V. V.'s Eyes Part 80

Carlisle's difficulties, indeed, were by no means over for the day. The conviction which had come upon her with the first full view of her lover's face--where Colonel Dalhousie seemed also to have set his afflicting mark--had suddenly grown overwhelming. She had made her draft for payment against an account where there were no more funds.

"Are you ill?"

"No," she answered, straightening at once.... "I ... I'm afraid--this is my natural self."

"Something troubles you?" said Hugo, with penetration.

She nodded, and turned away.

She had always been capable of independent action; it was her chief strength, however mamma might speak of flare-ups. But never in her womanhood had she felt less in tune for heroics and a scene. Life was shaking to pieces all around her.

"Hugo," she began, with difficulty, playing at arranging a slide of books on the table with hands like two blocks of ice ... "I--I hesitated about coming down at all, but now--I think ... As you are going away to-night, and would be coming back to-morrow entirely on my account ... I think I ought--"

"Why, my dear! What's all this about?... Do you mean you've let your feelings be hurt by my going off? Why, you--"

"It isn't that."

The nature of his understanding seemed to stir something in her, and she went on in a rather steadier voice:

"I've been thinking of something you said to me once--that I wasn't the girl you had asked to marry you ... It's taken me a long time, but I've learned that that was the truth. I'm not--"

She was checked, to her surprise, by a soft laugh.

"So that's been it!... I never imagined--no wonder!... Why, Cally! How could you suppose I meant it? Don't you know I was angry that day?--off my head? Would I--"

"But it's true! I'm not that girl at all--I feel differently--I--"

"Well! Let's not waste good time in mare's nests of _that_ sort. Why, dear little girl, would I be here now, if I wasn't satisfied as no other man on earth--"

"But I'm not satisfied, Hugo."

Cally turned now, faced him fully, a faint color coming into her cheek.

In the man's handsome eyes she had surprised an unmistakable complacence.

"I'm not satisfied," she said, hurriedly, "to know that we are miles apart, and drifting further every minute. Don't you see there's no sympathy--no understanding--between us? What interests me, appeals to me, what is really my natural self--that only annoys you, makes you think--"

"I've been at fault there, I own," he interrupted, soothingly, nodding his head respectfully up and down. "To tell the truth, I've been so immensely interested in _you_,--in Carlisle the woman,--that I haven't seemed able to make proper allowance for your--your other interests. I promise to turn over a new leaf there. And, on your side, I am sure, you do realize, Carlisle--"

"Hugo," said the girl, desperately, "you don't understand me. I am trying to say that I can't marry you. I cannot."

Then the faint hum of voices from the dining-room down the hall became quite audible in the library. By the ebbing of color from Hugo's virile face, Cally knew that she had penetrated his satisfaction at last; but by the look in his eyes she learned that she had lodged no conviction in him.

"I hesitated when you asked me in September," said she, slowly, and trying her best to make her voice sound firm. "I should have made up my mind sooner--I've been to blame. I'm sorry to--"

He said in a slightly hoa.r.s.ened voice: "What has happened since I left you this afternoon?"

What, indeed? Everything seemed to have happened.

"Something did happen ... But I--I don't think there's any use to talk about it."

"Tell me what has happened. I have a right to know."

"I will, if you wish--but it won't do any good.... I went out, to my cousins'. And at the door, as I came back, I--I met Colonel Dalhousie.

He stopped me ... expressed his opinion of me. He said things that I--I--"

She stopped precipitately, with a break in her voice; turned from him.

"Oh!--I understand ... Poor little girl."

At the mention of the name of ill omen, Canning's strong heart had missed a beat. He had thought the old corpse buried past exhumation; the sudden rising of the ghost to walk had staggered for an instant even his superb incredulities. But with that sudden tremulousness of hers, he was himself again, or almost, with a new light upon her whole strange and unreliable demeanor. Small wonder, after such an encounter, if she was brought to the verge of hysteria, her feminine reason unseated, her mind wandering mistily over the forgotten past....

He tried to take at least one hand in loving sympathy, but found that the matter could not be arranged.

"The shock has upset you--poor darling! I understand. No wonder!..."

"No--I'm not upset ... I--Hugo, I can't marry you. I'm truly sorry--I've tried--but now I'm quite sure--"

"But this is madness," said Hugo's queer voice. "Don't you see it is as you say the words?... Not marry me--because an old ruffian waylaid you, called you--hard names--"

"No, but because what he said was true. No--of course that's not the reason ... I must tell you the truth ..."

Cally lifted misty eyes, beneath which faint circles were beginning to appear, and said with sadness:

"Hugo, I don't love you."

Then she watched, painfully, the last remnants of his a.s.surance drop away from his face: and after that, she saw, with a certain fear, that she had still to make herself believed.

Hugo, supported not merely by his own justifiable confidences but by her mother's affirmations, could, indeed, put no credence in his ears. Many explanations were possible for this extraordinary feminine perversity; she had happened to mention the one explanation that was not possible.

"You don't know what you're saying," he began, huskily, out of the silence. "You're not yourself at all nowadays ... Full of new little ideas. You've taken a whim, because an old rascal ... whom I shall punish as he deserves--"

"No ... That helped me to make up my mind, perhaps. But I've learned I've never loved you--since you left me last year."

Cally moved away from Hugo, not caring to witness the breaking-up of his self-control. She leaned against the heavy mahogany table, clenching a tiny handkerchief between chill little hands. If the months had brought her perfect vengeance on the man who had once failed her in her need, she was finding it, indeed, a joyless victory.

"I'm to blame for not telling you before--when you were here last month," she said, with some agitation ... "Only I really didn't know my own mind ... All summer I seemed to ... just to take it for granted that--everything was the same--that I still cared for you. But--Hugo, I don't. I'm sorrier than I can say for what has been my fault...."

The young man had been standing like one in a trancelike illness, who can hear, indeed, with horrible distinctness, but can neither move nor speak. But now the increasing finality of her words seemed all at once to galvanize him; he shook himself slightly and took one heavy step forward.

"What you need is a protector, little girl--a man. I know about the summer--I suffered, too.... Of course. And in the loneliness--you've let yourself be affected.... The unrest of the day--"

"No, no! _Please_," said she, almost ready to scream--"don't think this is one of my new little ideas you speak of. I--it's true that we don't seem to think alike about things.... But I'd never have noticed that at all if I loved you. I'd want to think and do only as you wished. But I don't--"

"I've spoiled you ... letting you think you could have your way with me," said Hugo, in his thick and gritty voice. "You're mad to-night, little girl ... aren't responsible for what you say...."

Flicked in her spirit, she broke across his argument with a changed voice and gaze.

"Why is it madness not to love you?"