifle away from him.

"And--if it were?" she murmured. He stared an instant, and seized his chance.

"I should thank the G.o.ds and you, sweet one, and do my best to show appreciation," he said; and sat down on the couch beside her.

"But it was not!" she cried hastily, and moved farther away. In spite of himself Marius's lips twitched to a smile. As she retreated, he advanced.

"No? But it was I who came!" he said, his keen eyes on her. But her look did not falter. "You waited because the G.o.ds willed that I should come to you," he said, speaking rapidly, since she showed signs of nervousness. "And I have come, to plead my love, and to ask yours in return. Once before were we interrupted when I tried to speak; now the chance is mine at last. You shall anoint my door with wolf's fat and rule at my hearth as wife. Your father wishes it--he would be glad to see our love blossom into flower. Say, wilt thou love me, sweet?"

But Varia sprang to her feet, clasping her hands over her ears.

"Love--love!" she cried fretfully. "Nay, I have had enough of love!"

Marius laughed aloud.

"So, thou strange beauty? Maybe, but I have not. And I think there is still something left for thee to learn. Dost remember a game I was to teach thee once--a game which two can play?"

She interrupted him, standing poised as though for flight, her head on one side, a smile touching her crimson lips, her veiled eyes glancing sidewise into his.

"Nay--I remember?" she said with a rippling laugh. "Why now, how should I remember, my lord? Am I not a fool?"

His glance was somewhat taken aback.

"Fool or not, I love thee, pretty witch, and thou shalt be my wife."

She shook her head, and the laughter died from her face, leaving it startled.

"Thy wife? Wife to thee? Oh, no! I cannot be that!"

"Oh, yes! Thou canst and must and shalt be that! I'll not let thee go so lightly!" He advanced upon her, but she stretched out a white naked arm to full length, a finger pointing at him, and he stopped. Just why, he did not pause to think.

"Nay, my lord!" she said, and her voice took on the haunting tones which had so perplexed her father. "That I am not as other girls I know right well. Why, then, should my lord desire me for wife? Thou dost not love me. Were I thy wife, I must love thee, and I do not wish to love thee. I could say,--what are the words?--always and ever they are ringing in my heart,--'Where thou art, Caius, there am I, Caia,' with my lips as well as with my heart, but not to thee--oh, not to thee!" She flung out her arms with a gesture of sudden wild abandonment, and clasped them over her eyes. Her voice broke in a storm of tears.

"Now--woe is me!--all I can say is 'Where art thou, Caius?' I have waited so long--so long!"

"But he is here at last," said Marius, and took her hand.

She wept softly, with hanging head, making no effort to get away.

"I will pray my lord father that he force me not to become wife to thee!"

"Thy lord father gives command that thou shalt become wife to Marius since he desires thee, and to no other man!" said Eudemius's voice behind them. Marius wheeled, as Varia gave a startled cry and wrenched her hand free. Eudemius came into the room, his face changed as no living soul had seen it changed until then.

"I feared that thou hadst not taken the right way back," he said to Marius, and there was a shade of significance in his tone. "Therefore--I came to see."

"Father, say I need not be wife to him!" cried Varia, bold in her terror.

"Why not?" Eudemius asked harshly. "What reason lies behind thy refusal?"

"I do not know!" she stammered. "I know only that I would not wed with him. I love him not--"

"Love! what hath love to do with it? And what know you of love, little fool?" said Eudemius, with impatience.

Varia started forward, catching desperately at the straw.

"Thou hast said it!" she cried stormily. "I am fool--fool--fool--fit wife for no man! Who wants to wed a fool?"

"Be silent! I'll teach thee--" Eudemius exclaimed, but Marius interposed.

"Pray thee--father--leave the taming of this wild bird to me!" he said, and emphasized the word, and watched. He had judged subtly. Eudemius turned to him, his hands out, his stern face broken up and working. He patted Marius's shoulders with shaking hands, and leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead.

"My son--oh, my son, my son!" he cried.

But Varia, unnoticed of either, cast herself upon the couch and wept, her face hidden in its silken cushions.

Livinius came from his sickroom and joined them in a week, and was told the news. From his face it was apparent that he was pleased, and that in spite of all his words, the match would be very well to his liking. But when he got Marius alone, which was difficult, since Eudemius would scarce let his prospective son-in-law out of his sight, he spoke to him with all seriousness.

"It will be a great thing for thee, my son; thou canst carve out for thyself what career thou wilt. I am pleased; thou art pleased; Eudemius--why, for Eudemius, he is a changed man utterly."

"Truly, he is," Marius agreed. "Who could dream that behind that iron mask of his there dwelt such affection, such store of human kindness?"

"All for thee, lad," said Livinius. His tone, with all its pride, held a tinge of sadness. "It brings the water to my eyes to watch the new nature struggling in him with the old. He hath pinned all his faith and hope to thee. Be thou worthy of the trust."

"Ay, so I will," said Marius readily. He shook himself with a quick breath. "And the task will be no easy one, father mine. I do not feel myself at all a cuckoo stealing into a nest ready feathered. What I get I shall pay for, in degree, if not in kind. There will be three men's work in handling this estate."

"And the one who is most nearly touched in this?" said Livinius. "She whose poor little hands are weighted with the gold of which she knows nothing, whose child's head is filled with dreams in which thou hast no part?"

"Oh, Varia?" said his son. "I suppose it is no worse for her than for other women. She shall have all that I can give to content her. Father, it is a strange thing about that child. When I am away from her, I will own that her memory doth not linger over long with me. But when I am with her, she bewitches me. I know not what else to call it. Always I am trying to probe her; always I find myself foiled and baffled when I think that I have found the clew to her mystery. If ever she should waken from this state of hers.... At present she is angry, and I have not seen her for two days. That may be, but she forgets that soon it will not be for her to say whether I shall see her or whether not."

His lips tightened; in his dark eyes a yellow spark flashed and died.

Livinius glanced at him, smiled, and held his peace.

It was even as Livinius had said. Eudemius was, if not a changed man, at least a changing one. Sombre his face would always be; Fate had bitten too deep for the scars ever to be smoothed away. But with the haunting fear removed that his name and fortune should fall into unworthy hands, he seemed to have shaken off ten years of nightmare trouble. His voice began to lose its bitter harshness; for the first time his slaves no longer trembled at his glance. His att.i.tude toward Marius was curious--also, in view of his nature, touching. On Marius he lavished all the pride and tenderness of an adoring father to his son, and of both there was more than anyone had guessed. He worshipped Marius openly, gloried in him exultingly, and was fiercely and suppressedly jealous of Livinius's prior right. He hung on Marius's every word; shared his sports and hunting; tried to regain a moment of his lost youth that he might be a comrade as well as a father. At times a strange mood took him, when he, Eudemius the proud, became humbly grateful that Marius should be willing to mate with the ill-starred daughter of his house. In general they accepted each other on terms of complete equality. Each was receiving and conferring a favor; there was no debt on either side.