CHAPTER XXXIV.
“I, TOO, AM FREE.”
“No need to tell me,” said Percy Levant in a voice inaudible to the marquis. “I know!”
Doris sank back into her chair and covered her facewith her hands. The marquis leaned forward, regarding her with alarm.
“What is it? What is the matter?” he inquired, agitatedly. “What have I said——” He broke down and began to cough and tremble, and the valet hurried to his side; but the old man waved him away with feeble savageness.
“What is the matter with her?” he demanded of Percy Levant as imperiously as his weak voice would let him.
“Miss Marlowe is not strong, and the heat of the room——Come, Doris,” he broke off more gently, and he drew her hand through his arm.
She was going with a glance—a glance of reproach—at the thin, wrinkled face; then her heart seemed to yearn, and she touched the wasted hand stretched out to her.
“Heaven forgive you, my lord!” she murmured, with infinite sadness, and allowed Percy Levant to lead her away.
The marquis almost rose in his alarm and anxiety.
“Where are you going? What have I said? Come back——” Then he fell on his side gasping for breath, and the terrified valet sprang to the bell and sent for the doctor.
Doris walked home in a state of mind easy enough to imagine but very difficult to describe. Imagine the emotion of a tender-hearted woman who for many weary months has deemed the man she loved with all her pure, ardent nature false, and then suddenly discovering that she has misjudged and wrongfully condemned him!
The sudden shock of joy that ran through her almost seemed to deprive her of her senses, and it was with the greatest difficulty that she could refrain from crying aloud, “Oh, my love! my love! forgive me! forgive me!” And if she did not say it aloud, the prayer rose from her heart. The cruel letter, which she read and re-read daily in the hope that its perusal would crush out her love for him, was false! A fiend in the form of a man had betrayed them both, and Cecil was true! He had loved her—loved her, Doris, until he had received that letter which she had given to Spenser Churchill—had loved her and deemed her as false as she had thought him!
For a time her mind failed to realize the web andwoof of the plot which the “philanthropist” had woven with such devilish cunning; but though she did not know all the threads and lines of the scheme, she gradually began to understand how completely she and Cecil had been deceived. But why? What was the motive? She put the question away from her, and returned to the delicious thought that, after all, he, Cecil, had not deserted her; that the wicked letter was a forgery; and that her faith in him was restored to her.
And Percy Levant watched by her side, tenderly supporting her trembling arm in silence. Love bestows a keen insight into the feelings of the one beloved, and he knew all that was passing through her mind, and read it as one reads a printed book, and—he kept silence.
They reached the villa, and he led her into the hall.
“Go up to your room and rest,” he said, in a low voice.
“Yes,” she said, with a little start, as if she had forgotten his presence. “Yes, I—I am tired—very, very tired!” and she pressed her hand over her heart.
“Rest,” he repeated. “I shall remain in the house in case you should want me,” and he dropped her hand, and, strolling into the drawing-room, walked to the window, and looked out with the face of a man who has received sentence of death, and to whom all mundane matters can be of no consequence whatever.
Doris went upstairs to her own room slowly, and sank into a chair.
“Cecil was true! Cecil was true! Cecil loved me!” she repeated to herself a hundred times; then suddenly she started, for on a chair opposite her she caught sight of her wedding dress.
It was as if a ghost had suddenly risen to dispel her newly recovered joy and happiness with a word, a breath.
Cecil had been true, yes, but he was engaged to Lady Grace, and she, Doris, was within a few days of her marriage with Percy Levant.
The sudden revulsion of feeling sent the blood from her cheeks, and made her blind and dizzy, and she stretched out her hands as if to push some terrible phantom from her.
So she sat for a full minute; then her brain cleared, and she saw the situation distinctly and plainly.
She had regained her faith in her lover, but—it was too late to save her! After all, Spenser Churchill had effected his purpose, whatever it was, for Lord Cecil Neville was almost wedded to Lady Grace, and she——! She uttered a cry, almost a sob, as she thought of the man who was waiting for her downstairs.
If Lord Cecil had loved her, so had Percy Levant, and with a love as strong, and as true! Could she desert him? If so, then she would prove herself as false as she had deemed Cecil Neville, who could be nothing to her now, for was he not to marry Lady Grace? He had forgotten her, Doris, by this time, and even if he had not, her word was pledged to the other man who loved her so devotedly! What should she do? She fell on her knees and hid her face in her hands, and in that attitude of despairing supplication remained for half-an-hour.
Then she rose, and, bathing her burning eyes, went slowly downstairs. He was there, standing at the window, and he came to meet her with a haggard face, which told of the agony the intense suffering of waiting had cost him.
“Are you—are you rested?” he said, in a low voice, and he took her hand and led her to a couch. “I waited because I thought you would like to say ‘good-by.’”
She just raised her heavy lids, then clasped her hands in her lap and waited for him to go on.
“I am going. Of course, you know that. My love for you has not yet robbed me of all manliness, Doris, and—I am going. This discovery which you made this afternoon was half-suspected by me. The eyes of a man who loves are keen in all matters pertaining to the woman he loves, and from certain signs I suspected that Lord Cecil Neville was bound up in your past life; but it was suspicion only. The marquis’ innocent exposure has turned it into certainty. And so—I have waited to bid you good-by.”
She sat perfectly motionless for a moment. Then she looked up at him, with a piteous entreaty.
“What shall I say?” she murmured.
“Say nothing,” he replied, huskily. “I give you yourfreedom, Miss Marlowe. Knowing, as I do, how cruelly you have been deceived—you and Lord Cecil,” he put in, as if the speaking of his name were difficult to him, “there is no other course open to me. I love you—ah, yes!—you know that; but my very love for you pleads for you against myself! And so I give you back all your pledges, and say simply, ‘good-by!’”
He held out his hand, eying her keenly and sorrowfully. But she did not place her burning hand in his. Instead, she shook her head slowly.
“Stay,” she murmured, almost inaudibly, and her pale face grew crimson for a second.
He leaned upon the couch, and bent over her, trembling, and white as death.
“You say ‘Stay!’” he breathed. “Think—think what the word means to me, Doris!”
“I—I have thought!” she breathed.
“It means—ah, you cannot imagine all it means to me! Will you repeat it?”
“Yes,” she said, in as low a voice as before.
He took her hand and held it in his.
“And will you tell me that—that you do not love Lord Cecil; that you can forget him?”
She turned her face away.
“Don’t—don’t drive me too hard!” she murmured, piteously.
His face grew wan and haggard again.
“I—I understand,” he said. “Yes, I understand—and I must be content.”
He let her hand fall, and walked to the window, turning his back to her. Then he returned, and kneeling beside her, said, in a low voice:
“Doris, I asked you to trust me. I ask it still. Remember that no man, not even Lord Cecil”—with a touch of bitterness—“could love you more dearly than I love you; and—trust me.”
“Yes, I trust you! I have always done so,” she said, almost inaudibly.
“We are to be married on the sixteenth,” he said, musingly. “Everything is ready, Doris.”
She inclined her head.
“We will be married on the sixteenth!” he said, almost solemnly. He raised her hand to his lips. “Don’t look so scared, Doris,” he said, with a curious smile. “I—I am a better man than you think me!” and, dropping her hand, he left the room.
Doris had burned her boats. There was no returning across the river. She had pledged herself now irrevocably.
The next morning at breakfast the marquis’ valet called to inquire after Miss Marlowe.
“His lordship has been in a terrible state, miss,” he said, gravely. “He was afraid that something he had said had offended or alarmed you, and although he was put at a loss to remember what it was, the idea distressed him very much, and seems to be preying on his mind. He was very ill, indeed, last night, quite wandering, so to speak, and the doctor did not leave him for a moment.”
“Please tell the marquis that I—I have forgiven all that he said, that I know he was not aware there was anything to offend me in—in the incident he related,” said Doris, painfully. “Yes; tell him that whatever it was, I forgive it freely.”
“Thank you, miss,” said the valet, with a look of relief. “His lordship will be very glad to get the message. Begging your pardon, miss, but his lordship seems, if I may be so bold, to be wrapped up in you. He was talking about her ladyship, the marchioness, last night, her ladyship and the little girl, and he kept repeating your name, as if you reminded him of her.”
Doris sighed. Percy Levant stood gravely regarding the tablecloth, saying not a word.
“I suppose you have sent for Lord Cecil as the marquis is so much worse?” said Lady Despard.
The valet shrugged his shoulders.
“I certainly intended doing so as soon as the telegraph office was open this morning, my lady; but directly the marquis became conscious he distinctly forbade me doing so. Of course, I should not disobey him while he was sensible, and there was no immediate danger. The marquis demands implicit obedience from his household, my lady.”
“Perhaps Miss Marlowe will be able to call and seehim this morning,” said Lady Despard, glancing inquiringly at Doris; but Doris grew pale, and shook her head.
“Not to-day,” she said, in a low voice, and almost pleadingly. “To-morrow—perhaps.”
The valet bowed.
“Thank you, miss,” he said, gratefully, and as he withdrew he added, respectfully, “a sight of you will do him more good than all the doctors in Italy, I am sure, miss.”
If Doris had promised to pay the sick man a visit she could not have done so, for Percy Levant, without consulting either of the ladies, ordered the phaeton and pair and calmly requested them to get their things on.
“I am going to take you ladies for a long drive,” he said, with that air of resolution which all women admire in a man. “You, Doris, because you need it for your health’s sake, and you, Lady Despard, because you are in danger of becoming a monomaniac!”
“Oh, indeed!” retorted Lady Despard, languidly; “and what’s my mania, pray?”
“Wedding millinery,” he replied, pointing to the confused mass of lace and muslin amid which Lady Despard seemed to exist.
“Well, there’s some truth in that,” she said, with a smile; “and, anyway, I suppose we shall have to go, eh, Doris? And this is the man whom we thought all milk and honey, so meek and docile as scarcely to have a will of his own!” she added, pouting. “You see what you have done, my dear; you have completely spoiled him by being foolish enough to promise to marry him!”
She went for the drive, Percy Levant taking the reins and Doris seated beside him, and in after years she remembered, with a singular vividness, every incident of the day, almost every word he spoke. Never had he been in lighter humor, or in better “form;” and if his object was to drive, for the time at least, all remembrance of the marquis and his story of Spenser Churchill’s villainy from her mind, he almost succeeded, and as the hours sped by, the exquisite scenery, the keen, fresh air, and the unflagging wit and humor of her companion brought the color to Doris’ pale cheeks, and drove the lines of care and trouble from her brow.
And through it all he permitted no sign of his ownsuffering to become visible. The handsome face was serenely cheerful, the pliant lips wore a settled smile, causing Lady Despard to look at him once, and exclaim, with a sigh:
“I wish you could sell me that butterfly nature and disposition of yours, Percy. I would give you more than half my kingdom.”
“Would you?” he said, turning on the box and glancing at Doris as he did so. “Would you?” and a curious expression flashed across his face for a moment. “I’m afraid you would be like the man who thought he was doing a clever thing in buying a sovereign for nineteen shillings and sixpence until he tried to change the coin and discovered that it was—a counterfeit!”
They went to a country inn, at which he had ordered dinner by a servant sent on before, and Lady Despard was enchanted by the dainty simplicity of the menu and the manner in which he played the host, and when he strolled off to smoke his cigar and leave them to trifle with the grapes and the ripe figs which nestled in the center of a hugerepoussedish of such flowers as only Italy can produce, Lady Despard patted Doris on the cheek, causing her to start from a reverie, and said:
“Yes, my dear, I will say it again: You have done very well! He will be simply a treasure of a husband. I assure you, I don’t know another man in all my extensive list of friends and acquaintances who could have behaved so perfectly. Fancy taking two women out for the day, keeping them amused every minute, and then giving them all the nice things women love, not ugly chops and steaks, but all these delicate things for dinner. And he’ll be just as fresh and bright all the way home, of course! Yes, I must repeat it, my dear. I think you have made an excellent choice, and if I hadn’t registered a vow never to marry again, why—oh, there’s time to cut you out yet if I tried very hard, so don’t look so exasperatingly self-confident! And now the best thing you can do,” she went on, as Doris smiled and sighed, “is to go and find him, and repay him for all his trouble with one of those sweet, little speeches of yours, and several of those upward glances of those blue eyes which seem so innocent and commonplace, and yet, as I have been told,drive poor men to thoughts of suicide. Go and find him, my dear; he hasn’t gone far, and is, of course, waiting for you to join him. I shall be quite happy and content for an hour, I assure you. Come back when the moon is up above those trees, and then we will start.”
“Which means that you want to go to sleep,” said Doris, smiling as she rose.
“Quite right, dear,” assented Lady Despard, serenely. “I want to go to sleep for a few minutes, and dream that I, too, have got a handsome young man who is fortunately poor enough to have to work for me, and who worships the ground I tread on. Go and find him, and—be good to him, for he deserves it!”
Doris went slowly in the direction Percy Levant had taken, but she did not see him, and presently, losing herself in her thoughts, she wandered across the lawn which stretched between the inn and the high road, and, leaning against the low wall, gave herself to brooding over the confession which the marquis had made—if confession it could be called!
Presently she was startled by the sound of wheels coming down the steep road to her right, and a few minutes afterward she saw a traveling carriage pull up at the door of the inn, amidst a great bustle and confusion, the stamping of horses’ hoofs, the click of changing harness, and the shouting of outriders.
Then she heard voices asking and answering questions, and among them the landlord’s suave tones, begging some one—the travelers, presumably—to enter and rest themselves while the horses were fed.
Doris listened in an absent kind of fashion, in which the noises and voices came to her like those in a dream, until, suddenly looking up, she saw the moon had risen above the tree tops, and she turned to go back to the arbor in which Lady Despard was doubtless sleeping the sleep of the just. As she did so, she heard a slow step at her side, and glancing in its direction, saw a tall figure coming toward her with a slow and listless step. She was drawing back into the shadow of the shrubs to let him pass without seeing her, when suddenly the moon smiled from behind a cloud, and poured its light full on his face, and she saw that it was Lord Cecil Neville!
Yes, it was his face, but how altered! Pale and haggard it looked, as if as many years as minutes had passed over it since she saw it last in all its bright, fresh youthfulness, and it was the shock caused by this change in the beloved face, as much as the sudden appearance which kept her rooted to the spot.
She could not have moved if her life had depended on it, and he was almost upon her before he noticed her. Then, raising his hat, he murmured:
“Pardon, senorita,” and was going on, when, looking more closely at her, he uttered an exclamation, and stood like herself, stock-still.
For a space in which one could count twenty, these two stood looking into each other’s eyes speechless, then he said:
“Doris!” and stretching out his arms, made a step toward her.
For a second the desire to sink upon his breast was terrible, but she fought against it and shrank back.
The color which had rushed to his face as he spoke her name died away at her gesture of repudiation, and letting his arms drop to his side, he said in a constrained voice:
“Miss Marlowe! Am I dreaming? Doris, is it you?”
“Yes, it is I,” she said, almost inaudibly, her heart beating so loudly in her ears as almost to drown her voice.
“You! You!” he repeated, looking round as if he could not believe the evidence of his senses. “You, and here! Good Heavens, I thought I was dreaming!” he muttered. “I—I thought you were—when did you come here?” he broke off as if he scarcely knew what he was saying; his eyes devouring her face with the expression in them which might shine in the eyes of a man who, dying of thirst, sees the limpid stream—just beyond his reach.
“I—I came here, to Italy, some months ago, my lord,” she said, and her voice sounded strange and hollow.
“Some months, some months?” he repeated, putting his hand to his head and pushing the hair from his forehead; a trick which Doris remembered with a vividness which was like a stab.
“Why, how could that be? You could not get back from Australia—and yet, yes, I suppose so!”
She started and looked at him, and was about to exclaim, “Australia? I have never been there, my lord!” when she thought it better to remain silent, remembering the marquis’ story.
“You—you did not stay long,” he said. “Were you, are you happy?” he asked, abruptly.
She turned her head away; her lips quivering at the dull accents of pain in his voice.
“Few mortals are happy, my lord,” she replied, in a low voice.
He waved his hand impatiently.
“For Heaven’s sake don’t address me as if we were strangers!” he broke out. “It is a farce in which I find it impossible to play! Doris——” he stopped and drew nearer to her—“are you so hard of heart, or so light of memory, that you can forget, absolutely forget, all that passed between us—you and I? Have you forgotten Barton meadows? The day I fell off the horse at your feet? the day I told you that I loved you, and asked you to be my wife? the day you promised to be my wife?”
She shrank back against the wall, and put her hands against it as if to sustain her and keep her from falling.
“Have you clean forgotten?” he demanded, bitterly.
“I have tried to forget,” she panted.
“Oh, Heaven!” he exclaimed, with suppressed passion; “and they say women have hearts, they boast that women are gentle and merciful! You tried to forget; and, of course, you succeeded! While I——” he drew near to her and looked longingly at her pale face, all the lovelier for its pallor and the intense light shining in the beautiful eyes, the tremor on the perfectly curved lips; “while I have thought of you day by day, night by night! I swear that there is not a night in which I have not dreamed of you, in which you have not stood beside me to mock me with those eyes of yours, to murmur the vows which fell so readily from those sweet lips. Great Heavens, how cruel, how merciless even the best of you can be!”
In the fury of his agony it almost seemed as if he were about to strike her with his upraised hand, and Doris felt a wild thrill run through her as the conviction that he still loved her forced itself upon her.
“He loves me still! He loves me still!” she almost cried aloud.
“Yes, the best of you,” he repeated, dully, like a man whose senses are half numbed with pain. “For I counted you the best, and—Heaven help me!—I still count you so! Doris—I don’t know by what name I should call you, but till I die you will be ‘Doris’ to me—Doris, why did you deceive me? I have lain awake at nights trying to answer that question. I ask you to tell me now, now that all is over between us——” and he bit his lips till the blood came as he gazed at the lovely, downcast face. “All is over, and we are miles apart, worlds apart,” and he stifled a groan, “and you can tell me safely. Why did you treat me as you did? Was it simply deviltry, coquetry, what? What fun, amusement, was there in it? They said you were practising your profession upon me; that I was a mere block, which you were acting—always acting—up to. Was that true?”
She made no reply, but stood statue-like, her hands pressed against the rough wall, her heart beating in dull, heavy throbs which seemed to stifle her.
“Was it true? If so, then you were the wickedest, the cruelest woman God ever made!” he said, fiercely. “There are some women whose trade it is—professed flirts—to fool and betray men; but they carry the sign of their trade on faces and voices, and we men are aware of them. But you—you, with that innocent face of yours, with that sweet, girlish voice of yours, with those eyes whose truth a man might stake his soul upon——” he stopped and gazed at her as if his soul were slipping from him. “Why don’t you answer me?” he broke off, almost savagely.
Her dry lips quivered, a longing so intense as to be almost irresistible assailed her; the desire to exclaim: “I did not deceive you; I did love you; I still love you. No treachery of mine parted us!” but she remembered the promise she had made to Percy Levant, the promise renewed only that morning; remembered that he, Lord Cecil, was either already married, or pledged to marry Lady Grace, and she remained silent.
He drew a long breath and shrugged his shoulders.
“You can’t answer. I suppose it was merely for amusementthat you led me on to loving you, merely for amusement that you got the heart out of my bosom, merely for amusement that you promised to be my wife, and still merely for amusement—broke my heart!”
She turned. They say the worm will turn if trodden on too persistently.
“Was it only a broken heart you offered to Lady Grace, my lord?” she said. The moment after she had spoken the words she would have recalled them, for she saw by the sudden pallor of his face, the quiver of his lips, how much they had cost him.
“I see,” he said, in a low voice; “you seek to excuse yourself of unfaithfulness by accusing me!”
“No, no,” she breathed; but he went on, disregarding her.
“Yes, I am engaged to Lady Grace! It is quite true. All the world knows it,” with a suppressed bitterness; “but I did not ask her to be my wife until you had—jilted—me! Jilted! It is too light a word. Men use it as a jest. But you did not jilt, you deserted and betrayed me!”
“I—I!” she panted.
“Yes!” he said, passionately. “You waited until I had left England—left England to please and conciliate my uncle—and then, disregarding my letters, my appeals to your love and your honor, you coldly—like a finished coquette!—cast me off with a few cold words. Good Heavens, I cannot recall it without feeling the old pain, the old madness!” he broke off. “Oh, Doris, you have broken other hearts than mine, I dare say, but you never broke one that loved you half as dearly, half as truly, as mine did! I would have staked my life, my honor, on your truthfulness. I would have upheld it in the face of the whole world, and,” with a bitter smile, “should have been rightly laughed at for my pains! Doris, the treachery that was sport to you, was death to me! Look at me!” he drew nearer to her, and folded his arms. “That day I lay with my head in your lap I was a young man, with all a young man’s keen zest for life, with all a young man’s keen desire for life and belief in happiness! I feel like an old man now, bereft of all hope, haunted by thememory of your deceit. This is your work! Be proud of it, if you can!”
She hid her face in her hands, lest it should tell him too much, and he mistook the gesture and attitude for a confession of her guilt, and it moved him to a softer mood.
“I—I beg your pardon,” he stammered. “Don’t—for Heaven’s sake—don’t cry! That won’t do any good. I’m awfully sorry I should have blared out what I felt. It’s—it’s all past and gone now. Of course, you are married?”
Her lips formed the word “no,” though it was not audible.
“No!” he exclaimed, and the blood rushed to his face. “Not married! Then you are still Doris Marlowe, still Doris—the Doris I think and dream of——” He laid his hand on the wall and bent over her, trembling visibly. “Not married! Why—why—I don’t understand! I thought—that is—Doris——” a strange change in his voice smote upon her ears suddenly, a tone of wild, mad hope. “Doris, I thought you were utterly lost to me! That you were married! Why have you not married?”
She remained silent, and the color came and went on his face, and his eyes flashed.
“Why, Doris? You must answer me! Is it because—ah, no! you can’t have remembered—and yet——You are still Doris Marlowe! The dear, sweet Doris who won my heart in Barton meadows! Doris—you—you—drive me almost mad! The mere sight of you wipes out all the weary months since we parted! You are free still? Free? By Heaven, I can scarcely believe it!” He drew nearer, panting heavily, like a man who suddenly dares entertain the hope that dawns upon him. “Not married! Doris, do you remember? Let me look at your face! Why do you turn away from me? Are you playing with me still? If you are not married, there must be some reason! Great Heavens! don’t deceive, don’t betray me now! Listen! I, too, am free! I will be free! I’d give up all the world for your sake! Doris, listen to me! It may not be—it may not be too late!”
He was bending over her so closely now that she could feel his breath upon her cheek; an awful, a terrible languorwas creeping over her; if he had caught her in his arms, and touched her lips with his, she could not have resisted. Love, the all-powerful god, was pleading with her for this, the only man she had ever loved, and she was conscious that she was yielding—yielding.
“Tell me, Doris; tell me again!” he exclaimed, passionately. “It may not be too late! You are not married; and I thought—they told me——My darling, my love, my Doris——”
His hand was upon her arm, his lips close to her face, his breath stirred her hair; she felt powerless to move; in another moment she would, by no consent of her own, have been in his arms, when, suddenly, she felt herself drawn from him, and a voice said, in calm, clear accents:
“Lord Cecil Neville, I believe?”
Cecil drew himself up to his full height.
“My name is Neville,” he said, haughtily.
Percy Levant slowly and gently drew Doris’ arm within his.
“So I imagined, my lord,” he said, not sternly nor haughtily, but with a calm—almost judicial—gravity. “I could have wished that our meeting could have been under freer circumstances,” and he nodded significantly; “but as it is, allow me to introduce myself! My name is Levant—Percy Levant!”
Lord Cecil gave the short, military bow which is half a nod and half an obeisance, and glanced at Doris, who leaned upon Percy Levant’s arm, and hung her head; her quivering lips and pallid face bearing evidence to the emotions which wrung her heart.
“Yes, I am Cecil Neville,” said Lord Cecil. “I am an old—” he paused—“an old friend of Miss Marlowe’s, whom I did not expect to meet here. You are a relation, I presume?”
“No,” said Percy Levant, meeting the half-fierce gaze of the dark Stoyle eyes. “But I hope to be. I have the happiness and honor to be Miss Marlowe’s affianced husband.”
Cecil Neville drew back a step, and his face grew white.
“I—I beg your pardon,” he said, stiffly. “I—I did notknow. Why did you not tell me?” he asked, turning to Doris with white lips and reproachful eyes.
She tried to speak, had opened her lips, indeed, when a voice, impatient and querulous, broke the silence. It was the voice of Lady Grace.
“Cecil! Cecil!” she called. “Where are you? Ce—cil! Ce—cil!”
His face reddened.
“I am going to Pescia to visit a sick relative,” he said, addressing Percy Levant, in a low voice. “You will be able to find me at the hotel, if you should require me,” he added, significantly.
“Thank you, my lord,” said Percy Levant, as significantly.
“Ce—cil!” called the voice again.
He bit his lip, and, without another word, turned and left them; but as he passed out of the walk, illumined by the bright rays of the moon, he stopped, and looked back, as Adam might have looked back upon the Paradise he had left forever, as one might have looked for the last time upon a treasure utterly and entirely lost.
Lord Cecil walked toward the carriage, in which Lady Grace and the marquis’ lady housekeeper were sitting, and Lady Grace, leaning through the window, greeted him with a smiling, but scarcely concealed impatience. She was dressed in a traveling costume of Redfern’s, which must have astonished the intelligent foreigner pretty considerably, and looked, for all her famous loveliness, rather tired, worn and ill at ease.
“Why, Cecil, where have you been?” she exclaimed; “I have been calling for the last half-hour.”
“Scarcely as long as that, Grace,” he said, and his voice sounded hoarse and strained. “I have only been a few yards away, and heard you.”
“At least, then, you might have answered,” she retorted. “Do you know how long we are to wait here?”
“Not much longer,” he replied, leaning against the carriage, and averting his face from the gaze of her sharp, keen eyes. “Horses are not machines, you must remember, and want rest sometimes.”
“Horses, I don’t call them horses,” she said, contemptuously;“they are living skeletons. I am so tired of sitting here!”
“Will you come inside the inn?” he asked, with a barely concealed weariness.
“Oh, no, thanks. I know what that means. These inns are a disgrace to any civilized country. What with the smell of garlic and the dreadful men hanging about them, they are too awful. If you could get me a glass of wine, of decent wine, dear——”
“All right,” he said, and went into the inn. “Give me a bottle of the best wine you have got, and a glass of brandy,” he said to the landlord, and he drank the latter almost at a draught, his hand shaking as he carried the glass to his lips. If he had seen a ghost instead of sweet Doris Marlowe, he could not have been more completely unmanned and upset. Indeed, he had seen a ghost; the ghost of his lost happiness and wrecked life, and she was to marry this stranger, this Percy Levant; what had become of the Mr. Garland, with whom she had sailed to Australia, then? He was so lost in troubled reverie that he had quite forgotten Lady Grace, until the familiar, too familiar, “Ce—cil,” issuing from the carriage, recalled his wandering mind.
He caught up the wine bottle and a glass and strode back to the carriage, filled with that weariness and despair which renders every moment of existence almost unendurable to the galley slave and convict. At that moment he would have given half a continent, had he possessed it, to be alone and free to indulge in his sad and bitter reflections.
Unknown to the valet, the Pescia doctor had telegraphed to him a few days ago, and he had told Lady Grace that he must start for Italy, and at once. Much to his surprise, to his embarrassment, also, she had declared her intention of accompanying him. The fact must be stated, alas! that Lady Grace could not endure her lover’s absence from her side, even for a few days. Her love for him—her passion, as it must be called—had become the absorbing sentiment of her life, and, like all absorbing emotions, it tortured her. She knew, knew for a certainty, that he did not love her, and all her days and nights were filled by a devouring jealousy and discontent.She was rendered wretched if he spoke to or danced with a young and pretty girl. She was jealous of his past as a whole, but madly, fiercely jealous of the girl Doris Marlowe, from whom she had, by the assistance of Spenser Churchill, succeeded in separating him.
She knew he did not love her; that she had entrapped him into the engagement, and she dreaded with an agony of apprehension lest anything should occur to separate them. It is not too much to say that she hated the marquis for being ill and causing the postponement of her marriage. A woman, when she knows that love is returned, is full of trust and confidence, but Lady Grace, knowing that Cecil bore her no love, was full of distrust and suspicion, doubt, and fear. She was never happy, nor at ease, unless he was in her sight, and she found it simply impossible to allow him to go to Italy without her. Sometimes, in the dead of night, she would awake with a start and a cry of terror from a nightmare in which she had dreamed that he had discovered her share in the plot which had robbed him of Doris and bound him to herself, and by day she lived in a constant dread that some accident would reveal the conspiracy and deprive her of him.
So intense an anxiety began to tell upon her, and already there were lines and wrinkles on the face which artists had painted and of which poets had sung.
To put it briefly, Lady Grace’s punishment had commenced even in the first hour of her triumph! Black care sits behind every sorrow, but he is never more safely seated than when he rides behind the man or woman whose success depends upon a lie.
She knew that the world would talk and shrug its shoulders if she accompanied Lord Cecil to Italy, although she took the elderly lady as achaperone; but she set the world’s opinion at naught, just as she had done when, in obedience to Spenser Churchill’s prompting, she went down to Lord Cecil’s chambers. She could not let him out of her sight, and that was the long and short of it.
Lord Cecil took the wine to the carriage, and poured some out for her, but she only put her lips to it.
“It is too awful!” she said, irritably. “Pray hurry them on, Cecil. I am sure those horses must be rested by now.It is sheer laziness. Who was that you were talking to when I called you?” she asked, abruptly, her keen eyes fixed on his face.
He felt himself growing white.
“Nobody you know,” he said, abruptly. “Try and drink some wine, it is not so bad.”
“Are you sure I don’t know them? I thought I heard English voices.”
“You don’t know them,” he said, almost curtly.
“Let me out and let me see,” she said, querulously. “I am sick of being cooped up here.”
“Come out by all means, if you like, Grace,” he responded, “but there is no one there, and the horses are just being put to.”
As he spoke, the postilion led the weary animals into the shafts, and Lady Grace sank back with a restless sigh.
“We shall find the marquis dead,” she said, callously. “We seem to have been years on the journey; yes, he’ll be dead!”
“I trust not,” he responded, grimly. “I’ll ride outside and smoke a cigar,” he added, as the postboy smacked his whip.
She flung herself back among the cushions.
“Oh, very well,” she said, petulantly.
Lord Cecil got on the box, and the carriage rolled onward to Pescia and the Fate awaiting them.