Petticoat Rule Part 25

"I was meditating," she replied coldly, as she smoothed down her skirts and mechanically put a hand to her hair, lest a curl had gone astray.

Then she made as if she would rise.

"Surely you are not going?" he pleaded.

"I have my work to do. I only stayed here a moment, in order to rest."

"And I am intruding?"

"Oh, scarcely," she replied quietly. "I was about to return to my work."

"Is it so urgent?"

"The business of a nation, M. le Comte, is always urgent."

"So urgent that you have no time now to give to old friends," he said bitterly.

She shrugged her shoulders with a quick, sarcastic laugh.

"Old friends? . . . Oh! . . ."

"Yes, old friends," he rejoined quietly. "We were children together, Lydie."

"Much has occurred since then, Monsieur le Comte."

"Only one great and awful fault, which meseems hath been its own expiation."

"Need we refer to that now?" she asked calmly.

"Indeed, indeed, we must," he replied earnestly. "Lydie, am I never to be forgiven?"

"Is there aught for me to forgive?"

"Yes. An error, a grave error . . . a fault, if you will call it so . . ."

"I prefer to call it a treachery," she said.

"Without one word of explanation, without listening to a single word from me. Is that just?"

"There is nothing that you could say now, Monsieur le Comte, that I should have the right to hear."

"Why so?" he said with sudden vehemence, as he came nearer to her, and in a measure barred the way by which she might have escaped. "Even a criminal at point of death is allowed to say a few words in self-defence. Yet I was no criminal. If I loved you, Lydie, was that wrong? . . . I was an immeasurable fool, I own that," he added more calmly, being quick to note that he only angered her by his violence, "and it is impossible for a high-minded woman like yourself to understand the pitfalls which beset the path of a man, who has riches, good looks mayhap and a great name, all of which will tempt the cupidity of certain designing women, bent above all on matrimony, on influence and independence. Into one of these pitfalls I fell, Lydie . . . fell clumsily, stupidly, I own, but not inexcusably."

"You seem to forget, M. le Comte," she said stiffly, "that you are speaking of your wife."

"Nay!" he said with a certain sad dignity, "I try not to forget it. I do not accuse, I merely state a fact, and do so before the woman whom I most honour in the world, who was the first recipient of my childish confidences, the first consoler of my boyhood's sorrows."

"That was when you were free, M. le Comte, and could bring your confidences to me; now they justly belong to another and . . ."

"And by the heavens above me," he interrupted eagerly, "I do that other no wrong by bringing my sorrows to you and laying them with a prayer for consolation at your feet."

He noted that since that first desire to leave him, Lydie had made no other attempt to go. She was sitting in the angle of the rough garden seat, her graceful arm resting on the back, her cheek leaning against her hand. A gentle breeze stirred the little curls round her head, and now, when he spoke so earnestly and so sadly about his sorrow, a swift look of sympathy softened the haughty expression of her mouth.

Quick to notice it, Gaston nevertheless in no way relaxed his att.i.tude of humble supplication; he stood before her with head bent, his eyes mostly riveted on the ground.

"There is so little consolation that I can give," she said more gently.

"There is a great one, if you will but try."

"What is it?"

"Do not cast me out from your life altogether. Am I such a despicable creature that you cannot now and then vouchsafe me one kind look?

. . . I did wrong you . . . I know it. . . . Call it treachery if you must, yet when I look back on that night, meseems I am worthy of your pity. Blinded by my overwhelming love for you, I forgot everything for one brief hour . . . forgot that I had sunk deeply in a pitfall--by Heaven through no fault of mine own! . . . forgot that another now had a claim on that love which never was mine to give, since it had always been wholly yours. . . . Yes! I forgot! . . . the music, the noise, the excitement of the night, your own beauty, Lydie, momentarily addled my brain. . . . I forgot the past, I only lived for the present. Am I to blame because I am a man and that you are exquisitely fair?"

He forced himself not to raise his voice, not to appear eager or vehement. Lydie only saw before her a man whom she had once loved, who had grievously wronged her, but who now stood before her ashamed and humbled, asking with utmost respect for her forgiveness of the past.

"Let us speak of it no longer," she said, "believe me, Gaston, I have never borne you ill-will."

For the first time she had used his Christian name. The layer of ice was broken through, but the surface of the lake was still cold and smooth.

"Nay! but you avoid me," he rejoined seeking to meet her eyes, "you treat me with whole-hearted contempt, whilst I would lay down my life to serve you, and this in all deference and honour, as the martyrs of old laid down their life for their faith."

"Protestations, Gaston," she said with a quick sigh.

"Let me prove them true," he urged. "Lydie, I watched you just now, while you slept; it was some minutes and I saw much. Your lips were parted with constant sighs; there were tears at the points of your lashes. At that moment I would have gladly died if thereby I could have eased your heart from the obvious burden which it bore."

Emboldened by her silence, and by the softer expression of her face, he sat down close beside her, and anon placed his hand on hers. She withdrew it quietly and serenely as was her wont, but quite without anger.

She certainly felt no anger toward him. Strangely enough, the anger she did feel was all against her husband. That Gaston had seen her grief was in a measure humiliating to her pride, and this humiliation she owed to the great wrong done her by milor. And Gaston had been clever at choosing his words; he appealed to her pity and asked for forgiveness. There was no attempt on his part to justify himself, and his self-abas.e.m.e.nt broke down the barrier of resentment which up to now she had set up against him. His respectful homage soothed her wounded pride, and she felt really, sincerely sorry for him.

The fact that her own actions had been so gravely misunderstood also helped Gaston's cause; she felt that, after all, she too might have pa.s.sed a hasty, unconsidered judgment on him, and knew now how acutely such a judgment can hurt.

And he spoke very earnestly, very simply: remember that she had loved him once, loved and trusted him. He had been the ideal of her girlhood, and though she had remorselessly hurled him down from his high pedestal since then, there remained nevertheless, somewhere in the depths of her heart, a lingering thought of tenderness for him.

"Lydie!" he now said appealingly.

"Yes?"

"Let me be the means of easing your heart from its load of sorrow. You spoke of my wife just now. See, I do not shirk the mention of her name. I swear to you by that early love for you which was the n.o.blest, purest emotion of my life, that I do not wrong her by a single thought when I ask for your friendship. You are so immeasurably superior to all other women, Lydie, that in your presence pa.s.sion itself becomes exalted and desire transformed into a craving for sacrifice."

"Oh! how I wish I could believe you, Gaston," she sighed.

"Try me!"

"How?"

"Let me guess what troubles you now. Oh! I am not the empty-headed fop that you would believe. I have ears and eyes, and if I hold aloof from Court intrigues, it is only because I see too much of their inner workings. Do you really believe that I do not see what goes on around me now? Do I not know how your n.o.ble sympathy must at this very moment be going out to the unfortunate young prince whom you honour with your friendship? Surely, surely, you cannot be a party to the criminal supineness which at this very moment besets France, and causes her to abandon him to his fate?"

"Not France, Gaston," she protested.