Desire began to upset his balance. His eyes lost their sparkle, his voice its lightness, he ceased to jest. He cut short the boy’s lessons and exhausted his strength in tramping long hours through the forest, angrily cutting down the undergrowth with his cane, and now cursing the girl, now pleading with her. He who had played with others was now the plaything and sport of his own feelings. He was possessed.
But sooner or later, he told himself, she must appear, he must have his opportunity. She could not always hide herself. And on the eighth day, when he had begun to despair, he had at last the luck to see her slip from the house by the side door. The truth was that Lady Ellingham had taken her to task and adjured her to rouse herself and to go out; and Rachel had done so, choosing a time when in the ordinary course he would be at his early dinner. But the tutor had long lost appetite save for the pursuit; his only desire now was to fight the matter out, to test his influence, and, as he hoped and believed, to prove its potency.
On fire as he was — and impatience consumed him — he let a short time elapse, and then he followed. He cared little who saw him, yet across the open he preserved some decency. But as soon as the sheltering trees hid him, he lengthened his stride, he came near to running. He did not dwell on what he would say when he overtook her — he had passed beyond that. She had given him her first love, he had held her in his arms, he had pressed his kisses on her face; and experience assured him that these things formed a bond that in nine cases out of ten disarmed resistance. And she was so innocent, so soft, so yielding, he was sure that she had only to feel his nearness, and his power, with a few sophistries, would be restored.
At last he saw the flutter of her skirt between the trees, and almost running he came up with her. Breathlessness gave the necessary quiver to his voice. “Rachel! Rachel!” he cried. He was pale and beads of perspiration, cold as the day was, stood on his brow.
She heard, and turned with a movement of alarm; but it was he who was the more startled. For the girl who faced him in this wintry clearing of the wood was not the old Rachel, the Rachel of blushes and shy tremulous smiles, but a white thin-faced girl whose eyes, enlarged by the dark shadows under them, did not so much reproach as accuse him. He felt the check, he could not but feel it, but he did what he could to recover himself. “Rachel! Rachel!” he repeated, holding out his hands to her — and there was appeal enough and desperate appeal in his voice to touch any woman. “Oh, my dear, my dear, it has been terrible not to see you, not to hear you, not to know how you fared!” And he would have taken her that moment in his arms, as if he felt no doubt of her.
But she looked at him with such solemn eyes, in a silence so heavy, that he hesitated. To cover the check, “And you — ah, but I see that you too have suffered,” he continued. “You have suffered too, Rachel! I see it. You have been ill, wretched, anxious, as I have been. Have thought of me as I have thought of you!”
And still she did not answer. She only looked at him with sad condemning eyes. At last, “Please to go away,” she said.
This was worse than he had feared, but he strove to put a bold face on it. “Go?” he exclaimed in apparent surprise — and God knows there was no lack of passion in his voice. “Go and leave you, now that I have found you! Now that at last I am with you! Now that at last I have the joy of seeing you, of hearing your voice, of touching if it be but the hem of your gown! Oh, never, you do not mean it! You cannot mean it, cannot mean that a few spiteful words, a jealous woman’s tale have so changed you, have robbed me of all that I had won! You have more heart, more constancy than that! Dare, oh, my dear, dare to be guided by them!” And again with hungry eyes he would have taken her in his arms.
But Rachel stepped back. “Don’t touch me!” she said. “Please to go away.”
If she had scolded him he could have met it. If she had told him that he had sought her ruin and that her love was dead, he could have argued with her, he could have dealt with her. But that “Don’t touch me” and her dumb accusing eyes confounded the man. He saw that here was no play-acting, no virtuous pretence, but a real shrinking. And though he replied, and with passion enough, “But this is nonsense! Nonsense, Rachel! My darling, you cannot throw me off like this! There is too much, too much between us!” he already felt the numbing hand of defeat.
“There is nothing between us,” she answered in a low voice. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“Oh, but—”
“I know the truth. Will you please to go away.”
If the blood had risen to her face he would have known what to do, for he still believed that if he could hold her in his arms she would melt. But in drawing back she had placed a small bush between them, and though they were alone and she was in his power, he could not chase her from bush to bush.
Force, then, he kept for a last resort, and he bent himself to move her by the strength of an appeal, to which with any other woman his haggard eager face must have given weight. “You are not fair to me!” he cried. “You believe all that is said against me! Said by a jealous, a spiteful, a wicked woman! At least hear me, you must, you shall hear me, you shall hear my defence. What has been told you, what tales, what lies—”
“Are you married?” She had but the bare question to put.
And that bare question, cold and curt, upset him. He hesitated. If he lied, would it avail him? The lie would be carried to Lady Ellingham and might be fatal to him in other ways. He tried to parry the thrust. “After a fashion, I am,” he said. “I confess it. Most unhappily, most unfortunately, most tragically — married.”
Rachel shivered. “Will you please to go away then.”
“But, Rachel, Rachel,” he answered, his voice throbbing with feeling, “how hard! How can you be so hard, so cruel, so pitiless? At least hear me! Let me explain, let me tell you how slight, how shadowy, how unreal the bond is! Let me tell you my story, and instead of condemning me, you will feel for me, pity me, you will console me. Let me tell you—”
“I wish to hear nothing.” She shivered as she spoke. “Will you go away, sir.”
“Not till you have heard me! No!” His temper, spurred by balked desire, was mastering him. “No, I will not!”
“Then I will go,” she said.
But he stood in the way. “No,” he said doggedly. “Not till you have heard me. No, I will not, I will not let you go! You owe me that at least,” he continued with indignation. “Does all that you have sworn to me, all your affection, all your woman’s love, come only to this — to throw me off at a word! Oh, my dear,” and again with a pathetic descent to prayer, he held out his hands to her, “have pity on me! Rachel, Rachel, say that it is a dream, a nightmare from which we awaken! Say that nothing shall come between us, nor part us! There is but love in the world. There is but love, and beside it nothing matters, nothing serves, all is but form and show, not worth an hour of happiness — of such happiness as we may still know together! Oh, my dear,” and his voice quivered with feeling, “be true, be true to yourself. Have courage, have faith, shake yourself free from the prejudices — But I see—” breaking off with bitterness as he saw her recoil—” You fear me! You shrink from me!”
“No,” she cried with indignation, “I shrink, sir, from myself! That I have let you — that I have suffered at your hands what I have, that I have been so blind, so dull! But how could you, how could you — when it was not you that I loved, but my own fancy, and as far from you as heaven from earth! And now — now that I have told you, I beg you, I implore you to leave me.”
“I will not!” he cried. “No!”
“Mr. Girardot—”
“No,” he insisted savagely. “No, I will not.” He foresaw defeat, and disappointment maddened him. The cruel instincts that are ever a part of such a passion awoke in him. “Not until I have more than this, ma’am! This is talk! It may deceive another, but it does not deceive me. You are not a clod or a stone, though you would have me think it, but flesh and blood! You can feel and thrill and love, and I have
proved it! You are a woman, and if with my arms about you you can still swear that you do not love me—”
“But I do swear it!” she cried. The wildness of his words and the look in his eyes frightened her at last. She glanced aside, seeking a way of escape.
He seized the advantage. “But I don’t believe you!” he rejoined, and before she could evade him he had seized her by the arm and was drawing her to him. “Now,” he cried exultantly, “now I’ll prove you wrong, my lady! You don’t escape me so easily! No, it is no use to struggle.”
He was dragging her, fiercely resisting, into his embrace, when “Stop!” said a cold authoritative voice. “What is this? What does this mean? Mr. Girardot! Surely you forget yourself!”
“The devil!” he exclaimed, his passion quenched in an instant. He let the girl go. And as she stepped back, white, panting, her eyes wide, her hand pressed to her breast, he turned and saw Lady Ellingham, who, her colour high, stood calmly awaiting his answer. As he did not reply, “It seems I come in season,” she said. “Miss South, I saw this gentleman follow you and I came after you, suspecting something of this. You had better go home if you are equal to it. I will myself hear his explanation.”
The blood flooded Rachel’s face — what humiliation he had brought on her! But she bowed her head and as quickly as her shaking knees and palpitating heart would let her she moved away in silence and took the homeward path. My lady waited until she was out of earshot, then she turned to the tutor. “Was this another appointment?” she asked with irony.
“It was not.”
“Chance, I suppose, sir?”
“No,” he rejoined defiantly. “If you must know, ma’am, I followed her.”
“And meant to — to make the most of the occasion, it seems.”
The surprise had been so complete that he had not yet recovered his self-possession. But his wits were already at work: already he saw that in a position so serious it might be as well, and all that was left to him, to risk fortunes already desperate on a single cast. The Countess had followed them — why? And this was the second time that she had followed them — why? His vanity cried aloud for compensation and at the same time suggested to him where he might find it; and audacious, impudent as the idea was, and amazing the volte-face, he had never been wanting either in audacity or impudence.
“But now,” the Countess continued with severity as he did not answer, “now, Mr. Girardot, be good enough to understand that there must be an end of this. I have had — too much patience, sir. You are of his lordship’s choice, you are here at his will and by his appointment, and I have so far been loath to interfere. But this is too much. This is a cruel, wicked, unmanly pursuit, and it must stop. It shall go no further under my roof.”
He could see that she meant it and that he must either be crushed or he must risk his last stake. He bared his head and with a characteristic gesture he tossed back the hair from his forehead. He knew that the action became him. “You do not ask,” he said gloomily, “what it means?”
“I fear I know — only too well, sir.”
“But not how it arose.”
“I am not concerned with that. I am only concerned—”
“But it is you — you who are concerned with that!” he cried, breaking in impulsively, and turning his fine eyes full upon her, those eyes whose pleading had done so much execution. “It is you, ma’am, you and no other, who are the cause of this — this folly, this madness, this delirium, for it is no more.”
“I?” She could not believe her ears.
But he had burned his boats, he was beyond the fear of her displeasure. “Yes, you,” he replied hardily. “You and you only are the cause of this, of all this. He who falls from a height will catch at any stay, grasp at any straw, stop himself where he can, high or low. Will, repelled by a queen, be caught by a handmaid! I swear that it has been so with me, and you know it. Deny it if you can, ma’am. You must have known how it was with me, how mad I was, and how unhappy in my madness this twelvemonth past! How high I aspired, how greatly I dared! For if my lips were mute, and my tongue was dumb, my eyes at least must have told you the truth.”
She flushed darkly. “Mr. Girardot,” she said, “if you mean what you seem to mean—”
“I do mean it!” he retorted, “and you do not doubt it, though you pretend to! For a year you and you only have filled my thoughts, owned my heart, enslaved me! Have been the world and all the world and more to me! This,” he flung a contemptuous gesture after Rachel, “served for a cloak, a cover, but it could not blind you. For I am flesh and blood and you would not own me, you despised me and looked down on me, and desperate—”
“Desperate? No, but mad! You must be mad,” the Countess cried incredulously. “Oh, the audacity of it, the vileness of it! I cannot, sir, believe my ears. When you have just, when you have this moment — and heaven above, what reason, what ground have I ever given you that you should believe that you could—”
“Ground?” he retorted savagely. “You? None, ma’am. But my lord — every ground. Ground to build as high as heaven! Did you think that any man with the blood of a man could stand by unmoved and see how he treated you? How he neglected you? How he betrayed you? How he outraged you? You might be patience itself, you might let his contempt sink you as low in the dust as your beauty set you high, yet did you think that any man worthy of the name could look on from day to day and bear it? Could see you so treated, so abandoned, so despised, without kindling? Could — no, ma’am, I will speak though I lose all — could be witness of your life from day to day without pitying you, without adoring you, without longing to devote his poor all to you? If you thought this, then you have never known a man!”
“I have never known a man — a bad man,” she cried viciously, “until now!”
“But still a man,” he retorted. “And he who owns you, who dishonours you, who sets the cheapest above you — is no man!”
“Oh, abominable!” she cried, and in the impotence of her anger she struck the silver-headed cane that she carried so violently on the ground that it splintered. “Do you know that if I were a man I would kill you! Your love — oh, heaven!”
“It would be heaven if you returned it!”
“If I returned it? If?” The contempt in my lady’s voice was beyond words. “Hear me, listen! Listen, you — you miserable creature who can turn in a moment from the maid to the mistress and think your shift is not seen! Than the love — the word blisters my lips — of such a man I would rather bear my husband’s hate! I would cherish it, I would nurse it! I would rather have him though he beat me, starved me, shamed me, set a hundred women above me — than you! He is at least and at worst a gentleman, while you — but I soil my lips with you, I stain myself every moment that I stay in your company, look at you, hear you! That you — you should presume to me! You? To me! But enough. Enough, sir! Let me not see you again. Leave this place at once, leave it this night! Make any pretext you please — you have store of them. But go, go, sir. For if I hear that you remain to-morrow I shall tell all to my husband and you will be whipped from the house. Oh, you are too much! You are impossible! You are incredible!”
And without a backward look she turned and swept away. “Oh, vile! Vile!” she flung over her shoulder. She panted with rage.
He might have darted after her and laid hands on her as he had laid hands on Rachel, for they were alone and no help was near. But he was beaten. The spirit and force of her denunciation had overwhelmed him, and the idea did not even occur to him. And — it went for something perhaps — he did not love her.
Instead he stood looking after her, and “D — n!” he whispered in an ecstasy of chagrin. He had staked all and lost all. But it was of Rachel’s pale face and tremulous lips that he thought.
CHAPTER XXI
THE BOWLING-GREEN
LADY ANN could sleep like a dormouse. She could sleep for ten hours at a stretch without moving so much as would free the torrent of her inky mane from her night-cap
. But like most children she awoke early, was early afoot, and thenceforward became a torment to housemaids, who with their brooms and pails desired nothing so much as to have the house to themselves. She had a way of sliding silently down the balusters and jumping on Jane’s back as she swept, or of slyly pinching Martha’s defenceless calves as she scrubbed, which was very disturbing. Or she would invade Mrs. Jemmett’s room and plunder her buttered toast — such toast, hot and crisp, as the dining-room never saw — and be gone before the good woman discovered her loss. All was game that came to Ann’s net, but on these cold winter mornings, sport was scarce, and the best-natured housemaid prone to be crusty.
Anything out of the common, therefore, was a godsend to Ann, and when on her way downstairs two mornings later she spied a gentleman descending before her, she bounded down upon him, overjoyed. “By gum, Uncle George,” she cried, seizing his arm and hanging affectionately upon it, “why are you up? And where are you going? I’ll get my hood and come with you.”
The Captain turned upon her. “No, you won’t!” he said. “Sheer off and go back to bed, monkey! I’m on business.”
“Back to bed?” she replied with scorn. “Why, I’m dressed. I’m jiggered if I do. Why!” and her eyes grew big with surprise. “Here’s another! Bobby dear, what is it? Why are you up? You look as if you were going to a funeral!”
“Then it will be yours!” the beau answered more sharply than even Uncle George had. He glanced at the Captain. “Here’s a bore,” he said — bore was a new word much in fashion then. “You run away and play, baby.”
“I will — with you!” Ann returned. She danced derisively up and down and defied them both.
The men’s eyes met. Then something in Bobbie’s appearance seemed to strike the other. “Have you got — what we want?” he asked.
“Confound it!” Lord Robert exclaimed, conscience-stricken. “What an ass I am! If I haven’t forgotten the necessaries!” He turned and bounded up the stairs at much more than his usual pace.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 727