DUO
At some distance from the village street he dismissed the vehicle which
had brought him from Verneuil, a rickety affair drawn by an emaciated
horse, and suitcase in hand strode up the hill toward the house of
Madame Guégou, the garden wall of which was visible beyond the
flowering orchard. The air was laden with odors, sweet with the smell
of the fruit blossoms and early shrubs. In the meadow to the left some
goats were grazing and, as he passed, the wether raised his head and
examined him incuriously, its bell clanking solemnly. The sun was
already beyond the profile of the forest; beyond the sleepy village and
against the warm sky thin threads of purple smoke ascended in
perpendicular lines and then drifted lazily down to the mist of the
valley below. Nature breathed slowly, deeply, as though aware that its
state was not a matter of days or even of years, but of an eternity,
during which its evolution must not be hurried.
After the turmoil of steamer and railroad this silence was oppressive.
Minute sounds came to Markham across the distances, the bark of a dog,
the lowing of cattle, a shutter closing, human voices near and far,
each one distinct, but each mellowed and softened as though strained
through a silver mesh. He missed the shudder of the steamer, the
rattle of the train, the jolting even of the station wagon from which
he had just descended; for they were all a part of the fever of his
voyage made in such mad haste, sounds which had soothed and given him
patience, their very turbulence assuring him that he was losing no time
upon the way. And now that he had reached his destination, a violent
reaction had set in. He was still moving forward toward the house with
the walled garden, but a fear obsessed him that perhaps after all there
had been a mistake. What if, after all, Hermia were not here? His
suitcase gained in weight and he perspired gently. Why hadn't he
cabled her at the first moment of his decision to sail or why hadn't he
relayed his wireless across when the opportunity had offered? All his
hopes seemed to be slipping from his finger ends. Was this Vagabondia?
It seemed different somehow. He was aware of his neatly creased
trousers, his bowler hat, his gloves, and the leather bag which reeked
of sophistication. He was an anachronism, or Vallécy was. They were
not attune. He and Vallécy clashed discordantly.
Timorously, almost upon tiptoe, he reached the village street. A dog
emerged from a field, sniffed at the crease of his trousers
suspiciously and growled. At this moment Markham desired anything but
commotion, so he chirped to the animal and stroke on, his head bent,
his gaze on the portal of the _ancien_, which, as he noted, was
forbiddingly closed. He paused a moment, eyeing the cur which stopped
when he stopped, still regarding him uncertainly. And then summoning
his courage he went to the door and knocked. This noise, which sounded
faintly enough to Markham, seemed to be the demonstration of hostility
the dog was waiting for, and it began barking furiously, snapping
almost at Markham's immaculate heels, a signal which was taken up
immediately, near and far, by every cur in the village. Curious heads
were poked out of windows, and at last after a few moments his door was
opened just wide enough for the head of his former hostess to inspect
him.
"Madame Guégou," he began uncertainly and then paused.
The door opened a trifle wider.
"It is I," she remarked, her gaze on the suitcase. "I can buy nothing,
Monsieur."
He laughed uneasily.
"You do not remember me, Madame?" he asked.
She relinquished the door-knob and emerged, inspecting his clothing.
"You are from Paris, of course. Last year perhaps, you came--"
"I did--last summer, Madame. I am Philidor--the artist."
"You! Monsieur! _You_ Philidor!" She leaned forward upon the step,
her eyes searching his face. "Philidor was not such as you. He wore a
beard and--" She suddenly caught him by the shoulder and turned him
toward the sunset. "I might think--and yet--"
"I am Philidor," he repeated, laughing. "I came in search of--of
Yvonne."
"You--are he! It is true. The saints be praised!" She threw the door
inside open and called: "Jules! Jules! He is come. Monsieur
Philidor is here!"
The _ancien_ limped forward from the inner darkness, showing his gums.
"I knew it," he cried triumphantly. "Did I not say that he would
return?"
Markham took the bony fingers, his anxious gaze going past them toward
the glow of the kitchen.
"And Yvonne?" he asked feverishly. "She is within?"
"She is here, yes, she is here--waiting for you."
He dropped his valise and strode past them eagerly. A pot simmered
upon the fire, the table gave evidence of a recent repast, and a pile
of dishes nearby stood mutely in evidence, but of Hermia there was no
sign.
"_Tiens_!" Madame Guégou was muttering. "She was here but a moment
ago. In the garden, perhaps--"
He dashed out of the rear door and down the graveled walk.
"Hermia!" he called, and then again, "Hermia!"
He reached the arbor just in time to see her speed across the lower end
of the meadow and vanish into the trees. Hatless he leaped the low
wall and followed, joy giving him wings, while the old couple
wonderingly watched from the doorway. They were mad, these two. She
had been waiting for him a month and now--she fled. Mad? But what was
love but madness?
Markham sprang into the cover of the trees where he had seen her
disappear and followed the path up the hill breathlessly. She would
escape him now, even, when she had sent for him and he had come to
her! She could not go far. The cover was thin. He would have called
again, but he spared his breath, for he knew that she would not reply.
He reached the end of the path and scanned the hill beyond. She could
not have gone that way. He turned and plunged among the pine trees to
his right where the woods were thicker. It was getting darker, but he
saw her white skirt, gray in the shadows--saw it--lost it and found it
again in the deep wood. He sprang forward over fallen trees, through
brambles, over rocks, down the slope to the streamside and caught her
behind a tree where she had hidden away from him.
"Hermia!" he cried. "Hermia, you witch! What a dance you've led me!
But I have you now--I have you--"
And so he had--in both of his arms, his lips seeking hers. But she
denied him.
"Did you think you could escape me--again?" he laughed, "when I've come
half across the world for you?"
"You--you frightened me," she gasped.
"How did I frighten you?"
"I did--didn't expect you--"
"You sent for me?"
"I--I thought you would have cabled--"
He laughed joyously.
"Cabled the hour of my arrival, and found you--missing! I know you
now, you see. I took no chances. As it is, you tried to get away--"
"I didn't get far--"
"That wasn't your fault. You tried. Why did you run?"
She was silent, her head still hidden. He repeated the question.
"I--I don't know."
"Do I frighten you now?"
"Not so much."
He held her more closely in his arms, and kissed the crown of her head,
which was the only object offered.
"I know," he whispered, "because you had given me everything except
yourself--and you knew that I would take that."
"No, no."
"What, then?"
Silence.
"I had feared--" she paused.
"What had you feared?"
"That you might not come. You didn't reply--"
"This is my reply."
He raised her lips slowly to his own and took them. Her eyes were
closed as though she feared to open them, and show him the dawn of her
womanhood. But in a moment her figure relaxed in his arms and her head
sank upon his shoulder in token of surrender.
"Mad little Hermia!" he whispered.
"Mad no longer," she sighed.
"You must prove it. I'll not let you go until I'm sure you won't go
flying from me again."
"I don't want you to let me go. I want you to hold me tight. It
is--rest. I'm tired of going. I want to stay--here."
"You love me?"
This time she opened her eyes wide and let him see that what she said
was true. She had outgrown her adolescence--her madness, unless it
could be called madness to love as she did. Her eyes were deep wells
of mystery, in which he saw, as from the distant brink above, his own
image, clear amid the shadows. There were signs of trouble in them,
too, as though she had thought long and distressfully, but greater than
the marks of pain were the sweeter tokens of a love and trust
unalterable.
She sank upon a rock, he beside her, her head on his breast. The dusk
fell swiftly, its shadows enfolding them. He kissed her again and
again, her lips trembled upon his as she murmured the words so long
unspoken.
"Philidor, I love you--I love you. It was so long--the waiting."
"You needn't have waited, dear," he said gently.
"Oh, don't reproach me! I can't bear it. It had to be. Olga--she
smirched us--your love and mine--made--"
He stopped her lips with kisses, smiling inwardly and thinking of the
wisdom of Mrs. Hammond.
"There is no Olga--" he murmured, "no gossip but the whisper of the
stream which knows the truth."
"Yes--the truth. That is all that matters, isn't it? But that
play--shall I ever forget it?"
"Sh--child. You must forget. A lie never lives."
"I will forget. I don't care--now. Let them say what they choose.
But I _did_ suffer, Philidor."
"And I. You were cruel, dear."
"I had to be cruel. I feared that you--that I--"
She paused and he questioned gravely.
"I feared that you, too, might have misjudged me--there in the woods at
Sées--that I had cheapened myself to you--that I had been unwomanly."
"Hermia!"
"I don't know what possessed me after Olga appeared. She poisoned the
very air with doubt. I was desperate. I didn't seem to care what
happened. I don't know what I wanted. I think if you had taken me
then and held me--as you do now--held me close to you and had not let
me go, as you did, you might have had me to do as you willed. But you
relinquished me--"
"I had to, dear."
"Yes, I understand now. I couldn't then. I wanted to hurt you--as I
was hurt. Your sanity made me desperate. I couldn't understand why
you should be so sane while I was not. You were greater than I--and
though I loved you for it (O Philidor, how I loved you!) I meant that
you should pay for my heart-throbs--that you should pay for Olga--for
everything."
"I have paid."
"Forgive me. I suffered doubly in knowing that you suffered. I fled
from you and hid my heart as a miser would buy his treasure. But your
letters, forwarded from Paris, followed me. O Philidor! I did not
read them--not at first. I saw Olga telling that story at the dinner
table and my pride revolted. I put them away--unopened, and kept them
concealed--from others, from myself and tried to forget them. I
couldn't. They were you. I would take them out and look at them. I
slept with them under my pillow. At last I could stand it no longer.
I took them and disappeared for a whole day from the rest of my party.
I read them alone on the summit of a mountain." She broke off with a
sigh. "Ah me! If you had come to me there you would not need to have
pleaded, Philidor."
"My Hermia!"
"You were with me that day. Didn't you know it?"
"I was with you every day, child."
She smiled happily.
"When I got down to Evian at nightfall they were searching for me.
They thought that I had fallen and been killed. They reproved me. I
was calm and smiling, my spirit still soaring to you across the
distances. I had made up my mind to go to you the next day."
"Oh, if you had--!"
"In the morning," she went on, "came your letter telling me that you
were sailing for New York. It wasn't like the other letters. You were
reproachful and you were going away from me. It chilled me a
little--after the day before. Olga's face interposed--again. And so I
let you go. You see I'm telling you everything."
"Go on, dear."
"I got no more of your letters for a time--for a long time--"
"I wrote you--"
"Yes--from New York. There was some mistake. I didn't get those
letters until long after--until I reached New York--until after I had
seen you. Meanwhile, I feared--that you had cooled--that Olga had done
something to change you--"
"Not that--"
"I feared her. I knew then that she was capable of anything. I heard
that she was again in New York and sensed that you must have seen her--"
"I did see her," he put in grimly.
"I didn't know what had happened. I made up my mind to ignore her--to
ignore _you_--to forget you and to make you forget, if I could, what
had happened."
"That was impossible."
"I knew it, but I tried. O my dear, if you had known my pains at
making you suffer! It was hard. But I did it. When you came to the
house--"
"Don't speak of that," he muttered. "It was not Hermia that I saw."
"Not _this_ Hermia. It was a girl that even _I_ did not know. I had
rehearsed that conversation and I carried it through to the end."
"The end--of all things, it seemed."
She drew more closely into the shelter of his arms and drew his lips
down to hers.
"Yes--but we shall make a new beginning----And then," she went on,
after a moment, "I saw Olga and cut her. I hadn't meant to--but I
couldn't help it. The sight of her turned me to ice. And Pierre de
Folligny--" She stopped again, her brows tangling. "That man! He
remembered me. He presumed. He was odious. I had the butler show him
the door. I--I wasn't very wise, I think. But I couldn't,
Philidor,--I simply _couldn't_ temporize with a man of his caliber."
"D--n him!" said Markham.
"He told--I think--of Olga did--"
"It was De Folligny," he groaned. "But I couldn't do anything. That
would have made things worse."
"Oh, yes--and then the play--that dreadful play! That was Olga's
doing. I was _there_, Philidor, at Rood's Knoll. I saw it all.
Listened in terror to every word of the dreadful sacrilege. It _was_
sacrilege!--to see my love and yours pictured the dreadful thing that
that love was. I got out somehow. They were talking of me--lightly.
I heard them; as they talked of--of other women who do not know right
from wrong--as they would have talked of that dreadful Frenchwoman
who--who was killed."
She was sobbing gently on his shoulder, her slender body quivering and
drawing closer. "Oh, I have paid--paid in full for my fault--"
He soothed her, but she started back, holding him at arm's length, her
eyes the more lovely through their tears, "But I regret nothing. I
would suffer more, if I might, to know what I know. I have learned the
meaning of life, Philidor. I bless my pain for the new meaning it has
given my joy. I bless _your_ pain even, dear, for the new meaning it
has given your unselfishness. You thought only of me, of my happiness
when I had paid you only misery."
"There shall be no more pain," he murmured. "There is no room for it.
Joy shall crowd it out."
"Will you forgive me?" she asked.
"I'll try," he smiled. "Will you promise never to run away from me
again?
"Where should I run?"
He meditated a moment and then said with a smile:
"To Trevelyan M--"
But she put her fingers over his lips before he could finish.
"Don't Philidor. Wherever I went, I should not go to Trevvy." She
laughed. "He cast me off, you know."
"Cast _you_ off?"
She nodded. "He heard that story at Rood's Knoll after I had gone.
The next day he came to my house in town. I saw him. He wore a
woe-begone expression and silently presented a clipping from a paper."
She laughed again. "He looked like a virtuous undertaker presenting a
bill, long overdue, for the interment of some lightly mourned relative.
He asked me if the story were true. I said it was--and he went out of
the house--casting not even one longing, lingering look behind!"
"But it _wasn't_ true."
"That's just the point--but he thought so. Would _you_ have believed
me that kind of a girl? You could have, you know, and didn't." She
sighed happily, and sank back into his arms. "I think I don't want
people to be _too_ excellent, Philidor. Just human--"
"Were you"--he hesitated a moment--"were you engaged to him, Hermia?"
She gazed at him wide-eyed.
"Never," she asserted, and then repeated, "Never, never, never!"
"But the newspapers--"
"O Philidor! How could I have been engaged to Trevvy when I--I was
already engaged to you?"
"Engaged."
"Yes, promised. After the forest at Sées I knew it then. I could
never have loved anyone else. Why, Philidor, you held me like this,
and kissed me--"
"You loved me then--and before--?"
She hesitated demurely.
"Yes--before."
"Before, Alençon?"
"Y--yes."
"Before Verneuil?"
She smiled and nodded.
"Here--at Vallécy?"
"Before that."
"You adorable child! Passy?"
"Yes?"
He was now really astounded. What she added astounded him still more.
"I think it began before 'Wake Robin'?"
"Thimble Island?"
She stammered. "I--I think it really began in your studio."
"In New York?"
"You interested me--and you snubbed me so completely. You were so
impolite, John Markham. I was curious about you. You were like no man
I had ever met. You told me the truth. I didn't like it, but I
respected you for telling it. When I went away I remember wanting to
see you again. AT Thimble Island--"
"Yes?"
She hid her face in his breast and the words came slowly.
"My visit to--to Thimble Island--I--I knew you were there. My m--motor
_didn't_ miss fire, Philidor?"
He raised her head and made her look at him. Even in the wan light her
face was rosy with her confession. But she laughed joyously.
"I wanted to snub you for being so rude to me. Alas! I ended by--by
scrubbing your floor."
"Diana of the Tubs! How you scrubbed!"
"I liked it. You were very nice at Thimble Island, Philidor." She
paused a moment. "Then Olga came--and the others. She quite owned
you, then, didn't she?"
"No," he replied slowly.
"I don't think I really liked Olga's face-powder on your coat, dear."
He was silent.
"I knew you didn't love her. You couldn't. She wasn't your sort."
More silence.
"You didn't care for her, did you?" jerkily.
He looked down into her eyes tenderly but made no reply. She sighed
but asked no more questions. And, when he knew that she understood the
meaning of his silence, he took her head between his hands and made her
look at him.
"Isn't it enough for me to say to you that I love you better than all
the world, dear, that I am yours--wholly and indivisibly--my past, my
future--"
"Oh, I am content," she whispered quickly. "Your past--shall be what
you have made it. I'm not afraid. But your future--"
She caught one of his hands in both of her own and held it to her
heart. "That is mine."
There was a silence rich with meaning. The stream, the whispering
boughs, the rising breeze in the tree-tops joined in the soft chorus of
their nuptial-song. The night fell, shrouded in mystery. Behind them
over their shoulders a new moon rose, a harbinger of good fortune, but
they did not turn to look at it. It could not foretell them a fortune
that was already theirs. Its light flowed through the shadows, paling
the silhouette of the leaves against the afterglow, bathing them both
in liquid silver. He told her many of the things that she already
knew, but each reiteration had a new meaning and a new delight. The
same immortal questions and answers, ever new, ever mystifying. The
touch of hands, of eyes, the physical contact, outward tokens of the
spiritual pact made already, the welding of the bonds which were to
make them one! The moments of their more intimate confessions past, he
told her of the friendship of Mrs. Hammond and what she had done to set
the story right, but she did not seem to hear him. Her gaze was upon
the pale rim of light along the hill-top beyond, a gaze which looked
and saw nothing beyond the rosy aura of her thoughts.
"What does it matter now?" she murmured. "What does anything
matter--after this?"
"You will marry me--soon?" he urged her.
She sighed softly and laid her hand in his.
"Whenever you want me to," she said, with eloquent simplicity.
"To-morrow?"
She smiled mischievously.
"I must, I think, Philidor. Would you have me compromised?"
He laughed happily.
"Yes. Compromised by reverence, pilloried by tenderness--"
"Not reverence, Philidor. I'm only a little devil, after all."
"Then devils are angels in Vagabondia. Your wings are white, Hermia."
"They're trailing now--"
"Brave wings--fluttering--weary of flight. They shall fly no more--"
"Not alone--broader ones shall bear them company."
A pause.
"After to-morrow--shall we go?"
"Afoot, Philidor--as before."
And then. "Poor Clarissa!"
He laughed. "You shall have her."
She started up in delight.
"You mean that you--?"
"Clarissa is languishing in a stable in Paris>"
She spoke of Cleofonte and the Signora.
"We must find them, too, Philidor. And Stella--I promised her. We
must do something for Stella."
It was growing late. There was a sound in the thicket behind them.
They started up and were confronted by the _ancien_, who hobbled toward
them, with his stick and lantern, like _Diogenes_ searching for an
honest man.
"God be praised!" he croaked. "You are here. We feared you might have
fallen among the rocks."
"Among the roses, Père Guégou. _Thy_ roses--" said
Yvonne, her hand in Philidor's.
The old man stared at them witlessly, then turned and lighted them upon
their way.
The End