PAUL DESFRAYNE’S CONFESSION.
Paul Desfrayne’s weakness did not last many minutes.
Rising to his feet, he strode backward and forward half a dozen times;
then, pausing, he leaned his folded arms on the back of the low, carved
chair into which he had at first thrown himself.
“You alarm me, Paul. I beseech you, tell me the worst at once,”
implored his mother.
“You may see with what an effort I try to approach the secret which,
for three long years, has been my curse by day and by night,” answered
Paul mournfully.
Mrs. Desfrayne threw out her hands with an involuntary gesture of fear
and amazement.
“For three years!” she repeated, as if incredulous.
“What do you imagine that secret to have been?” he demanded, gazing
steadfastly at her.
“Good heavens! how can I imagine when, until this moment, I did not
know you had any concealment from me at all?” exclaimed Mrs. Desfrayne.
Her accent was indicative half of despair, half of keen reproach.
“As you are aware, I have just received a most singular offer.”
“Your troubles, then, have some reference to Lois Turquand?”
“In a measure, yes. You would wish me, if I understood you aright, to
take advantage, as far as in me lay, of this offer?”
Mrs. Desfrayne hesitated, then cried, with vehemence:
“Why do you not speak plainly at once, instead of harassing me by these
hints and half-confidences?”
“Because I am afraid of the effect upon you; because I am afraid you
may never be able to forgive me.”
“For what offense?”
“For deceit and ingratitude toward the best and kindest of mothers.”
“It is impossible to comprehend you. I must only wait for some key to
your singular self-reproaches,” said Mrs. Desfrayne, with a profound
sigh.
“Three years ago I went for a holiday tour to Italy, when you were with
some friends at Wiesbaden.”
“I recollect perfectly well. I was disappointed because you would not
join us.”
“Would to Heaven I had yielded to your wishes!”
“From that time I have scarcely seen anything of you, Paul. You have
visited me by fits and starts, and have never stayed long.”
As she spoke, an idea darted into Mrs. Desfrayne’s mind.
“After traveling about in various parts of Italy, as I kept you
informed by my letters, I reached Florence.”
His lips trembled as he pronounced the name of the city which bore so
many painful memories for him.
“Go on, my dear.”
“I remained at Florence for several weeks. While there, I went every
night to the opera.”
“A very agreeable manner of spending your evenings,” said Mrs.
Desfrayne, with assumed carelessness.
“There was an excellent company, and the operas were admirably
selected; but I did not go for the sake of either performers or pieces:
I went, drawn thither as by a lodestone, because I was under some kind
of strange hallucination that I was in love with a young girl who had
just come out there. Perhaps I may have been in love with her. It was
folly--a madness!”
There was no sign of emotion on Mrs. Desfrayne’s face. She sat almost
immovable as a statue, her hands loosely clasped as they rested in her
lap, her wide-open, glowing eyes alone betraying the painful interest
she felt in her son’s words.
“For some days and nights I blindly worshiped this dazzling star from
a distance,” Paul continued, having vainly waited for some remark from
his mother. “At last I was introduced to her. She lived with some
elderly female relative, who accompanied her to the theater every
night. By degrees--very rapid degrees, for Italian girls are very
unlike their English sisters--she made me her confidant. She did
with me as she chose. For all I knew of her real nature, she might
as well have worn a waxen mask. Through the dishonesty of the man
who had trained her, she had been sold into a species of slavery to
the manager. Unaware of her own value, she had bound herself to this
fellow’s exclusive service for the term of ten years, at a salary which
the most subordinate performer would have refused with scorn.”
“Go on,” said his mother, on whom the truth began to force itself.
“Infatuated as I was, she easily interested me in her story, although I
had at that time no intentions of any kind beyond----”
“Beyond flirting with the girl?”
“I floated with the current. I was incapable of reasoning, as much so
as any one bereft of their natural senses. One night I was behind the
scenes; the house took fire. There was a fearful panic, and hundreds
were injured--many killed. This young girl clung to me, and somehow I
carried her out of the theater by the stage-door--I believe so, for I
remembered nothing from the time I caught her up in my arms until a
moment of amazed weakness, when I woke up to find myself lying in a
strange room, this girl sitting by me. I then learned that, as I rushed
out, bearing her in my arms, a blazing beam of timber had fallen, and
dangerously wounded me.”
An exclamation escaped Mrs. Desfrayne, and she half-rose from her seat.
“What am I to hear?” she cried, as if in anguish. “And you never told
me of this illness!”
“Let me finish, now that I have begun. I had been ill for weeks in
the old home on the outskirts of Florence, where this girl lived,
with her aged attendant or relative. Unhappily--most unhappily--they
both imagined I was an English milord. I believe that my servant had
deceived them by bragging of my wealth and importance.”
“How did he dare to permit you to remain in that place instead of
having you carried to your own lodgings?” demanded Mrs. Desfrayne.
“When I fell, the girl and I were put into some kind of vehicle,
and she took me to her own home. Her object was, I believe, to have
me under the immediate pressure of her influence. When Reynolds, my
servant, heard of what had occurred, he flew to my side; but the
physician who attended me would not, or could not, hear of my removal.
Reynolds, poor soul, was seized, a day or two after, with a fever, from
which he did not recover for months.”
“I see now the drift of your history,” said Mrs. Desfrayne, in a tone
which showed that she was wounded to the depths of her heart. “It
is the hackneyed story of the young man who falls ill marrying the
handsome young woman who nurses him.”
Captain Desfrayne turned aside, and took a hasty stride to and fro;
then he returned, resuming his position.
“She was, or pretended to be, full of joy and gratitude on my recovery.
During the days of my convalescence, she spoke to me fully of her
state of bondage, her anger at the injustice done her, her desire
for liberty, and affected to make no secret of what she averred was
desperate love for myself. My sympathies were enlisted for her; my
vanity was aroused in her favor. I at length----”
“Asked her to marry you?” laughed his mother.
“No. Her agreement with the manager bound her for ten years, under a
heavy penalty. I desired that she should leave the stage, although
I felt it would be next to an impossibility to marry this girl. I
remembered your strong prejudices against stage-performers----”
“Ah! You did think of me once.”
“I rarely forgot you in my most insane moments. I thought of my
position, of the traditions of my family. I would have freed her if I
could, and then fled her presence; for I felt it would be impossible to
make this girl your daughter, though her name was stainless, and she
was superbly beautiful, and gifted with talents of a certain kind. But
I could not rescue her by money from the clutches of the old wolf who
had laid a claw upon her. It would have needed thousands, and I should
perhaps have left myself penniless, and--and looking very like a fool,”
Paul added, with a cynical laugh.
“You married the girl, then?” said Mrs. Desfrayne eagerly, anxious to
ascertain the exact position of her son, and desirous of hurrying him
to an immediate acknowledgment.
“I offered to assist her in taking flight to Paris. At least, I
believed the suggestion was mine, but later I recollected that the
entire plan was arranged by herself, under advice of the old woman who
attended her. She was restless and impatient until we had completed
every preparation to leave Florence forever, as she intended. I cannot
realize how it came about that I was like a puppet in her hands.”
Mrs. Desfrayne shrugged her shoulders with a kind of disdainful
compassion.
“We started late on a Friday, the opera being closed on that night, and
arrived safely at the frontier. Then we suddenly discovered that the
old woman had not been provided with a passport. The girl whom I had
undertaken to assist wept and sobbed with terror.”
“A preconcerted affair, my poor Paul.”
“No doubt. We agreed that there was nothing to be done but to leave
the old attendant behind with money and instructions to follow as
early as she possibly could, and then to pursue our journey. For more
than a week we continued our flight. It seemed to me then more like
a strange, fascinating dream, than an incident of my real every-day
life. I fell more and more under the spell of this beautiful siren’s
beauty and insidious charm of manner, and by the time we reached Paris
I had completely lost my senses. About three days after we reached
our destination, I made her my wife; we were married at the British
embassy.”
Paul’s mother clasped her hands with a cry. The point at which she
had desired to arrive even now electrified her. She could not have
explained her own feelings at that moment. Her brain seemed in a whirl
from the shock. The story gave her the idea that it was like one of
those fantastical dreams, where all the personages who appear perform
the most improbable tricks, and everybody apparently does the most
unlikely acts.
“May I inquire the name of this amiable young person?” she asked, and
her own voice struck her as being strange.
“It is already known to you,” answered Paul, in hollow tones. “But I
will mention it when I have finished my narration. We were married. The
ceremony over, we returned to the hotel where I had placed her, and
where I had likewise taken up my abode. Within an hour after this fatal
bond had been tied, an accidental observation on my part revealed to
her the fact that I was _not_ the rich and titled man she had supposed
me to be. I had asked her to relinquish the stage as a profession, and
she laughingly answered that as the wife of a great English milord it
would be impossible for her to continue the career to which she had
meant to devote her life. I was confounded at the mistake into which
she had so unhappily fallen, and endeavored to explain my real position
to her.”
Mrs. Desfrayne tapped her foot on the carpet with such violence that
Paul stopped.
“Go on--go on--go on!” she exclaimed.
“This girl, whom I up to that moment had had the fatuity to imagine
loved me for myself alone, went on in an ecstasy dilating on the future
splendors of her lot. I at length succeeded in inducing her to listen
to me. Then I laid before her the realities of my position, my limited
income, the quietude of the life she would be obliged to lead. I spoke
of you----”
“How dared you speak of me to a person like that?” furiously asked Mrs.
Desfrayne.
“I--well, enough. If blamelessness of life, an unspotted name, could
have atoned for other sins, even you, mother, must have granted her
absolution. Enough. She was compelled to believe that she had made a
most fearful mistake--she was like a tiger who---- My mother, it had
been well for us--for many others--if that revelation could have come
an hour before, instead of an hour after, our ill-starred union. The
scene I never can forget. Sometimes in the dead hours of the night I am
startled awake by the fancy that I am again going through it. I wonder,
after the successive shocks of those few weeks, that I now live to give
you the miserable recital.”
Again he paced to and fro, as if in almost uncontrollable emotion. This
time, on again pausing, he sank into the chair as if almost exhausted.
His mother made no sign. The bitterness of her anger and disappointment
exceeded, if that were possible, his darkest forebodings.
She continued to tap her foot on the carpet, and her jeweled fingers
twined and twisted in one another as if they must snap. This time she
addressed no inquiry to him, but sat a silent image of despair and
mortified anger.
“Let me make an end of my story as quickly as I can,” Paul said, in
subdued tones. He heartily wished now he had let it still remain untold
until such a time as he might be driven to confess it. “La Lucia, after
storming and raging, registered a mighty oath never to see my face
again if she could help herself, never to carry into effect the vows
she had made at the altar--to hold herself free as if she had never
seen me. I can hardly tell you what she said. She ironically thanked me
for having helped her to escape from one kind of slavery, though she
found herself trammeled in another, and for my care of her during the
journey, and for the consideration and delicate courtesy I had shown
her in her unprotected state, and then swept out of the room. The next
thing I heard of my lady wife was that she had carried herself and all
her belongings off from the hotel. I never heard of her again until
Europe was ringing with her name and fame.”
“Her name?” repeated Mrs. Desfrayne mechanically.
“The name I had first known her under.”
“And that was?”
“Lucia Guiscardini.”
Mrs. Desfrayne sprang from her seat, and began pacing to and fro in her
turn.
“Oh! it is too much--too much!” she cried. “Ungrateful, wicked,
unloving son, is it thus you have returned the deep, unwearying
affection I have ever cherished for you?”
“The most bitter reproaches you can level at me can never equal in
intensity those which I have heaped on my own head,” Paul replied.
“You must have been mad to let yourself be entrapped in this way,” Mrs.
Desfrayne went on. “I can scarcely believe it is true. You are, then,
really bound to this--this singing woman who cares nothing for you, who
seems to disdain you and all belonging to you. Oh! it is incredible.
And what about Miss Turquand?”
“I know not,” answered Paul wearily. “I wish to Heaven I had never seen
or heard of the eccentric old fogy who chose to imagine himself under
some debt of gratitude to me, for then----”
“Folly!” angrily interrupted his mother. “Better wish you had never
seen this woman who owns you--or that you had not been so----”
She shrugged her shoulders with an expression indescribable.
There was a brief pause.
“It would be as ridiculous as it would be undignified on my part to
display any resentment against you,” Mrs. Desfrayne resumed. “Of
course, you had a right to please yourself: though married in haste,
you are repenting at leisure. But what are you going to do?”
“In what way?”
“Good heavens! so long as that woman lives, there is not a ray of
happiness for you.”
“I know it. It is a heavy penalty to pay for those few weeks of
forgetfulness, of lunacy, of fever; but hardly so heavy to bear as
the loss of the love and esteem of the only woman in the world I ever
loved, or am likely to love.”
“Whom are you talking about?” hastily demanded Mrs. Desfrayne, a new
spasm of jealousy seizing her heart.
But Paul would not answer.
He rested his arms on the back of the chair, and laid his head on the
support thus made. This attitude brought vividly back to his mother’s
mind the days of his childhood and youth, when he had been all her
own. How often had she seen him thus, when he had been guilty of some
youthful fault or folly, and was penitent, yet half-afraid he should
not easily find pardon!
Mrs. Desfrayne’s heart was irresistibly drawn toward her boy. With a
soft, gentle touch, she laid one of her white, jeweled hands on his
head.
“Do you speak of me?” she asked. “Ah! Paul, it is ten thousand pities
that, having committed this fatal mistake, you did not confide in me
before. What a miserable future is before you; but you must not give
way. It must be borne. I do not reproach you. Nay, I will give you such
comfort as I can.”
Paul caught her hands, and covered them with kisses.
“Would that I had--would that I had told you, mother!” he cried,
looking up into her face with his open, candid eyes, from which some of
the black care had melted. “That terrible secret has stood between me
and you like some malignant black specter.”
“I dimly felt its presence now and again,” said his mother, “though I
could not believe it possible you could deceive me. But tell me, what
do you mean to do?”
“Nothing. What can I do?”
“True.”
“As for this young lady, why, I am sorry she will be driven to think
ill of me; but any explanation would be clearly impossible. She will
have a handsome fortune in any case, and probably marry some one
infinitely more to her taste than I should be. In two or three days
my leave of absence expires, and I go to rejoin my regiment near
Gloucester.”
“I no sooner see you again than you are snatched away. It is hard,
Paul.”
“Just at this juncture perhaps it will be better for me to be out of
your way. You will think more kindly of your absent son and his faults
and follies than you might of----”
“Come. Let us put away that painful subject, and not recur to it unless
necessary. Of course, it is of no earthly use your giving another
thought to this Miss Turquand.”
“I think it would be as well to confide my exact position to the lawyer
who drew up the will, and who introduced me to the young lady yesterday
evening--Amberley. I think I mentioned his name to you. He might be
able to give me a dispassionate word of advice.”
Mrs. Desfrayne considered.
“You see, my dearest mother, he would be able to look at the matter
from a mere business point of view, as he has no interest in the
affair.”
“Perhaps,” Mrs. Desfrayne slowly said, “it might be as well to consult
him. I think I have met him at Lady Quaintree’s. Yes, it would perhaps
be best to speak to him about your most unhappy position.”
Captain Desfrayne rose, and went over to his mother’s little
writing-table. As if afraid to trust to his continuance of purpose, he
sat down and wrote a few lines to Frank Amberley, asking him to make an
appointment, as he desired to consult him on a matter of importance.
He showed the note to his mother, enclosed it then in an envelope,
addressed and stamped it, leaving it on the desk ready for the post.
The ordeal he had so dreaded had been passed through. The terrible
secret had been revealed. Now he wished he had spoken of it long ago.
“You are going to Gloucester? When?”
“On Wednesday. The regiment is stationed at Holston, some miles from
Gloucester.”
“Holston? Why, is not that near the place where Flore Hall is situated?”
“Yes. I look forward to going over the old house once more as one of
the few pleasures in store for me down there. I feel thankful to get
away now.”
Neither Captain Desfrayne nor his mother knew that the old Hall in
which he had spent so many days of his childhood had been left to Lois
Turquand by her dead benefactor.
The storm had passed, leaving but little trace behind.
Mrs. Desfrayne easily persuaded her son to remain for the rest of the
evening with her.
On Wednesday Captain Desfrayne was to go to Gloucester.
On Monday he was to visit Madam Guiscardini, according to the
appointment made in the gardens, though it seemed worse than useless to
renew the pain and distress he had suffered that day.
His mother was passionately averse to his seeing the woman who had so
fatally entrapped him.
“Nay, mother; it will be best to ascertain clearly how we are to spend
our future lives,” Paul said. “We must come to a clear understanding
some way.”
On reaching home, he found a letter from Frank Amberley, dated that
morning, before his own had been written, asking if it would be
convenient for him to attend on Tuesday a meeting of the partners
of the firm, to go more fully into the details of business having
reference to Miss Turquand’s affairs.
Paul Desfrayne saw it would not be so easy to shrink from his duties
as sole trustee and executor to the beautiful Lois as he had hoped it
might be.
As he drifted into a broken, uneasy slumber that night, his last
thoughts turned upon Lois, sincerely trusting it might not be necessary
for the young girl to attend the meeting.
Why should he have this fear--this undercurrent of aversion to
encountering his beautiful charge?
He had seen her only twice. He persuaded himself she was cold and
beautiful as an antique statue. He argued to himself that a world-worn,
half-weary man of thirty could scarcely be acceptable to a young girl
of eighteen. He chose to feel certain that being dictated to in her
choice must of itself suffice to render him unwelcome.
And yet he shrank with vague terror at the chance of being again
exposed to the danger of being obliged to look into those soft,
crystal-bright eyes, of glancing even for a moment into those
untroubled depths, where lay mirrored the most perfect purity, loyalty,
and truth.