A WOMAN'S LOVE
It seemed to him in those few golden moments of his life that memory
died away and time stood still. The past with its hideous sorrows, and
the future over which it stretched its chilling hand, were merged in the
present. Life had neither background nor prospect. The overpowering
realization of the elysium into which he had stepped had absorbed all
sense and all knowledge. They were together, and words were passing
between them which would live to eternity in his heart.
But the fairest summer sky will not be fair forever. Clouds will gather,
and drive before them the sweetness and joy from the smiling heavens,
and memory is a mistress who may slumber but who never sleeps. Those
moments of entrancing happiness, although in one sense they lasted a
lifetime, were in the ordinary measure of time but of brief duration.
For with something of the overmastering suddenness with which his
passion had found expression, there swept back into his heart all the
still cold flow of icy reminiscence. She felt his arms loosen around
her, and she raised her head, wondering, from his shoulder, wonder that
turned soon to fear, for he rose up and stood before her white, and with
a great agony in his dark eyes.
"I have been mad!" he muttered hoarsely. "Forgive me! I must go!"
She stood up by his side, pale, but with no fear or weakness in her
look. She, too, had begun to realize.
"Tell me one thing," she said softly. "You do--love me!"
"God knows I do!" he answered. The words came from his heart with a
nervous intensity which showed itself in his quivering lips, and the
vibration of his tone. She knew their truth as surely as though she had
seen them written in letters of fire, and that knowledge, or rather her
absolute confidence in it, made her in a measure bold. The dainty
exclusiveness which had half repelled, half attracted other men had
fallen away from her. She stood before him a loving tearful woman, with
something of that gentle shame which is twin sister to modesty burning
in her cheeks.
"Then I will not let you go," she said softly, taking both his hands in
hers, and holding him tightly. "Nothing shall come between us."
He looked into the love light which gleamed in her wet eyes, and
stooping down he took her again into his arms and kissed her.
"My darling!" he whispered passionately, "my darling! But you do not
know."
"Yes, I do," she answered, drawing him gently back to their old place.
"You mean about what Rachel Kynaston said that awful night, don't you?"
"More than that, alas!" he answered in a low tone. "Other people besides
Rachel Kynaston have had suspicions about me. I have been watched, and
while I was away, Falcon's Nest has been entered, and papers have been
taken away."
She was white with fear. This was Benjamin Levy's doing, and it was
through her. Ought she to tell him? She could not! She could not!
"But they do not--the papers, I mean--make it appear that----"
"Helen," he interrupted, with his face turned away from her, "it is best
that you should know the truth. Those papers reveal the story of a
bitter enmity between myself and Sir Geoffrey Kynaston. When you
consider that and the other things, you will see that I may at any
moment be arrested."
A spasm of pain passed across her face. At that moment her thoughts were
only concerned with his safety. The terrible suggestiveness of what he
had told her had very little real meaning for her then. Her one thought
was, could she buy those papers? If all her fortune could do it, it
should be given. Only let him never know, and let him be safe!
"Bernard," she whispered softly, "I am not afraid. It is very terrible,
but it cannot alter anything. Love cannot come and go at our bidding. It
is forever. Nothing can change that."
He stopped her lips with passionate kisses, and then he tried to tear
himself away. But she would not let him go. A touch of that complete
self-surrender which comes even to the proudest woman when she loves had
made her bold.
"Have I not told you, Bernard," she whispered, "that I will not let you
go?"
"Helen, you must," he said hoarsely. "Who knows but that to-morrow I may
stand in the dock, charged with that hideous crime?"
"If they will let me, I shall gladly stand by your side," she answered.
He turned away, and his shaking fingers hid his face from her.
"Oh, this is too much for a man to bear!" he moaned. "Helen, Helen,
there must be nothing of this between you and me."
"Nothing between you and me!" she repeated with a ring of gentle scorn
in her voice. "Bernard, do you know so little of women, after all? Do
you think that they can play at love in this give-and-take fashion?"
He did not answer. She stood up and passed one of her arms around his
neck, and with the other hand gently disengaged his fingers from before
his face.
"Bernard, dearest, look at me. All things can be changed by fashion or
expediency save a woman's love, and that is eternal. Don't think,
please, of any of these terrible things that may be in store for us, or
what other people would think or say. I want you to remember that love,
even though it be personal love, is far above all circumstance. No power
in this world can alter or change it. It belongs to that better part of
ourselves which lifts us above all misfortune and trouble. You have
given me a great happiness, Bernard, and you shall not take it away from
me. Whatever happens to you, it is my right to share it. Remember, for
the future, it is 'we,' not 'I.' You must not think of yourself alone in
anything, for I belong now to everything that concerns you."
And so it was that for the first time in his life Bernard Maddison, who
had written much concerning them, much that was both faithful and
beautiful, saw into the inner life of a true woman. Only for the man
whom she loves will she thus lift the curtain from before that sweet
depth of unselfishness which makes even the homeliest of her sex one of
the most beautiful of God's creations; and he, if he be in any way a man
of human sensibility and capacity, must feel something of that wondering
awe, that reverence with which Bernard Maddison drank in the meaning of
her words. The mute anxiety of her tearful gaze, the color which came
and fled from her face--he understood all these signs. They were to him
the physical, the material covering for her appeal. A life of grand
thoughts, of ever-climbing ideas, of pure and lofty aims, had revealed
to him nothing so noble and yet so sweetly human as this; had filled his
being with no such heart-shattering emotion as swept through him at that
moment. A woman's hand had lifted him out from his despair into a higher
state, and there was a great humility in the silent gesture with which
he yielded his will to hers.
And then again there were spoken words between them which no chronicles
should report, and a certain calm happiness took up its settled place in
his heart, defiant of that despair which could not be driven out. Then
came that reawakening to mundane things which seems like a very great
step indeed in such cases. She looked at the clock, and gave a little
start.
"Bernard, it is nearly eleven o'clock," she cried. "We must go into the
drawing-room at once. What will aunt think of us? You must come with me,
of course; but you'd better say good night now. There, that will do,
sir!"
She drew away and smoothed her ruffled hair back from her forehead,
looking ruefully in the glass at her tear-stained cheeks, and down at
the crushed violets in her corsage.
"May I have them?" he asked.
She drew them out and placed them in his hand.
"To-morrow----" she said.
"To-morrow I must go into the land of violets," he interrupted.
She turned round quickly.
"What do you mean? You are not going away without my permission, sir?"
"Then I must seek it," he answered, smiling. "You have given life such
an exquisite sweetness for me, that I am making plans already to
preserve it. My one hope lies in Italy."
"How long should you be away?" she asked anxiously.
"Not a week," he answered. "If I am permitted to leave England, which I
fear is doubtful, to-morrow, I can be back perhaps in five days."
"Then you may go, Bernard," she whispered. "Take this with you, and
think of me sometimes."
She had drawn out a photograph of herself from a folding case on the
mantelpiece, and he took it from her eagerly.
"Nothing in the world could be so precious to me," he said.
"For a novice you say some very nice things," she answered, laughing
softly. "And now you must go, sir. No, you needn't come into the
drawing-room; I really couldn't show myself with you. I'll make your
excuses to my aunt. Farewell--love!"
"Farewell--sweetheart!" he answered, hesitating for a moment over the
words which seemed so strange to him. Then, as though loth to leave him,
she walked down the hall by his side, and they looked out for a moment
into the square. A footman was standing prepared to open the door, but
Helen sent him away with a message to her maid.
"Do you know why I did that?" she asked, her clasp tightening upon his
arm.
He shook his head, and looked down at her fondly.
"I can't imagine, unless----"
She glanced half fearfully behind and then up into his face again, with
a faint blush stealing into her cheeks.
"I want one more kiss, please."
He looked into her soft trustful face, and he felt, with a sense almost
of awe, the preciousness of such a love as this, a love which,
comprehending the terrible period of anxiety through which he had to
pass, was not ashamed to seek to sweeten it for him by the simple charm
of such an offering. Then, at the sound of returning footsteps in the
hall, he let go her hands, and with her fond farewell still lingering in
his ears, he hurried out into the street.