Gervase sprang up and faced her, his eyes flashing dangerously.
“Do not make any pretence with me!” he said half angrily. “Never tell me you cannot love! …”
“I HAVE loved!” she interrupted him. “As true women love, — once, and only once. It suffices; not for one lifetime, but many. I loved; and gave myself ungrudgingly and trustingly to the man my soul worshipped. I was betrayed, of course! — it is the usual story — quite old, quite commonplace! I can tell it to you without so much as a blush of pain! Since then I have not loved, — I have HATED; and I live but for one thing — Revenge.”
Her face paled as she spoke, and a something vague, dark, spectral and terrible seemed to enfold her like a cloud where she stood. Anon she smiled sweetly, and with a bewitching provocativeness.
“Your ‘passion,’ you see, my friend awakens rather a singular ‘reflex’ in me! — not quite of the nature you imagined!”
He remained for a moment inert; then, with an almost savage boldness, threw his arm about her.
“Have everything your own way, Ziska!” he said in quick, fierce accents. “I will accept all your fancies, and humor all your caprices. I will grant that you do not love me — I will even suppose that I am repellent to you, — but that shall make no difference to my desire! You shall be mine! — willing or unwilling! If every kiss I take from your lips be torn from you with reluctance, yet those kisses I will have! — you shall not escape me! You — you, out of all women in the world, I choose…”
“As your wife?” said Ziska slowly, her dark eyes gleaming with a strange light as she dexterously withdrew herself from his embrace.
He uttered an impatient exclamation.
“My wife! Dieu! What a banalite! You, with your exquisite, glowing beauty and voluptuous charm, you would be a ‘wife’ — that tiresome figure-head of utterly dull respectability? You, with your unmatched air of wild grace and freedom, would submit to be tied down in the bonds of marriage, — marriage, which to my thinking and that of many other men of my character, is one of the many curses of this idiotic nineteenth century! No, I offer you love, Ziska! — ideal, passionate love! — the glowing, rapturous dream of ecstasy in which such a thing as marriage would be impossible, the merest vulgar commonplace — almost a profanity.”
“I understand!” and the Princess Ziska regarded him intently, her breath coming and going, and a strange smile quivering on her lips. “You would play the part of an Araxes over again!”
He smiled; and with all the audacity of a bold and determined nature, put his arms round her and drew her close up to his breast.
“Yes,” he said, “I would play the part of an Araxes over again!”
As he uttered the words, an indescribable sensation of horror seized him — a mist darkened his sight, his blood grew cold, and a tremor shook him from head to foot. The fair woman’s face that was lifted so close to his own seemed spectral and far off; and for a fleeting moment her very beauty grew into something like hideousness, as if the strange effect of the picture he had painted of her was now becoming actual and apparent — namely, the face of death looking through the mask of life. Yet he did not loosen his arms from about her waist; on the contrary he clasped her even more closely, and kept his eyes fixed upon her with such pertinacity that it seemed as if he expected her to vanish from his sight while he still held her.
“To play the part of an Araxes aright,” she murmured then in slow and dulcet accents, “you would need to be cruel and remorseless, and sacrifice my life — or any woman’s life — to your own clamorous and selfish passion. But you, — Armand Gervase, — educated, civilized, intellectual, and totally unlike the barbaric Araxes, could not do that, could you? The progress of the world, the increasing intelligence of humanity, the coming of the Christ, these things are surely of some weight with you, are they not? Or are you made of the same savage and impenitent stuff as composed the once famous yet brutal warrior of old time? Do you admire the character and spirit of Araxes? — he who, if history reports him truly, would snatch a woman’s life as though it were a wayside flower, crush out all its sweetness and delicacy, and then fling it into the dust withered and dead? Do you think that because a man is strong and famous, he has a right to the love of woman? — a charter to destroy her as he pleases? If you remember the story I told you, Araxes murdered with his own hand Ziska-Charmazel the woman who loved him.”
“He had perhaps grown weary of her,” said Gervase, speaking with an effort, and still studying the exquisite loveliness of the bewitching face that was so close to his own, like a man in a dream.
At this she laughed, and laid her two hands on his shoulders with a close and clinging clasp which thrilled him strangely.
“Ah, there is the difficulty!” she said.
“What cure shall ever be found for love-weariness? Men are all like children — they tire of their toys; hence the frequent trouble and discomfort of marriage. They grow weary of the same face, the same caressing arms, the same faithful heart! You, for instance, would grow weary of me!”
“I think not,” answered Gervase. And now the vague sense of uncertainty and pain which had distressed him passed away, leaving him fully self-possessed once more. “I think you are one of those exceptional women whom a man never grows weary of: like a Cleopatra, or any other old-world enchantress, you fascinate with a look, you fasten with a touch, and you have a singular freshness and wild attraction about you which makes you unlike any other of your sex. I know well enough that I shall never get the memory of you out of my brain; your face will haunt me till I die!”
“And after death?” she queried, half-closing her eyes, and regarding him languorously through her silky black lashes.
“Ah, ma belle, after that there is nothing to be done even in the way of love. Tout est fini! Considering the brevity of life and the absolute certainty of death, I think that the men and women who are so foolish as to miss any opportunities of enjoyment while they are alive deserve more punishment than those who take all they can get, even in the line of what is called wickedness. Wickedness is a curious thing: it takes different shapes in different lands, and what is called ‘wicked’ here, is virtue in, let us say, the Fiji Islands. There is really no strict rule of conduct in the world, no fixed law of morality.”
“There is honor!” said the Princess, slowly;— “A code which even savages recognize.”
He was silent. For a moment he seemed to hesitate; but his indecision soon passed. His face flushed, and anon grew pale, as closing his arms more victoriously round the fair woman who just then appeared voluntarily to yield to his embrace, he bent down and whispered a few words in the tiny ear, white and delicate as a shell, which was half-hidden by the rich loose clusters of her luxuriant hair. She heard, and smiled; and her eyes flashed with a singular ferocity which he did not see, otherwise it might have startled him.
“I will answer you to-morrow,” she said. “Be patient till then.”
And as she spoke, she released herself determinedly from the clasp of his arms and withdrew to a little distance, looking at him with a fixed and searching scrutiny.
“Do not preach patience to me!” he exclaimed with a laugh. “I never had that virtue, and I certainly cannot begin to cultivate it now.”
“Had you ever any virtues?” she asked in a playful tone of something like satire.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I do not know what you consider virtues,” he answered lightly: “If honesty is one, I have that. I make no pretence to be what I am not. I would not pass off somebody else’s picture as my own, for instance. But I cannot sham to be moral. I could not possibly love a woman without wanting her all to myself, and I have not the slightest belief in the sanctimonious humbug of a man who plays the Platonic lover only. But I don’t cheat, and I don’t lie. I am what I am. …”
“A man!” said Ziska, a lurid and vindictive light dilating and firing her wonderful eyes. “A man! — the essence of all that is evil,
the possibility of all that is good! But the essence is strong and works; the possibility is a dream which dissolves in the dreaming!”
“Yes, you are right, ma chere!” he responded carelessly. “Goodness — as the world understands goodness — never makes a career for itself worth anything. Even Christ, who has figured as a symbol of goodness for eighteen hundred years, was not devoid of the sin of ambition: He wanted to reign over all Judaea.”
“You view Him in that light?” inquired Ziska with a keen look. “And as man only?”
“Why, of course! The idea of an incarnate God has long ago been discarded by all reasoning thinkers.”
“And what of an incarnate devil?” pursued Ziska, her breath coming and going quickly.
“As impossible as the other fancy!” he responded almost gayly. “There are no gods and no devils, ma belle! The world is ruled by ourselves alone, and it behoves us to make the best of it. How will you give me my answer to-morrow? When shall I see you? Speak low and quickly, — Dr. Dean is coming in here from the garden: when — when?”
“I will send for you,” she answered.
“At what hour?”
“The moon rises at ten. And at ten my messenger shall come for you.”
“A trustworthy messenger, I hope? One who knows how to be silent?”
“As silent as the grave!” she said, looking at him fixedly. “As secret as the Great Pyramid and the hidden tomb of Araxes!”
And smiling, she turned to greet Dr. Dean, who just then entered the saloon.
“Denzil has gone to bed,” he announced. “He begged me to excuse him to you, Princess. I think the boy is feverish. Egypt doesn’t agree with him.”
“I am sorry he is ill,” said the Princess with a charming air of sympathy.
“Oh, he isn’t exactly ill,” returned the Doctor, looking sharply at her beautiful face as he spoke. “He is simply unnerved and restless. I am a little anxious about him. I think he ought to go back to England — or Scotland.”
“I think so, too,” agreed Gervase. “And Mademoiselle Helen with him.”
“Mademoiselle Helen you consider very beautiful?” murmured the
Princess, unfurling her fan and waving it indolently to and fro.
“No, not beautiful,” answered the Doctor quickly. “But very pretty, sweet and lovable — and good.”
“Ah then, of course some one will break her heart!” said the Princess calmly. “That is what always happens to good women.”
And she smiled as she saw Gervase flush, half with anger, half with shame. The little Doctor rubbed his nose crossly.
“Not always, Princess,” he said. “Sometimes it does; in fact pretty often. It is an unfortunate truth that virtue is seldom rewarded in this world. Virtue in a woman nowadays—”
“Means no lovers and no fun!” said Gervase gayly. “And the possibility of a highly decorous marriage with a curate or a bankclerk, followed by the pleasing result of a family of little curates or little bank-clerks. It is not a dazzling prospect!”
The Doctor smiled grimly; then after a wavering moment of indecision, broke out into a chuckling laugh.
“You have an odd way of putting things,” he said. “But I’m afraid you may be right in your estimate of the position. Quite as many women are as miserably sacrificed on the altar of virtue as of vice. It is ‘a mad world,’ as Shakespeare says. I hope the next life we pass into after this one will at least be sane.”
“Well, if you believe in Heaven, you have Testament authority for the fact that there will be ‘neither marriage nor giving in marriage’ there, at any rate,” laughed Gervase. “And if we wish to follow that text out truly in our present state of existence and become ‘as the angels of God’ we ought at once to abolish matrimony.”
“Have done! Have done!” exclaimed the Doctor, still smiling, however, notwithstanding his protest. “You Southern Frenchmen are half barbarians, — you have neither religion nor morality.”
“Dieu merci!” said Gervase, irreverently; then turning to the Princess Ziska, he bowed low and with a courtly grace over the hand she extended towards him in farewell. “Good-night, Princess!” — then in a whisper he added: “To-morrow I shall await your summons.”
“It will come without fail, never fear!” she answered in equally soft tones. “I hope it may find you ready.”
He raised his eyes and gave her one long, lingering, passionate look; then with another “Good-night,” which included Dr. Dean, left the room. The Doctor lingered a moment, studying the face and form of the Princess with a curiously inquisitive air; while she in her turn confronted him haughtily, and with a touch of defiance in her aspect.
“Well,” said the savant presently, after a pause: “Now you have got him, what are you going to do with him?”
She smiled coldly, but answered nothing.
“You need not flash your beautiful eyes at me in that eminently unpleasant fashion,” pursued the Doctor, easily. “You see I KNOW YOU, and I am not afraid of you. I only make a stand against you in one respect: you shall not kill the boy Denzil.”
“He is nothing to me!” she said, with a gesture of contempt.
“I know he is nothing to you; but you are something to him. He does not recognize your nature as I do. I must get him out of the reach of your spell—”
“You need not trouble yourself,” she interrupted him, a sombre melancholy darkening her face; “I shall be gone to-morrow.”
“Gone altogether?” inquired the Doctor calmly and without surprise,— “Not to come back?”
“Not in this present generation!” she answered.
Still Dr. Dean evinced no surprise.
“Then you will have satisfied yourself?” he asked.
She bent her head.
“For the time being — yes! I shall have satisfied myself.”
There followed a silence, during which the little Doctor looked at his beautiful companion with all the meditative interest of a scientist engaged in working out some intricate and deeply interesting problem.
“I suppose I may not inquire how you propose to obtain this satisfaction?” he said.
“You may inquire, but you will not be answered!” she retorted, smiling darkly.
“Your intentions are pitiless?”
Still smiling, she said not a word.
“You are impenitent?”
She remained silent.
“And, worst of all, you do not desire redemption! You are one of those who forever and ever cry, ‘Evil, be thou my good!’ Thus for you, Christ died in vain!”
A faint tremor ran through her, but she was still mute.
“So you and creatures like you, must have their way in the world until the end,” concluded the Doctor, thoughtfully. “And if all the philosophers that ever lived were to pronounce you what you are, they would be disbelieved and condemned as madmen! Well, Princess, I am glad I have never at any time crossed your path till now, or given you cause of offence against me. We part friends, I trust? Good-night! Farewell!”
She held out her hand. He hesitated before taking it.
“Are you afraid?” she queried coldly. “It will not harm you!”
“I am afraid of nothing,” he said, at once clasping the white taper fingers in his own, “except a bad conscience.”
“That will never trouble you!” and the Princess looked at him full and steadily. “There are no dark corners in your life — no mean side-alleys and trap-holes of deceit; you have walked on the open and straight road. You are a good man and a wise one. But though you, in your knowledge of spiritual things, recognize me for what I am, take my advice and be silent on the matter. The world would never believe the truth, even if you told it, for the time is not yet ripe for men and women to recognize the avengers of their wicked deeds. They are kept purposely in the dark lest the light should kill!”
And with her sombre eyes darkening, yet glowing with the inward fire that always smouldered in their dazzling depths, she saluted him gra
vely and gracefully, watching him to the last as he slowly withdrew.
CHAPTER XV.
The next day broke with a bright, hot glare over the wide desert, and the sky in its cloudless burning blue had more than its usual appearance of limitless and awful immensity. The Sphinx and the Pyramids alone gave a shadow and a substance to the dazzling and transparent air, — all the rest of the visible landscape seemed naught save a far-stretching ocean of glittering sand, scorched by the blazing sun. Dr. Maxwell Dean rose early and went down to the hotel breakfast in a somewhat depressed frame of mind; he had slept badly, and his dreams had been unpleasant, when not actually ghastly, and he was considerably relieved, though he could not have told why, when he saw his young friend Denzil Murray, seated at the breakfast table, apparently enjoying an excellent meal.
“Hullo, Denzil!” he exclaimed cheerily, “I hardly expected you down yet. Are you better?”
“Thanks, I am perfectly well,” said Denzil, with a careless air. “I thought I would breakfast early in order to drive into Cairo before the day gets too sultry.”
“Into Cairo!” echoed the Doctor. “Why, aren’t you going to stay here a few days?”
“No, not exactly,” answered Denzil, stirring his coffee quickly and beginning to swallow it in large gulps. “I shall be back to-night, though. I’m only going just to see my sister and tell her to prepare for our journey home. I shan’t be absent more than a few hours.”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 426