When James Brood and Frederic left the dining-room, nearly an hour prior to the departure of Mrs Desmond, there was in the mind of each the resolution to make short work of the coming interview. Each knew that the time had arrived for the parting of the ways, and neither had the least desire to prolong the suspense.
Frederic, far from suspecting the ordeal in store for him, experienced a curious sense of exaltation as he followed the master of the house up the stairway. He was about to declare his freedom; the very thought of it thrilled him. He had at last found the courage to revolt, and there was cause for rejoicing in the prospect of a lively triumph over what he was pleased to call oppression.
He would not mince matters! Oh, no; he would come straight to the point. There wasn't any sense in temporising. There were years of pent-up grievances that he could fling at his father, but he would crystallise them into a few withering minutes and have done with the business. He knew he was as pale as a ghost and his legs were strangely weak, but he was not cognisant of the slightest sensation of fear, nor the least inclination to shrink from the consequences of that brief, original challenge.
The study door was closed. James Brood put his hand on the knob, but before turning it faced the young man with an odd mixture of anger and pity in his eyes.
“Perhaps it will be better if we had nothing more to say to each other,” he said with an effort. “I have changed my mind. I cannot say the thing to you that I——”
“Has it got anything to do with Yvonne and me?” demanded Frederic ruthlessly, jumping at conclusions in his new-found arrogance.
Brood threw open the door.
“Step inside,” he said in a voice that should have warned the younger man, it was so prophetic of disaster. Frederic had touched the open sore with that unhappy question. Not until this instant had James Brood admitted to himself that there was a sore and that it had been festering all these weeks. Now it was laid bare and it smarted with pain. Nothing could save Frederic after that reckless, deliberate thrust at the very core of the malignant growth that lay so near the surface.
It had been in James Brood's heart to spare the boy. An unaccountable wave of compassion had swept through him as he mounted the stairs, leading his victim to the sacrifice. He would have allowed him to go his way in ignorance of the evil truth; he would have spared the son of Matilde and been happier, far happier, he knew, for having done so. He would have let him fare forth, as he elected to go, rejoicing in his foolish independence, scorning to the end of his days, perhaps, the man who posed as father to him.
But Frederic had touched the hateful sore. His chance was gone.
Hot words were on Frederic's lips. Brood held up his hand, and there was in the gesture a command that silenced the young man. He was somewhat shocked to find that he still recognised the other's right to command. The older man went quickly to the door of the Hindu's closet. He rapped on the panel, and in an instant the door was opened. Ranjab stepped out and quickly closed the door behind him. A few words, spoken in lowered tones and in the language of the East, passed between master and man.
Frederic turned his back to them. Moved by a sudden impulse, he strode to the window and pulled the curtains apart. A swift glance upward showed him the drawn shades in Lydia's bedroom windows. Somehow he was glad that she was asleep. An impulse as strong as the other ordered him to shift his glance downward to the little balcony outside of Yvonne's windows. Then he heard the door close softly behind him and turned to face his father.
They were alone in the room. He squared his shoulders.
“I suppose you think I am in love with her,” he said defiantly. He waited a moment for the response that did not come. Brood was regarding him with eyes from which every spark of compassion had disappeared. “Well, it may interest you to know that I intend to marry Lydia this very day.”
Brood advanced a few steps toward him. In the subdued light of the room his features were not clearly distinguishable. His face was gray and shadowy; only the eyes were sharply defined. They glowed like points of light, unflickering.
“I shall be sorry for Lydia,” he said levelly.
“You needn't be,” said Frederic hotly. “She understands everything.”
“You were born to be dishonest in love.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“It is my purpose to tell you precisely what I mean. Lydia understands far more than you think. If she marries you it will be with her eyes open; she will have no one to blame but herself for the mistake.”
“Oh, I haven't tried to deceive her as to my prospects. She knows how poor we will be at the———”
“Does she know that this love you profess for her is at the very outset disloyal?”
Frederic was silent for a moment. A twinge shot through his heart.
“She understands everything,” he repeated stubbornly.
“Have you lied to her?”
“Lied? You'd better be careful how you———”
“Have you told her that you love her and no one else?”
“Certainly!”
“Then youhavelied to her.”
There was silence—tense silence.
“Do you expect me to strike you for that?” came at last from Frederic's lips, low and menacing.
“You have always considered yourself to be my son, haven't you?” pursued Brood deliberately. “Can you say to me that you have behaved of late as a son should———”
“Wait! We'll settle that point right now. Ididlose my head. Head, I say, not heart. I shan't attempt to explain—I can't, for that matter. As for Yvonne—well, she's as good as gold. She understands me far better than I understand myself. She knows that even honest men lose their heads sometimes—and she knows the difference between love and—the other thing. I can say to you now that I would sooner have cut my own throat than do more than envy you the possession of someone you do not deserve. Ihaveconsidered myself your son. I have no apology to make for my—we'll call it infatuation. I shall only admit that it has existed and that I have despaired. So God is my witness, I have never loved anyone but Lydia. I have given her pain, and the amazing part of it is that I can't help myself. Naturally, you can't understand what it all means. You are not a young man any longer. You cannot understand.”
“Good God!” burst from Brood's lips. Then he laughed aloud—grotesquely.
“Yvonne is the most wonderful thing that has ever come into my life. She has shown me that life is beautiful and rich and full of warmth. I had always thought it ugly and cold. Something inside of me awoke the instant I looked into her eyes—something that had always been there, and yet undeveloped. She spoke to me with her eyes, if you can believe such a thing possible, and I understood. I adored her the instant I saw her. I have felt sometimes that I knew her a thousand years ago. I have felt that I loved her a thousand years ago.” A calm seriousness now attended his speech, in direct contrast to the violent mood that had gone before. “I have thought of little else but her. I confess it to you. But through it all there has never been an instant in which I did not worship Lydia Desmond. I—I do not pretend to account for it. It is beyond me.”
Brood waited patiently to the end.
“Your mother before you had a somewhat similar affliction,” he said, still in the steady, repressed voice. “Perhaps it is a gift—a convenient gift—this ability to worship without effort.”
“Better leave my mother out of it,” said Frederic sarcastically. A look of wonder leaped to his eyes. “That's the first time you've condescended to acknowledge that I ever had a mother.”
“I shall soon make you regret that you were ever so blessed as to have had one.”
“You've always made it easy for me to regret that I ever had a father.”
Brood's smile was deadly.
“If you have anything more to say to me, you had better get it over. Purge your soul of all the gall that embitters it. I grant you that privilege. Take your innings.”
A spasm of pain crossed Frederic's face.
“Yes, I am entitled to my innings. I'll go back to what I said downstairs. I thought I loved and honoured you last night. I would have forgiven everything if you had granted me a friendly—friendly, that's all—just a friendly word. You denied———”
“I suppose you want me to believe that it was love for me that brought you slinking to the theatre,” said the other ironically.
“I don't expect you to believe anything. I was lonely. I wanted to be with you and Yvonne. Curse you! Can't you understand how lonely I've been all my life? Can't you understand how hungry I am for the affection that every other boy I've known has had from his parents? I've never asked you about my mother. I used to wonder a good deal. Every other boy had a mother. I never had one. I couldn't understand it. And they all had fathers, but they were not like my father. Their fathers were kind and loving, they were interested in everything their sons did—good or bad. I used to love the fathers of all those other lucky boys at school. They came often—and so did the mothers. No one ever came to see me—no one!
“I used to wonder why you never told me of my own mother. Long ago I gave up wondering. Something warned me not to ask you about her. Something told me it was best to let sleeping dogs lie. I never inquired of anyone after I was old enough to think for myself. I was afraid to ask, so I waited, hoping all the time that you would some day tell me of her. But you've never breathed her name to me. I no longer wonder. I know now that she must have hated you with all the strength of her soul. God, how she must have hated to feel the touch of your hands upon her body! Something tells me she left you, and if she did, I hope she afterward found someone who—but no, I won't say it. Even now I haven't the heart to hurt you by saying that.” He stopped, choking up with the rush of bitter words. “Well, why don't you say something?”
“I'm giving you your innings. Go on,” said Brood softly.
“She must have loved you once—or she wouldn't have married you. She must have loved you or I wouldn't be here in this world. She———”
“Ha!” came sharply from Brood.
“—didn't find you out until it was too late. She was lovely, I know. She was sweet and gentle and she loved happiness. I can see that in her face, in her big, wistful eyes. You———”
“What's this?” demanded Brood, startled. “What are you saying?”
“Oh, I've got her portrait—an old photograph. For a month I've carried it here in this pocket-case over my heart. I wouldn't part with it for all the money in the world. When I look at the dear, sweet, girlish face and her eyes look back into mine, I know thatsheloved me.”
“Her portrait?” said Brood, unbelieving.
“Yes—and I have only to look at it to know that she couldn't have hurt you—so it must have been the other way round. She's dead now, I know, but she didn't die for years after I was born. Why was it that I never saw her? Why was I kept up there in that damnable village———”
“Where did you get that photograph?” demanded Brood hoarsely. “Where, I say? What interfering fool———”
“I wouldn't be too nasty, if I were you,” said Frederic, a note of triumph in his voice. “Yvonne gave it to me. I made her promise to say nothing to you about it. She———”
“Yvonne? Are you——— Impossible! She could not have had———”
“It was lying under the marble top of that old bureau in her bedroom. She found it there when the men came to take it away to storage. It hadn't been moved in twenty years or more.”
“In—her—bedroom?” murmured Brood, passing his hand over his eyes. “The old bureau—marble top—good Lord! It was our bedroom. Let me see it—give it to me this instant!”
“I can't do that. It's mine now. It's safe where it is.”
“Yvonne found it? Yvonne? And gave it to you? What damnable trick of fate is this? But——— Ah, it may not be a portrait of your—your mother. Some old photograph that got stuck under the———”
“No; it is my mother. Yvonne saw the resemblance at once and brought it to me. And it may interest you to know that she advised me to treasure it all my life, because it would always tell me how lovely and sweet my mother was—the mother I have never seen.”
“I insist on seeing that picture,” said Brood with deadly intensity.
“No,” said Frederic, folding his arms tightly across his breast. “You didn't deserve her then and you———”
“You don't know what you are saying, boy!”
“Ah, don't I? Well, I've got just a little bit of my mother safe here over my heart—a little faded card, that's all—and you shall not rob me of that. I wish to God I had her here, just as she was when she had the picture taken. Don't glare at me like that. I don't intend to give it up. Last night I was sorry for you. I had the feeling that somehow you have always been unhappy over something that happened in the past, and that my mother was responsible. And yet when I took out this photograph, this tiny bit of old cardboard—see, it is so small that it can be carried in my waistcoat pocket—when I took it out and looked at the pure, lovely face, I—by Heaven, I knew she was not to blame!”
“Have you finished?” asked Brood, wiping his brow. It was dripping.
“Except to repeat that I am through with you for ever. I've had all that I can endure, and I'm through. My greatest regret is that I didn't get out long ago. But like a fool—a weak fool—I kept on hoping that you'd change and that there were better days ahead for me. I kept on hoping that you'd be a real father to me. Good Lord, what a libel on the name!” He laughed raucously. “I'm sick of calling you father. You did me the honour downstairs of calling me 'bastard.' You had no right to call me that; but, by Heaven, if it were not for this bit of cardboard here over my heart, I'd laugh in your face and be happy to shout from the housetops that I am no son of yours. But there's no such luck as that! I've only to look at my mother's innocent, soulful face to———”
“Stop!” shouted Brood in an awful voice. His clenched hands were raised above his head. “The time has come for me to tell you the truth about this innocent mother of yours. Luck is with you. I am not your father. You are———”
“Wait! If you are going to tell me that my mother was not a good woman, I want to go on record in advance of anything you may say, as being glad that I am her son no matter who my father was. I am glad that she loved me because I was her child, and if you are not my father, then I still have the joy of knowing that she loved some one man well enough to———” He broke off the bitter sentence and with nervous fingers drew a small leather case from his waistcoat pocket. “Before you go any farther, take one look at her face. It will make you ashamed of yourself. Can you stand there and lie about her after looking into———”
He was holding the window curtains apart, and a stream of light fell upon the lovely face, so small that Brood was obliged to come quite close to be able to see it. His eyes were distended.
“It is not Matilde—it is like her, but—yes, yes; it is Matilde! I must be losing my mind to have thought———” He wiped his brow. “But it was startling—positively uncanny.” He spoke as to himself, apparently forgetting that he had a listener.
“Well, can you lie about her now?” demanded Frederic.
Brood was still staring, as if fascinated, at the tiny photograph.
“But I have never seen that picture before. She never had one so small as that. It———”
“It was made in Vienna,” interrupted Frederic, not without a strange thrill of satisfaction in his soul, “and before you were married, I'd say. On the back of it is written 'To my own sweetheart,' in Hungarian, Yvonne says. There! Look at her. She was like that when you married her. How adorable she must have been. 'To my own sweetheart'! O—ho!”
A hoarse cry of rage and pain burst from Brood's lips. The world grew red before his eyes.
“'To my own sweetheart'!” he cried out. He sprang forward and struck the photograph from Frederic's hand. It fell to the floor at his feet. Before the young man could recover from his surprise, Brood's foot was upon the bit of cardboard. “Don't raise your hand to me! Don't you dare to strike me! Now I shall tell you who that sweetheart was!”
Half an hour later James Brood descended the stairs alone. He went straight to the library, where he knew that he could find Yvonne. Ranjab, standing in the hall, peered into his white, drawn face as he passed, and started forward as if to speak to him. But Brood did not see him. He did not lift his gaze from the floor. The Hindu went swiftly up the stairs, a deep dread in his soul.
The shades were down. Brood stopped inside the door and looked dully about the library. He was on the point of retiring when Yvonne spoke to him out of the shadowy corner beyond the fireplace.
“Close the door,” she said huskily. Then she emerged slowly, almost like a spectre, from the dark background formed by the huge mahogany bookcases that lined the walls from floor to ceiling. “You were a long time up there,” she went on.
“Why is it so dark in here, Yvonne?” he asked lifelessly.
“So that it would not be possible for me to see the shame in your eyes, James.”
He leaned heavily against the long table. She came up and stood across the table from him, and he felt that her eyes were searching his very soul.
“I have hurt him beyond all chance of recovery,” he said hoarsely.
She started violently.
“You—you struck him down? He—he is dying?” Her voice trailed off into a whisper.
“He will be a long time in dying. It will be slow. I struck him down, not with my hand, not with a weapon that he could parry, but with words—words! Do you hear? I have crushed his soul with words!”
“Oh, you coward!” she cried, leaning over the table, her eyes blazing. “I can understand it in you. You have no soul of your own. What have you done to your son, James Brood?”
He drew back as if from the impact of a blow. “Coward? If I have crushed his soul, it was done in time, Yvonne, to deprive you of the glory of doing it.”
“What did he say to you about me?”
“You have had your fears for nothing. He did not put you in jeopardy,” he said scornfully.
“I know. He is not a coward,” she said calmly.
“In your heart you are reviling me. You judge me as one guilty soul judges another. Suppose that I were to confess to you that I left him up there with all the hope, all the life blasted out of his eyes—with a wound in his heart that will never stop bleeding—that I left him because I was sorry for what I had done and could not stand by and look upon the wreck I had created. Suppose———”
“I am still thinking of you as a coward. What is it to me that you are sorry now? What have you done to that wretched, unhappy boy?”
“He will tell you soon enough. Then you will despise me even more than I despise myself. He—he looked at me with his mother's eyes when I kept on striking blows at his very soul. Her eyes—eyes that were always pleading with me! But, curse them—always scoffing at me! For a moment I faltered. There was a wave of love—yes, love, not pity, for him—as I saw him go down before the words I hurled at him. It was as if I had hurt the only thing in all the world that I love. Then it passed. He was not meant for me to love. He was born for me to despise. He was born to torture me as I have tortured him.”
“You poor fool!” she cried, her eyes glittering.
“Sometimes I have doubted my own reason,” he went on, as if he had not heard her scathing remark. “Sometimes I have felt a queer gripping of the heart when I was harshest toward him. Sometimes, his eyes—her eyes—have melted the steel that was driven into my heart long ago, his voice and the touch of his hand have gently checked my bitterest thoughts. Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“You ask what I have done to him. It is nothing in comparison to what he would have done to me. It isn't necessary to explain. You know the thing he has had in his heart to do. I have known it from the beginning. It is the treacherous heart of his mother that propels that boy's blood along its craven way. She was an evil thing—as evil as God ever put life into.”
“Go on.”
“I loved her as no woman was ever loved before—or since. I thought she loved me; I believe she did. He—Frederic had her portrait up there to flash in my face. She was beautiful; she was as lovely as—but no more! I was not the man. She loved another. You may have guessed, as others have guessed, that she betrayed me. Her lover was that boy's father.”
Dead silence reigned in the room, save for the heavy breathing of the man. Yvonne was as still as death itself. Her hands were clenched against her breast.
“That was years ago,” resumed the man hoarsely.
“You—you told him this?” she cried, aghast.
“He stood before me up there and said that he hoped he might some day discover that he was not my son.”
“You told himthen?”
“He cursed me for having driven his mother out of my house.”
“You told him?”
“He uttered the hope that she might come back from the grave to torture me for ever—to pay me back for what I had done to her.”
“Then you told him!”
“He said she must have loathed me as no man was ever loathed before. Then I told him.”
“You told him because you knew she didnotloathe you!”
“Yvonne! You are laughing!”
“I laugh because after he had said all these bitter things to you, and you had paid him back by telling him that he was not your son, it was you—not he—who was sorry!”
“I did not expect sympathy from you, but—to have you laugh in my face! I———”
“Did you expect sympathy from him?” she cried.
“I told him in the end that as he was not my son he need feel no compunction in trying to steal my wife away from me. I———”
“And what did he say to that?” she broke in shrilly.
“Nothing! He did not speak to me after that. Not one word!”
“Nor should I speak to you again, James Brood!”
“Yvonne—I—I love you. I———”
“And you loved Matilde—God pity your poor soul! For no more than I have done, you drove her out of your house. You accuse me in your heart when you vent your rage on that poor boy. Oh, I know! You suspectme!And you suspected the other one. I swear to you that you have more cause to suspect me than Matilde. She was not untrue to you. She could not have loved anyone else but you. I know—I know! Don't come near me! Not now! I tell you that Frederic is your son. I tell you that Matilde loved no one but you. You drove her out. You drive Frederic out.And you will drive me out!”
She stood over him like an accusing angel, her arms extended. He shrank back, glaring.
“Why do you say these things to me? You cannot know—you have no right to say———”
“Iamsorry for you, James Brood,” she murmured, suddenly relaxing. Her body swayed against the table, and then she sank limply into the chair alongside.
“Yvonne!”
“You will never forget that you struck a man who was asleep, absolutely asleep, James Brood. That's why I am sorry for you.”
“Asleep!” he murmured, putting his hand to his eyes. “Yes, yes—he was asleep! Yvonne, I—I have never been so near to loving him as I am now. I—I———”
“I am going up to him. Don't try to stop me. But first let me ask you a question. What did Frederic say when you told him his mother was was what you claim?”
Brood lowered his head.
“He said that I was a cowardly liar.”
“And it was then that you began to feel that you loved him. Ah, I see what it is that you need, James. You are a great, strong man, a wonderful man in spite of all this. You have a heart—a heart that still needs breaking before you can ever hope to be happy.”
“As if my heart hasn't already been broken,” he groaned.
“Your head has been hurt, that's all. There is a vast difference. Are you going out?”
He looked at her in dull amazement. Slowly he began to pull himself together.
“Yes. I think you should go to him. I—I gave him an hour to—to———”
“To get out?”
“Yes. He must go, you see. See him, if you will. I shall not oppose you. Find out what he expects to do.”
She passed swiftly by him as he started toward the door. In the hall, which was bright with the sunlight from the upper windows, she turned to face him. To his astonishment her cheeks were aglow and her eyes bright with eagerness. She seemed almost radiant.
“Yes; it needs breaking, James,” she said, and went up the stairs, leaving him standing there dumbfounded. Near the top she began to hum a blithe tune. It came down to him distinctly—the weird little air that had haunted him for years—Feverelli's!
To Brood's surprise she came half-way down the steps again, and, leaning over the railing, spoke to him with a voice full of irony.
“Will you be good enough to call off your spy, James?”
“What do you mean?” He had started to put on his light overcoat.
“I think you know,” she said briefly.
“Do you consider me so mean, so infamous as———” he began hotly.
“Nevertheless, I feel happier when I know he is out of the house. Call off your dog, James.”
He smothered an execration and then called out harshly to Jones:
“Ask Ranjab to attend me here, Jones. He is to go out with me,” he said to the butler a moment later.
Yvonne was still leaning over the banister, a scornful smile on her lips.
“I shall wait until you are gone. I intend to see Frederic alone,” she said, with marked emphasis on the final word.
“As you like,” said he coldly.
She crossed the upper hall and disappeared from view down the corridor leading to her own room. Her lips were set with decision; a wild, reckless light filled her eyes, and the smile of scorn had given way to one of exaltation. Her breath came fast and tremulously through quivering nostrils as she closed her door and hurried across to the little vine-covered balcony.
“The time has come—the time has come, thank God!” she was saying to herself, over and over again. The French doors stuck. She was jerking angrily at them when her maid hurried in from the bedroom, attracted by the unusual commotion.
“Que faites vous, madame?” she cried anxiously.
Her mistress turned quickly.
“Listen! Go downstairs at once and tell them that I have dismissed you. At once, do you hear?”
“Oui madame!” cried Céleste, her eyes dancing with a sudden, incomprehensible delight.
“You are to leave the house immediately. I dismiss you. You have been stealing from me, do you understand?”
“Oui, madame. Je comprendes parfaitement, madame!” cried the maid, actually clapping her hands.
“You will pack two steamer-trunks and get them out of the house before five o'clock. You are going back to Paris. You are dismissed.”
The little Frenchwoman beamed.
“Certainement, madame! Par le premier bateau. Je comprend.”
“The first boat for Havre—do you know the hour for sailing? Consult the morning paper, Céleste.”
“En bien, madame. La Provence. Il part demain. Je———”
“Go at once!” cried the mistress, waving her hands excitedly.
“Vous me renvoyez!” And the little maid dashed out of the room.
As she descended the back stairs an amazing change came over her. Her sprightly face became black with sullen rage and her eyes snapped with fury. So violent was her manner when she accosted Jones in the servants' hall that he fell back in some alarm. She was not long in making him understand that she had been dismissed, however, and that she would surely poison the diabolical creature upstairs if she remained in the house another hour. Even the cook, who had a temper of her own, was appalled by the exhibition; other servants were struck dumb.
Jones, perspiring freely, said something about calling in an officer, and then Céleste began to weep bitterly. All she wanted was to get out of the house before she did something desperate to the cruel tyrant upstairs, and she'd be eternally grateful to Jones if he'd get her trunks out of the storeroom as soon as——— But Jones was already on his way to give instructions to the furnace-man.
Céleste took the occasion to go into hysterics, and the entire servant body fell to work hissing “Sh—h!” in an agony of apprehension lest the turmoil should penetrate the walls and reach the ears of the “woman upstairs.” They closed all of the doors and most of the windows, and the upstairs maid thought it would be a good idea to put a blanket over the girl's head.
Left alone, Yvonne turned her attention to the window across the court and two floors above her the heavily curtained window in Brood's “retreat.” There was no sign of life there, so she hurried to the front of the house to wait for the departure of James Brood and his man. The two were going down the front steps. At the bottom Brood spoke to Ranjab, and the latter, as imperturbable as a rock, bowed low and moved off in an opposite direction to that taken by his master. She watched until both were out of sight. Then she rapidly mounted the stairs to the top floor.
Frederic was lying on the couch near the jade room door. She was able to distinguish his long, dark figure after peering intently about the shadowy interior in what seemed at first to be a vain search for him. She shrank back, her eyes fixed in horror upon the prostrate shadow. Suddenly he stirred and then half raised himself on one elbow to stare at the figure in the doorway.
“Is ityou?” he whispered hoarsely, and dropped back with a great sigh on his lips.
Her heart leaped. The blood rushed back to her face. Quickly closing the door, she advanced into the room, her tread as swift and as soft as a cat's.
“He has gone out. We are quite alone,” she said, stopping to lean against the table, suddenly faint with excitement.
He laughed, a bitter, mirthless, snarling laugh.
“Get up, Frederic. Be a man! I know what has happened. Get up! I want to talk it over with you. We must plan. We must decide now at once—before he returns.” The words broke from her lips with sharp, staccato-like emphasis.
He came to a sitting posture slowly, all the while staring at her with a dull wonder in his heavy eyes.
“Pull yourself together,” she cried hurriedly. “We cannot talk here. I am afraid in this room. It has ears, I know. That awful Hindu is always here, even though he may seem to be elsewhere. We will go down to my boudoir.”
He slowly shook his head and then allowed his chin to sink dejectedly into his hands. With his elbows resting on his knees, he watched her movements in a state of increasing interest and bewilderment. She turned abruptly to the Buddha, whose placid, smirking countenance seemed to be alive to the situation in all of its aspects. Standing close, her hands behind her back, her figure very erect and theatric, she proceeded to address the image in a voice full of mockery.
“Well, my chatterbox friend, I have pierced his armour, haven't I? He will creep up here and ask you, his wonderful god, to tell him what to do about it,aïe?His wits are tangled. He doubts his senses. And when he comes to you, my friend, and whines his secret doubts into your excellent and trustworthy ear, do me the kindness to keep the secret I shall now whisper to you, for I trust you, too, you amiable fraud.”
Standing on tiptoe, she put her lips to the idol's ear and whispered. Frederic, across the room, roused from his lethargy by the strange words and still stranger action, rose to his feet and took several steps toward her.
“There! Now you know everything. You know more than James Brood knows, for you know what his charming wife is about to do next.” She drew back and regarded the image through half-closed, smouldering eyes. “But he will know before long—before long.”
“What are you doing, Yvonne?” demanded Frederic unsteadily.
She whirled about and came toward him, her hands still clasped behind her back.
“Come with me,” she said, ignoring his question.
“He—he thinks I am in love with you,” said he, shaking his head.
“And are you not in love with me?”
He was startled. “Good Lord, Yvonne!”
She came quite close to him. He could feel the warmth that travelled from her body across the short space that separated them. The intoxicating perfume filled his nostrils; he drew a deep breath, his eyes closing slowly as his senses prepared to succumb to the delicious spell that came over him. When he opened them an instant later she was still facing him, as straight and fearless as a soldier, and the light of victory was in her dark, compelling eyes.
“Well,” she said deliberately, “I am ready to go away with you.”
He fell back stunned beyond the power of speech. His brain was filled with a thousand clattering noises.
“He has turned you out,” she went on rapidly. “He disowns you. Very well; the time has come for me to exact payment of him for that and for all that has gone before. I shall go away with you. I———”
“Impossible!” he cried, finding his tongue and drawing still farther away from her.
“Are you not in love with me?” she whispered softly.
He put his hands to his eyes to shut out the alluring vision.
“For God's sake, Yvonne—leave me. Let me go my way. Let me———”
“He cursed your mother! He curses you! He damns you—as he damned her. You can pay him up for everything. You owe nothing to him. He has killed every———”
Frederic straightened up suddenly and, with a loud cry of exultation, raised his clenched hands above his head.
“By Heaven, I will break him! I will make him pay! Do you know what he has done to me? Listen to this: he boasts of having reared me to manhood, as one might bring up a prize beast, that he might make me pay for the wrong that my poor mother did a quarter of a century ago. All these years he has had in mind this thing that he has done to-day. All my life has been spent in preparation for the sacrifice that came an hour ago. I have suffered all these years in ignorance of———”
“Not so loud!” she whispered, alarmed by the vehemence of his reawakened fury.
“Oh, I'm not afraid!” he cried savagely. “Can you imagine anything more diabolical than the scheme he has had in mind all these years? To pay back my mother—whom he loved and still loves—yes, by Heaven, he still loves her—he works to this beastly end! He made her suffer the agonies of the damned up to the day of her death by refusing her the right to have the child that he swears is no child of his. Oh, you don't know the story—you don't know the kind of man you have for a husband—you don't———”
“Yes, yes; I do know!” she cried violently, beating her breast with clenched hands. “Idoknow! I know that he still loves the poor girl who went out of this house with his curses ringing in her ears a score of years ago, and who died still hearing them. And I had almost come to the point of pitying him—I was failing—I was weakening. He is a wonderful man. I—I was losing myself. But that is all over. Three months ago I could have left him without a pang—yesterday I was afraid that it would never be possible. To-day he makes it easy for me. He has hurt you beyond all reason, not because he hates you, but because he loved your mother.”
“But you do love him!” cried Frederic in stark wonder. “You don't care the snap of your fingers for me. What is all this you are saying, Yvonne? You must be mad. Think! Think what you are saying.”
“I have thought—I am always thinking. I know my own mind well enough. It is settled: I am going away, and I am going with you.”
“You can't be in earnest!”
“I am desperately in earnest. You owe nothing to him now. He says you are not his son. You owe nothing but hatred to him, and you should pay. You owe vengeance for your mother's sake—for the sake of her whose face you have come to love, who loved you to the day she died, I am sure. He will proclaim to the world that you are not his son, he will brand you with the mark of shame, he will drive you out of New York. You are the son of a music-master, he shouts from the housetops! Your mother was a vile woman, he shouts from the housetops! You cannot remain here. Youmustgo. You must take me with you. Ah, you are thinking of Lydia! Well, are you thinking of dragging her through the mire that he will create? Are you willing to give her the name he declares is not yours to give? Are you a craven, whipped coward who will not strike back when the chance is offered to give a blow that will———”
“I cannot listen to you, Yvonne!” cried Frederic, aghast. His heart was pounding so fiercely that the blood surged to his head in great waves, almost stunning him with its velocity.
“We go to-morrow!” she cried out in an ecstasy of triumph. She was convinced that he would go! “La Provence!”
“Good Heaven!” he gasped, dropping suddenly into a chair and burying his face in his shaking hands. “What will this mean to Lydia—what will she do—what will become of her?”
A quiver of pain crossed the woman's face, her eyelids fell as if to shut out something that shamed her in spite of all her vainglorious protestations. Then the spirit of exaltation resumed its sway. She lifted her eyes heavenward, and inaudible words trembled on her lips. A moment later she stood over him, her hands extended as if in blessing.
Had he looked up at that instant he would have witnessed a Yvonne he did not know. No longer was she the alluring, sensuous creature who had been in his thoughts for months, but a transfigured being whose soul looked out through gentle, pitying eyes, whose wiles no longer were employed in the devices of which she was past-mistress, whose real nature was revealed now for the first time since she entered the house of James Brood.
There was pain and suffering in the lovely eyes, and there was a strange atmosphere of sanctuary attending the very conquest she had made. But Frederic did not look up until all this had passed and the smile of triumph was on her lips again and the glint of determination in her eyes. He had missed the revelation that would have altered his estimate of her for the future.
“You cannot marry Lydia now,” she said, affecting a sharpness of tone that caused him to shrink involuntarily. “It is your duty to write her a letter to-night, explaining all that has happened to-day. She would sacrifice herself for you to-day, but there is—to-morrow! A thousand to-morrows, Frederic. Don't forget them, my dear. They would be ugly, after all, and she is too good, too fine to be dragged into———”
“You are right!” he exclaimed, leaping to his feet. “It would be the vilest act that a man could perpetrate. Why—why, it would be proof of what he says of me—it would stamp me for ever the dastard he—no, no; I could never lift my head again if I were to do this utterly vile thing to Lydia. He said to me here—not an hour ago—that he expected me to go ahead and blight that loyal girl's life, that I would consider it a noble means of self-justification! What do you think of that? He——— But wait! What is this that we are proposing to do? Give me time to think! Why—why, I can't take you away from him, Yvonne! What am I thinking of? Have I no sense of honour? Am I———”
“You are not his son,” she said significantly.
“But that is no reason why I should stoop to a foul trick like this. Do—do you know what you are suggesting?” He drew back from her with a look of disgust in his eyes. “No! I'm not that vile! I——”
“Frederic, you must let me———”
“I don't want to hear anything more, Yvonne. What manner of woman are you? He is your husband, he loves you, he trusts you; oh, yes, he does! And you would leave him like this? You would———”
“Hush! Not so loud!” she cried in great agitation.
“And let me tell you something more. Although I can never marry Lydia, by Heaven, I shall love her to the end of my life. I will not betray that love. To the end of time she shall know that my love for her is real and true and———”
“Frederic, you must listen to me,” she cried, wringing her hands. “You must hear what I have to say to you. Wait! Do not leave me!”
“What is it, Yvonne—what is it?” he cried, pausing in utter amazement after taking a few steps toward the door.
“Where are you going?” she whispered, following him with dragging steps. “Not tohim?”
“Certainly not! Do you think I would betray you to him?”
“Wait! Give me time to think,” she pleaded. He shook his head resolutely. “Do not judge me too harshly. Hear what I have to say before you condemn me. I am not the vile creature you think, Frederic. Wait! Let me think!”
He stared at her for a moment in deep perplexity and then slowly drew near.
“Yvonne, I do not believe you mean to do wrong—I do not believe it of you. You have been carried away by some horrible———”
“Listen to me,” she broke in fiercely. “I would have sacrificed you—aye, sacrificed you, poor boy—in order to strike James Brood the cruellest blow that man ever sustained. I would have destroyed you in destroying him—God forgive me! But you have shown me how terrible I am, how utterly terrible! Love you? No! No! Not in that way. I would have put a curse, an undeserved curse, upon your innocent head, and all for the joy it would give me to see James Brood grovel in misery for the rest of his life. Oh!”
She uttered a groan of despair and self-loathing so deep and full of pain that his heart was chilled.
“Yvonne!” he gasped, dumbfounded.
“Do not come near me!” she cried out, covering her face with her hands. For a full minute she stood before him, straight and rigid as a statue, a tragic figure he was never to forget. Suddenly she lowered her hands. To his surprise, a smile was on her lips.
“You would never have gone away with me. I know it now. All these months I have been counting on you for this very hour, this culminating hour—and now I realise how little hope I have really had, even from the beginning. You are honourable. There have been times when my influence over you was such that you resisted only because you were loyal to yourself—not to Lydia, not to my husband—but to yourself. I came to this house with but one purpose in mind. I came here to take you away from the man who has always stood as your father. I would not have become your mistress—pah! how loathsome it sounds!—but I would have enticed you away, believing myself to be justified. I would have struck James Brood that blow. He would have gone to his grave believing himself to have been paid in full by the son of the woman he had degraded, by the boy he had reared for the slaughter, by the blood———”
“In God's name, Yvonne, what is this you are saying? What have you against my—against him?”
“Wait! I shall come to that. I did not stop to consider all that I should have to overcome. First, there was your soul, your honour, your integrity to consider. I did not think of all those things. I did not stop to think of the damnable wrong I should be doing to you. I was blind to everything except my one great, long-enduring purpose. I could see nothing else but triumph over James Brood. To gain my end it was necessary that I should be his wife. I became his wife—I deliberately took that step in order to make complete my triumph over him. I became the wife of the man I had hated with all my soul, Frederic. So you can see how far I was willing to go to—ah, it was a hard thing to do! But I did not shrink. I went into it without faltering, without a single thought of the cost to myself. He was to pay for all that, too, in the end. Look into my eyes, Frederic. I want to ask you a question. Will you go away with me? Will you take me?”
He returned her look steadily.
“No!”
“That is all I want to hear you say. It means the end. I have done all that could be done, and I have failed. Thank God, I have failed!” She came swiftly to him and, before he was aware of her intention, clutched his hand and pressed it to her lips. He was shocked to find that a sudden gush of tears was wetting his hand.
“Oh, Yvonne!” he cried miserably.
She was sobbing convulsively. He looked down upon her dark, bowed head and again felt the mastering desire to crush her slender, beautiful body in his arms. The spell of her was upon him again, but now he realised that the appeal was to his spirit and not to his flesh—as it had been all along, he was beginning to suspect.
“Don't pity me,” she choked out. “This will pass, as everything else has passed. I am proud of you now, Frederic. You are splendid. Not many men could have resisted in this hour of despair. You have been cast off, despised, degraded, humiliated. You were offered the means to retaliate. You———”
“And I was tempted!” he cried bitterly. “For the moment I was———”
“And now what is to become ofme?” she wailed.
His heart grew cold.
“You—you will leave him? You will go back to Paris? Yvonne, it will be a blow to him. He has had one fearful slash in the back. This will break him.”
“At least, I may have that consolation,” she cried, straightening up in an effort to revive her waning purpose. “Yes, I shall go. I cannot stay here now. I—” She paused and shuddered.
“What, in Heaven's name, have you against my—against him? What does it all mean? How you must have hated him to———”
“Hated him? Oh, how feeble the word is! Hate! There should be a word that strikes more terror to the soul than that one. But wait! You shall know everything. You shall have the story from the beginning. There is much to tell, and there will be consolation—aye, triumph for you in the story I shall tell. First, let me say this to you: when I came here I did not know that there was a Lydia Desmond. I would have hurt that poor girl; but it would not have been a lasting pain. In my plans, after I came to know her, there grew a beautiful alternative through which she should know great happiness. Oh, I have planned well and carefully, but I was ruthless. I would have crushed her with him rather than to have failed. But it is all a dream that has passed, and I am awake.
“It was the most cruel, but the most magnificent dream—ah, but I dare not think of it. As I stand here before you now, Frederic, I am shorn of all my power. I could not strike him as I might have done a month ago. Even as I was cursing him but a moment ago I realised that I could not have gone on with the game. Even as I begged you to take your revenge, I knew that it was not myself who urged, but the thing that was having its death-struggle within me.”
“Go on. Tell me. Why do you stop?”
She was glancing fearfully toward the Hindu's door. “There is one man in this house who knows. He reads my every thought. He does not know all, but he knowsme. He has known from the beginning that I was not to be trusted. That man is never out of my thoughts. I fear him, Frederic—I fear him as I fear death. If he had not been here I—I believe I should have dared anything. Icouldhave taken you away with me months ago. But he worked his spell and I was afraid. I faltered. He knew that I was afraid, for he spoke to me one day of the beautiful serpents in his land that were cowards in spite of the death they could deal with one flash of their fangs. You were intoxicated. Iama thing of beauty. I can charm as the———”
“God knows that is true,” he said hoarsely.
“But enough of that! I am stricken with my own poison. Go to the door! See if he is there. I fear———”
“No one is near,” said he, after striding swiftly to both doors, listening at one and peering out through the other.
“You will have to go away, Frederic. I shall have to go. But we shall not go together. In my room I have kept hidden the sum of ten thousand dollars, waiting for the day to come when I should use it to complete the game I have played. I knew that you would have no money of your own. I was prepared even for that. Look again! See if anyone is there? I feel—I feel that someone is near us. Look, I say!”
He obeyed.
“See! There is no one near.” He held open the door to the hall. “You must speak quickly. I am to leave this house in an hour. I was given the hour.”
“Ah, I can see by your face that you hate him! It is well. That is something. It is but little, I know, after all I have wished for—but it is something for me to treasure—something for me to take back with me to the one sacred little spot in this beastly world of men and women.”
“Yvonne, you are the most incomprehensible———”
“Am I not beautiful, Frederic? Tell me!” She came quite close to him.
“You are the most beautiful woman in all the world,” he said abjectly.
“And I have wasted all my beauty—I have lent it to unloveliness, and it has not been destroyed! It is still with me, is it not? I have not lost it in———”
“You are beautiful beyond words—beyond anything I have ever imagined,” said he, suddenly passing his hand over his brow.
“You would have loved me if it had not been for Lydia?”
“I couldn't have helped myself. I—I fear I—faltered in my—are you still trying to tempt me? Are you still asking me to go away with you?”
A hoarse cry came from the doorway behind them—a cry of pain and anger that struck terror to their souls.