The Tree of Knowledge Part 84

"Elsa, you are mad! _Mrs. Orton?_"

"Leon, you don't know what hateful things she said of you. She said she knew them for facts. I was obliged to tell her the real truth, I could not stand to have her pitying me, and telling me she knew better than I did. And she declared she would not tell. I made her promise."

He laughed harshly.

"So, though you could betray your husband's confidence, you did not think that she could betray yours! Oh, Elsa! Elsa!... G.o.d help me!"

"Leon, it is very inconsiderate and unkind of you to frighten me so!

I--I--shall faint or something. What harm so very great have I done?

They often put stories about you in the papers. n.o.body will know that this is true."

"The world may know, for aught I care. What is the world to me? Less than nothing. All my life I have never valued public opinion. I could bear with perfect fort.i.tude to be an outlaw--tabooed by society, if--if I knew there lived on earth one woman I could trust."

He went to the window. The purple darkness outside seemed in sympathy with him. The verbena scent welled up in waves of perfume. Elsa began to cry bitterly, and then to let fall a torrent of excuses.

She had done it for him, because she hated to hear a spiteful woman speak ill of him. It was because she loved him so that she had been tempted; and there was no great harm done, and now he spoke to her as if she were a dog. He was unkind, he terrified her. She would not bear to be so scolded, she was not a child any more, etc.

Through it all Percivale stood immovable by the window, wondering what could possibly happen next. He felt rather like a man who, having received his death-blow, awaits with a dumb patience the moment when death itself shall follow. Was this woman really the Elsa of his adoration? Had he indeed to this slight, trifling, deceitful nature surrendered himself body and soul as a slave? How could he live on, a long life through, with a wife whom he despised?

Despised? His feeling came nearer to loathing than to contempt as he looked at her. Her very beauty sickened him--the outer covering which had won his fancy. He hated himself for ever having loved her.

She could not see that it was the act itself, not the consequences of it, which he so condemned. So small was her nature that she was unable even to comprehend her transgression. He could not make her understand the horror with which he must regard such a breach of trust.

"There was no great harm done?" was her cry.

"Harm!" he said, brokenly. "There is murder done. You have killed my faith, Elsa, for ever more."

"It is very rude and unkind to say that you will never tell me anything again, just because I let out this one thing. And I only told one person. I never so much as mentioned it to anyone else. I might have published it all over London, to hear you talk!"

It was impossible to answer a speech like this. She had _only_ betrayed him to one person! She had _not so much as mentioned it_ to anyone else!

And this was his wife, his ideal!

Claud Cranmer had said,

"If you wish to preserve your ideal, you must not marry her."

He sank into a chair, covered his face, and groaned.

"Come, Leon, don't behave like that--you are the most unreasonable person I ever met!" cried Elsa. "Go away, please, to your dressing-room, and leave me alone. I want to go to bed. You have made me cry so that my eyes are scarlet, and my head feels like lead. I think you are extremely unkind; when I have told you I am very sorry, and begged you pardon. I don't see what more I can do."

"No, Elsa," he said, rising, "you can do nothing more. You cannot make yourself a different woman; and nothing short of that would avail to help us much."

He pa.s.sed her without looking at her, and shut himself into his dressing-room.

His wife crossed the room, and stared at herself in the gla.s.s.

"I know my eye-lids will be all swelled to-morrow," she thought, with a keen sense of injury. "I never saw Leon in such a rage. I hope he will soon get over it. I don't think he is a very good-tempered man; I call him rather sulky. Osmond was much greater fun."

A few minutes after she was in bed, the door opened and Percivale came in. He had changed his dress clothes for his yachting suit, and his cap was in his hand.

"Leon! Are you mad?" cried Elsa.

"I think not," he said, gravely, as he came to her bedside, "but--but--Elsa, forgive me, I cannot stay here and go on as if nothing had happened. You have given me too severe a shock for me to recover from all at once."

"Leon, what nonsense! You talk in such a strange way sometimes I think you cannot be quite right in your head. I do not understand you."

"No," he said, his voice almost a cry, "that is the trouble, Elsa. You do not understood me. I have not understood you either. I have been mistaken. I was ignorant of life. I did not know you, and now that, suddenly, I have seen you _as you are_, and not as I fancied you, I must have time to grow used to the idea. Poor child, poor child! You could not help it. It is I who am to blame, far more than you. Forgive me that I expected too much."

"What are you going to do? Go away and leave me alone here with the aunts for a punishment?"

"I am going to take the yacht round to Clovelly for Lady Mabel, as was suggested. It will not be very long, and by the time I come back I shall be calmer. I shall be able to face this new aspect of things better.

Elsa, Elsa, have you no word for me--nothing to heal the wound you have made? Do you not see, my child, what you have done? Can't you realize how despicable a part you have played! Elsa, face this conduct of yours--what should you say of another man's wife who had betrayed her husband's confidence to his enemy--abused the trust confided to her? Can you not even see the nature of your fault as it is?"

"I have said I am sorry, and I will say it again if it will please you.

I know it was stupid to tell her. I thought so several times afterwards.

I did not like to tell you; but I do think you make too much fuss, Leon.

A thing is out before you know it, but I can't see that it is such a sin as you want to make out."

He tried no more. He bowed his head to utter failure.

Stooping, he gently put his lips to his wife's pure brow, shaded with its innocent-looking curls of gold.

"Poor child," he said, tenderly, "poor, beautiful child. Sleep, Elsa, I must not keep you awake, or make you grieve. It would spoil your beauty; and it is your mission to be beautiful. Good-night!--good-night! I am not angry with you."

"Then why do you go rushing off in the middle of the night instead of coming to bed like a Christian?" she cried, pitifully. "Leon, Leon, why are you so strange--so unaccountable! You make me so unhappy--without my knowing why! You--you are--so very _very_ hard on me!" Suddenly she burst into a pa.s.sion of tears. Lifting herself from her pillows, she cast both arms round him, clinging to him. "I--I do love you," she gasped, "don't be so cruel to me, don't!" The tears welled up in the young man's beautiful eyes in sympathetic response.

He drew the lovely head down upon his breast, and soothed her with infinite compa.s.sion. Like Arthur, the stainless gentleman whose wife had failed him in another--a worse way--"his vast pity almost made him die,"

as he held her closely, caressing her like a child until her sobs had ceased.

"You are not angry any more?" she asked at last, lifting her wet eye-lashes with a wistful, appealing glance.

"No, Elsa, no. I am not angry. I am penitent. There is no need to make yourself unhappy. Go to sleep."

"I am very sleepy," she sighed, "but you will wake me if you move me."

"I will sit here until you sleep."

"Thank you. You are a good, dear boy. Good-night, Leon."

"Good-night, Elsa."

There was stillness in the room--utter stillness as at last Percivale laid his sleeping wife down, and, bending over her, bestowed a parting kiss.

He felt somewhat as a man who gazes upon the dead form of one beloved.

His dream-Elsa was a thing of the past--vanished, dead.

What would the fresh life be like which he must begin with her? A life of strain--of the heavy knowledge that never while he lived could he hope for sympathy, could he satisfy the mighty craving of his soul for a wife who should be to him what Claud Cranmer's wife was to her husband.