One Day Part 23

CHAPTER XXII

During the Boy's absence that day a new guest had arrived at the little hotel. A capricious American lady, who had come to Lucerne, "for a day or two's rest," she said, before proceeding to Paris where an impatient Count awaited her and his wedding-day.

Yes, Opal was actually in Lucerne, and the suite of rooms once occupied by the mysterious Madame Zalenska were now given over to the little lady from over the seas, who, in spite of her diminutive stature, contrived to impress everybody with a sense of her own importance. She had just received a letter from her fiance, an unusually impatient communication, even from him. He was anxious, he said, for her and his long-delayed honeymoon. Honeymoon! G.o.d help her! Her soul recoiled in horror from the hideous prospect. Only two days more, she thought, pressing her lips tightly together. Oh, the horror of it! She dared not think of it, or she would go mad! But she would not falter. She had told herself that she was now resigned. She was going to defeat Fate after all!

She had partaken of her dinner, and was standing behind the ivy that draped the little balcony, watching the moon in its setting of Swiss skies and mystic landscape. How white and calm and spotless it appeared!

It was not a man's face she saw there--but that of a woman--the face of a nun in its saintly, virgin purity, suggesting only sweet inspiring thoughts of the glory of fidelity to duty, of the comfort and peace and rest that come of renunciation.

Opal clasped her hands together with a thrill of exultation at her own victory over the love and longings that were never to be fulfilled. A song of prayer and thanksgiving echoed in her heart over the thought that she had been strong enough to do her duty and bear the cross that life had so early laid upon her shoulders. She felt so good--so true--so pure--so strong to-night. She would make her life, she thought--her life that could know no personal love--abound in love for all the world, and be to all it touched a living, breathing benediction.

As she gazed she suddenly noticed a lighted launch on the little lake, and an inexplicable prescience disturbed the calm of her musings. She watched, with an intensity she could not have explained, the gradual approach of the little craft. What did that boat, or its pa.s.senger, matter to her that she should feel such an acute interest in its movements? Yet something told her it did matter much, and though she laughed at her superst.i.tion, nevertheless her heart listened to it, and dared not gainsay its insistent whisper.

A young man, straight and tall and lithe, bounded from the launch and mounted the terrace steps. She saw his clean-cut profile, his well-groomed appearance, which even in the moonlight was plainly evident. She noted the regal bearing of his well-knit figure, and she caught the delicious aroma of the particular brand of cigar Paul always smoked, as he pa.s.sed beneath the balcony where she stood.

She turned in very terror and fled to her rooms, pulling the curtains closer. She shrank like a frightened child upon the couch, her face white and drawn with fear--of what, she did not know.

After a time--long, terrible hours, it seemed to her--she parted the curtains with tremulous fingers and looked out again at the sky, and shuddered. The virgin nun-face had mysteriously changed--the moon that had looked so pure and spotless was now blood-red with pa.s.sion.

Opal crept back, pulling the curtains together again, and threw herself face downward upon the couch. G.o.d help her!

Paul Zalenska lingered long over his dinner that night. He was tired and thoughtful. And he enjoyed sitting at that little table where his father perhaps sat the night he had first seen her who became his love.

And Paul pictured to himself that first meeting. He tried to imagine that he was Paul Verdayne, and that shortly his lady would come in with her stately tread, and take her seat, and be waited upon by her elderly attendant. Perhaps she would look at him through those long dark lashes with eyes that seemed not to see. But there was no special table, to-night, and the Boy felt that the picture was woefully incomplete--that he had been left out of the scheme of things entirely.

After finishing his meal, he went out, as his father had done, out under the stars and sat on the little bench under the ivy, and smoked a cigar.

He felt a curious thrill of excitement, quite out of keeping with his loneliness. Was it just the memory of that old love-story that had stirred his blood? Why did his pulse leap, his blood race through his veins like this, his heart rise to his throat and hammer there so fiercely, so strangely. Only one influence in all the world had ever done this to him--only one influence--_one woman_--and she was miles and miles away!

Suddenly, impelled by some force beyond his power of resistance--a sense of someone's gaze fixed upon him, he raised his eyes to the ivy above him. There, faint and indistinct in the shadow of the leaves, but quite unmistakable, he saw the white, frightened face of the girl he loved, her luminous eyes looking straight down into his.

He sprang to his feet, and pulled himself up by the ivy to the level of the terrace, but she had vanished and the watching stars danced mockingly overhead. Was he dreaming? Had that strange old love-story taken away from him the last remaining shred of sanity? Surely he hadn't seen Opal! She was in Paris--d.a.m.n it!--and he clenched his teeth at the thought--certainly not at Lucerne!

He looked at the windows of that enchanted room. All was darkness and silence. Cursing himself for a madman, he strode into the hall and examined the Visitors' List. Suddenly the blood leaped to his face--his head reeled--his heart beat to suffocation. He was not dreaming, for there, as plainly as words could be written, was the entry:

_Miss Ledoux and maid, New Orleans, U. S. A._

She was there--in Lucerne!--his Opal!

CHAPTER XXIII

How Paul reached his room, he never knew. He was in an ecstasy--his young blood surging through his veins in response to the leap of the seething pa.s.sions within.

Have you never felt it, Reader? If you have not, you had better lay aside this book, for you will never, never understand what followed--what _must_ follow, in the very nature of human hearts.

Fate once more had placed happiness in his grasp--should he fling it from him? Never! never again! He remembered his mother and her great love, as she had bade him.

This day, following as it did his mother's letter, had been a revelation to him of the possibilities of life, and of his own capacity for enjoying it. In one week, only one week more, he must take upon his shoulders the burdens of a kingdom. Should he let a mistaken sense of right and duty defraud him a second time? Was this barrier--which a stronger or a weaker man would have brushed aside without a second thought--to wreck his life, and Opal's? He laughed exultingly. His whole soul was on fire, his whole body aflame.

Beyond the formality of the betrothal, Opal had not yet been bound to the Count. She was not his--yet! She could not be Paul's wife--Fate had made that forever impossible--but she should be _his_, as he knew she already was at heart.

They loved, and was not love--everything!

He paced the floor in an excitement beyond his control. Opal should give him, out of her life, one day--one day in the little hotel on the Burgenstock, where his mother and her lover had been so happy. They, too, should be happy--as happy as two mating birds in a new-built nest--for one day they would forget all yesterdays and all to-morrows.

He would make that one day as glorious and shadowless for her as a day could possibly be made--one day in which to forget that the world was gray--- one day which should live in their memories throughout all the years to come as the one ray of sunshine in two bleak and dreary lives!

And tempted, as he admitted to himself, quite beyond all reason, he swore by all that he held sacred to risk everything--brave everything--for the sake of living one day in Paradise.

"We have a right to be happy," he said. "Everyone has a right to be happy, and we have done no wrong to the world. Why should we two, who have the capability of making so much of our lives and doing so much for the world, as we might have, together--why should we be sentenced to the misery of mere existence, while men and women far less worthy of happiness enjoy life in its utmost ecstasy?"

One thing he was firmly resolved upon. Opal should not know his real rank. She should give herself to Paul Zalenska, the man--not to Paul the Prince! His rank should gloss over nothing--nothing--and for all she knew now to the contrary, her future rank as Countess de Roannes was superior to his own.

And then as silence fell about the little hotel, unbroken save by some strolling musicians in the square near at hand who sent the most tender of Swiss love-melodies out upon the evening air, Paul walked out to the terrace, pa.s.sed through the little gate, and reaching the balcony, knocked gently but imperatively upon the door of the room that was once his mother's.

The door was opened cautiously.

Paul stepped inside, and closed it softly behind him.

CHAPTER XXIV

In the moonlit room, Paul and Opal faced each other in a silence heavy with emotion.

It had been months since they parted, yet for some moments neither spoke. Opal first found her voice.

"Paul! You-saw me!"

"I felt your eyes!"

"Oh, why did I come!"

Opal had begun to prepare for the night and had thrown about her shoulders a loose robe of crimson silk. Her l.u.s.trous hair, like waves of burnished copper, hung below her waist in beautiful confusion. With trembling fingers she attempted to secure it.

"Your hair is wonderful, Opal! Please leave it as it is," Paul said softly. And, curiously enough, she obeyed in silence.

"Paul," she said at last, with a little nervous laugh, as she recovered her self-possession and seated herself on the couch, "don't stand staring at me! I'm not a tragedy queen! You're too melodramatic. Sit down and tell me why you've come here at this hour."

Paul obeyed mechanically, his gaze still upon her. She shrank from the expression of his eyes--it was the old tiger-look again!