The Confounding of Camelia Part 23

"Why?"--her voice at last showed a tremor. "You debase me by your incredulity. If I do not love you--what did yesterday mean?--what does _this_ mean? It is my only excuse."

"Excuse?"--in this nearing antagonism his voice flamed up at the sudden outlet--"Excuse? There was no excuse--for yesterday." Saved from the direct brutality of refusing her love, the memory of Arthur's betrayed trust rose hot within him. Arthur's sincerity shone in its n.o.ble unconsciousness of the falseness of friend and sweetheart, one falseness forced, one willing and frivolous; his grief was mocked by her indifference.

"Nothing can excuse that," he said. "What right had you to accept him?

What right had you to keep me in ignorance? Why did you not break with him before turning to me? By Heaven, Camelia! even knowing you as I do I cannot understand how you did it! I could hardly look him in the face when he was here, the thought of it sickened me so."

"Yes, that was horrible," said Camelia.

"Horrible?" Perior repeated. Her judicial tone exasperated him. He walked away to the window repeating, "Horrible!" as though exclaiming at inadequacy.

"But have I not atoned?" Camelia asked.

"Atoned?" he stared round at her.

"I have set him free. I have owned myself unworthy. I did not know you cared for me when I accepted him, or, at least, I did not know I cared for you--so much."

Perior continued to look at her for a silent moment, contemplating the monstrousness, yet strangely intuitive truth of her amendment. He let it pa.s.s, feeling rather helpless before it.

"So that is the way you pave the way to penitence? You atone to the broken toys by walking over them? No, Camelia, no, nothing atones, either to him or to me, for that unspoken lie." He came back to her, feeling the need to face her for the solemn moment of the contest.

Camelia was speaking hurriedly at last, losing a little her sustaining calm--"And had I told you?--Had I said at once that I was engaged to him?--Would that have helped us?--Could you have said, then, that you loved me? You would have been too angry--for his sake--to say it, when I had told you that in one day I had accepted and meant to reject him"--the questions came eagerly.

He looked at her face, strong with its still unshaken certainty, white, delicate, insistent. Loving it and her, his eyes held hers intently, and he asked, "Did I say I loved you?"

A serene dignity rose to meet his look. "You did not _say_ it, perhaps.

You said you did _not_ love me," she added, with a little smile.

"I was base--and I spoke basely. I said that I loved you enough to kiss you. You may scorn me for it."

"Ah!" she said quickly, "that was because you did not believe that I loved you! You are exonerated."

"Not even then. But if you do love me--choose me, as you say; if I do love you--which I have not said--and will not say, will not say even to exculpate my folly of last night--even then, Camelia! I would not marry a woman whom I despise."

"Despise?" she repeated. Her voice was a toneless echo of his. She weighed the word, and found it heavy, as he saw. Her eyes dwelt on his mutely, and there dawned slowly in them the terror of the eternal negative that rose between her and him.

"You are not good enough for me, Camelia," said Perior.

"Because of yesterday!" she gasped. "You can't forgive that!"

"Not only that, Camelia--I do not love you."

She stood silent, gazing. His heart bled for her. To tell the saving lie, he had faced a jibing self-scorn; yet he continued to face it inflexibly.

"I could not live with you. I think you would kill me. I said to poor Arthur this afternoon what I believe of you--that you are selfish, and false, and hard as a stone. I could not love a woman of whom I could think--of whom I had been forced to say--that."

Compunctions rained upon him--sharp arrows. Her mute, white face appealed--if only to the long devotion, the long tenderness of years.

The crucial moment was past, and the upwelling tenderness, devotion, called to him to hurry her away from it, and support her under his own most necessary cruelty.

His voice broke in a stammer as he said, taking her hands--"How can I tell you how I hate myself for saying this?--it is hideous--it is mean to say."

And Camelia said nothing, seemed merely to await, in a frozen stupor, another blow. He could not see in her now the lying jilt of yesterday.

"Don't think of me again as I've been this afternoon. Forget it, won't you?" he urged; "I am going away to-morrow--and--you will get over it, be able to see me again--some day, as the good old friend who never wanted to be cruel--no, I swear it, Camelia. You must go now; you will let me order the trap? You will let me drive you home?"

She had drawn her hands away; in the dim room her eyes met his--bereft, astonished.

"You will let me drive you?" Perior repeated with some confusion.

"No, I will walk," she said, hardly audibly.

"The five miles back? It is too far--too late." He looked away from her, too much touched by those astonished eyes.

"No--I will walk." Then, as he stood still, rather at a loss--

"You are going to-morrow?"

"Yes."

"Because of me?"

"Ah--that pleases you!" he said, with a smile a little forced.

"Pleases me!" The sharpness of her voice cut him, made him feel gross in his unkindness.

"It does not please me, but it is the best thing under the circ.u.mstances. Now, Camelia, you must go. I will walk with you. We won't speak of this at all--will pretend it never happened. You must forgive my folly of last night, and get over this touching folly of yours. Come, we won't talk of it any more," he repeated, drawing her hand through his arm, holding it with a clasp consolatory and entreating.

She did not follow him. "No! no!" she said, half-choked, drawing away the hand. Then, suddenly, with a great sob, turning to him, she flung herself upon his breast, clung to him, her hands clutching his shoulders--

"Oh! don't leave me! Don't leave me! I can't bear it!" she cried, shuddering. "I will be good! Oh, I _will_ be good! Give me time, just wait--and see--" The words were half lost, as with hidden face she wept.

"You are so cruel, so unjust--give me time and see how I will please you--how you will love me. You must love me--you must--you must."

"Camelia! Camelia!" Perior was shocked, shaken as well. The deep note of his own voice warned him in its pity, and amazement, and distress, of the dangerous emotion that seized him. To yield again to an emotion, even though a higher one than last night's--to yield with those thoughts of hers--those spoken thoughts--never, never.

He tried to hold her off; her sobs made her helpless, but with arms outstretched--blindly, as he remembered to have seen a crying, stumbling child, she turned to him--it was too pitiful--as she might have turned to her mother. How repulse the broken creature? He could but take the outstretched hands, let her come to him again; she did not put her arms around him; there was no claim; only a clinging, her face hidden, as she sobbed, "Don't leave me! Don't! I love you! I adore you!"

"My poor child!"

"Yes, yes, your poor child! Be sorry for me, be kind--only a child. I did not mean to deserve that--torture, you--despising! I never _meant_ anything--so wrong. Only a silly, a selfish, a frivolous child--won't you see it?--never caring for the toys I played with--never caring for anything but you, _really_. Can't you see it now, as I do? I have grown up, I have put away those things. Can't you forgive me?"

"Yes, yes. Great heavens! I am not such a prig, such a fool! I have always hoped----"

"That you could allow yourself to love me! Ah, say it! say it!" She looked up, lifting her face to his.

"To be fond of you, Camelia," said Perior. "I can't say more than that!"

"Because you won't believe in me! Can't believe in me! And I can't live without you to help me! Haven't you seen, all along, that you were the only one I cared about? Half my little naughtinesses were only to provoke you, to make you angry, to see that you cared enough to be angry. All the rest--the worldliness--the using of people--yes, yes, I own to it!--but no one was better than I! Why should I have been good when no one else is? When all are playing the same game, and most people only fit to play with? Why should I have been better than they?"