"You have really thought of me?" she said in a low tone. "You have really been unhappy on my account?"
"I have!" he admitted. "Very unhappy!"
Something in his tone—in the reluctance with which he made the admission, angered her. She moved a little further away, and her voice grew harder.
"Yes; you have been unhappy!" she said. "And why? It was because you were ashamed to find yourself thinking of me; you, Paul de Vaux, a citizen of the world and a man of culture, thinking of a poor dancing girl with only her looks to recommend her! That was where the sting lay! That was what reddened your cheek! You men! You are as selfish as devils!"
She stamped her foot; her voice was shaking with passion. Paul stood before her with a deep flush on his pale cheeks, silent, like a man suddenly accused. Her words were not altogether true, but they were winged with, at any rate, the semblance of truth.
She continued—a little more quietly, but with her tone and form still vibrating.
"What do you fear? What is that you struggle against? I have seen you when it has been your will to take me—into your arms, to hold my hands. Then I have seen you conquer the desire, and you run away,as though afraid of it. Why? Do you fear that I shall seek to compromise you?—is not that the English word? Do you think that I want you to marry me? Is it because you dare not, that you—you do not offer to take my hand, even? Tell me now! Why is it?"
"For your own sake, Adrea!"
"For my own sake!" she repeated scornfully. "Do you believe it yourself? Do you really think that it is true? I will tell you why it is! It is because you have no thought, no imagination. You say to yourself, she is not of my world. I cannot marry her."
There was a silence. A burning coal fell upon the hearth, and flamed up; the glow reached Paul's face. He was very pale, and his eyes were dry and brilliant. Suddenly he moved forward, and clasped Adrea's hands tightly in his.
"But, Adrea! are you sure that you love me?"
A sudden change swept into her face. Her dark eyes grew wonderfully soft.
"Yes!" she answered, looking up to him with a swift, brilliant smile. "I am sure!"
He held out his arms; his resistance was at an end. It had grown weaker and weaker during those last few moments; now it was all over, swept away by a sudden, tumultuous passion, so strange and little akin tothe man that it startled even himself. Afar off in his mind he was conscious of a dim sense of shame as he held her close in his arms and felt her warm, trembling lips pressed against his. But it was like an echo from a distant land. It seemed to him that a deep, widening gulf lay now between him and all that had gone before. His old self was dead! A new man had sprung up, with a new personality, and the time had not yet come for regrets.
"Adrea!"
It was a cry which seemed to ring through the room, an interruption so sudden and strange that they started apart like guilty children, gazing towards the lifted curtain which divided the apartment with wondering, half-fearful faces. The woman whom Adrea had called her step-mother stood there, pale and bloodless, with her great black eyes flashing, and behind her a tall, dark figure was gazing sternly at them.
Adrea was the first to recover her composure. She was a little further away, and she could see only her step-mother.
"What do you want?" she exclaimed quickly. "I desire to be alone! Why do you stand there?"
There was no answer. Then the momentary silence was broken by a quick, startled cry from Paul, which seemed to cleave the semi-darkness of the room.
"My God!"
The dark figure had moved forward, and was standing, pale and austere, before them. It was Father Adrian.
There was a moment's intense silence. Then Paul turned swiftly round to where Adrea stood, a little behind him. But the suspicions which had commenced to crowd in upon him vanished before even they had taken to themselves definite shape. Her surprise was as great as his; and, as their eyes met, she shuddered with the memory which his presence had recalled.
"Paul de Vaux, I had no thought of meeting you here," Father Adrian said sternly.
Paul met his gaze haughtily. There was a rebuke, almost a threat, in the priest's tone which angered him. Whatever his presence here might betide, he was in no way responsible for it to Father Adrian.
"Nor I you," he answered. "I imagined that you were staying at the monastery."
"I am staying there."
Madame de Merteuill stepped slowly into the room. She was still trembling, and had all the appearance of a woman sore stricken by some unexpected calamity. Even her voice was faint and broken.
"Father Adrian is a visitor here only—an unexpected one—like yourself."
"Why is he here?" Adrea asked slowly. "Has he come to see us again? What does he want?"
Father Adrian turned towards her, grave and severe. "I have come to see Madame de Merteuill. I bring her a message from an old man whom, by her absence, she is wronging. You I did not expect to find here,—and thus."
She made no answer. The priest drew a little nearer to her, and his thin, ascetic face seemed suddenly ablaze with scorn and anger.
"Child! your destiny is surely to bring sorrow upon all those who would watch over you, and shape your life aright. Where you have been living, and how, since your flight, I do not know. You have hidden yourself well! You have shown more than the ordinary selfishness of childhood! You have thought nothing of those who may have troubled for you! I do not ask for your confidence. This is enough for me: I find you here in his arms—his of all men in the world! False to your Church; false to your sex; false to your father's memory! Shameless!"
She did not flinch from before him. She looked him in the face, coldly and without fear.
"You are a priest, and you do not understand. Be so good as to remember that I am no longer now in your power or under your authority. You cannotthreaten to make me a nun any longer. Remember that I am outside your life now, and outside your religion."
"You can be brought back," he said calmly. "I have powers."
"Powers which I defy. Your religion is a cold, dry farce, and I hate it. You cannot frighten me; you cannot alarm me in the least. You can do ugly things, I know, in the name of your Church; and if you had me back at the convent, or on that awful island, I should be frightened at you. Here, I am not."
Instinctively she glanced toward Paul. Already in her thoughts, he was assuming the protector. He would not suffer harm to come to her. He was strong and rich and powerful. The horror of days gone by had already grown faint with her; it was little more than memory. It was gone, and could not come again.
"I have not come here to talk with you, child," he answered quietly. "My errand has been with Madame de Merteuill, and it is accomplished, I go now. Paul de Vaux, our ways lie together for a mile or more, and I have a word to say to you. Let us go."
Paul was slowly recovering from a state of mental stupor, and, with his discovery, something of the glamour of his late intoxication was passing away. He had no regret, there was nothing which he would haverecalled; but his eyes were stronger to pierce the mists, and he was able to bring the weight of impersonal thought to bear upon all that had passed between Adrea and himself. Wheresoever it might lead, there was a tie between them now which could not be lightly severed.
"It is time I went," Paul answered. "Adrea, I will come and see you to-morrow."
She looked at the priest, suspicious and troubled. "What does he want with you, Paul?" she whispered. "Don't go with him!"
"I must!" he answered sadly. "He has something to say to me which I wish to hear. I will come and see you to-morrow."
"If you must, then, until to-morrow. But, Paul!"
She drew him on one side. "Beware of him! Oh! beware of him!" she said quickly, her eyes full of fear. "He is a fanatic, a Jesuit. Don't trust him! Have little to say to him. Hush! don't answer me! He is watching. Good-night, beloved! my beloved!"
Paul and his companion walked down the avenue in silence, and turned into the narrow, stony road which wound across the moor. The storm was over, and the rain had ceased. Above them, only faintly visible, as though seen through a canopy of delicate lace, the stars were shining in a cloudless sky through the wreaths of faint grey mist. Far off, the sound of the sea came rolling across the moor to their ears, now loud and threatening as it beat against the iron cliffs and thundered up the coombs, now striking a shriller note as the huge waves, ever beaten off, retreated, dragging beach and shingle with them. It had been an ocean gale, and the very air was salt and brackish with flavours of the sea. Here and there great piles of seaweed had been carried in a heterogeneous mass to their feet, and the ground beneath them was soft and sandy. But the storm had died away as suddenly as it had come. The tall, stark pine trees, which afew hours ago had been bending like whips before the rushing wind, stood now stiff and stark against the wan sky. There was not even motion enough in the air to clear away the white mists which hung around. Only the troubled sea remained to mark the passage of the storm.
Paul was in no mood for talking. He recognised the fact that what had happened to him that evening must, to a certain extent, colour his whole life. He wanted to think it over quietly, now that he was away from the influence of Adrea's passionately beautiful face and pleading eyes. He had an inward sense of great disappointment in himself, and he was anxious to see how far this was justified. He was prepared for a rigid self-examination, and he was impatient to begin upon it. But, while he was still upon the threshold of his meditations, his companion's voice sounded in his ear.
"Paul de Vaux, I have a word or two to say to you."
Paul awoke with a start. "Certainly!" he said gravely. "I am ready."
Father Adrian continued, speaking slowly and keeping his eyes fixed steadily upon Paul; "Only a few nights ago we met amongst the ruins of your old Abbey. You will remember that I spoke to you of your father's last hours, of a strange story confided tomy keeping—a story of sin and of sorrow—a story casting its shadow far into the future. You remember this?"
"Perfectly!"
"At first you seemed to consider that this story, told to me on his deathbed by a man who was at least repentant, should be held sacred—sacred to me as a priest of the Holy Church, and sacred to you as his son. Yet, as you saw afterwards, it was not so. The confession was made to me as a man; and withal it was made by one outside the pale of any religion whatever. It was mine to do as I chose with! It is mine now!"
"If it is anything which concerns me, or the honour of my family, you should tell me. If it involves wrongs which should be righted, or in any way concerns the future, you should tell me. You must have come for that purpose! You must mean to eventually, or why should you have found your way to this out-of-the-way corner of the world. Let me hear it now, Father Adrian!"
"It will darken your life!"
"I do not believe it! At any rate I will judge for myself. Let me hear it!"
The priest looked away into the darkness, and his voice was low and hoarse. "You do not know what you ask!" he said. "No, I shall not tell you yet. Itis for your own sake! Sometimes I think that I will go away and never tell you."
"Why not? You came here for no other reason."
Father Adrian shook his head. "I did not come to tell you. It was your home I came to see. Many hundreds of years ago Vaux Abbey was a monastery, sacred to the saint whose name I unworthily bear. My visit here was half a pilgrimage! But," he went on, his brows contracting, and his eyes gleaming fire, "since I came, I have been perilously near striking the blow which I have power to strike. You bear a name which for centuries was foremost in the history of our sacred Church. For generation after generation the De Vauxs were good Catholics and the benefactors of their Church. Your chapel was richly adorned, and five priests dwelt here always with old Sir Roland de Vaux. And now, where is your chapel, once the most beautiful in England; it is a pile of ruins, like your faith! I wander round in your villages. Your tenants have gone the way of their lord. Roman Catholicism is a dying power. Hideous chapels have sprung up in all your districts! The true faith is neglected! And who is to blame for it all? Your recreant family. You, who should have been the most zealous upholders of religion, have drifted down the stream of fashion, nerveless and indifferent. Oh! it is heresy, rank heresy, tothink of a De Vaux, such as you, dwelling indifferent amongst the mighty associations of your name and home! I wander about amongst those magnificent ruins of yours, æsthetically beautiful, but nevertheless a living, burning reproach, and I ask myself whether I do well in holding my peace. I cannot tell! I cannot tell!"
Paul was moved in spite of himself by the vehemence of his companion's words. The horrors of that deathbed scene at Cruta had never grown dim to him. He had always felt that his father had only decided to keep something back from him in those last moments, after a bitter struggle; and he was now quite sure that whatever it might have been, the secret had been confided to this priest.
"I want to ask you a question," he said. "Whatever this mystery may be to which you are constantly alluding, I am of course ignorant. But you seem to have some understanding with the two women whom we have left this evening. I want to know whether Adrea is concerned in it."
"She is not!"
"Nor Madame de Merteuill?"
"I cannot tell you!"
They were in the Abbey grounds, close to the ruins, and the moorland lay behind them, with its floatingmists and vague obscurity. Here the sky was soft and clear, and every pillar amongst the ruins stood out against the empty background of sea and sky. Father Adrian paused.
"I will come no further," he said. "I am a saner man away from your despoiled home. There is just a last word which I have to say to you."
Paul stood still, and listened.
"I have borne much," Father Adrian said, "much tempting and many impulses; but I have zealously put a watch upon my tongue, and I have spared you. For the future, your happiness—nay, your future itself—is in your own hands. I saw your father kill the only relative Adrea had in this world. We saw the deed done, though we have both held our peace concerning it. Paul de Vaux, I am inclined to spare you a great blow which it is in my power to strike. I am inclined to spare you, but I make one hard and fast condition. Adrea is not for you! She must be neither your wife, nor your friend, nor your ward! There must be no dealings, no knowledge between you the one of the other! There is blood between you; it can never be wiped out! The stain is forever. Lift up your hand to heaven, and swear that you will never willingly look upon her face again, or, as God is my master, I will bring upon your name, and your family, and you, swift and everlasting shame!"
His hand fell to his side, and his voice, which had been vibrating with passion, died away in a little, suppressed sob. Paul looked at him steadily. The perspiration was standing out upon his forehead in great beads, and his eyes were dry and brilliant. The man was shaken to the very core, and in the strange upheaval of passion he had altogether lost his sacerdotality. It was the man who had spoken, the man, passionate and sensuous, deeply moved through every chord of his being. The "priest" had fallen away from him, the remembrance of it seemed almost grotesque. Paul, too, had caught much of the passionate excitement of the moment.
"Time!" he said hoarsely. "I must have time. A few days only. I ask no questions! Only how long?"
"A week!" the priest answered. "A week to-night we meet here!"
"Do you know who has taken Major Harcourt's cottage, Mr. de Vaux?" Lady May asked.
Paul was silent for a moment. He sat quite still in his saddle, and gazed across the moor, with his hand shading his eyes.
"I beg your pardon, Lady May," he said. "I thought that I heard the dogs. You asked me——"
"About Major Harcourt's cottage. Do you know who has taken it?"
"I am not sure about the name. It is a foreign lady, and her step-daughter, I believe. There is a clergy-man—or a Roman Catholic priest, rather—too; but he may be only a visitor."
"Indeed!"
The monosyllable was expressive. Paul glanced at his companion with slightly arched eyebrows. What had she heard? Something, evidently, for there had been a coolness in her manner all the morning, and herclear grey eyes were resting now upon the many gables of the cottage just below them, with distinct disapproval. Now that he thought of it, Paul remembered that a dogcart from the Castle had whirled past him as he had turned out of the drive last night. Doubtless he had been seen and recognised. Well! after all, what did it matter? The time when he had meant to ask Lady May to be his wife seemed very far back in the past now. Between that part of his life and now, there was a great gulf fixed. Last night had altered everything!
He had certainly not meant to hunt that morning, but it had been forced upon him. Quite early, Reynolds had come to his room to inquire whether he should provide breakfast for thirty or fifty, and had reminded him that the meet was in front of the Abbey. So, against his will, Paul had been compelled to entertain the hunt and join in it himself. Lady May had been specially invited to breakfast, but she had not come, and Paul had only just seen her for the first time at the cover side. She had greeted him coldly; and though they had somehow taken up a position a little apart from the others, very few words had passed between them. Her frank, delicate face was clouded, and her manner was reserved.
"I believe my brother knows who they are," shecontinued, after a short silence. "He saw them at the station."
Paul bit his lip, and turned away. The mystery of Lady May's manner was explained now.
"Did he tell you, then?"
Lady May toyed with her whip, and then looked Paul straight in the face. "Yes! he told me the name of the younger one. It is Adrea Kiros, the dancing girl. Mr. de Vaux, may I ask you a question?"
"Certainly!"
Lady May looked straight between her horse's ears, and a slight flush stole into her cheeks. "You must not think that I was listening; it was not so at all. But last night, as I was passing the billiard-room, I heard my brother and Captain Mortimer talking. They were coupling your name with this—Miss Adrea Kiros. They spoke of her coming down here as though you must have known something of it. They were blaming you, as though you were responsible for her coming. We have been friends, Mr. de Vaux; and so far as I am concerned, our friendship has been very pleasant. But if there is any truth in what they said—well, you can guess the rest. I want you to tell me yourself; I am never content to accept hearsay evidence against my friends. I prefer to be unconventional, as you see. Please tell me!"
"Will you put your question a little more definitely, Lady May?" Paul asked slowly.
"Certainly! Has that young person come here at your instigation? Did you arrange for her to come here?"
"I did not! No one could have been more surprised to see her than I was."
Lady May was growing very stiff. She sat up in her saddle, and drew the reins through her fingers. "You know her?"
"I do!"
"You visited her in London?"
"I did!"
"You were at the cottage last evening?"
"I was! I lost my way, and——"
Lady May touched her horse with her spur. "Thank you, Mr. de Vaux!" she said haughtily. "I will not trouble you any more. Please don't follow me!"
Paul watched her ride down the hillside and join one of the little groups dotted about outside the cover-side, with a curious sense of unreality. After a while he broke into a little laugh, and, shaking his reins, lit a cigar. This was a new character for him altogether. He knew himself that no man had kept his life more blameless than he! If anything, he felt sometimes that he had erred upon the other side in thinking andspeaking too hastily of those who had been less circumspect. And now, it had come to this. The woman whose good opinion he had always valued next to his mother's had deliberately accused him of what must have seemed to her a flagrant outrage on decency. Her words were still ringing in his ears: "Please don't follow me." Lady May had said that to him; it was a little hard to realize.
A commotion around the cover below was a welcome diversion to him just then. A fox had got clear away, and hounds were in full cry. Paul pressed his hat down, and settled into his saddle with a grim smile. The physical excitement was just what he wanted, and in a few minutes he was leading the field, with only the master by his side, and Captain Westover a few yards behind.
At the first check, Captain Westover rode up to him. "I want just a word or two with you, De Vaux!" he said, drawing him on one side.
Paul drew himself up in his saddle, and sat there glum and unbending. "I am at your service," he answered. "I have had the pleasure already of a short conversation with your sister this morning."
Captain Westover nodded. "I suppose so. I want to beg your pardon first for what I am going to say, De Vaux. If I make an ass of myself, don't scrupleto say so! But I want to ask you this! Why, in thunder, did you let Adrea what's-her-name, the dancing girl, come down here?"
"It was no business of mine! I did not know that she was coming!"
Captain Westover stroked his moustache and looked puzzled. "Look here, old man," he said slowly, "you go to see her in London, don't you?"
"I have been!"
"Just so! And you were down at the cottage last night, weren't you?"
"I was!"
"Well! hang it all, then you must have known something about her coming, you know! It can't be just a coincidence. Bevan & Bevan are my solicitors, and by the purest accident, one day I learned that Miss Adrea enjoys a settlement of a thousand a year from you. They didn't tell me, of course. I happened to catch sight of your check on the table one day, and overheard old Sam Bevan give some instructions to a clerk. Sorry, but I couldn't help it! You're the first person I've breathed it to."
"I am her guardian!" Paul exclaimed angrily.
Captain Westover whistled. "You may call it what you like, old fellow! I don't mind, I can assure you! You don't seem inclined to listen to any advice, so Iwon't offer any more. But if you'll forgive my saying so, you're doing a d——d silly thing. Good-morning."
On the whole, Paul did not enjoy his day's hunting; and before it was all over, he found himself once more in an embarrassing situation. For as he rode past the gates of the cottage, on his way home, Adrea was there, breathless and laughing, with her dusky hair waving loosely around her shapely head.
"I saw you coming," she said, a little shyly, "and I was afraid that you would not stop, so I ran out as fast as I could. It was silly of me! You were coming in, weren't you?"
"I think not!" Paul answered gravely. "Look how thick in mud I am, and how tired my horse looks!"
She looked up at him with pleading eyes and parted lips. "Do come!" she said. "I have been expecting you all day!"
She held the gate open, and stood looking up at him, a curiously picturesque-looking figure in the grey twilight. Her gown was like no other woman's; it was something between a Greek robe and a tea-gown, of a dull orange hue, and her dusky hair was tied up with a bow of ribbon of the same colour. Everything about her was strange; even the faint perfume which hung about her clothes, and which brought him sudden,swift memories of that moment when she had lain in his arms, and his lips had met hers. Paul felt the colour steal into his pale cheeks as he leaped to the ground, and passed his arm through his horse's bridle.
"I will come,cara mia!" he said softly.
She clasped her hands through his other arm, and whispered something in his ear, as they turned up the avenue together. Just then the sound of horses' hoofs in the road made them both turn round. Captain Westover and Lady May were riding by together, with their eyes fixed upon Paul and his companion.
It was with a strange conflict of feelings that Paul, with Adrea by his side, passed across the square, low hall of the cottage, plentifully decorated with stags' heads and other sporting trophies, and into the drawing-room. It was a room which had been built, too, of quaint shape, made up of nooks and corners and recesses, and with dark oak beams stretching right across the ceiling. The furniture was all old-fashioned, and of different periods; but the general effect was harmonious, though a trifle shabby. Paul knew it well! Many an evening he had come in to tea there, after a cigar and a chat with the old Major, and lounged in that low chair by Mrs. Harcourt's side. But it scarcely seemed like the same room to him now. The Major and his wife had been old-fashioned people, and their personality, and talk, and surroundings, had created a sort of atmosphere which Paul had grown almost to associate with the place. He missed it directly heentered the room. What it was that had worked the change it was hard to tell. Adrea had been far too charmed with its quaintness to seriously alter anything. A little stiffness in the arrangement of the furniture had been corrected, and the few antimacassars carefully removed; otherwise nothing had been changed. The great bowls of yellow roses and chrysanthemums, and the piles of modern books and music lying about, might have been partly responsible for it; and the faint perfume which he had grown to associate altogether with Adrea, and which seemed wafted into the air as she gathered up her skirts on her way into the room, had a foreign flavour in it. But, after all, it was Adrea herself who changed the atmosphere so completely. She was so different from other women in her strange Eastern beauty and the leopard-like grace of her movements that she could not fail to create an atmosphere around her. Yes! it was she herself who had worked the change; just as she had worked so wonderful a change in him, Paul told himself.
At first they had thought that the room was empty; and Adrea, who had entered a little in advance, turned round to Paul and held out her hands with a sudden sweeping gesture of invitation. Even in that moment, as he moved towards her, Paul had time to feel a quick glow of admiration at the artistic elegance of her poseand colouring. Her proud, dusky face and brilliant eyes found a perfect background in the deep orange of her loose gown, and the velvet twined amongst her dark hair. Her arms, stretched out towards him, were half bare, where the lace had fallen back, and a world of passionate love and invitation was glowing in her face as she leaned slightly towards him, as if impatient of his slow advance. But before his hands had touched hers, a voice from the further end of the room had broken in upon that eloquent silence.
"Adrea! you did not see me!"
They stood for a moment as though paralysed; then Adrea turned slowly round with darkening face. "I did not! I thought that you were upstairs!"
She glided out of the shadows, a slim, tall figure dressed with curious simplicity, and with white, bloodless face. "I am going away," she said, coming quite close to them, and fixing her full, deep eyes upon Adrea; "I am going away at once. But, Adrea, there is one word—just one word—"
"Say it!" Adrea interrupted impatiently.
She glanced at Paul. He made a movement as though to quit the room, but Adrea prevented him. "You need not go!" she said. "Anything that is to be said can be said to you as well as to me. I prefer to have no secrets! You were going to say something to me," she added, turning to her companion.
"Yes! I have no objection to say it before Mr. de Vaux. I simply want to ask you whether you consider him a proper visitor in this house?"
"I choose it! I am mistress here!"
For a moment an angry reply seemed to quiver upon the woman's lips, but it died away.
"You are right! I thank you for reminding me of it," she said quietly. "And yet, Adrea, hear me! You are doing an evil thing! Was your father's murder so light a thing to you that you can join hands with his murderer's son? Remember that day! Think of your father lying across that chamber floor, stricken dead in a single moment by Martin de Vaux—by his father! It is not seemly that you two should stand there, hand in hand! It is not seemly for you to be under the same roof! It is horrible!"
There was a moment's silence. Then Adrea threw open the door, and pointed to it.
"Go!" she ordered coldly. "You have had your say, and that is my answer! You were my father's friend; I believe that he loved you! It was for his sake that I offered you shelter! It was for his sake that I brought you here! But, remember this: if you wish to stay with me, let me never hear another word from you on this subject!"
She went out silently. Adrea closed the door, andturned round with all the hardness fading swiftly out of her features. A moment before there had been a look of the tigress in her eyes; and Paul, watching her, had shuddered. It was gone now. She came close up to Paul, and led him to a chair.
"Was I very undignified?" she said, laughing. "I am afraid I was. I was very angry!"
He shook his head. "You were not undignified," he said, "but you were very severe. I think that she will go away."
Adrea's face hardened again. "I do not care! I would hate the dearest friend I had on earth who tried to come between us. Oh! Paul, Paul! don't you feel as I do; as though the world were empty, and my mind swept bare of memories,—as though there were no background to it all, nothing save you and I, and our love?"
Paul drew her to him. For him, at that moment, there was no past nor any future. The dreamyabandonof her manner seemed to have raised an echo within him.
"Listen! What is that?" Adrea exclaimed suddenly.
There was the ring of a horse's hoofs in the avenue, and immediately afterwards a loud peal at the bell. Paul and Adrea looked at one another breathlessly. Who could it be?
The outer door was opened and closed, and then quick steps passed across the hall. The drawing-room door was thrown open, and Arthur de Vaux, pale and splashed with mud from head to foot, stood upon the threshold.
The situation, although it was only a brief one, was for a moment possessed of a singularly dramatic force. The grouping and the colouring in that dimly lit drawing-room were all that an artist could desire, and the facial expressions bordered upon the tragic. Of all men in the world, his brother was the last whom of his own choosing Paul would have wished to see.
There was a brief silence. Arthur, breathless through his hasty entrance, could only stand there upon the threshold, his face white to the lips, and his eyes flashing with passionate anger and dismay. To him the situation was more than painful; it was horrible. To have believed ill of Paul from hearsay would have been impossible; his confidence in his elder brother had been unbounded. He had always looked up to him as the mirror of everything that was honorable and chivalrous. Even now, perhaps there might be some explanation—some partial explanation, at any rate. Paul was standing back amongst the shadows,and his face was only barely visible. Doubtless it was only surprise which held him silent. In a moment he would speak, and explain everything. It was this thought which loosened Arthur's tongue.
"Paul," he cried, and stepping forward into the room, "and Adrea! You here, and together! Tell me what it means! I have a right to know. I will know."
He had determined to be cool, to bear himself like a man, but their silence maddened him. Adrea, it is true, showed no signs of guilt or confusion in her cold, questioning face. But the deceit, if deceit there had been, was not hers. It was Paul who was responsible to him, and it was Paul who should have spoken—Paul, who stood there with a hidden face, a silent, immovable figure.
"Are you stricken dumb?" he cried angrily. "You can see who I am, can't you, Paul? Speak to me! Tell me whether there is any truth in these stories which are flying about the county, with no one to contradict them."
What might have been the tragedy of the situation vanished for Paul at the sound of his brother's words. After all, it was not the just anger of a deceived man with which he was confronted, but the empty scream of a boy's passion. Arthur's infatuation had but skimmedthe surface of his light nature. He was pricked, not wounded. Yet, though in a sense this realization brought its relief, Paul felt humbled into the dust. He was actually conscious of his own humiliation. So far as a nature such as his could be conventional, he had become so in deference to the opinion of those who looked up to him as the head of a great house, and of whom much was to be expected, both socially and politically. What must become of that opinion now, Arthur's words too plainly foreshadowed.
He moved forward into the centre of the room, and faced his brother. There was only a small table between them.
"I do not know who sent you here, Arthur," he said, "or what reports you have heard, but it seems to me, that any explanation you may wish had better be deferred until our return home."
Arthur struck the table violently with his riding-whip, "I will not wait!" he cried. "Here is the proper place! I have been deceived and cajoled by—by—you, Adrea, and by my own brother! It is shameful! You hypocrite, Paul! You, to come up to London, and solemnly lecture me about a dancing girl. You d——d hypocrite!"
Before his passion, Paul's grave and steadfast silence gained an added dignity. Adrea, with a red spot burning on her cheeks, sailed between the two.
"Arthur, you are mad," she said, turning suddenly upon him, with her eyes afire. "Have I ever deceived you? Have I ever pretended to care for you? Bah, no! You are only an unformed, hysterical boy. Before, you were indifferent to me. Now, I am very quickly growing to hate you! Begone! Leave this house!"
He stood quite still, white and trembling. The scorn of her words had fallen like ice upon his heart. Then he turned, and groped for the door, as though there were a mist before his eyes.
"I suppose you are quite right," he faltered out. "I didn't see it quite the same way, that's all. I understand now."
The door opened and shut. In a moment or two the sound of his horse's hoofs were heard in the avenue, growing rapidly less distinct as he galloped away into the darkness. To Paul it sounded like the knell of his self-respect, but Adrea felt only the relief. Her eyes, full of soft invitation, sought his; but he did not move. He stood there, silent and motionless, with his face turned towards the window. Those dying sounds meant so much to him,—so much that she could never understand.
The consciousness of her near presence suddenly disturbed him. He turned round. Her warm breathwas upon his cheek, and her white arms were twined about his neck.
"Paul," she whispered, "do not look so miserable, please! Come and talk to me."
Her arms tightened around him. He looked down at her with a peculiar helplessness. Their light weight seemed to him like a chain of iron weighing him down! down! down!
He had told himself that he had come to bid her farewell; that Father Adrian's words, vague though they were, yet had a definite meaning, and were worthy of his regard. But at that moment their memory was like a dying echo in his ears. This first passion of his life was strong upon him, and everything else was weak. The future was suddenly bounded for him by a pair of white, clinging arms, and a dark, beautiful face pressed close to his. He saw no more; he could see no further.
"By love stalks hate, his brother and his mate."
"By love stalks hate, his brother and his mate."
I am scarcely calm enough to write! Yet I must write! My heart is full; my very pulses are throbbing with excitement! What is it that has happened? It is all confused in my mind. Let me try and set it down clearly; then perhaps I shall be able to see my way.
Yesterday it seemed to me that my being was all too small for one passion. Now it holds two! The one, perhaps, intensifies the other. That is possible, for they are opposites, and one has grown out of the other. Now I cannot tell which is the stronger, the love or the hate.
I love one man, and I hate another. Perhaps I should say I love one man because I hate another. You, my dumb confidant, may be trusted with names, so I will be clearer still. I love Paul de Vaux, and I hate Father Adrian!
Oh! that he should have dared! that he should havedared to speak so to me! If only Paul had been there, he should have beaten him. If I had had the strength and the means, I would have killed him where he stood, and silenced those thin, cruel lips for ever. I could have stabbed him to the heart, and my hand would never have faltered.
Let me try to recall that scene. It is not difficult. His words are ringing still in my ears, and his white, passionate face seems to follow and mock me wherever I look. I see it out there in the white moonlight, and it rises up from the dark corners of the room. It haunts me, and I hate it! I hate him as a woman hates any one who comes between her and the man she loves!
We were alone, Paul and I; at least, we thought so. I had heard no one enter, nor had he. But suddenly a voice rang out and filled the room; a fierce, cruel voice, so changed and hardened with passion that I scarcely recognised it. But when we sprang up, and peered through the twilight of the chamber we saw him standing close to us,—so close that he might even have heard our whispered words to one another.
There had been some ceremony at the monastery amongst the hills where most of his time here is spent, and he had evidently come straight from there. His flowing black robes were splashed with mud and torn by brambles, and his white face was livid with exhaustionand anger. His dark eyes burned like fire in their hollow depths, and his right hand was raised above his head, as though he had been on the point of striking or denouncing us. I shall not forget his appearance while I live. It will haunt me to my dying day.
I think that it is the mystery of it all which tortures me so. What has Paul to fear from him? Whence comes his power? What evil is it which he holds suspended over his head? There is only one that I can imagine. Father Adrian must hold the key to that awful deathbed scene at the monastery of Cruta. As I write the words, my hand shakes, my heart sickens with the horror of that memory. Well have I cause to shrink from all thought of that hideous night;—I, to whom the son of Martin de Vaux has become the dearest amongst men! What was it Paul said to me? "He knows something which my father told him whilst he lay dying." Is it that knowledge which gives him this strange power? I did not believe in it! I would not have believed in it! But, in that dreadful moment, I turned to Paul, and I saw his face!
A volley of words seemed trembling on Father Adrian's lips; yet he did not speak. We waited for the storm to burst; we waited till I could bear the silence no longer, and I felt that if it was not broken I should go mad. So I drew near to him, and spoke asingle word in his ear. Then I glided back to Paul's side.
"Spy!"
He treated the insult as one might treat the bite of an insect in the face of some imminent danger. He did not reply to it; he did not appear to have heard it. His eyes traveled over me, as though they had been sightless, and challenged Paul's. In the excitement of the moment, his words sounded tame, and almost meaningless.
"This is your answer, then, Paul de Vaux! Let it be so! I accept your decision!"
There was no defiance in Paul's answer. His manner was quite subdued. I think that both his words and his tone surprised me.
"You have seen! I am in your hands!"
I looked from one to the other, troubled. I felt that there was a hidden meaning in their words which I could not understand. There was something between them from which I was excluded. But this much I knew. There was a threat in Father Adrian's words, and it was I who was the cause of it. Oh! if this man should bring evil upon Paul! The thought of it is like madness to me! See, there goes my pen! I cannot write when I think of it!
I have opened my window. The very air is sad withthe moaning of the sea, and the rustling of the night breeze in the thick, tangled shrubbery below. But to me it is sweet and grateful! I am in no mood for pleasant sounds or sights. The dreariness of the night finds its echo in my heart. The damp breeze cools my forehead! To-night I feel conscious of a new strength. It is the strength of hate! My mind is full of dim purposes; time will aid them to gather strength! As they group themselves together, action will suggest itself. To time I leave them!
Let me go back to my recital of what passed between us three. A strange lethargic calm seemed to have fallen upon Paul. He turned to me without even a single trace of the passion which had lit up his face a few moments before.
"I must go!" he said quietly. "Farewell!"
I could scarcely believe that he meant it; that he was going away without another word, at what was really this priest's unspoken bidding. But it was so. From that moment, the fear of Father Adrian which had grown up in my heart leaped into a new strength. I was angry, and full of resistance.
"Why should you go?" I cried. "I have much to say to you!"
"I must go now, Adrea," he answered simply. "When I came I had no thought of staying. It is late!"