The Reckoning Part 32

"You--_love_--me!"

I caught her in my arms. A bright blush stained neck and face, and she threw back her head, avoiding my lips.

[Ill.u.s.tration: She threw back her head, avoiding my lips.]

"Elsin, I beg you--I beg you to love me! Can you not see what you have done to me?--how I am awakened?"

"Wait," she pleaded, resisting me, "wait, Carus. I--I am afraid----"

"Of love, sweetheart?"

"Wait," she panted--"give me time--till morning--then if I change not--if my heart stirs again so loudly when you hold me--thus--and--and crush me so close to you--so close--and promise to love me----"

"Elsin, Elsin, I love you!"

"Wait--wait, Carus!--my darling. Oh, you must not--kiss me--until you know--what I am----"

Her face burned against mine; her eyes closed. Through the throbbing silence her head drooped, lower, lower, yielding her mouth to mine; then, with a cry she turned in my arms, twisting to her knees, and dropped her head forward on the bed. And, as I bent beside her, she gasped: "No--no--wait, Carus! I know myself! I know myself! Take your lips from my hands--do not touch me! My brain has gone blind, I tell you! Leave me to think--if I can----"

"I will not leave you here in tears. Elsin, Elsin, look at me!"

"The tears help me--help us both," she sobbed. "I know what I know.

Leave me--lest the very sky fall to crush us in our madness----"

I bent beside her, a new, fierce tenderness choking me; and at my touch she straightened up, tear-stained face lifted, and flung both arms around my neck.

"I love you, Carus! I love you!" she stammered. "I care for that, only--only for that! If it be for a week, if it be for a day, an hour, an instant, it is what I was made for, it is what I was fashioned for--to love you, Carus! There is nothing else--nothing else in all the world! Love me, take me, do with me what you will! I yield all you ask, all you beg, all you desire--all save wedlock!"

She swayed in my arms. A deadly pallor whitened her; then her knees trembled and she gave way, sinking to the floor, her head buried in the flowering curtains of the bed; and I to drop on my knees beside her, seeking to lift her face while the sobs shook her slender body, and she wept convulsively, head prostrate in her arms.

"I--I am wicked!" she wailed. "Oh, I have done that which has d.a.m.ned me forever, Carus!--forever and ever. I can not wed you--I love you so!--yet I can not wed you! What wild folly drove me to go with you?

What devil has dragged me here to tempt you--whom I love so truly? Oh, G.o.d pity us both--G.o.d pity us!"

"Elsin," I said hoa.r.s.ely, "you are mad to say it! Is there anything on earth to bar us from wedlock?"

"Yes, Carus, yes!" she cried. "It is--it is too late!"

"Too late!" I repeated, stunned.

"Aye--for I am a wedded wife! Now you know! Oh, this is the end of all!"

A while she lay there sobbing her heart out, I upright on my knees beside her, staring at blank s.p.a.ce, which reeled and reeled, so that the room swam all awry, and I strove to steady it with fixed gaze, lest the whole world come crashing upon us.

At last she spoke, lifting her tear-marred face from the floor to the bed, forehead resting heavily in her hands:

"I ask your pardon--for the sin I have committed. Hear me out--that is my penance; spurn me--that is my punishment!"

She pressed her wet eyes, shuddering. "Are you listening, Carus? The night before I sailed from Canada--_he_ sought me----"

"Who?" My lips found the question, but no sound came.

"Walter Butler! O G.o.d! that I have done this thing!"

In the dreadful silence I heard her choking back the cry that strangled her. And after a while she found her voice again: "I was a child--a vain, silly thing of moods and romance, ignorant of men, innocent of the world, flattered by the mystery with which he cloaked his pa.s.sion, awed, fascinated by this first melancholy lover who had wrung from me through pity, through vanity, through a vague fear of him, perhaps, a promise of secret betrothal."

She lifted her head and set her chin on one clinched hand, yet never looked at me:

"Sir Frederick was abed; I all alone in the great arms-gallery, nose to the diamond window-panes, and looking out at the moon--and waiting for him. Suddenly I saw him there below.... Heaven is witness I meant no harm nor dreamed of any. He was not alone. My heart and my affections were stirred to warmth--I sailing from Canada and friends next day at dawn--and I went down to the terrace and out among the trees where he stood, his companion moving off among the trees. I had come only to bid him the farewell I had promised, Carus--I never dreamed of what he meant to do."

She cleared her hair from her brow.

"I--I swear to you, Carus, that never has Walter Butler so much as laid the weight of his little finger on my person! Yet he swayed me there--using that spell of melancholy, clothed in romance--and--I know not how it was--or how I listened, or how consented--it is scarce more than a dreadful dream--the trees in the moonlight, his voice so gentle, so pitiful, trembling, beseeching--and he had brought a clergyman"--again her hands covered her eyes--"and, ere I was aware of it, frightened, stunned in the storm of his pa.s.sion, he had his way with me. The clergyman stood between us, saying words that bound me. I heard them, I was mute, I shrank from the ring, yet suffered it--for even as he ringed me he touched me not with his hand. Oh, if he had, I think the spell had broken!"

Again her tears welled up, falling silently; and presently the strength returned to her voice, and she went on:

"From the first moment that I saw you, Carus, I understood what love might be. From the very first I closed my ears to the quick cry of caution. I saw you meet coquetry unmoved, I knew the poison of my first pa.s.sion was in me, stealing through every vein; and every moment with you was the more hopeless for me. I played a hundred roles--you smiled indifference on all. A mad desire to please you grew with your amused impatience of me. Curiosity turned to jealousy. I longed for your affection as I never longed for anything on earth--or heaven. I had never had a lover to love before. O Carus, I had never loved, and love crazed me! Day after day I wondered if I had been fashioned to inspire love in such a man as you. I was bewildered by my pa.s.sion and your coldness; yet had I not been utterly mad I must have known the awful end of such a flame once kindled. But could I inspire love? Could you love me? That was all in the world I cared about--thinking nothing of the end, knowing all hope was dead for me, and nothing in life unless you loved me. O Carus, if I have inspired one brief moment of tenderness in you, deal mercifully with the sin! Guilty as I am, false as I am, I can not add a lie and say that I am sorry that you love me, that for one blessed moment you said you loved me. Now it is ended. I can not be your wife. I am too mean, too poor a thing for hate. Deal with me gently, Carus, lest your wrath strike me dead here at the altar of outraged Love!"

I rose to my feet, feeling blindly for support, and rested against the great carved columns of the bed. A cold rage froze me, searching every vein with icy numbness that left me like a senseless thing. That pa.s.sed; I roused, breathing quietly and deeply, and looked about, furtive, lest the familiar world around had changed to ashes, too.

Presently my dull senses were aware of what was at my feet, kneeling there, face buried in clasped hands, too soft, too small, too frail to hold a man's whole destiny. And, as I bent to kiss them, I scarce dared clasp them, scarce dared lift her to my arms, scarce dared meet the frightened wonder in her eyes, and the full sweetness of them, and the love breaking through their azure, as I think day must dawn in paradise!

"Now, in the name of G.o.d," I breathed, "we two, always forever one, through life, through death, here upon earth, and afterward! I wed you now with heart and soul, and ring your body with my arms! I stand your champion, I kneel your lover, Elsin, till that day breaks on a red reckoning with him who did this sin! Then I shall wed you. Will you take me?"

She placed her hands on my shoulders, gazing at me from her very soul.

"You need not wed me--so that you love me, Carus."

Arms enlacing one another, we walked the floor in silence, slowly pa.s.sing from her chamber into mine, and back again, heads erect, challenging that Destiny whose shadowy visage we could now gaze on unafraid.

The dusk of day was dissolving to a silvery night, through which the white-throat's song floated in distant, long-drawn sweetness. The little stream's whisper grew louder, too; and I heard the trees stirring in slumber, and the breeze in the river-reeds.

There, at the open window, standing, she lifted her sweet face, looking into mine.

"What will you do with me? I am yours."

"Wait for you."

"You need not wait, if it be your will."

"It is not my will that we ever part. Nor shall we, wedded or not. Yet we must wait our wedded happiness."

"You need not, Carus."

"I know it and I wait."

"So then--so then you hold me innocent--you raise me back to the high place I fell from, blinded by love----"

"You never fell from your high place, Elsin."