About two weeks after the death of the baby Dr. Belford called upon Noel. It was absolutely necessary, he said, to do something to rouse Christine from her state of hopeless lethargy. He had accordingly laid his plans to do this. He had discovered, through Eliza, that all the money furnished for the support of the establishment for some time past had come from Christine, and that Dallas even applied to his wife for money for tobacco and car-fares, pretending he went out looking for work.
“As far as I can understand,” said Dr. Belford, “the creature has no strong vices—he is too bloodless and inane for them. Even when he had money it doesn’t appear that he gambled, and I don’t believe he drinks. He is simply wanting in principle, feeling and everything. Eliza says he has scarcely spoken to his wife, or she to him, since the baby died. Indeed she neverspeaks a word to any one beyond what is strictly necessary. This state of things cannot go on. I told Eliza yesterday to go and ask her for money, which she did. On the heels of it I went to her and told her you wanted to begin a new picture and could find no model so suitable as herself. I asked her if she would agree. She told me then that Eliza had come to her for money to carry on the house, and that she felt she must, in some way, earn it, as she would not owe tradespeople, who could not afford to lose by her. So she asked me to tell you she would begin the sittings to-morrow.”
“What a friend you are, Doctor, to her and to me!” said Noel, grasping his companion’s hand.
The doctor held his hand in a resolute pressure as he looked at him keenly and said:
“I think I know my man. At all events I’m going to trust you. I haven’t much belief in saints, but unless you’re a double-dyed scoundrel you will never betray this trust.”
Noel answered nothing. The two men grasped hands a second longer and then, each satisfied with each, they parted.
When Christine came the next morning the pity that Noel felt for her almost overcame him. It was evident that the sight of the place brought up the saddest memories, and she appeared at the door empty-armed, instead of weighted down by her helpless little burden. The look on her face, as she threw back her veil, was almost more than he could bear. By a mute little gesture she seemed to implore him not to speak of what filled the minds of both, and he obeyed her. She gave him both her hands. He felt like falling on his knees before her, and controlled himself only by a strong effort. It seemed inhuman not to do something to help her, but what could he do?
“I’m so sorry for you,” was all he could say.
“Don’t speak. Don’t make me speak. You know I thank you for everything. I can’t talk.”
Then, loosing his hands, she walked offto a window and stood looking out, while Noel chose a different canvas and busied himself with preparations for work. Presently she came and placed herself calmly, and Noel began to draw. Occasionally he said some little thing, and she assented, but they both soon felt that silence was the only thing. There was no suggestion of tears in her eyes, but their look was the sadder for that. When the sitting was ended Noel tried to make her take a glass of wine or some fruit, but she turned from them almost with distaste. As she was leaving, however, she asked if she might have the roses on the table. When Noel eagerly said yes she took the great bunch in her hand and went off—he well knew where!
After that she came daily, and the picture progressed, but she, the beautiful model, remained unchanged in her hopeless apathy and misery.
One day at the close of the sitting Noel, as usual, went from the studio to his law-office. The season was dull and his partner was out of town, so it devolved on him toread and attend to the mail. He had read half through the little pile of letters which he found awaiting his attention when he took up one bearing the name and address of a law firm in a Western town, with whom he and his partner had, from time to time, transacted business. He opened it abstractedly and began to run over the contents rather listlessly, when a name caught his eye that arrested his attention. The lawyers proposed to his partner and himself to cooperate with them in a case of bigamy. They had worked it up satisfactorily, they said, their client being the first wife of a man said to be now living with a second one in the city of Noel’s residence. The man’s name was Robert Dallas.
Noel sprang to his feet, while a dizziness that made him almost unconscious took possession of him. He fell back into his chair again, a chill running through all his veins. If it should be the man Christine had married so hastily in a foreign country—the father of her child! The horror of it overcame him so that for several momentshe remained transfixed. Then he reflected that the name might be a mere coincidence, and took up the letter to finish it.
Every word he read strengthened the conviction that it was the Robert Dallas that he knew. There was a minute description of him, which corresponded perfectly, and the lawyer added that he had sent, by express, a photograph and specimens of his handwriting. Noel looked about him. An express parcel, which he had not noticed, lay on the table. He hastily cut the twine and opened it. There were papers and memoranda, and in an envelope a photograph. He tore it open and the weak, handsome face of the father of Christine’s child confronted him. There was no longer a doubt of it; Christine, the innocent, the guileless, the confiding, the pure and sweet and lovely, had been betrayed, and by this creature, this miserable excuse for a man, whose dull and feeble beauty looked to him hideous as leprosy. What would become of her? How would she bear it? Who would take care of her when the great shock fell?
A sudden strength came into him. A force that had lain as silent and reserved as the force of steam in water surged forth at the fiery touch of the thought that had first come to him. He got up hastily and put the lawyer’s letters and the parcel of papers into his iron safe and locked it. The photograph only he left out, and this he thrust into the inner pocket of his coat. As he was doing so it caught on something. It was his cross. A thought thrilled him. He was her knight of the Legion of Honor, and he felt that he had kept his trust!
He went out of the office, called a cab, and had himself driven to a street and number in a remote suburb of the city. In a quiet, pretty little house, overrun with vines, and facing a green and grassy public square as fresh and lovely as it was unfashionable, he stayed a long time, and when he emerged from it an elderly lady, dressed in black and with a white widow’s cap set above her smoothly-brushed hair, came to the door with him and pressed his hand with a fervent “God bless you” as he was leaving her.
It was evident that he had inspired her with some of the ardent spirit that was animating him, for she looked eager and full of interest, and as she turned back within the house, when he had driven off, she had the manner of a person who had work to do that called forth her best energies and sympathies. Noel had the same air as he caused himself to be driven from place to place, in pursuance of some purpose which kept him occupied until far into the night.
Next morning when the hour for Christine’s sitting came Noel was walking up and down in his studio with a face intensely pale from past sleeplessness and present excitement. He looked at his watch frequently, as if impatient, and yet the least sound made him start as if nervous and apprehensive. At last the sound he longed for and yet dreaded was heard, and he went to the door and threw it open for Christine to enter.
She came in without speaking, and throwing back her veil revealed her pale, sad face, with its look of passionless woe.
Noel took her hand as he closed the door behind her and inquired for her health. It was steadier than his, that little black-gloved hand. He felt reluctant to let it go as she withdrew it and began to take off her bonnet and gloves. When she had laid these on the table she ran her fingers with a pretty motion that he had oftennoticed through the loose masses of her dark hair, where it curved behind her ears. It was quite mechanical and showed an unconsciousness of self that Noel wondered whether he should ever see in her again.
She poured out a glass of water and drank half of it, and then said she was ready to begin. She looked tired, but she said she was not, and would like to begin if he were ready.
“Sit down, Christine,” he said gently, “I am not ready to begin yet. I want to talk to you.”
She looked surprised, but sank upon the lounge and he seated himself by her side. The utter lassitude of her expression made his task seem desperately hard to begin.
“I have something to tell you, dear Christine,” he said, “but I want you to make me a promise first. If the few poor little services I have been able to render you, and the interest and sympathy I have tried to express to you have done anything at all, I think they must have convinced you that I am your true, devoted friend and thatyou can trust me. Tell me this, Christine; you do trust me—don’t you?”
“More than any one on earth—but that is too little,” she said hastily—“as much as I could ever have trusted any one—as much as I trusted those who have been unworthy—and with a feeling that the knowledge of their unworthiness could never affect a thing so high as my faith in you.”
“Thank God that it is so. And now, Christine, I call the God we both adore and fear to witness that I will be true to your faith in me, to the last recess of my mind, no less than to the last drop of my blood. See, Christine, I swear it on my cross,” and he drew it out, touching the picture as he did so. “Give me your hand,” he said, “and we will hold this sacred cross between my hand and yours, and I will tell you this thing, and you must try to feel that I am not only your knight but also your dear brother, in whom all the confidence you have expressed to me is strengthened by the added bond of relationship. Christine, mysister, I want you to realize that there is an ordeal before you which it will take all the strength that you can summon to bear with fortitude. At first you will think it intolerable—impossible to be borne, and I do not pretend to tell you that the blow will not be awful, beyond words. I only want to say to you now, when you are calm enough to listen, that it is not so hopeless and terrible as it will look at first—that there is light beyond, though at first you may not be able to see it. Try to keep that in your mind if you can.”
She had given him her hand and they clasped the cross between them. All the time that he was speaking she looked at him with a calm and unbelieving wonder in her large eyes. As he paused she shook her head with grave incredulousness and said quietly:
“You do not know me, Mr. Noel. I thought you understood a little, but you are wrong if you think there is anything you could tell me for which I should care so much. I do not suppose I could make youunderstand it, but my heart is dead and buried in my baby’s grave, and nothing could make me feel as you expect me to feel. The two or three people that I—know” (Noel knew by the pause she made that she had wanted to say love, but couldn’t, in honesty, use the word) “are all well. I have just come from them—even Dr. Belford I have seen to-day—but if you were going to tell me they were all dead I could not care a great deal—at least not in the way you expect me to care—for what you have to tell me. It may be wicked to have so hard a heart, but I cannot help it. There is absolutely nothing in all the world that could make me feel in the way you think I ought to feel at what you have to tell me.”
“I did not say ought,” said Noel, “there is no ought about it. It is a thing inevitable. Oh, Christine, there is no way to lead up to it. I must just tell you and beg you, for my sake at least, to try to bear it.”
“You had better tell me,” she said. “You will see how I can bear it.”
The calm security of her tones, the passionlesswonder of her quiet face were almost maddening. They made him fear the more the effect of the shock when it should come.
“Christine,” he said quietly, though his heart was leaping, “it is something about your—about the man you married.”
A faint flush came up in her face, and she averted her eyes an instant. Then she looked at him and said calmly:
“I thought you knew that long ago that became one of the subjects upon which I had ceased to feel deeply. If you think it is wrong of me to say this I cannot help it. He hated his little child. He never thought it anything but a trouble and a burden, and he was not sorry when it died. He is glad the trouble of it is over. He had long ceased to feel any love for me—if he ever had it—but if he had cared a little for the poor little baby I could have forgotten that; but he was cruel toward it in thought and feeling, and if I had not watched the treasure of my heart and guarded it unceasingly he would have been cruel to it in deed, too. I know it and Eliza knows it. Oh, why didyou make me speak of it? I ought not to say such things. It is wrong.”
“Why wrong, Christine? Why do you feel it to be wrong? Tell me.”
“Because he is my husband,” she said sternly, “and I took solemn vows to love, to serve and to obey him. I said ‘for better or for worse.’ I said ‘till death us do part.’ The God who will judge me knows whether I have kept them. The love one cannot control; but one can force one’s self to serve and obey, and that I have tried to do.”
“And you have done it. I have felt that I could kneel and worship you for it—but, Christine, the truth is too evident to be avoided. He is unworthy of you. Suppose you could be free from him?”
“Divorce?” she said with a sort of horror. “Never! I scarcely know what it is—but marriage seems to me a thing indissoluble and inviolate. I cannot forget that he is the father of my child. I could never wish, on that account, to be free from him.”
“Christine, there is another way. Oh, my poor, poor child, you have never even thought of it, and it breaks my heart to tell you. But there is a way you might be free from him without divorce—a sad and dreadful way, my poor little sister, but remember, I implore you, that there is light beyond the darkness. Oh, cannot you think what I mean?”
She shook her head.
“I know he is not dead,” she said; “there is no other way that I know.”
“Suppose—my poor girl, try to be brave now, for you will have to know it—suppose your marriage to him was not legal—was no marriage at all?”
Her face got scarlet.
“That is not possible,” she said, “and if it were, it would make no difference. If he did it without knowing—”
“Christine, Christine, he did not! He knew it, my child. Prepare yourself for the very worst. He deceived you wilfully. Oh, Christine, when he was married to you there was an impossible barrier between you.It was such a thing as you could not dream of. Give me your hands and try to feel that your brother bears this sorrow with you.” He caught her other hand also and pressed them both between his own.
“Christine, he was married already. When he married you, he had already a wife and child.”
She wrenched her hands away and sprang to her feet. A low cry broke from her. Noel felt that it was he who had applied the torture, and he saw her racked with agony and utterly heedless of the comfort he had offered, and had fondly hoped to give her.
“Have you proof for what you say?” she cried, her wild look of confusion and terror making her so unlike her usual self that he seemed not to know her. “I will never believe it without the strongest proof. It is too horrible, too awful, too deadly, deadly shameful to be true. Be quick about it. If there is proof, let me have it.”
“Christine, there is proof. I have it here on the spot, but spare yourself, my poor, poor girl. Wait a little—”
“Don’t talk to me of waiting. Let me see what you have got. Oh, can’t you see that I can bear anything better than not to know? Show me what you have and if what you say is true—”
But she turned away as if his eyes upon her hurt her, and raised her arm before her face. In an instant she lowered it and said entreatingly:
“Oh, show me what you have. Have pity on me.”
Noel took the envelope containing the picture from his pocket.
“This has been sent me by a lawyer,” he said. “The woman is his client. She says he gave her this picture soon after they were married. Oh, Christine, don’t look at it—”
But she walked toward him steadily and took the envelope from his hand. He could not bear to see her when her eyes rested on it, so he turned away and walked off a few paces, standing with his back toward her.
There was a moment’s silence. He heard her slip the picture from the envelope, andhe knew that she was looking at it. He heard his watch tick in the stillness, and her absolute silence frightened him. It lasted, perhaps, a moment more and then he turned and looked at her. She was standing erect with the picture in her hand. He saw that she had turned it over and that it was upon the reverse side that her eyes were fixed. There was some writing on it which he had not seen.
She held the photograph out to him, with an intense calm in her manner, but he saw that her nostrils quivered and her breath came short. Her hands were trembling, too, but her voice was steady as she said:
“I am convinced.”
He glanced down at the picture and saw written on the back in a weak, uncertain hand which Christine had evidently recognized, “To my darling little wife, from Robert.”
He felt her humiliation so intensely that he could not look at her, but he took a step toward her and was about to speak when she turned away and, with a tottering step,went toward the sofa and fell heavily upon it, her face buried in her hands. A long breath that was almost a groan broke from her, and then she lay very still, except that now and then a violent shiver would run all along her frame. Poor Noel! He felt the bitterness of the false position he had tried to occupy. If he had been indeed her brother, this awful grief might have spent itself, to some extent, in his arms. He felt that he was nothing to her, but his heart was none the less soft toward her for that.
Thrusting the picture back into his pocket, he drew a chair near to her, and sat down by her side. He wanted her to feel that he was there, in case she should find it in her heart to turn to him for a help he did not venture to intrude. It seemed a long while that they remained so, but at last Christine sat up, turning upon him a face so strange and terrible that he trembled at the look of it. Sorrow had seared it like a blight. She had been lying upon a seam in the lounge and it had left a redmark across her face. He thought it looked like the wound upon her heart made visible.
“I can never see him again,” she said. “I cannot go home. Oh God, I have no home! It never was a home to me, except when my baby was in it. Oh, my baby boy!—my baby boy!—my little child that loved and clung to me! Oh, God was merciful to take you. My God, I see it now! I thank Thee, I thank Thee, I thank Thee!”
She fell on her knees on the floor, and then she threw herself forward on the couch, and hiding her face again shook from head to foot with great, tearless sobs.
“Oh, I am so glad he is dead! It is so sweet to me to think it! I would have had to look into his big, clear eyes that used to seem to read my very heart, and think of this! Oh, if only I could go and lie beside my baby, in the deep, still ground where the cruel eyes of men and women could not see us, I would want no other home. I have been lonely and miserable, lying in my bedat night, without him, and I have felt that he missed and needed me, as I did him. Oh, if only God would let me go to him, I would be willing to be put into his grave alive and wait for death to come! It would be easier than life with this thing branded on me.”
“Branded on you! Oh, Christine, you must not say it. You will not be branded; you will be, as you have always been, best and purest and truest among women—to me at least. What have you ever been but an angel of nobleness and heroism and devotion to duty? Oh, Christine, I could worship you.”
She rose to her feet and stood before him.
“I believe God will reward you in Heaven for those words,” she said. “You are a man who can see as He sees, in truth and clearness, and you know, as He does, I have tried to do right. But what you do not know, what He alone can know, is how I have suffered—how every sacred feeling of my woman’s heart has been torn and desecrated, and dragged to the earth, andhow I endured it all, because I thought it was my duty—and all the time it was—Oh, I feel as if I don’t know what may happen to me next to drag me deeper down in misery and sorrow. I thought the worst had come when my baby died, and now a thing so terrible has come as to make that the comfort that I hug to my soul.”
She sank to a seat on the couch again, and Noel came and took the place at her side.
“Give me your hand,” she said tremblingly. “Oh, I feel so frightened. Now that this has come I feel that the air is full of awful horrors that are waiting to fall upon me.”
Noel took her hands in both his own, and she clung to them with a pitiful intensity.
“The worst is over,” he said gently. “You have only to let me manage and think for you now—”
“Tell me,” she said, “tell me all there is to know—how you found this thing out, and what will be done about it. You musttell it every word to me. I can bear it better now than ever to speak of it again.”
And Noel told her, as mercifully and gently as he could, all that he had learned from the lawyer’s statements. He wanted to show her how convincing and certain the proof was, that she might be justified in acting on it. She held his hands in a hard grasp and looked at him with excited, distended eyes as she listened to it all. The mixture of wildness and calm in her manner and looks positively terrified him. He feared her reason might be temporarily disturbed, and would have given worlds to see her cry and complain, but she heard him through with the same excited stillness.
“I have a safe and pleasant refuge for you for the present, Christine,” he said. “I have arranged everything. A lady—a dear friend of mine, whose son was my friend and a man I loved devotedly—this lady will take you and care for you as a daughter. I have told her everything and she is waiting for you now, longing to love and comfort you. Her son is dead andshe has often told me that I, as his friend, came next in her affections, and that she would do anything on earth to serve me. I was able to help him once and she never forgot it. So I went and told her all the truth. She has a mind as clean and simple as your own, Christine, and she is longing to love and comfort and take care of you. You will let me take you to her—will you not?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “God bless you for it. I could never go back there again,” she added with a shudder, “but I must write a letter.”
She rose hastily and Noel, wondering, brought her writing materials.
She wrote a hasty note, and sealing it, asked him to have it sent at once. To his surprise he found it was addressed to Dallas.
“I will give it to the janitor as we go down,” he said. “Do you feel able to go now, Christine? A carriage will be waiting for us and I will take you to that dear woman who will make you feel as if your mother’s arms were around you.”
Christine was trembling in every limb, but she reached for her bonnet and tried to tie it on. Her hands shook so that she let it fall. Noel picked it up and held it a moment, saying soothingly:
“Don’t hurry. We can wait a little while, if you wish. Try not to be too despairing. When you drive away from here to-day you leave the past behind you, and enter into a new and different life. Your new friend, Mrs. Murray, will know you only as you are now, and you may meet no one unless you wish to. She has very few friends herself, and she will tell them what she chooses of you. You will see she is not a woman that people will dare to ask questions of.”
He stopped. A look so dreary, strange and full of anguish had come into Christine’s face that he was alarmed and said quickly:
“What is it?”
She struck her hands together and uttered a low cry.
“What is my name?” she said, in atone so wild and vacant he thought her mind was wandering. “It used to be,” she said, passing one hand across her forehead, as if in an effort of memory—“it used to be Verrone—Christine Verrone, but I am not that happy-hearted girl the nuns used to call by that name. This is not Christine Verrone. The very flesh and blood and bones of this body are different—and surely in this mind and heart and soul there is no tinge nor remnant of that old Christine. How, then, can I be she? Oh! I have no home, no country, no dwelling-place on earth; I have not even a name to be called by!”
Noel could bear no more. Taking her hands in his, he held them firmly, and looking in her eyes, said fervently:
“Then take my name, Christine. Let me give you a home and friends, and call you by the name I bear. God knows I would feel honored in bestowing it upon you. If you will commit your precious life into my keeping—if you will marry me—”
The look of her eyes checked him. The meaning of his words had dawned upon her slowly, and to his infinite distress he saw that they filled her with pain.
“You are speaking out of pity for me. You think I would die beneath it, unless you sacrificed yourself and gave me the protection of your name,” she said, speaking almost eagerly. “Tell me this is so. But you do not know how I feel. I can bear it somehow, or else I can die. I could never accept such a sacrifice from you, and, oh, I could never think of marriage again, even to the best and noblest creature on God’s earth, without a shrinking that is pain intolerable.”
Noel saw he had made a mistake. He saw, too, that the only way out of it was to let her put this interpretation on it. So he merely soothed and comforted her, and told her things should be as she chose, and then he tied her bonnet under her chin as if she had been a little girl, gave her her gloves, lowered the veil before her face and asked her if she were ready.
“You will take your sweet girl-name,” he said, “and be known as Mrs. Verrone. Only Mrs. Murray and I will know anything of your past, and we will now turn that page, Christine, and go forth into a new world—and a brighter one, please God.”
Christine was ill for many weeks, with Dr. Belford in daily attendance, and her faithful old Eliza to help Mrs. Murray with the nursing. All during the long fever, the gentle, little old lady, to whom Noel had confided her, watched and tended her with a mother’s devotion and love. The patient was far too ill to protest, and very soon she learned to lean upon and love Mrs. Murray as though she had indeed been her mother. Again poor Noel felt himself banished, ignored and excluded, as he alone was kept away from her, but his care for her was so supremely above his care for himself that he never made a complaint.
He had learned from Eliza—whose mouth was shut so tight to the other servants that she went among them almost like a dumb woman—that on the day of his making the announcement concerning her husband to Christine, a messenger hadbrought Dallas a note, after reading which he had hurriedly put a few things into a valise and left the house. Since then he had not been heard from. Evidently Christine had warned him in her note and he had run away to escape the suit for bigamy. Noel had not suspected the poor girl’s motive in writing, but, on the whole, he was glad. It was the simplest and surest way of getting rid of him.
At last Dr. Belford had pronounced the patient convalescent, and she was sitting up and even moving about the up-stairs rooms.
One afternoon Noel came to the house, as usual, to make inquiries. As he mounted the steps he saw that by some accident the door had been left ajar. He bethought him to go in softly, in the hope of finding Mrs. Murray in one of the lower rooms and taking her by surprise. He had bought a big bunch of crimson roses on the way. He crossed the hall softly and made his way to the cozy little sitting-room, attracted by the flickering light of a woodfire, which looked cheery and comfortable on a day like this. It was burning rather low, but the room was still partly lighted from without, and as he was about to cross the threshold he saw a picture which made him pause.
On a deep lounge half turned toward the fire a girl in white was lying fast asleep. It was Christine. Her dark hair was all gathered loosely back and coiled in a large knot low down against her fair throat, from which the white lace of her gown fell backward, leaving its beautiful pureness bare. There was a charming air of foreign taste and fashioning about the whole costume. Poor Christine! She had put it on obediently when Mrs. Murray had brought it to her, selecting it from among the contents of her trunk as the most comfortable and suitable thing for the convalescent to wear. It had been long since she had worn or even looked at it, and it had brought back sad memories of her pretty wedding outfit, but all her clothes had sad associations for her, and the ones she had worn more recentlywould have been worse than this. So she put it on unquestioningly, too listless to care much what she wore, a fact which did not prevent its being exquisitely suitable to her.
She was very white, and the long black lashes that lay against her cheek made a dark shadow under her eyes that made her look the more fragile. Her face was infinitely sad; the corners of the mouth drooped piteously, and a look of trouble now and then slightly contracted the brows.
Noel, who had cautiously drawn near, was seated in a low chair near her feet, scarcely daring to breathe for fear of waking her, and breaking the spell which seemed to hold him, also, in a sleep of enchantment. He made up his mind deliberately that he would remain and be near her when she waked. He had kept himself away from her long enough. Now he must see and talk with her. He sat so for some time, the red roses in his hands, and his steady, grave, intense dark eyes fastened upon her face. Presently a long,deep sigh escaped her, and the fair figure on the lounge moved slightly, and then settled into more profound repose. It was evident that she was sleeping soundly. A thought occurred to Noel, and moving with infinite cautiousness and slowness he took the roses one by one and laid them over her white dress. One of her arms was raised above her head, so that her cheek rested against it, and the other lay along her side, the hand relaxed and empty.
As he was putting the last rose in its place, he observed this little, fragile left hand particularly and saw a thing that made his heart throb: the wedding-ring was gone from it. Christine was free indeed! Here was the sign and token before his very eyes. Being free he might win her for his own. The force of his love in this minute seemed strong enough for any task. Oh, if he could only be patient! He felt it very hard—the hardest task that could beset him, but he gathered all the strength that was in him for a great resolveof patience. The sacredness of it rendered it a prayer.
And Christine slept on profoundly. He had known each moment that she might wake and discover him, but he felt himself prepared for that. He looked at her and realized that she was well, for in spite of her pallor, she had the look of youthful health and strength, and he said to himself that his banishment was over and the time to set himself to the task before him was come.
As he kept his eyes upon her lovely face a sudden little smile lifted, ever so slightly, the corners of her mouth, as if there were pleasure in her dream. The man’s heart thrilled to see it. If a dream could make her smile—if the power to smile remained to her—reality should do it, too. If he could just be patient! If he could keep down the longing in his heart that clamored for relief in uttered words!
A piece of wood upon the fire fell apart, sending up a bright little blaze. The sound of it wakened Christine. Still with thememory of that dream upon her she opened her eyes, and met Noel’s gaze fixed on her in sweet friendliness and gladness. For an instant neither spoke. Christine’s large eyes, clear as jewels in the firelight, gazed at him across the bank of crimson roses that seemed to send a red flush to her face.
Noel spoke first.
“All right again, at last!” he said, with a cheering smile. “Have you had a pleasant nap?”
And he leaned forward and held out his hand.
A rush of sad remembrance came over Christine’s face. The lines of her mouth trembled a little and she dropped her eyes as she took his hand in both her own and pressed it silently. Noel knew the touch meant only gratitude, and it left him miserably unsatisfied, but he felt himself strong to wait. She dropped his hand, and for a moment covered her face with her own, as if to collect herself thoroughly. Then she sat upright in her seat, scattering the roses to the floor. Noel knelt to gather them upfor her, and when he had collected the great mass into a gorgeous bunch he knelt still as he held them out to her.
She took them, hiding her face in their glowing sweetness, and Noel, rising, walked a few steps away, feeling it impossible to speak, unless he allowed himself the words he had forsworn.
At this instant a cheery voice was heard in the hall.
“Who in the world left the front door open?” it said, in energetic, matter-of-fact tones, at the sound of which Noel felt suddenly fortified.
Mrs. Murray had entered just in time, for the sight of Christine here alone had been almost too much for the resolutions of reserve in which he had flattered himself he was so strong.
In a little while the lives of Mrs. Murray and Christine had settled into a calm routine of work and talk, and the simple recreations of reading and house-decorating which were the only ones that Christine ever seemed to think of. She never went out, and worked with as much application as Mrs. Murray would permit at the embroidery which, at her earnest request, the wise old lady had got for her. She and Christine had a frank and loving talk, in which one was as interested as the other, in Christine’s making her own living, and in which it was settled, to the joy of each, that their home in future was to be together. They were days of strange peace and calm for poor Christine, and her heart would swell with gratefulness for them, as she sat over her beautiful embroidery, which was in itself a pleasure to her.
But the evenings were the best of all, for then Noel invariably came—sometimes tolook in and say a bright and cheery word, on his way to keep an engagement, sometimes to give them the benefit of the bright stories and good things he had heard at a dinner, and sometimes to spend a whole long evening, talking, laughing and reading aloud from new magazines and books which he brought with him in abundance. These were the sorts of delights utterly unknown to Christine before. She had read very little, and the world of delight that reading opened up to her was new, inspiring and enchanting. Noel read aloud his favorite poets, their two young hearts throbbing together, and their eyes alight with feeling at the passages which left the matured heart of Mrs. Murray undisturbed.
It had been in vain that Mrs. Murray had tried to induce Christine to sing. It occurred to her at last to put it in the light of a favor to herself, and when she told Christine that she loved music very dearly, and rarely had an opportunity to hear it, the girl went at once and played and sang for her, and then Mrs. Murray used the sameargument—that of giving a friend pleasure—with regard to Noel. At first it was difficult and awkward, but before very long Christine and Noel were singing duets together, and music now became a delightful part of their evening’s entertainment. How dull the evenings were when Noel did not come!—for sometimes there were engagements from which he could not escape. Mrs. Murray missed him much herself and it pleased her to be sure that Christine did also. Sometimes he would come late after a dinner, and if it were only a brief half-hour that he spent with them it made the evening seem a success, instead of a failure.
After a little while Mrs. Murray succeeded in inducing Christine to take walks with her along those quiet unfashionable streets, in the bracing air of the late autumn afternoons. She would return from these expeditions so refreshed, with such a charming color in the fair, sweet face to which peace and love and protecting companionship had given an expression of new beauty, that Mrs. Murray would be half protestingat the thought that the people that passed it, in the street, were deprived of a sight of its loveliness by that close, thick veil, which it never seemed to occur to Christine to lay aside. It seemed an instinct with her, and her good friend felt hurt to the very heart when she thought what the instinct had its foundation in.
In proportion as the influence of these days and weeks brought peace and calm to Christine, to Noel they brought an excited restlessness. He was under the spell of the strongest feeling that he had ever known. All the circumstances of his intercourse with Christine, the difficult self-repression to which he had compelled himself so long, and the sudden sense of her freedom which made vigilance harder still—all these things together brought about in him a state of excitement that kept him continually on a strain. It was only in her presence that he was calm, because it was there that he recognized most fully the absolute need of calmness and self-control. Away from her, he sometimes rushed into rash resolves, as to aresolute manly sort of wooing which he felt tremendously impelled to, and in which he felt a power in him to succeed. He would even make deliberate plans, and imagine himself going to the house and insisting on seeing Christine alone, and then his thoughts would fairly fly along, uttering themselves in excited words that burned their way to Christine’s heart and melted it.
But when, in actuality, he would come to where she was, all these brave and manful purposes faded, like mist, before the commanding spell of her deep and solemn calm. She seemed so tranquil in her assured sense of his simple friendliness that he often thought she must have forgotten entirely, in the excitement that followed, that he had offered her his heart and hand and name, or else that she was so convinced of the fact that it had been done in pity that she had never given it a second thought.
So perplexed, bewildered, overwrought did he become with all these thoughts that he forced himself to make some excuse and stay away from Christine. When at last hewent again, it was late in the evening and his time, he knew, would be short. It was three days now since he had been, and his blood flowed quick with impatience. He had thought of little else as he sat through the long dinner, eating the dishes set before him while he talked with a certain preoccupation to the beautifuldébutantewhom he had brought in, and who made herself her most fascinating for him, Noel being just the sort of man to represent such a girl’s ideal—older, graver, more finished in manner than herself, and possessed of the still greater charm of being thoroughly initiated in all the mysteries of the great world, across whose threshold only she had seen. She was exceedingly pretty, and Noel was too much an artist not to be alive to it, but as he looked at the fair, unwritten page her face represented to him, he was seeing, in his mind’s eye, that far lovelier face on which the spiritualizing, beautifying hand of sorrow had been laid. He had not gone thus far on his journey of life without deep suffering himself, and the heart that hadsuffered was the one to which he felt his true kinship. At the close of the dinner the whole party adjourned to the opera, Noel alone excusing himself, at the door of thedébutante’scarriage, on the plea of an important engagement. The lovely bud looked vexed and disappointed, but Noel knew his place at her side would be abundantly filled, and got himself away with all the haste decorum permitted.
When he rang at Mrs. Murray’s door Harriet ushered him into the little drawing-room where Christine was seated at the piano singing. Mrs. Murray was not present. Motioning the servant not to announce him he took his position behind a screen, where he could see and hear without being seen. Christine had heard neither his ring nor his entrance, so she was utterly unconscious of any presence but her own, and indeed most probably not of that, for there was a strange abandonment to sway of the song as her voice, rich and full and deep, sang softly: