THE servant, as he showed Perior into the drawing-room, told him that Miss Fairleigh was dying, and the imminence of the tragedy was sorrowfully emphasized by Lady Paton’s woe-stricken face, as she came in to him.
“Yes, Michael, dying,” she said before he spoke; his look had asked the question. He took her hands, and they sat down, finding a comfort in being together, and Perior was in as much need of it as she, felt not one whit stronger before the approaching end.
“Tell me about it. It has been so sudden.”
Lady Paton sobbed out the sad facts. Her own blindness; poor Mary’s long concealment—too successful; the doctor’s fatal verdict.
“I was blind, too,” said Perior, “though I always feared it.”
“Ah! that is the cruellest part of it! And her indifference—she does not seem to care; she does not speak to any of us.”
“Not to Camelia? Is Camelia with her?”
Perior’s heart must spare some of its aching to his unhappy Camelia.
“She has not once left her. She is so brave; I can only cry; but it has made Camelia already different; a strength, a gentleness, yet a despair. Shefeels it terribly, Michael, and the first shock was hers. Mary was out all yesterday afternoon—in the wet and cold, and when she came in she fainted in Camelia’s room.”
Perior looked at her, pondering this sinister announcement.
“I should like to see Mary—when she is able,” he said.
“Yes. She must have her friends about her, my poor, poor child. Ah Michael! I can never forgive myself.”
“Why do you say that? You gave Mary all her sunshine.”
“Not enough! not enough! She must have seen that it was Camelia, only Camelia, in whom my heart was bound up. She must have felt it.”
Perior sighed heavily. He, too, had regrets. Had he but known, guessed what he had been to Mary! But he said, “Don’t exaggerate that; Mary must have understood; it was inevitable, quite, and pardonable. Camelia was your daughter.”
“Ah! Camelia had so much, Mary so little!” and to this Perior must perforce assent.
Meanwhile Camelia sat by Mary’s side. She divided the vigils with the nurse who came down from London. She found that her eternal self-reproach had strengthened her. She could bear its steady contemplation and soothe her mother’s more helpless grief.
Mary was sinking fast. During the next three days she hardly spoke, though her eyes followed the ministering figures that moved about her bed. Conscious that she was dying, but wrapped in an emotionlesssadness, she watched them all indifferently, and slept quietly from time to time. It was going to be much easier than she had thought. Hardly a thread bound her to life; even her passionate hatred of Camelia was dimmed by the creeping mists; even her love for Perior wailed, it seemed, at a long distance from her; she listened to it as she lay there; only at moments came a throb of pain for all the happiness she had never had. Camelia meeting the calm eyes would smile tremulously, but Mary gave no answering smile, and her eyes kept all their calm.
Camelia had to hold firmly to the self-abnegation of perfect self-control to keep down the cry of confession that would give her relief, that would perhaps admit her to Mary’s heart; it was not until the third night, as she sat beside her, that the yearning allowed itself to grow to hope. Mary’s eyes, on this night, turned more than once from their vacant gaze and dwelt upon her with a fixity almost insistent.
Camelia dared, at last, to take in both her own the tragic hand that lay on Mary’s chest, and, after a timid pause, she raised it to her lips. It lay resistless; she held it against her cheek; through the dimness, Mary felt the tears wetting it.
The merciful hardness about her heart seemed to melt. She knew a keener pang, a longer aching, that did not end and give her peace again. It was not calm, after all, not good to die with that unloving frost holding one. She lay in silence, looking, in the faint light, at her cousin’s bent head, the ruffled outline of the golden hair. The thought of Camelia’s beauty bowed in this desolation touched her sharply, intolerably. She felt her heart beatingheavily, and suddenly, “Camelia, I am sorry,” she said.
Camelia clasped the imprisoned hand to her breast, and leaned forward.
“Sorry! Oh, Mary—what have you to be sorry for?”
“I was wicked—I hated you—I struck you.”
“I deserved hatred, dear Mary.”
“I should not hate you. It hurts me.”
“Oh my darling!” sobbed her cousin, rising, and bending over her.
“It hurts me,” Mary repeated, but in a voice unmoved.
“Do you still hate me, Mary?”
There was a pause before she answered—and then with a certain faltering, “I—don’t know.”
“Will you—can you listen, while I tell you something?” said Camelia almost in a whisper—for Mary’s voice was hardly more, “I must tell you, Mary, I deserve everything you said, and yet—you misjudged me. Will you hear the truth?” Camelia clasped the hand more tightly to her breast. “I am not going to defend myself—I only want you to know the truth; perhaps—you will be a little sorry for me then—and be able to love me—a little.”
Mary looked up at her silently, and, when she paused, said nothing; yet her intent look seemed to assent.
“It will not give you pain,” Camelia said tremblingly, “the pain is all mine here. Mary—I love him too.” The words came with a sob. She sank into the chair, and dropping Mary’s hand she leaned her elbows on the bed and hid her face.
“I loved him, Mary, and—I imagined that he must love me. My vanity was so great that I thought I could choose or reject him. I accepted Sir Arthur—from spite—partly, and then I was dreadfully frightened. On the very day I accepted Sir Arthur I sent for Mr. Perior. Mary, I made love to him. I did not tell him I was engaged; I wanted to escape from that blunder unscathed. I could not believe in his embarrassment, nor in the reality of his scorn when he found me out. I broke my engagement—as you know. I went to Mr. Perior’s house. I entreated him to love me—I hung about his neck, cried, implored. He did not love me; he rejected me. He scorns me—he is sorry for me; he is my friend, but he scorns me. I was not playing with him—you see that now. I adore him—and he does not love me at all.”
Uncovering her face, Camelia found Mary’s eyes fixed upon her.
“Do you understand now, Mary, why I went to him? I loved you so—was so sorry for you—so infinitely sorry—for had I not felt it all? I never told him that you thought he might have loved you; but I thought it myself, I thought that he might love you, indeed, when heknewyou—knew the sweetness, the sadness of your hidden love. If he refused, Mary, it was because he respected you too highly and himself—to act any falsity towards you. It was not like my rejection; there was no shame, no abasement for you. You have his reverent pity, his deep, loving devotion. Don’t regret, dear Mary, that through my well-meant folly he really knows you now.” She paused, and Mary still laysilent, slowly closing and unclosing her hand on the sheet.
“Believe me, Mary,” said Camelia, the monotony of her recitative yielding to an appealing tremor, “I have told you the truth—the very truth. I have not hidden a thought from you.”
“You love him?” Mary asked, almost musingly.
“Yes, dear, yes. We are together there.”
“I never saw it; never guessed it.”
“Like you, Mary, I can act.”
“And you wanted him to marry me,” Mary added presently, pondering it seemed.
“Oh, Mary!” said Camelia, weeping, “I did. I longed for it, prayed for it—I would have given my life to have him marry you. Mary, believe me, when I tell you that to atone in however a little measure for your dreary life, I would die—oh gladly, gladly.”
“Would it not have been worse than dying?” Mary asked in a voice that seemed suddenly to subtly smile, though she herself lay unsmiling in the shadowed whiteness of the bed.
“What—worse?”
“To see him marry me.” Camelia gazed at her.
“I think, Mary,” she said presently, “I could have seen it without one pang for myself; I would have been too glad for you to think of that. And then—he does not love me. The iron entered my soul long ago. I have long since lost even the bitterness of hope.”
“And he does not love you,” Mary repeated quietly, raising her eyes and looking away a little.
“He does not, indeed.”
Camelia’s quivering breaths quieted to a waitingdepth. But Mary for a long time said nothing more. Her hand lay across her breast, and above it her face now surely smiled.
At last she turned her eyes on her cousin. Looking at her very gently, she said, “But I love you, Camelia.”
CAMELIA was sitting again by Mary’s bed when Perior was announced the next morning.
“You must go and see him to-day,” said Mary.
“Why—must I?”
“I should like to see him,” Mary’s voice had now a thread only of breath; to speak at all she had to speak very slowly, “and you must tell him first, that I know.”
“Mary—dear——”
“I do not mind.”
“No, one does not, with him. I will see him, tell him.
“Talk—be nice to him; do not be angry with him because he will not marry me.” Her smile hurt Camelia, who bent over her, saying—
“If I had not gone!—you would not be here now; we might have kept you well much longer.”
“That would have been a pity—wouldn’t it?” said Mary, quite without bitterness.
“Oh, Mary! Could we not have made you happy?”
“Perhaps it is knowing that I can never be well that keeps me now from being sad,” Mary answered; “don’t cry, Camelia—I am not sad.”
But Camelia cried as she went down the stairs.
A pale spring sunshine filled the morning-room,where she found Perior. She had hardly noticed the outside world for the last few days, and it gave her now a sweetly poignant shock to see that the trees were all blurred with green, a web of life embroidering the network of black branches; beyond them a high, pale, spring sky. She saw the green really before seeing Perior, for he was looking at it, his back turned to her as she came in. Then, as he faced her, his aging struck her more forcibly than the world’s renewal of youth. As she looked at him, and despite the memory of their last words together, despite the tears upon her cheeks, she smiled. She had forgiven him. He had been right, she wrong; and then—his sad face, surely his hair had whitened? The love for Mary that overflowed her heart seemed to clasp him in its pity and penitence, but she could only feel it as the overflow.
“She wants to see you,” she said, giving him her hand, and she added, for the joy of last night must find expression, “She knows everything. She followed me that day—and half guessed the truth—only half; I had to tell her all. And she has forgiven me—for everything.” Camelia bent her forehead against his shoulder and sobbed—“She is dying!—and she loves me!”
“My darling Camelia,” said Perior, putting his hand on her hair.
To Camelia the words could only mean that he forgave—and loved—as Mary did; but she felt the deep peace of truest union.
“Then she is dying in the sunshine, isn’t she?” he added, “not in that horrible darkness.”
“Yes—but such a cold, white sunshine. It isbecause she feels no longer. It is peace—not happiness; just ‘peace out of pain.’”
“And cannot we two doubters add, ‘With God be the rest’?”
“We must add it. To hope so strongly—is almost to believe, isn’t it? Come to her now.”
She left him at Mary’s door.
The nurse, with her face of hardened patience, rose as he entered.
“I will leave you with Miss Fairleigh, sir. Call me if I am needed.”
Her look was significant.
Perior felt his heart shake a little as he went round the white curtain. He was afraid. If he should blunder—stab the ebbing life with some stupidity! Something of this tender fear showed in his look at the dying girl, and the fear deepened for a moment to acutest pain at sight of her. Was that the Mary he had last seen sitting over the account books?—the Mary he had fatuously told to keep cheerful? Remorse wrung his heart. But as for the fear of hurting her, Mary was very far beyond all little mundane tremors, and they faded away, ashamed for having been, as he clasped her hand, and met her eyes; their still smile quieted even his pain, and wrapped him in its awe and beauty.
He sat down beside her, keeping her hand in his.
“Dear Mary,” he said.
For a long time she did not speak; indeed Perior thought that she might not wish to employ the coarser medium of communication, could not, perhaps; her eyes, as they rested upon him, seemed amply significant; but he could not fathom, quite,their ultimate meaning. Perhaps a great sadness underlay their calm. But at last, very faintly and very slowly she said—
“You saw Camelia.”
“Yes.”
“You know—that I was—cruel to Camelia?”
“No, I did not know.”
“I was.”
“I cannot believe that, Mary.”
“I was, I misjudged her. I struck her. She did not tell you that?”
“No,” said Perior, after the little pause his surprise allowed itself.
“I did, I struck her,” Mary repeated, with a certain placidity. “You understand?” she added.
Perior was putting two and two together; the result was clearly comprehensible.
“Yes, I understand,” he said.
“Camelia understood too.”
“Yes,” Perior repeated his assent, adding, “You have saved Camelia, Mary; I don’t think she can ever again be blind—or stupid.”
“Camelia—stupid?” Mary’s little smile was almost arch.
“That is the kindest word, isn’t it?” Perior smiled back at her, “Let us be kind, for we are all of us stupid—more or less; you very much less, dear Mary.”
Mary’s look was grave again, though it thanked him. “You are kind. Camelia has been very unhappy,” the words were spoken suddenly, and almost with energy.
“I don’t doubt that.” Mary closed her eyes, asif all effort, even the passive effort of sight, must be concentrated in her words.
“And I am afraid—she will be very unhappy about me.”
“That is unavoidable.”
“But—unjust. She is nothing—that I thought. Nothing is her fault. It is no one’s fault.—I was born—not rich, not pretty, not clever, not even contented; it is no one’s fault. I have been cruel. You must comfort her,” and Mary suddenly opening her eyes looked at him fixedly. “You must comfort her,” she repeated, adding, “I know that you love Camelia.”
Perior, with some shame, felt the red go over his face. Mary observed his confusion calmly.
“You need not mind telling me,” she said.
“Dear Mary, I am abased before you.”
“That isn’t kind to me,” Mary smiled. “You do love her—do you not?”
“Yes, I love her.”
“And she loves you.”
“I have thought it—sometimes,” said Perior, looking away.
“She has always loved you. You too have misjudged Camelia. She told me—last night—she told me that you had rejected her.”
“Did she, Mary?” Perior looked down at the hand in his.
“Yes—through love of me. You understand?”
“Perfectly.”
“It brought us together,” said Mary, closing her eyes again.
She lay so long without speaking that Periorthought she must, in her weakness, have fallen asleep, but at last she said, the words wavering, for her breath was very shallow, “That is what Camelia needed. Some one—to love—a great deal——” And with an intentness, like the last leap of a dying flame, she added, looking at him, “You will marry Camelia.”
“If Camelia will have me,” said Perior, bending over her hand and kissing it.
A gleam of gaiety, of pure joyousness, shone on Mary’s face. Humorously, without a shadow of bitterness, she said, “I win—where Camelia failed!”
The tears rushed to Perior’s eyes. He could not speak. He rose, and stooping over her, he took her in his arms and kissed her.
“Ah!” she said quickly, “it is much better to die. I love you.” She looked up at him from the circle of his arms. “How could I have lived?”
At the great change in her face he wondered if he had done well in yielding to the impulse of pure tenderness; but still supporting her fragile shoulders he said, stammering—
“Dear child—in dying—you have let us know you—and adore you.”
The light ebbed softly from her eyes as she still looked up at him. “Perhaps—I told you—hoping it——” she murmured. These words of victorious humility were Mary’s last. When Camelia came in a little while afterwards she saw that Mary’s smile knew, and drew her near; but standing beside her, holding her hand, she felt that Mary would not speak to her again. Through her tears she looked across the bed at Perior; his head was bowed on thehand he held; his shoulders shook with weeping. At the unaccustomed sight a half dull wonder filled her.
For a long time Mary smiled before her, as they held her hands; and Camelia only felt clearly that the smile was white and beautiful. She waited for it to turn to her again. Only on meeting Perior’s solemn look the sense of final awe smote upon her.
“She is dead,” he said.
To Camelia the smile seemed still to live.
“Dead!” she repeated. Perior gently put the hand he held on Mary’s breast.
“Not dead!” said Camelia, “she had not said good-bye to me!”
Perior came to her; his silence, that could not comfort, answered her. She fell upon her knees beside the bed, and her desperate sobs wailed uselessly against the irretrievable.
IT was many weeks afterwards that he told her what Mary had said. Her woe, not selfish, but inconsolable, made it impossible that during the first days of bereavement he should do more than help and sustain her by the fullness of a friendship now recognized as deep and unrestrained.
It was she herself who asked him one day if Mary had said anything that he could tell her, had spoken of her with a continuation of the forgiveness, her trust in which made life possible. Camelia, in her new devotion to her mother, its vehemence almost alarming Lady Paton, controlled for her sake all tears and lamentations, but lying on a sofa this afternoon, alone in the twilight, the tears had risen, and they were falling fast when Perior came in and sat down beside her. It was then that she asked him about Mary.
“She told me what you said to her the night before she died,” Perior answered, and Camelia let him take her hand. She lay reflecting for some moments before saying—
“She wanted you to think as well of me as possible.”
“She wanted to make me happy. She knew that you were mistaken.”
“How mistaken?” Camelia asked from her pillow.
His voice had been unemphatic, but in the slightpause that followed her question she felt that his eyes dwelt upon her, and she looked up at him.
“You told her—that I did not love you.” Camelia lay silent, her hand in his, her eyes on his eyes.
“You believed that, didn’t you?” he asked.
“How could I help believing it?”
“Ah! that shows a trust in me! Well, Mary did not believe it. Mary told me that I loved you.”
“And do you?” cried Camelia. She took her hand away, sat upright, and faced him. Perior was forced to smile a little at the baldness of his answering, “I do, Camelia.”
“You did not know till——”
“Oh, I knew all along,” Perior confessed, interrupting her. Camelia’s eyes widened immensely as she took in the astounding revelation. He replied to their silent interrogations with “I have been a wretched hypocrite. How I convinced you of the lie I don’t know.”
“And you told that to Mary.” He saw now that her gaze passed him, ignored him and his revelation in its personal bearing.
“I told her the truth. It did not hurt her. She was far above such hurts. You had showed her that you were worthy of any love. To share her secret made her happy.”
“Happy! Oh, Mary! Mary!” Camelia murmured, looking away from him. “It must have hurt,” she added. “Ah, it must have hurt.”
“She was as capable of nobility as you—that was all.”
“As I!” It was a cry of bitterness.
“As you, indeed. I feel between you both whata poor creature I am. I suppose I did for a test. You proved yourselves on me.”
There was silence for a little while. Camelia looked out of the window at the spring evening. It was here they had sat together on that day of their first meeting after her return. Her mind went back to it in all the sorrow of hopeless regret. What had Mary been to her then?
“What more did she say?” she asked at last in a voice of utter sadness. She still looked out of the window, but when he answered, “She said that you loved me,” she looked at him.
“Is that still true, Camelia?” he asked, smiling gravely and with a certain timidity.
“So you know, at last, how much.”
“My darling.” His tone brought the tears to her eyes; they rolled down her cheeks while she said brokenly, “And I told her; I gave her the weapon—and she smiled at us. Oh, that smile!”
“There was triumph in it. She asked me to marry you, Camelia, and I said I would—if you would have me. But, I must not ask you now—must I?” He sat down beside her on the sofa, and kissed her hand.
“Ah, no; don’t think of that. It would kill me, I think, if for one moment I forgot.”
“You need not forget—yet you may be happy, and make me happy.”
“Oh, you don’t know,” said Camelia, clasping her hands and looking down at them, “you don’t know. Even you don’t know how wicked I have been.”
“We all have such dark closets in our hearts. Don’t shut yourself in yours.”
“I don’t shut myself. I am locked in. That is my punishment. Michael,” and she looked round at him without turning her head, “I think of nothing else; that I made her miserable—that I made her glad to die. I must tell you. You don’t know how I treated her. I remember it all now—years and years—so plainly. I robbed her of everything. If a sunbeam fell on her path I stood between her and it.”
Perior was silent, but putting his hand over hers he held it faithfully.
“Listen. Let me tell you a few—only a few—of the things I remember. I don’t know why you love me!—how you can love me! It hurts me to be loved!” she sobbed suddenly.
“If it will help you, tell me everything. And I must love you, even if it hurts you.”
And, her hand in that faithful hand, her eyes on his, demanding inflexible judgment, Camelia began the long confession—a piteous tale, indeed. All the blots and failings gathered in a huge blackness; she spoke from it. He felt as she spoke that the clasp of his hand was her one link with revival. It was a piteous tale: for the robbery of Mary’s ride, the brutal taunts flung at her on that winter night—these were but the bigger drops in the sea of selfish thoughtlessness. After each incident, rounded with a succinct psychology that showed her pitiless clearness of vision, she paused, as if waiting for him to speak. His silence seemed to acquiesce, and she wanted no soothing denial. And even now his hand held hers, and did not cast her off. When she had done, and after the silence had grown long, he said—
“And so I might lay bare my heart to you.”
“I would not be afraid of its dark corner. You have never been meanly selfish, never trodden on people.”
“But I might affirm other things. I will open the door if it will help you to sit down with me in the doubled darkness.”
“No, dear Michael, no. Mine is enough.”
“I have heard you; and may I now tell you again that I love you?”
“Not again. Not now. But I am glad that you love me. I feel it. I should like to sit like this forever, just feeling it, with my hand in yours.”
This very debatable love-scene must be Perior’s only amorous consolation for many months. Of her quiet content in his presence there could be no doubt. No barrier, no pain, was now between them. Their union was achieved, as if by a mere wave-wash, effacing one misunderstanding—it hardly seemed more now, nor their change of relation apparent; but under all Camelia’s courage was the fixed determination to allow herself no happiness. Superficially there was almost gaiety at times; her regret would never become conventional or priggish; but even Lady Paton did not guess that Camelia and Michael were lovers, although a secret hope—very wonderful, and carefully hidden—painted for her future rosy possibilities. With all the sadness, with all the regret, these days were the happiest Lady Paton had known; and as Camelia’s devotion was exclusively for her, she could not guess that the secret hope was already realized.
Yet Camelia did not leave her silent lover utterlybereft. After the deep gravity of the first avowal her little demonstrations were of a light, an almost mocking order. In this new phase she returned to the teasing fondness of the old one; and sometimes the central tenderness would pierce the lightness.
Perior could afford patience. Reading one afternoon in the library (his daily presence at Enthorpe was a matter of course), he heard steps behind him, then felt her hand clasp over his eyes.
“You are keeping on—loving me?” she demanded.
“Yes, I am keeping on,” said Perior, turning his page with a masterly calm. He knew that the little outburst conceded nothing, and that even when Camelia dropped a swift kiss on his hair he was by no means expected to retaliate.
For the lighter mood the cottages made endless subjects for conversation and discussion. In talking—squabbling amicably—over their interior civilization, Camelia felt that she and Perior had much the playful gravity of children making sand pies at the seaside.
Camelia insisted on her prints and photographs, and on hanging them herself. She had fixed theories on the decoration of wall-spaces.
Perior held the ladder and criticised. “They are quite out of place, you know. That exotic art is most incongruous. It jars.” Camelia was hanging up a modern print after Hiroshighé.
“It wouldn’t jar on us, would it?” she asked, driving in a nail.
“We are exotic mentally.”
“Let us train them to a more cosmopolitan out-look, then.”
“They would far prefer the colored prints from Christmas numbers.”
“Well, they shan’t have them!” Camelia declared, and he laughed at her determined tyranny. But when her tenants were duly installed Camelia was forced to own that the honest forces of the soil were difficult to manage. She came in to tea one afternoon with the announcement, that the Dawkins had taken down all their prints and put up flower-entwined texts and horrible colored advertisements. Mrs. Dawkins had said that her husband objected to “those outlandish women”; they made him feel “quite creepy like.”
Later on she had to confess that the Coles by no means appreciated their photographs of the Sistine Sibyls, so charmingly placed along the walls, and that from among them glared a well-fed maiden with upturned, prayerful, and heavily-lashed eyes; testifying to the Coles’ religious instincts and to their only timid opposition.
“How can they be so stupid!” cried Camelia. “And how can I!”
“You can’t grow roses on cabbages, Camelia,” said Perior, “to say nothing of orchids. You are demanding orchids of your cabbages.”
“Desire precedes function,” Camelia replied sententiously, “if the cabbages want to, very much, they may grow orchids. I shall still hope.”
ON a beautiful October afternoon a visitor came to Enthorpe.
Camelia was summoned to find Mrs. Fox-Darriel in the drawing-room. Mrs. Fox-Darriel, with a pastoral hat—rather Gallic in its conscious innocence—tipped over her emphasized eyes, her gown of muslin and lace very fluffy on very rigid foundations, looked with her triumphant artificiality of outline quite oppressively smart. Camelia, after her year’s seclusion, felt her to be oppressive.
It was rather difficult to smile on meeting her, their parting had such painful associations—the dark turmoil of those days drifted over Camelia’s memory as she gave her friend her hand.
“You are surprised to see me, aren’t you, Camelia?” said Mrs. Fox-Darriel.
“Yes. Rather surprised.”
“No wonder, you faithless young woman. You haven’t troubled to toss me a thought for this twelvemonth. Well, I bear you no grudge; it is a psychological phase that will, I hope, wear itself away. Yes, I am stopping down in these parts again, twenty miles away, with the Lambournes. You have not seen them yet, I hear. New importations. Mr. Lambourne is a bloated capitalist, and as my poor Charlie is Labor personified, I hope thatmy display of four new gowns daily in the Lambourne ancestral halls—they will be ancestral some day—will result in a beneficial return of favors. Charlie is going in very much for companies; Mr. Lambourne’s companies are extremely advantageous. Oh, I uphold the uses of Lambournes in our modern world; they make us poor penniless aristocrats so very comfortable; they are good, grateful people.”
Mrs. Fox-Darriel, while she talked, was looking Camelia up and down in a slowly cogitating manner.
“No, I can’t stop to tea; I must be going back directly, it is a long drive. I only came to have a look at you, and, if possible, to solve the mystery. What’s up, Camelia? That is what I want to know. Is this all the result of last year’s littleesclandre?”
Camelia evaded the question.
“We have had trouble. You heard that my cousin was dead.”
Mrs. Fox-Darriel’s eye travelled again over Camelia’s black dress. “Yes—I heard. Poor little thing. And she would never appreciate how charming was the mourning being worn for her; that gown is really—well, there is a great deal in it, a great deal. I don’t know how you manage to make your clothes so significant. You’ve got all Chopin’s Funeral March into those lines. Well, it makes you feel badly, of course.”
“Yes. Very badly.” From the very patience of Camelia’s voice Mrs. Fox-Darriel was keenly aware of barriers. How Camelia had disappointed her! A certain baffled, angry affection rose within her.
“You certainly treated her horribly, my dear. Iunderstand regrets.” Camelia made no reply, and looked at her with a steady sadness.
“And—she was in love with the vial of wrath. You knew that, I suppose.”
“I knew that I was in love with him, Frances.”
At that Mrs. Fox-Darriel gasped. Her eyes took on an unblinking fixity. “So you own to it?”
“Yes, I certainly own to it.”
“Camelia! You are not going to—” The conjecture made her really white.
“To what?” and Camelia smiled irrepressibly.
“Camelia, I am fond of you. I did wish best things for you. I did hope to see yousomebody. You would have been. Youcanbe. Sir Arthur will be on his knees before you if you lift a finger.”
“Oh! I hope not,” cried Camelia.
“You know it. You know it. Lady Elizabeth hasn’t a chance. She has become literary—is writing the life of her great-grandfather, deep in archives—that means hopelessness.—Camelia!” and Mrs. Fox-Darriel’s cry gathered from Camelia’s impassive smile a frenzied energy. “You are not—tell me you are not—going to marry that man—relapse into a country matron! He will swamp you. You have nothing in common. It is calf-love, pure and simple. I felt it all along; hoped he would see the incongruity of it—take your poor little cousin, who was cut out for submission and nurseries.”
“Oh, I don’t think a superfluity of either will be expected of me,” said Camelia, with a laugh really unkind.
“Oh, heavens! You are going to marry him?”
“Yes, immediately,” said Camelia, somewhat toher own surprise. She had not expected her rather indefinite views on this subject to crystallize so suddenly and so irrevocably. “Console yourself, Frances,” she added, really feeling some compunction before Mrs. Fox-Darriel’s tragic contemplation, “it won’t be my funeral. He dug me out, and I am going to dig him out. You may hear of me yet—as his wife.”
“Ah!” Mrs. Fox-Darriel had found the calm of her despair. “It is the same old story. His indifference has done it all. It may be brutal, but I must say it, you threw yourself at his head. The flattery at last penetrated his priggishness; Endymion stooped to Selena.”
Camelia’s serenity held good.
“You can’t make me angry. I like your disinterestedness, Frances. Let me thank you for Endymion; I am sure the simile would flatter his forty-five years.”
“And I came hoping——”
“Hoping what my kind Frances?”
“That I was to be a link; that I would find you sane again—willing to pay me a visit, and meethim.”
“But, as you see, I am on Latmos, and like it.”
“Yes, I see. I am disillusionized, Camelia; I confess it. I didn’t expect that sort of floppiness from you. And there is a self-righteousness about your whole manner that is insufferable, quite; I tell you so frankly.” Mrs. Fox-Darriel, as she spoke, shouldered her closed parasol, and clasped her hands over it in a militant antagonism of attitude. “The sheep looking suavely from its fold at the goat. We are all goats to you now.”
“Come, let us kiss through the bars, then.”
“Oh, you are miles away—æons away!”
Mrs. Fox-Darriel submitted drearily. “You are lost! done for! And the name, the power, the future you might have had! You were clever.”
“I rather doubt that.”
“Ah! of course you doubt it; you must doubt it. As the wife of a crusty country squire it would be a corroding cleverness merely. You turn your back on it.”
“We won’t be hopelessly provincial. You will see us in London. He may get into Parliament.”
“Us! He! Alas! he will swamp you,” she repeated. “He will turn you into a pillar of salt—looking back, and being sorry.Youto be wasted!” was the last Camelia heard.
When she had gone Camelia went slowly across the lawn; Perior, she knew, was lurking about the garden waiting for her. Some of Mrs. Fox-Darriel’s remarks had cut—so far less deeply, though, than her own thoughts during past months. It was the strong revival of these thoughts that pained her more than the mode of revival.
It was dusk, a pensive dusk, the evening sky faintly barred with pink. Perior was walking up and down the garden between rows of tally growing flowers. Was the thought of his patience and loneliness, of her selfishness in prolonging them, a mere sophistry meant to hide her own longing for happiness? As she walked down the path towards him her mind juggled with this thought; it was very confusing.
“Who do you think it was?” she asked, puttingher hand in his, a littledouceurPerior had never presumed upon.
“Mrs. Jedsley? Mrs. Grier? Lady Haversham?” he asked affably, but scanning, as she felt, the sadness of her face.
“No—the past has been having a flick at me—Mrs. Fox-Darriel the whip.”
“Ah yes. I never liked her.”
“There is not much harm in her.”
“No, perhaps not,” Perior acquiesced.
“I told her,” said Camelia, after a little pause in which they turned a corner of the garden, and walked down it again by an outward path.
“Well, what did you tell her? She has hurt you. I can see that.”
“No, not she. She asked me if I had never seen that Mary loved you, so, in reply, I said that I had only seen thatIloved you.”
“Did that excellent piece of truth-telling pain you?”
“No; it was a delicious mouthful. But, she said too, that the flattery of my love had pierced your indifference—or your priggishness, she called it”—and Camelia gave him a rather arch glance, “and I didn’t really wonder, notreally; but you were so much more indifferent than I was, weren’t you?” and she paused in the path to look at him, not archly, but very seriously. Her candor was so charming, with its little touch of fear, that Perior’s answer could not resist an emphasis.
“Dearest,” he said, and Camelia’s wonder was not unpleasant, and his daring went unrebuked, as he put his arm around her.
“That means you were not?”
“It means a great deal more. I was in love with you when I was nothing to you. I’ve always been in love with you—horribly in love with you. Indifference! Great heavens! that was what I prayed for, that was what I tried to feign, for I thought you such an abominable little siren. All the time that you were picking me up, and putting me down, and whisking past me, and torturing and teasing me, all the time I was adoring you, I couldn’t help myself! adoring you with all your crimes upon you! thinking myself a fool for it, I grant.”
“Putting you down? No, I never did that,” Camelia demurred.
“Well, I thought so. And at all events you know that you were most comfortably indifferent until you found out that you couldn’t get me for the asking.”
“No, no!” cried Camelia. “From the first, if you had really let me think you loved me, told me so, nicely, and begged a little, I should have fallen straight into your arms, and perhaps never have found out how bad I was!”
“And that would have been a pity, eh? No,” he added, with an argumentative gravity that touched and made her smile sadly. “You were neverbad. It was always half my fault. I misjudged you, and you danced to my lugubrious piping.”
“This is the very madness of devotion! Oh, dear Alceste, with you, perhaps, with you I have not dealt so badly; but,but——” She walked on again, turning away her head.
“Don’t,” said Perior gently.
“Ah, I must, I must remember.”
For a long time they were silent during the rounding of the whole garden, where the high walls grew dark against the sky, and the flowers, in the faint light, were ghostly.
“Michael,” she said at last, “I rebel sometimes against my own unhappiness. I want to crush it—I am afraid of it; but I am more afraid of being happy.”
“Why can’t they go together?” he asked.
“Ah! but can they?”
“They must, sooner or later. Then you won’t be afraid of either. Doesn’t this all mean,” he added, “thatnowI may tell you how much I love you?” and he stopped to look at her. Her face was like a white flower in the dusk. Far away, over long sweeps of thin purpling cloud, shone one star, faint and steady. He saw together her face, the sky, and the star.
“Oh!” said Camelia, “doyou know me? Even now, do you know me? I’m not one bit good! I am still the horrid child who clamored for your love; my love for you the only good thing in me! You love me, all the same? You don’t mind? don’t expect anything? I want so much, but I will have nothing, not a kiss, not your hand holding mine,—there, let it go,—on false pretences.”
“I can only retaliate.Iam not one bit good. Dear, horrid child, will you put up with me?”
“Oh, I never minded!” she cried. “I loved you, good or bad.”
“And I you; only I minded. That is all the difference. There isn’t a falsity between us, Camelia,” he added.
“No, there isn’t.”
“Then, may I kiss you, and hold your hand?”
“Yes; only—first—first—” she held him off, smiling, yet still doubting, still tremulously grave, “I am not good enough; no, I am not good enough.”
“Quite good enough for me,” said Perior. “I am getting tired of your conscience, Camelia.”
THE END.