It was early in the morning, a few days later, when Paul Verdayne and his young friend reached New Orleans. Immediately after breakfast—he would have presented himself before had he dared—the Boy called at the home of the Ledouxs. Verdayne had important letters to write, as he informed the Boy with a significant smile, and begged to be allowed to remain behind.
And the impatient youth, blessing him mentally for his tact, set forth alone.
The residence that he sought was one of the most picturesque and beautiful of the many stately old mansions of the city. It was enclosed by a high wall that hid from the passers-by all but the most tantalizing glimpses of a fragrant, green tropical garden, and gave an air of exclusiveness to the habitation of this proud old family. As the Boy passed through the heavy iron gate, and his eye gazed in appreciation upon the tints of foliage no autumn chills had affected, and the glints of sun and shadow that only heightened the splendor of blossom, and shrub, and vine, which were pouring their incense upon the air, he felt that he was indeed entering the Garden of Eden—the Garden of Eden with no French serpents to tempt from him the woman that had been created his helpmeet.
He found Opal, and a tall, handsome young man in clerical vestments, sitting together upon the broad vine-shaded veranda. The girl greeted him cordially and introduced him to the priest, Father Whitman.
At first Paul dared not trust himself to look at Opal too closely, and he did not notice that her face grew ashen at his approach. She had recovered her usual self-possession when he finally looked at her, and now the only apparent sign of unusual agitation was a slight flush upon her cheek—an excited sparkle in her eye—which might have been the effect of many causes.
He watched the priest curiously. How noble-looking he was! He felt sure that he would have liked him in any other garb. What did his presence here portend?
Paul had supposed that Opal was a Catholic; indeed had been but little concerned what she professed. She had never appeared to him to be specially religious, but, if she was, that absurd idea of self-sacrifice for a dead mother she had never known might appeal to the love of penance which is inherent in all of Catholic faith, and she might not surrender to her great love for him.
The priest rose.
"Must you go, Father?" asked Opal.
"Yes!... I will call to-morrow, then?"
"Yes—tomorrow! And"—she suddenly threw herself upon her knees at his feet—"your blessing, Father" she begged.
The priest laid a hand upon her head, and raised his eyes to Heaven. Then, making the sign of the cross upon her forehead, he took her hands in his, and gently raised her to her feet. She clung to his hands imploringly.
"Absolution, Father," she pleaded.
He hesitated, his face quivering with emotions his eyes lustrous with tears, a world of feeling in every line of his countenance.
"Child," he said hoarsely, "child! Don't tempt me!"
"But youmustsay it, you know, or what will happen to me?"
The priest still hesitated, but her eyes would not release him till he whispered, "Absolvo te, my daughter, and—God bless you!"
And releasing her hands, he bowed formally to Paul and hurried down the broad stone steps and through the gate.
Opal watched him, a smile, half-remorseful and half-triumphant, upon her face.
"What does it all mean?" asked Paul as he laid his hand upon her arm.
She laughed nervously. "Oh—nothing! Only—when I see one of those long, clerical cassocks, I am immediately seized with an insane desire to find themaninside the priest!"
"Laudable, certainly! And you always succeed, I suppose?"
"Yes, usually!—why not?" And she laughed again. "Don't, Paul! I don't want to quarrel with you!"
"We won't quarrel, Opal," he said. But the thought of the priest annoyed him.
He seated himself beside her. "Have you no welcome for me?" he said.
She looked up at him, her eyes sweetly tender.
"Of course, Paul! I'm very glad to see you again—if you are a bad boy!"
He looked at her in amazement. "I, bad?—No," he said. And they laughed again. But it was not the care-free laughter they had known at sea. There was a strained note in the tones of the girl that grated strangely upon the Boy's sensitive ear. What had happened? he wondered. What was the new barrier between them? Was it the priest? Again the thought of the priest worried him.
"Where is my friend, the Count de Roannes?" he ventured at last.
"He sailed for Paris last week."
Paul's heart leaped. Surely then their legal betrothal had not taken place.
"What happened, Opal?"
"The inevitable!"
And again his heart bounded for joy! The inevitable! Surely that meant that the girl's better nature had triumphed, had shown her the ignominy of such a union in time to save her. He looked at her for further information, but seeing her evident embarrassment, forbore to pursue the question further.
They wandered out through the luxurious garden, and the spell of its enchantment settled upon them both.
He pulled a crimson rose from a bush and began listlessly to strip the thorns from the stalk. "Roses in September," he said, "are like love in the autumn of life."
And they both thought again of the Count and a chill passed over their spirits. The girl watched him curiously.
"Do you always cut the thorns from your roses?" she asked.
"Certainly-sooner or later. Don't you?"
"O no! I am a woman, you see, and I only hold my rose tightly in my fingers and smile in spite of the pricks as if to convince the world that my rose has no thorns."
"Is that honest?"
"Perhaps not—but—yes, I think it is! If one really loves a rose, you see, one forgets that it has thorns—really forgets!".
"Until too late!"
But there was some undercurrent of hidden meaning even in this subject, and Paul tried another.
He asked her about the books she had read since they parted and told her of his travels. He painted for her a picture of the little cabin on the western prairie, with its man and its woman and its baby, and she listened with a strange softness in her eyes. He felt that she understood.
There was a tiny lake in the garden, and they sat upon the shore and looked into the water, at an unaccountable loss for words. At last Paul, with a boyish laugh, relieved the situation by rolling up his sleeve and dabbling for pebbles in the sand at the bottom.
There was not much said—only a word now and then, but both, in spite of their consciousness of the barrier between them, were rejoicing in the fact that they were together, while Paul, happy in his new-born resolution, was singing in his heart.
Should he tell her now?
He looked up quickly.
"Opal," he said, "you knew I would come."
"Why?" she asked.
"Because—I love you!"
The girl tried to laugh away the serious import of his tone.
"I am not looking for men to love me, Paul," she said.
"No, that's the trouble. You never have to."
He turned away again and for a few moments had no other apparent aim in life than a careful scrutiny of the limpid water.
Somehow he felt a chill underlying her most casual words to-day. What had become of the freemasonry between them they had both so readily recognized on shipboard?
Just then Gilbert Ledoux and his wife strolled into the garden. They were genuinely pleased to see Paul and insisted on keeping him for luncheon. The conversation drifted to his western trip and other less personal things and not again did he have an opportunity to talk alone with Opal.
Paul took his departure soon after, promising to return for dinner, and to bring Verdayne with him. Then, he resolved to himself, he would tell Opal why he had come. Then he would claim her as his wife—his queen!
And Paul kept his word.
That evening they found themselves alone in a deep-recessed window facing the dimly-lighted street.
"Opal," said Paul, "do you know why I have come to New Orleans? Can't you imagine, dear?"
She instantly divined the tenor of his thoughts, and shook her head in a tremor of sudden fright.
"I have come to tell you that I have fought it all out and that I cannot live without you. Though I am breaking my plighted troth, I ask you to become my wife!"
Her eyes glistened with a strange lustre.
"Oh, Paul! Paul!" she murmured, faintly. "Why did you not say this before—or—why do you tell me now?"
"Because now I know I love you more than all the world—more than my duty—more than my life! Is that enough?"
And Paul was about to break into a torrent of passionate appeal, when Gilbert Ledoux joined them and, shortly after, Mrs. Ledoux called Opal to her side.
Opal looked miserably unhappy. Why was she not rejoicing? Paul knew that she loved him. Nothing could ever make him doubt that. As he stood wondering, idly exchanging platitudes with his genial host, Mrs. Ledoux spoke in a tone of ringing emphasis that lingered in Paul's ears all the rest of his life, "I think, Opal, it is time to share our secret!"
And then, as the girl's face paled, and her frail form trembled with the force of her emotion, her mother hastened to add, "Gentlemen, you will rejoice with us that our daughter was last week formally betrothed to the Count de Roannes!"
The inevitablehadhappened.
How the remainder of the evening passed, Paul Zalenska never knew. As he looked back upon it, during the months that followed, it seemed like some hideous dream from which he was struggling to awake. He talked, he smiled, he even laughed, but scarcely of his own volition; it was as though another personality acted through him.
He was a temperate boy, but that night he drank more champagne than was good for him. Paul Verdayne was grieved. Not that he censured the lad. He knew only too well the anguish the Boy was suffering, and he could not find it in his heart to blame him for the dissipation. And yet Verdayne also knew how unavailing were all such attempts to drown the sorrow that had so shocked the Boy's sensitive spirit.
As he gazed regretfully at the Boy across the dinner table, the butler placed a cablegram before him. Receiving a nod of permission from his hostess, he hastily tore open the envelope and paled at its contents.
The message was signed by the Verdaynes' solicitor, and read:
Sir Charles very ill. Come immediately.
Sir Charles very ill. Come immediately.
Before they left the house, Paul sought Opal for a few last words. There were no obstacles placed in his way now by anxious parental authority. He smiled cynically as he noticed how clear the way was made for him, now that Opal was "safeguarded" by her betrothal.
She drew him to one side, whispering, "Before you judge me too harshly, Paul, please listen to what I have to say. I feel I have the right to make this explanation, and you have the right to hear it. Under the French law, I am legally bound to the Count de Roannes. Fearing that I might not remain true to a mere verbal pledge—you knew we were engaged, Paul, for I told you that, last summer—the Count asked that the betrothal papers be executed before his unavoidable return to Paris. Knowing no real reason for delay, since it had to come some time, I consented; but I stipulated that I was to have six months of freedom before becoming his wife. Arrangements have been made for us all to go abroad next spring, and we shall be married in Paris. Paul, I did not tell you this, this afternoon—I could not! I wanted to see you—the real you—just once more, before you heard the bitter news, for I knew that after you had heard, you would never look or speak the same to me again. Oh, Paul, pity me! Pity me when I tell you that I asked for those six months simply that I might dedicate them to you, and to the burial, in my memory, of our little dream of love! It was only my little fancy, Paul! I wanted to play at being constant that long to our dream. I wanted to wear my six-months' mourning for our still-born love. I thought it was only a little game of 'pretend' to you, Paul—why should it be anything else? But it was very real to me."
Her voice broke, and the Boy took her hand in his, tenderly, for his resentment had long since died away.
"Opal," he faltered, "I no longer know nor care who or what I am. This experience has taken me out of myself, and set my feet in strange paths. I had a life to live, Opal, but I have forgotten it in yours. I had theories, ideals, hopes, aspirations—but I don't know where they are now, Opal. They are gone—gone with your smile—"
Opal's eyes grew soft with caresses.
"They will come back, Paul—they must come back! They were born in you—of Truth itself, not of a mere woman. You will forget me, Boy, and your life will not be the pitiful waste you think. It must not be!"
"I used to think that, Opal. It never seemed to me that life could ever be an utter waste so long as a man had work to do and the strength and skill to do it. But now—I'm all at sea! I only know—how—I shall missyou!"
Opal grew thoughtful.
"And how will it be with me?" she said sadly. "I have never learned to wear a mask. I can't pose. I can't wear 'false smiles that cover an aching heart.' Perhaps the world may teach me now—but I'm not a hypocrite—yet!"
"I believe you, Opal! I love you because you are you!"
"And I love you, Paul, because you are you!"
And even then he did not clasp her in his arms, nor attempt it. She was another's now, and his hands were tied. He must try to control his one great weakness—the longing for her.
And in the few moments left to them, they talked and cheered each other, as intimate friends on the eve of a long separation. They both knew now that they loved—but they also knew that they must part—and forever!
"I love you, Paul," said Opal, "even as you love me. I do not hesitate to confess it again, because—well, I am not yet his wife. And I want to give you this one small comfort to help to make you strong to fight and conquer, and—endure!"
"But, Opal, you are the one woman in the world God meant for me! How can I face the world without you?"
"Better that you should, Paul, and keep on fancying yourself loving me always, than that you should have me for a wife, and then weary of me, as men do weary of their wives!"
"Opal! Never!"
"Oh, but you might, Boy. Most men do. It's their nature, I suppose."
"But it is notmynature, Opal, to grow tired of what I love. I am not capricious. Why should you think so?"
"But it's human nature, Paul; there is no denying that. To think, Paul, that we could grow to clasp hands like this—that we could kiss—actually kiss, Paul,calmly, as women kiss each other—that we could ever rest in each other's arms and grow weary!"
But Paul would not listen. He always would have loved her, always! He loved her, anyway, and always would, were she a thousand times the Countess de Roannes, but it was too late! too late!
"Always remember, Paul, wherever you are and whatever you do," went on Opal, "that I love you. I know it now, and I know how much! Let the memory of it be an inspiration to you when your spirits flag, and a consolation when skies are gray, and—Paul—oh, I love you—love you—that's all! Kiss me—just once—our last goodbye! There can be no harm in that, when it's for the last time!"
And Paul, with a heart-breaking sob, clasped her in his arms and pressed his lips to hers as one kisses the face of his beloved dead. He wondered vaguely why he felt no passion—wondered at the utter languor of the senses that did not wake even as he pressed his lips to hers. It was not a woman's body in his arms—but as the sexless form of one long dead and lost to him forever. It was not passion now—it was love, stripped of all sensuality, purged of all desire save the longing to endure.
It was the hour of love's supremest triumph—renunciation!
Back in England again—England in the fall of the year—England in the autumn of life, for Sir Charles Verdayne was nearing his end. The Boy spent a few weeks at Verdayne Place, and then left to pay his first visit to his fiancée. Paul Verdayne was prevented by his father's ill health from accompanying him to Austria, as had been the original plan.
Opal had asked of the Boy during that last strange hour they had spent together that he should make this visit, and bow obediently to the call of destiny—as she had done. She did not know who he really was, nor what station in life his fiancée graced, but she did know that it was his duty bravely and well to play his part in the drama of life, whatever the role. She would not have him shirk. It was a horrible thing, she had said with a shudder—none knew it better than she—but she would be glad all her life to think that he had been no coward, and had not cringed beneath the bitterest blow of fate, but had been strong because she loved him and believed in him.
And so, since Paul Verdayne could not be absent from his father's side, with many a reluctant thought the Boy set forth for Austria alone.
During his absence, Isabella—she who had been Isabella Waring—returned from Blackheath a widow with two grown daughters—two more modern editions of the original Isabella. The widow herself was graver and more matronly, yet there was much of the old Isabella left, and Verdayne was glad to see her. Lady Henrietta gave her a cordial invitation to visit Verdayne Place, which she readily accepted, passing many pleasant hours with the friend of her youth and helping to while away the long days that Verdayne found so tiresome when the Boy was away from him.
Isabella was still "a good sort," and made life much less unbearable than it might have been, but Verdayne often smiled to think of the "puppy-love" he had once felt for her. It was amusing, now, and they both laughed over it—though Isabella would not have been a woman had she not wondered at times why her "old pal" had never married. There had been chances, lots of them, for the girls had always liked the blue-eyed, manly boy he had been, and petted and flattered and courted him all through his youth. Why hadn't he chosen one of them? Had he really cared so much for her—Isabella? And she often found herself looking with much pitying tenderness upon the lonely man, whose heart seemed so empty of the family ties it should have fostered—and wondering.
Lady Henrietta, too, was set to thinking as the days went by, and turning, one night, to her son, "Paul," she said, "I begin to think that perhaps I was wrong in separating you from the girl you loved, and so spoiling your life. Isabella would have made you a fairly good wife, I believe, as wives go, and you must forgive your mother, who meant it for the best. She did not see the way clearly, then, and so denied you the one great desire of your heart"
She looked at him closely, but his heart was no longer worn upon his sleeve, and finding his face non-committal, she went on slowly, feeling her way carefully as she advanced.
"Perhaps it is not too late now, my son. Don't let my prejudices stand in your way again, for you are still young enough to be happy, and I shall be truly glad to welcome any wife—any!"
Verdayne did not reply. His eyes were studying the pattern of the rug beneath his feet. His mother's face flushed with embarrassment at the delicacy of the subject, but she stumbled on bravely.
"Paul," she said, "Isabella is young yet, and you are not so very old. It may not, even now, be too late to hold a little grandchild on my knee before I die. I have been so fond of Paul—he is so very like you when you were a boy—and have wished—oh, you don't know how a mother feels, Paul—I have often wished that he were your son, or that I might have had a grandson just like him. Do you know, Paul, I have often fancied that your son, had you had one, would have been very like this dear Boy."
Verdayne choked back a sob. If his mother could only understand as some women would have understood! If he could have told her the truth! But, no, he never could. Even now it would have been a terrible shock to her, and she could never have forgiven, never held up her head again, if she had known.
As for marrying Isabella—could he? After all, was it right to let the old name die out for want of an heir? Was it just to his father? And Isabella would not expect to be made love to. There was never that sort of nonsense about her, and she would make all due allowance for his age and seriousness.
His mother felt she had been very kind and generous in renouncing the old objection of twenty years' standing, and, too, she felt that it was only right, after spoiling her son's life for so long, to do her best to atone for the mistake. It must be confessed she could not see what there was about Isabella to hold the love and loyalty of a man like Paul for so long, but then—and she sighed at the thought of the wasted years—"Love is blind," they say—and so's a lover! And her motherly heart longed for grandchildren—Paul's children—as it had always longed for them.
Paul Verdayne sat opposite his penitent mother and pondered. The scent from a bowl of red roses on his mother's table almost overpowered him with memories.
He thought of the couch of deep red roses on which he had lain, caressed by the velvet petals. He could inhale their fragrance even yet—he could look into her eyes and breathe the incense of her hair—her whole glorious person—that was like none other in all the world. Yes, she had been happy—and he would remember! She would be happier yet could she know that he had been faithful to his duty—and surely this was his duty to his race. His Queen would have it so, he felt sure.
Rising, he bent over his mother, his eyes bright with unshed tears, and kissed her calmly upon the brow. Then he walked quietly from the room. His resolution was firmly fixed.
He would marry Isabella!
Sir Charles Verdayne lingered for several weeks, no stronger, nor yet perceptibly weaker. He took a sudden fancy to see his old friend, Captain Grigsby, and the old salt was accordingly sent for. His presence acted as a tonic upon the dying man, and the two old friends spent many pleasant hours together, talking—as old people delight in talking—of the days of the distant past.
"Is this widow the Isabella who once raised the devil with your Paul?" asked Grigsby.
"Same wench!" answered Sir Charles, a twinkle in his eye.
"Hum!" said the Captain—and then said again, "Hum!" Then he added meditatively, "Blasted unlucky kiss that! Likely wench enough, but—never set the Thames on fire!—nor me!"
"Oh the kiss didn't count," said Sir Charles. "As I said to the boy's mother at the time, a man isn't obliged to marry every woman he kisses! Mighty good thing, too—eh, Grig? Besides, a kiss like that is an insult to any flesh and blood woman!"
"An insult?"
"The worst kind! You see, Grig, no woman likes to be kissed that way. Whether she's capable of feeling a single thrill of passion herself or not, she likes to be sure that she can inspire it in a man. And a kiss like that—well, it rouses all her fighting blood! Makes her feel she's no woman at all in the man's eye—merely a doll to be kissed. D'ye see? It's damned inconsistent, of course, but it's the woman of it!"
"The devil of it, you mean!" the old Captain chuckled in response. Then, "Paul had a lucky escape," he said, as he looked furtively around the room for listening ears, "mighty lucky escape! And an experience right on the heels of it to make up for the loss of a hundred such wenches and—say, Charles, he's got a son to be proud of! The Boy is certainly worth all the price!"
"Any price—any price, Grig!" Then the old man went on, "If Henrietta only knew! She thinks the world of the youngster, you know—no one could help that—but what if she knew? Paul's been mighty cautious. I often laugh when I see them out together—him and the Boy—and think what a sensation one could spring on the public by letting the cat out of the bag. And the woman would suffer. Wouldn't she, just! Wouldn't they tear her to pieces!"
"Yes, they would," said the Captain, "they certainly would. This is a world of hypocrites, Charles, damned rotten hypocrites!"
"That's what it is, Grig! Not one of those same old hens who would have said, 'Ought we to visit her?' and denounced the whole 'immoral' affair, and all that sort of thing—not one of them, I say, but would—"
"Give her very soul to know what such a love means! O they would, Charles—they would—every damned old cat of them, who would never get an opportunity to play the questionable—no, not one in a thousand years—if they searched for it forever!"
"Yet women are made so, Grigsby—they can't help it! Henrietta would faint at the mere suggestion of accepting as a daughter-in-law a woman with a past!"
And the old man sighed.
"I'd have given my eyes—yes, I would, Grig—to have seen that woman just once! God! the man she made out of my boy! Of course it may have been for the best that it turned out as it did, but—damn it all, Grig, she was worth while! There's no dodging that!"
"Nobody wants to dodge it, Charles! She was over-sexed, perhaps—but better that than undersexed—eh?"
But the exhilaration caused by the coming of his old friend gradually wore itself away, and Sir Charles began to grow weaker. And at last the end came. He had grown anxious to see the Boy again, and the young fellow had returned and spent much time with the old man, who loved the sound of his voice as it expressed his fresh, frank ideas.
But Sir Charles spent his last hours with his son.
"Paul," he said, in a last confidential whisper, touching upon the theme that had never been mentioned between them before, "I understand—everything—you know, and I'm proud of you—and him! I have wanted to say something, or do something for you—often—often—to help you—but it's the sort of thing a chap has to fight out for himself, and I thought I'd better keep out of it! But I wanted you to know—now—that I've known it all—all along—and been proud of you—both!"
And their hands clasped closely, and the eyes of both were wet, but even on the brink of death the lips of the younger man were sealed. The +silence of one-and-twenty years remained unbroken. +It was not a foolish reticence that restrained him—but simply that he could not find words to voice the memories that grew more and more sacred with the passing of the years.
And at evening, when the family had gathered about him, the old man lay with his son's hand in his, but his eyes looked beyond and rested on the face of the Boy, who seemed the renewal of hit son's youth, when life was one glad song! And thus he passed to the Great Beyond.
And his son was Sir Paul Verdayne, the last of his race.
That night, the young baronet and the Boy sat alone over their cigars. The Boy spoke at some length of his extensive Austrian visit. The Princess Elodie would make him a good wife, he said. She was of good sturdy stock, healthy, strong—and, well, a little heavy and dull, perhaps, but one couldn't expect everything! At least, her honor would never be called into question. He would always feel sure that his name was safe with her! He was glad he went to Austria. There were political complications that he had not understood before which made the marriage an absolute necessity for the salvation of his country's position among the kingdoms of the world, and he was more resigned to it now. Yes, indeed, he was far more resigned. The princess wasn't by any means impossible—not a half bad sort—and—yes, he was resigned! He said it over and over, but without convincing Sir Paul—or deceiving himself!
As for the elder man, he said but little. He had been wondering throughout that dinner-hour whether he could ever really make Isabella his wife. The Boy thought of Isabella, too, and was anxious to know whether his Father Paul was going to be happy at last. He had been very curious to see the woman who could play so cruel a part toward the man he loved. If he had been Verdayne, he thought, he would never forgive her—never! Still, if Father Paul loved the woman—as he certainly must to have remained single for her sake so long—it put a different face on the matter, and of course it was Verdayne's affair, not his! The Boy had been disappointed in Isabella's appearance and attractions—she was not at all the woman he had imagined his Father Paul would love—but of course she was older now, and age changes some women, and, and—well, he only hoped that his friend would be happy—happy in his own way, whatever that might be.
At last, he summoned Vasili to him and called for his own particular yellow wine—the Imperial Tokayi—and the old man filled the glasses. It was too much for Verdayne—and all thoughts of Isabella were consigned to eternal oblivion as he remembered the time whenhehad sipped that wine with his Queen in the little hotel on the Bürgenstock.
She would have no cause for jealousy—his darling!
It was November when Sir Charles died, and Lady Henrietta betook herself to her sister's for consolation, while Sir Paul and the Boy, with a common impulse, departed for India.
They spent Christmas in Egypt, the winter months in the desert, and at last spring came, with its remembrance of duties to be done. And to the elder man England made its insistent call, as it always did in March. For was it not in England, and in March, the tidings reached him that unto him a son was born?
He must go back.
So at last, acting upon a pre-arrangement to which the young Prince had not been a party, they made their way back to their own world of men and women.
"Boy," said Sir Paul, one day, "the time has come when many questions you have asked and wondered about are to be answered, as is your due. It was your mother's wish that you should go, at the beginning of May, alone, to Lucerne. There you will find letters awaiting you—from her—from your Uncle Peter—yes, even from myself—telling you the whole secret of your birth, the story of your inheritance."
"Why Lucerne, Father Paul?"
"It was your mother's wish—and mine!"
Then, with a rush of tenderness, the older man threw his arm around the Boy's shoulders. "Boy," he said, "be charitable and lenient and kind—whatever you read!"
"And what are you going to do, Father Paul? I have not quite two weeks of freedom left, and I begrudge every day I am forced to spend away from you. You will go with me to see me crowned—and married?"
"Certainly, Boy! You are to stay in Lucerne only until you are sure you understand all the revelations of these letters, and their full import. It may be a week—it may be a day—it may be but a few hours, but—I can't go with you, and you must not ask me to! It is an experience you must face alone. I will await you in Venice, Paul, and be sure that when you want me, Boy, I will come!"
The Boy's sensitive nature was stirred to the depths by the emotion in Sir Paul's face—emotion that all his life long he had never seen there before. He grasped his hand—
"Father Paul," he began, but Sir Paul shook his head at the unspoken appeal in his face and bade him be patient just a little longer and await his letters, for he could tell him nothing.
And thus they parted; the Boy to seek in Lucerne the unveiling of his destiny, the man to wait in Venice, a place he had shunned for one-and-twenty years, but which was dearer to him than any other city in the world. It was there that he had lived the climax of his love-life, with its unutterable ecstasy—and unutterable pain.
Vasili had preceded his young master to Lucerne with the letters that had been too precious, and of too secret a nature, to be entrusted to the post. Who can define the sensations of the young prince as he held in his hand the whole solution of the mystery that had haunted all his years? He trembled—paled. What was this secret—perhaps this terrible secret—which was to be a secret no longer?
Alone in his apartment, he opened the little packet and read the note from the Regent, which enclosed the others, and then—he could read no further. The few words of information that there stared him in the face drove every other thought from his mind, every other emotion from his heart. His father! Why hadn't he seen? Why hadn't he known? A thousand significant memories rushed over him in the light of the startling revelation. How blind he had been! And he sat for hours, unheeding the flight of time, thinking only the one thought, saying over and over again the one name, the name of his father, his own father, whom he had loved so deeply all his life—
Paul Verdayne!
At last, when he felt that he could control his scattered senses, he turned over the letters in the packet and found his mother's. How his boyish heart thrilled at this message from the dead!—a message that he had waited for, and that had been waiting for him, one-and-twenty years! The letter began:
"Once, my baby, thy father—long before he was thy father—had a presentiment that if he became my lover my life would find a tragic end.
"Once, likewise, I told thy father, before he became my lover, that the price we might have to pay, if we permitted ourselves to love, would be sorrow and death! For, my baby, these are so often the terrible cost of such a love as ours. That he has been my lover—my beloved—heart of my heart—thine own existence is the living proof; and something—an intangible something—tells me that the rest of his prophecy will likewise be fulfilled. We have known the sorrow—aye, as few others have—and even now I feel that we shall also know death!
"It is because of this curious presentiment of mine that I write down for thee, my baby—my baby Paul—this story of thy father and thy mother, and the great love that gave thee to the world. It is but right, before thou comest into thy kingdom, that thou shouldst know—thou and thou alone—the secret of thy birth, that thou mayst carry with thee into the big world thy birthright—the sweetness of a supreme love."
Then briefly, but as completely and vividly as the story could be written, she pictured for him the beautiful idyl she and her lover had lived, here in this very spot, two-and-twenty years ago; told him, in her own quaint words, of the beautiful boy she had found in Lucerne, that glorious May so long ago, and how it had been her caprice to waken him, until the caprice had become her love, and afterwards her life; told him how she had seen the danger, and had warned the boy to leave Lucerne, while there was yet time, but that he had answered that he would chance the hurt, because he wished to live, and he knew that only she could teach him how—only she could prove to him the truth of her own words, thatlife was love!
She told how weary and unhappy she had been, picturing with no light fingers the misery of her life—married when a mere child to a vicious husband—and all the insults and brutality she was forced to endure; and then, for contrast, told him tenderly how she had been young again for this boy she had found in Lucerne.
There was not one little detail of that idyllic dream of love omitted from the picture she drew for him of these two—and their sublime three weeks of life on the Bürgenstock with their final triumphant, but bitter culmination in Venice. She told him of what they had been pleased to call their wedding—the wedding of their souls—nor did she seek to lessen the enormity of their sin.
She touched with the tenderest of fingers upon the first dawn in their hearts of the hope of the coming of a child—a child who would hold their souls together forever—a child who would immortalize their love till it should live on, and on, and on, through countless generations perhaps—till who could say how much the world might be benefited and helped just because they two had loved!
And then she told him—sweetly, as a mother should—of all her dreams for her son—all her hopes and ambitions that were centered around his little life—the life of her son who was to redeem the land—told him how ennobled and exalted she had felt that this strong, manly Englishman was her lover, and how sure she had been that their child would have a noble mind.
"Thou wilt think my thoughts, my baby Paul—thou wilt dream my dreams, and know all my ambitions and longings. Thou canst not be ignoble or base, for thou wert born of a love that makes all other unions mean and low and sordid by comparison."
"Thou wilt think my thoughts, my baby Paul—thou wilt dream my dreams, and know all my ambitions and longings. Thou canst not be ignoble or base, for thou wert born of a love that makes all other unions mean and low and sordid by comparison."
Then, after telling, as only she could tell it, of the bitterness of that parting in Venice, when, because of the threatening danger, from which there was no escape, she left her lover to save his life, she went on:
"Dost thou know yet, when thou readest this, little Paul, with thy father's eyes—dost thou know, I wonder, the meaning of that great love which to the twain who realize it becomes a sacrament—dost understand?—a sacrament holier even than a prayer. It was even so with thy father and me—dost thou—canst thou understand? If not yet, sometime thou wilt, and thou wilt then forgive thy mother for her sin."
"Dost thou know yet, when thou readest this, little Paul, with thy father's eyes—dost thou know, I wonder, the meaning of that great love which to the twain who realize it becomes a sacrament—dost understand?—a sacrament holier even than a prayer. It was even so with thy father and me—dost thou—canst thou understand? If not yet, sometime thou wilt, and thou wilt then forgive thy mother for her sin."
She told of the taunts and persecutions to which she was forced to submit upon her return to her kingdom. The king and his friends had vilely commended her for her "patriotism" in finding an heir to the throne. "Napoleon would have felt honored," her husband had sneered, "if Josephine had adopted thy method of finding him the heir he desired!" But through it all, she said, she had not faltered. She had held the one thought supreme in her heart and remembered that however guilty she might be in the eyes of the world, there was a higher truth in the words of Mrs. Browning, "God trusts me with a child," and had dared to pray.
"To pray for strength and grace and wisdom to give thee birth, my baby, and to make thee all that thou shouldst be—to develop thee into the man I and thy father would have thee become. I was not only giving an heir to the throne of my realm. I was giving a son to the husband of my soul. But the world did not know that. Whatever it might suspect, it could actually know—nothing! The secret was thy father's and mine—his and mine alone—and now it is thine, as it needs must be! Guard it well, my baby, and let it make thy life and thy manhood full of strength and power and sweetness and glory and joy, and remember, as thou readest for the first time this story of thy coming into the world, that thy mother counted it her greatest, proudest glory to be the chosen love of thy father, and the mother of his son."
"To pray for strength and grace and wisdom to give thee birth, my baby, and to make thee all that thou shouldst be—to develop thee into the man I and thy father would have thee become. I was not only giving an heir to the throne of my realm. I was giving a son to the husband of my soul. But the world did not know that. Whatever it might suspect, it could actually know—nothing! The secret was thy father's and mine—his and mine alone—and now it is thine, as it needs must be! Guard it well, my baby, and let it make thy life and thy manhood full of strength and power and sweetness and glory and joy, and remember, as thou readest for the first time this story of thy coming into the world, that thy mother counted it her greatest, proudest glory to be the chosen love of thy father, and the mother of his son."
She had touched as lightly as she could upon the dark hours of her baby's coming, when she was doomed to pass through that Valley of the Shadow far away from the protecting and comforting love of him whose right it was by every law of Nature to have been, then of all times, by her side; but the Boy felt the pathos of it, and his eyes filled with tears. His mother—the mother of his dreams—his glorious queen-mother—to suffer all this for him—for him!
And Father Paul!—his own father! What must this cross have been to him! Surely he would love him all the rest of his life to make up for all that suffering!
Then he thought of the other letters and he read them all, his heart torn between grief and anger—for they told him all the appalling details of the tragedy that had taken his mother from him, and left his father and himself bereaved of all that made life dear and worth the living to man and boy.
One of the letters was from Sir Paul, telling the story over again from the man's point of view, and laying bare at last the great secret the Boy had so often longed to hear. Nothing was kept back. Even every note—every little scrap of his mother's writing—had been sacredly kept and was now enclosed for the eyes of their son to read. The closed door in Father Paul's life was unlocked now, and his son entered and understood, wondering why he had been so blind that he had not seen it all before. The writing on the wall had certainly been plain enough. And he smiled to remember the readiness with which he had believed the plausible story of Isabella Waring!
And that man—the husband of his mother—the king who had taken her dear life from her with a curse upon his lips! Thank God he was not his father! No, in all the world of men, there was no one but Paul Verdayne—no one—to whom he would so willingly have given the title—and to him he had given it in his heart long before.
He sat and read the letters through again, word by word, living in imagination the life his mother had lived, feeling all she had felt. God! the bliss, the agony of it all!
And Paul Zalenska, surrounded by the messages from the past that had given him being, and looking at the ruin of his own life with eyes newly awakened to the immensity of his loss, bowed his face in his hands and wept like a heart-broken child over the falling of his house of cards.
Ah! his mother had understood—she had loved and suffered. She was older than he, too, and had known her world as he could not possibly know it, and yet she had bade him take the gifts of life when they came his way.
And—God help him!—he had not done so!