'Since thou art not as these are, go thy ways;
Thou hast no part in all my nights and days.
Lie still--sleep on--be glad. As such things be
Thou couldst not watch with me."
Luncheon has gone off very pleasantly. Joyce, persuaded by Lady
Baltimore, had gone down to it, feeling a little shy, and conscious of a
growing headache. But everybody had been charming to her, and Baltimore,
in especial, had been very careful in his manner of treating her, saying
little nice things to her, and insisting on her sitting next to him, a
seat hitherto Lady Swansdown's own.
The latter had taken this so perfectly, that one might be pardoned for
thinking it had been arranged beforehand between her and her host. At
all events Lady Swansdown was very sympathetic, and indeed everybody
seemed bent on treating her as a heroine of the highest order.
Joyce herself felt dull--nerveless. Words did not seem to come easily to
her. She was tired, she thought, and of course she was, having spent a
sleepless night. One little matter gave her cause for thankfulness.
Dysart was absent from luncheon. He had gone on a long walking
expedition, Lady Baltimore said, that would prevent his returning home
until dinner hour--until quite 8 o'clock. Joyce told herself she was
glad of this--though why she did not tell herself. At all events the
news left her very silent.
But her silence was not noticed. It could not be, indeed, so great and
so animated was the flow of Beauclerk's eloquence. Without addressing
anybody in particular, he seemed to address everybody. He kept the whole
table alive. He treated yesterday's adventure as a tremendously amusing
affair, and invited everyone to look upon it as he did. He insisted on
describing Miss Kavanagh and himself in the same light as he had
described them earlier to his sister, as the modern Babes in the Wood,
Mrs. Connolly being the Robin. He made several of the people who had
dropped in to luncheon roar with laughter over his description of that
excellent inn keeper. Her sayings--her appearance--her stern notions of
morality that induced her to bring them home, "personally
conducted"--the size of her waist--and her heart--and many other things.
He was extremely funny. The fact that his sister smiled only when she
felt she must to avoid comment, and that his host refused to smile at
all, and that Miss Kavanagh was evidently on thorns all the time did not
for an instant damp his overflowing spirits.
* * * * *
It is now seven, o'clock; Miss Kavanagh, on her way upstairs to dress
for dinner, suddenly remembering that there is a book in the library,
left by her early in the afternoon on the central table, turns aside to
fetch it.
She forgets, however, what she has come for when, having entered the
room, she sees Dysart standing before the fire, staring apparently at
nothing. To her chagrin, she is conscious that the unmistakable start
she had made on seeing him is known to him.
"I didn't know you had returned," says she awkwardly, yet made a
courageous effort to appear as natural as usual.
"No? I knew you had returned," says he slowly.
"It is very late to say good-morning," says she with a poor little
attempt at a laugh, but still advancing toward him and holding out her
hand.
"Too late!" replied he, ignoring the hand. Joyce, as if struck by some
cruel blow, draws back a step or two.
"You are not tired, I hope?" asks Dysart courteously.
"Oh, no." She feels stifled; choked. A desire to get to the door, and
escape--lose sight of him forever--is the one strong longing that
possesses her; but to move requires strength, and she feels that her
limbs are trembling beneath her.
"It was a long drive, however. And the storm was severe. I fear you must
have suffered in some way."
"I have not suffered," says she, in a dull, emotionless way. Indeed, she
hardly knows what she says, a repetition of his own words seems the
easiest thing to bar, so she adopts it.
"No?"
There is a considerable pause, and then----
"No! It is true! It is I only who have suffered," says Dysart with an
uncontrollable abandonment to the misery that is destroying him. "I
alone."
"You mean something," says Joyce. It is by a terrible effort that she
speaks. She feels thoroughly unnerved--unstrung. Conscious that the
nervous shaking of her hands will betray her, she clasps them behind her
tightly. "You meant something just now when you refused to take my hand.
But what? What?"
"You said it was too late," replies he. "And I--agreed with you."
"That was not it!" says she feverishly. "There was more--much more! Tell
me"--passionately--"what you meant. Why would you not touch me? What am
I to understand----"
"That from henceforth you are free from the persecution of my love,"
says Dysart deliberately. "I was mad ever to hope that you could care
for me--still--I did hope. That has been my undoing. But now----"
"Well?" demands she faintly. Her whole being seems stunned. Something of
all this she had anticipated, but the reality is far worse than any
anticipation had been. She had seen him in her thoughts, angry,
indignant, miserable, but that he should thus coldly set her aside--bid
her an everlasting adieu--be able to make up his mind deliberately to
forget her--this--had never occurred to her as being even probable.
"Now you are to understand that the idiotic farce played between us two
the day before yesterday is at an end? The curtain is down. It is over.
It was a failure--neither you, nor I, nor the public will ever hear of
it again."
"Is this--because I did not come home last evening in the rain and
storm?" Some small spark of courage has come back to her now. She lifts
her head and looks at him.
"Oh! be honest with me here, in our last hour together," cries he
vehemently. "You have cheated me all through--be true to yourself for
once. Why pretend it is my fault that we part? Yesterday I implored you
not to go for that drive with him, and yet--you went. What was I--or my
love for you in comparison with a few hours' drive with that lying
scoundrel?"
"It was only the drive I thought of," says she piteously. "I--there was
nothing else, indeed. And you; if"--raising her hand to her throat as if
suffocating--"if you had not spoken so roughly--so----"
"Pshaw!" says Dysart, turning from her as if disgusted. To him, in his
present furious mood, her grief, her fear, her shrinkings, are all so
many movements in the game of coquette, at which she is a past mistress.
"Will you think me a fool to the end?" says he. "See here," turning his
angry eyes to hers. "I don't care what you say, I know you now. Too
late, indeed--but still I know you! To the very core of your heart you
are one mass of deceit."
A little spasm crosses her face. She leans back heavily against the
table behind her. "Oh, no, no," she says in a voice so low as to be
almost unheard.
"You will deny, of course," says he mercilessly. "You would even have me
believe that you regret the past--but you, and such as you never regret.
Man is your prey! So many scalps to your belt is all you think about.
Why," with an accent of passion, "what am I to you? Just the filling up
of so many hours' amusement--no more! Do you think all my eloquence
would have any chance against one of his cursed words? I might kneel at
your feet from morning until night, and still I should be to you a thing
of naught in comparison with him."
She holds out her hands to him in a little dumb fashion. Her tongue
seems frozen. But he repulses this last attempt at reconciliation.
"It is no good. None! I have no belief in you left, so you can no longer
cajole me. I know that I am nothing to you. Nothing! If," drawing a deep
breath through his closed teeth, "if a thousand years were to go by I
should still be nothing to you if he were near. I give it up. The battle
was too strong for me. I am defeated, lost, ruined."
"You have so arranged it," says she in a low tone, singularly clear. The
violence of his agitation had subdued hers, and rendered her
comparatively calm.
"You must permit me to contradict you. The arrangement is all your own."
"Was it so great a crime to stay last night at Falling?" "There is no
crime anywhere. That you should have made a decision between two men is
not a crime."
"No! I acknowledge I made a decision--but----"
"When did you make it?"
"Last evening--and though you----"
"Oh! no excuses," says he with a frown. "Do you think I desire them?"
He hesitates for a minute or so, and now turns to her abruptly. "Are you
engaged to him finally?"
"No."
"No!" In accents suggestive of surprise so intense as to almost enlarge
into disbelief. "You refused him then?"
"No," says she again. Her heart seems to die within her. Oh, the sense
of shame that overpowers her. A sudden wild, terrible hatred of
Beauclerk takes her into possession. Why, why, had he not given her the
choice of saying yes, instead of no, to that last searching question?
"You mean--that he----" He stops dead short as if not knowing how to
proceed. Then, suddenly, his wrath breaks forth. "And for that
scoundrel, that fellow without a heart, you have sacrificed the best of
you--your own heart! For him, whose word is as light as his oath, you
have flung behind you a love that would have surrounded you to your
dying day. Good heavens! What are women made of? But----" He sobers
himself at once, as if smitten by some sharp remembrance, and, pale with
shame and remorse, looks at her. "Of course," says he, "it is only one
heartbroken, as I am, who would have dared thus to address you. And it
is plain to me now that there are reasons why he should not have spoken
before this. For one thing, you were alone with him; for another, you
are tired, exhausted. No doubt to-morrow he----"
"How dare you?" says she in a voice that startles him, a very low voice,
but vibrating with outraged pride. "How dare you thus insult me? You
seem to think--to think--that because--last night--he and I were kept
from our home by the storm----" She pauses; that old, first odd
sensation of choking now again oppresses her. She lays her hand upon the
back of a chair near her, and presses heavily upon it. "You think I have
disgraced myself," says she, the words coming in a little gasp from her
parched lips. "That is why you speak of things being at an end between
us. Oh----"
"You wrong me there," says the young man, who has grown ghastly.
"Whatever I may have said, I----"
"You meant it!" says she. She draws herself up to the full height of her
young, slender figure, and, turning abruptly, moves toward the door. As
she reaches it, she looks back at him. "You are a coward!" she says, in
a low, distinct tone alive with scorn. "A coward!"