Red Rowans Part 47

"You mean that she loved you, or you think she did."

"I am sure of it. She did not deny it. Violet! she is the first woman, I verily believe, who has loved me truly, and I repaid her by insult."

A dangerous rush of sheer anger came to send tact and prudence to the wind for the time. "You say that! The only woman! Then I say, Paul, that you insult others by your doubts--others who have loved you longer. Paul!" She was very close upon the verge, when she pulled herself up short, and gave a little laugh. "You cannot think her love very deep if you say she will refuse you. But what reason have you to think she will? Because you kissed her? That is absurd, and you know it. I believe you wish her to accept you."

"Do I?" he asked wearily; "for the life of me I scarcely know; but I mean to ask her. I must. Surely you can see that; you generally understand me."

"I do understand you, Paul; better perhaps than you understand yourself. That is why I tell you not to go down to Gleneira. You are _tete montee_ now. You are not yourself. Look the matter in the face!

Supposing she were to accept you; what then?"

He paused a moment. "I should marry her, I suppose--but she won't. I am not the sort of fellow she could marry." His voice had the tenderest ring in it, but his head was turned away. To see it she leant forward closer to him, almost on her knees, and the firelight lit up her eager, appealing face.

"Paul, don't deceive yourself with doubts. You love her more than ever, and if, as you say, she loves you, the result is a foregone conclusion, if you meet. It is a future of poverty, and, oh, how you will regret it! Don't go, Paul, I beg of you; I beseech you--I am an old friend, my dear."

As she laid her flashing jewelled hands on his shoulder, his went up mechanically and drew them down. So holding them in his, he looked into her face kindly. "You are, indeed--but I must go--I have no choice."

His soft, caressing touch made her risk all, and her breath came fast in swift denial. "No choice! That is not true! You said but now, no one had loved you truly but this girl. Think, Paul, did not I? You know I did. Was it for my own sake that I gave you up--that I sent you away? You know it was not. I am not of the sort on whom the world turns its back. I would have faced it gladly. It was for you. Because you loved your profession--because--but you know it all! Even when I was free, but poor, I would not claim you. Will Marjory do as much for you? Will she say, 'I love you, but I will not injure you by marrying you'? I think not. But I should not injure you now--I am rich, I am rich, and I love you."

Once before she had told him so plainly, but it had then been with an easy self-control, suggesting the idea but withholding its inception.

Now she was pleading as if for life.

"You are very good," he muttered, feeling the truth of what she said.

"Yes!" she echoed, with a tinge of bitterness at her lack of power to move him more. "How good you will never know. I have stood between you and more evil than you dream of; and now I ask you to stay with me, Paul, not because I love you, but because you are always happy with me, because you will be safe with me--with me--only with me."

That was true also; he was always happy with her. But safe?

"I do not understand," he said. "Why should I be safer with you? I know of no danger." Then he clasped her hands tighter, looking into her face curiously. "What is it, Violet? Is there danger? You speak---- By Heaven! there is something, Violet! What is it?"

She drew from him quickly, realising her own imprudence, for she was not prepared for any decisive step. "Nothing, Paul--nothing to speak of," she said, rising to her feet with a hasty laugh, but her voice shook, her hands were trembling. "Since you will not listen, go to Marjory; she can protect you as well as I can."

"I don't care to hide behind any woman," he said sternly. "Not even behind you. What is it? You are not the kind of woman to say that sort of thing unless you meant it. What danger do you know that I do not?"

Even to hear his questioning roused her to a sense of what the knowledge would mean to him, and the instinct of defence overcame even her pride. "Am I not the sort of woman? All women are alike when they are jealous. Can't you see it, Paul--can't you understand? or will you force me to say it all over again? I know nothing, positively nothing, to prevent your marrying Marjory. Go down to Gleneira if you will."

He shook his head. "Don't prevaricate, Violet. I had rather you lied to me, but for pity's sake do neither. Be my friend and tell me the truth."

For an instant his gentleness overcame her fence. "I cannot, Paul--I cannot," she almost wailed; then remembering herself, she went on, "How can I, when there is nothing to tell?"

"I will not leave the room till I know," was his reply. "There _is_ something, and you shall tell me. You will not; then I must find out for myself--there was a letter in your hand. Let me go, Violet! I don't want to hurt you, but I must and will have that letter, unless---- No! I cannot trust you for the truth. I must see that letter for myself."

She knew enough of him to recognise that now his imperious temper was roused, her only chance lay in an appeal to his affection.

"Listen, Paul! I have done so much for you. Pay me back now--only this little thing. I don't want you to see that letter--you have no right to see it."

He shook his head, and she flung the hands she had been detaining from her with a cry.

"You do not trust me! You do not trust me! That is hard after all these years."

"No! I cannot trust you, dear; you are too good to me," he said gently, as he walked over to the table.

The dusk had grown into dark, and he pa.s.sed on to the window, in hopes of sufficient light to decipher the letter he held; failing that he came back to the fire.

"Don't strain your eyes over it," she said bitterly, as she leant--as if tired out--against the mantelpiece, watching him sombrely. "I strained mine over it once--needlessly. I will ring for lights, and you can surely wait for so much, now you have got your own way."

So they waited in silence, standing side by side before the fire, till the servant had set the shaded lamp on the table, and drawn the window curtains carefully, methodically. Then he glanced at the superscription, and pointing to it, said, "Why did you read it?" for across the first blank page was scrawled legibly, "Not to be read by anyone till Paul Macleod of Gleneira is dead."

"Because I chose--the reason why _you_ read it, I suppose."

The old admiration for her spirit which, even now, did not hesitate to meet him boldly on his own ground, rose in him as, instinctively, he turned to the signature for some further light to guide him in reading the closely written sheets. Then his eye caught a name at the bottom of a page where the writing merged from ink to a faint pencil.

"Jeanie Duncan!" he exclaimed, half aloud; "what can she have to do with me?" The instant after he turned to Mrs. Vane, as those who are puzzled turn to those who are better informed. "Janet Macleod! did she marry a Macleod after all?"

"She married your brother Alick, and the boy is their son. Now you know the worst--and _I_ have told you it--_I_, who would not hurt you for the world."

"She married---- Then little Paul?" He stood as if unable to grasp the meaning of his own words.

"Sit down, dear, and read it, since you have chosen to read. There is no hurry. You know the worst," she said gently.

So with a sort of dazed incredulity he read on in silence:

"Paul Macleod! yes! Paul! you shall read this some day; some day soon.

I am revenged. You were ashamed of me, and now I am the laird of Gleneira's wife. Yet I did not mean to be revenged till he came, like a fool, and put it into my head. I was getting tired of the life, too--of the hard, thankless life. It was by chance I fell in with him in Paris. I went there with someone and stayed on; so he could not guess that I was Jeanie Duncan, whom he had never seen. And I hated him because he was your brother; so he grew mad after me, and promised marriage. Then the thought came--I, whom the laird's Jock did not think good enough to love or marry, will take the laird himself, and flaunt it over them all. So we were married, and then, before I had time to settle anything, he died--died of drink, Paul!

"Well! I hated him, so I did not care. I hated him for being so like you, and caring for me when you did not----

"And now, if it is a boy, I will have my revenge--my just revenge--and turn you out of the old place. But I wait, because, if it is a girl, you will not care, and I will not have you jeer because my revenge has failed. I pray day and night that it may be a boy, and lest I should die, I write all about it, and put my marriage lines with the letter.

Then my son can come, and turn you out. I did not seek revenge, remember. It came into my hand, and it is just. You know that it is just!

"Jeanie Duncan.

"P.S.--Look in the photograph shops in Paris for 'La Belle ecossaise,'

if you wish to know what I was like when _he_ married me."

Paul, reading methodically, paused for a second, pa.s.sed his hand across his forehead as if to clear his mind, and then went on to a fainter pencil scrawl:

"Well! I have waited, Paul! It is a boy--so like you, Paul! I lie and think--for they say I am dying, and so it cannot hurt now--that he _is_ your son, and that we were married in the old days. But it is all a lie! He is _his_ son, and I will have my revenge! If only I could remember anything but the old days, Paul! Ah! surely when people love as we did---- No! I do not understand. Only, the boy is so like you. I lie and think, and I feel he must never turn you out. Never! never!

Only, if you die, then the boy must have his rights, for he is your son.

"Janet Macleod.

"P.S.--Mother will keep this; she has come to see me die, so it will be quite safe. She does not know I am married, and I have written outside that no one is to read it till you are dead. Ah, Paul! I wish you could have seen it. Forgive me, Paul--forgive me that he is not your son!"

A greyness had come to the handsome face, and, as he folded up the letter methodically, his hands trembled.