The Man and the Moment Part 17

CHAPTER XI

All through breakfast, Sabine devoted herself sedulously to Lord Fordyce--and this produced two results. It sent Henry into a seventh heaven and caused Michael to burn with jealous rage. Primitive instincts were a good deal taking possession of him--and he found it extremely difficult to keep up his role of disinterested friend. It must be admitted he was in really a very difficult position for any man, and it is not very easy to decide what he ought to have done short of telling Henry the truth at once--but this he found grew every moment more hard to do. It would mean that he would have to leave Heronac immediately. In any case, he must do this directly. Sabine admitted, even to him, that she was his wife. They could not together agree to leave Henry in ignorance, that would be deliberately deceiving, and would make them both feel too mean. But while nothing was even tacitly confessed, there seemed some straw for his honor to grasp; he clutched at it knowing its flimsy nature. He had given himself until the next day and now refused to look beyond that. Every moment Sabine was attracting him more deeply--and bringing certain memories more vividly before him with maddening tantalization.

But did she love Henry? Of that he could not be sure. If she did, he certainly must divorce her at once. If she did not--why was she wishing to marry him? Henry was an awfully good fellow, far better than he--but after all, she was his wife--even though he had forfeited all right to call her so, and if she did not love Henry, no friendship toward him ought to be allowed to stand in the way of their reunion. It is astonishing how civilization controls nature! If we put as much force into the controlling of our own thoughts as we put into acting up to a standard of public behavior, what wonderful creatures we should become!

Here were these two human beings--young and strong and full of pa.s.sion, playing each a part with an art as great as any displayed at the Comedie Francaise! And all for reasons suggested by civilization!--when nature would have solved the difficulty in the twinkling of an eye!

Michael spent a breakfast hour in purgatory. It was plain to be seen that Henry expected him to show some desire to go fishing, or to want some other sport which required solitude, or only the company of Madame Imogen--and his afternoon looked as if it were not going to be a thing of joy. The result of civilization then made him say:

"May I take out that boat I saw in the little harbor after breakfast, Mrs. Howard? I must have some real exercise. Two days in a motor is too much."

And his hostess graciously accorded him a permission, while her heart sank--at least she experienced that unpleasant physical sensation of heaviness somewhere in the diaphragm which poets have christened heart-sinking! She knew it was quite the right thing for him to have done,--and yet she wished fervently that they could have spent another hour like the one in the turret summer-house.

Henry was radiant--and as Michael went off through the postern and down to the little harbor where the boats lay, he asked in fine language what were his beloved's wishes for the afternoon?

Sabine felt pettish, she wanted to snap out that she did not care a single sou what they did, but she controlled herself and answered sweetly that she would take him all over the chateau and ask his opinion and advice about some further improvements she meant to make.

They strolled first to the crenellated wall of the courtyard along which there was a high walk from which you looked down upon the boat-house and the little jetty--this wall made the fourth side of the courtyard, and with the gate tower, and the concierge's tower across the causeway, and part of the garden elevation, was the very oldest of the whole chateau, and dated from early feudal times.

They leaned upon the stone and looked down at the sea.

"There are only a very few days in the year that Minne-ha-ha ever comes out of her shed," Sabine told him, pointing to the boat-house. "You cannot imagine what the wind is here--even now it may get up in a few moments on this gla.s.sy sea, or thunder may come--and in the autumn the storms are too glorious. I sit at one of the big windows in my sitting-room and watch the waves for hours; they break on the rocks which stretch out from the tower, which is my bedroom on the Finisterre side, and they rise mountain-high; it is a most splendid sight. We are, as it were, in the midst of a cauldron of boiling foam. It exalts and vitalizes me more than I can tell you. I wish it had been the autumn now."

"I don't," he said. "I much prefer the summer and peace. I want to take away all that desire for fierce things, dearest--they were the echoes of those dark thoughts and shadows which used to be in your eyes at Carlsbad."

"Ah, if you could!" she sighed.

It was the first time he had ever seen her moved--and it distressed him.

"Do you not think that I can, then?" he asked, tenderly. "It is the only thing I really want in life--to make you happy."

"How good you are, Henry!" she cried; "so n.o.ble and unselfish and true; you frighten me. I am just a creature of earth--full of things you may not like when you know me better. I am sure I think of myself more than any one else--you make me--ashamed."

He took her hand and kissed it, while his fine gray eyes melted in worship.

"I will not even listen when you say such things--for me you are perfect--a pearl of great price."

"I must try to be, but I am not," and her voice trembled a little. "I believe I am as full of faults and life as your friend there--Mr.

Arranstoun, who I am sure is just a selfish, reckless man!"

Michael at this moment reached the boat-house with old Berthe's son, who began to help him to untie the one he wanted. He looked the most splendid creature there in his white flannels--and he turned and waved to them and then got in and pulled out a few yards with long, easy strokes.

"Michael is a character," his friend said. "He has been spoilt all his life by women--and fortune. He has a most strange story. He married a girl about five years ago just to make himself safe from another woman whom he had been making love to. I was awfully angry with him at the time--I was staying in the house and I refused to wait for the wedding.

I thought it such a shame to the girl, although it was merely an empty ceremony--but she was awfully young, I believe."

"How interesting!" and Sabine's voice was strained. "You saw the girl--what was she like?"

"No, I never saw her--it was all settled one afternoon when I was out--and I thought it such a thundering shame that I left that same night."

"And if you had stayed--you would have met her--how curious fate is sometimes--isn't it? Perhaps you could have prevented your friend being so foolish--if you had stayed."

"No, nothing in the world would ever prevent Michael from doing what he wanted to--it is in the blood of all those old border families--heredity again--they flourished by imposing their wills recklessly and s.n.a.t.c.hing and fighting, and who ever survived was a strong man. It has come down to them in force and vigor and daring unto this day."

"But what happened about the marriage?" Sabine asked. "It interests me so much; it sounds so romantic at this matter-of-fact time."

"Nothing happened, except that they went through the ceremony and the girl left at once that same night, I believe, and Michael has never seen or heard of her since--he tells me the time is up now when he can divorce her for desertion, according to Scotch law--and I fancy he will.

It is a ridiculous position for them both. He does not even know if she has not preferred some one else by now."

"Surely she would have given some sign if she had--but perhaps he does not care."

"Not much. I fancy he amused himself a good deal at Ostende--" and Henry smiled. "He has been away in the wilds for five years and naturally has come back full of zest for civilization."

Sabine's full lips curled, and she looked at the sea again, and the figure in the boat rapidly pulling away from the sh.o.r.e.

"If he chose to leave her alone all these years, he could not expect anything else, could he, than that she would have grown to care for another man."

"No, that is what I told him--and he said he was a dog in the manger."

"He did not want her himself, and yet did not wish to give her to any one else--how disgustingly selfish!"

"Men are proverbially selfish," and Henry smiled again; "it is the nature of the creatures."

The violet eyes were glowing as stars might glow could they be angry--and their owner turned away from the sea with a fine shrug of her shoulders--her thoughts were raging. So that is how Michael looked upon the _affaire_! He was just the dog in the manger, and she was the hay!

But never, never would she submit to that! She would speak to him when he came in and ask him to divorce her at once. Why should Henry ever know?--even if Scotch divorces were reported she would appear, not as Mrs. Howard, but as Mrs. Arranstoun,--then a discouraging thought came--only Sabine was such an uncommon name--if it were not for that he might never guess. But whether Henry ever knew or did not know, the sooner she were free the better, and then she would marry him and adorn his great position in the world--and Michael would see her there, and how well she fulfilled her duties--so even yet she would be able to punish him as he deserved! Hay! Indeed! Never, never, never!

Then she knew she must have been answering at random some of Lord Fordyce's remarks, for a rather puzzled look was on his face.

A strong revulsion of feeling came to her. Henry suddenly appeared in his best guise--and a wave of tenderness for him swept over her. How kind and courteous and devoted he was--treating her always as his queen.

She could be sure of homage here--and that far from being hay; she would be the most valued jewel in his crown of success. She would rise into spheres where she would be above the paltry emotions caused by a hateful man just because he had "it"!

So she gave her hand to Henry in a burst of exuberance and let him place it in his arm, and then lead her back into the chateau and through all the rooms, where they discussed blues and greens and stuffs and furniture and the lowering of this doorway and the heightening of that, and at last they drifted to the garden and to the lavender hedge--but she would not take him into the summer-house or again look out on the sea.

All through her sweetness there was a note of unrest--and Henry's fine senses told him so--and this left the one drop of bitterness in his otherwise blissful cup.

Michael meanwhile was expending his energy and his pa.s.sion in swift movement in the boat--but after a while he rested on his oars and then he began to think.

There was no use in going on with the game after all--he ought to go away at once. If he stayed and saw her any more he would not be able to leave her at all. He knew he would only break his promise to Henry--tell Sabine that he had fallen madly in love with her--implore her again to forgive him for everything in the past and let them begin afresh. But he was faced with the horrible thought of the anguish to Henry--Henry, his old friend, who trusted him and who was ten times more worthy of this dear woman than he was himself.

He had never been so full of impotency and misery in his life--not even on that morning in June when he woke and found Sabine had left him--defied him and gone--after everything. Pure rage had come to his aid then--but now he had only remorse and longing--and anger with fate.

"It must all depend upon whether or no she loves Henry," he said to himself at last--"and this I will make her tell me this very afternoon."

But when he got back and went into the garden he happened to witness a scene.

Sabine--overcome by Lord Fordyce's goodness, had let him hold her arm while her head was perilously near to his shoulder. It all looked very intimate and lover-like when seen from afar. The greatest pain Michael Arranstoun had ever experienced came into his heart, and without waiting a second he turned on his heel and went back to the house. Here he had a bath and changed his clothes, while his servant packed, and then, with the help of Madame Imogen, he looked up a train. Yes, there was a fast one which went to Paris from their nearest little town--he could just catch it by ordering Henry's motor--this he promptly did--and leaving the best excuses he could invent with Madame Imogen, he got in and departed a few minutes before his hostess and Lord Fordyce came back to tea at five.