THE VIGIL LIGHT
"I'll go and rouse up one of the hotels," said Garth.
"But you're in evening dress," Marise reminded him. "You can't come back
like that in the morning. Besides, what would the people think?"
"Hang the people!" Garth replied.
"One can't--unfortunately."
"Well, here's a better plan. I'll sit outside in the garden court. I can
come in--if you'll let me--before there's any chance of being seen."
Marise shivered. "It would be cold!"
"Pooh!" said Garth. "It's never really cold here. Don't forget it wasn't
exactly a picnic, those years in France. I don't think I shall ever mind
cold again."
"Anyhow, I should feel a brute sleeping calmly here, with you sitting on
a hard bench out of doors. I may not be a very nice person," Marise
criticised herself, "but I'm not a thorough-paced _pig_. We must think
of some other possible arrangement."
"There's only one other possible arrangement. And you'd not consider
that possible."
"What is it?" rather breathlessly.
"For you to make yourself comfortable behind a barricade of those two
useful screens in your bedroom, while I sit up in an armchair--or spread
myself out on this sofa."
"I _do_ consider that possible," said Marise, "now I know what kind of a
man you are. That's what we'll do! I'll slip on a dressing-gown and curl
up on top of the bed under an eiderdown. And early in the morning the
one that's awake will call the other. It's quite simple--and you see I'm
not so disagreeable as you thought."
"Have I ever given you cause to believe I thought you disagreeable?"
"Dear me, yes! Whole heaps of times! Not that it matters."
"I suppose it wouldn't matter to you. But it does matter to me, 'what
kind of a man' you 'now know' me to be. Have you been studying me? I
hadn't noticed it. But if you have, I'd be interested to hear what
conclusions you've come to. Do you mind telling me?"
"Oh, my conclusions mostly concern your state of mind regarding _me_!"
said Marise.
"What, according to you, is it?"
"Dislike," she replied promptly.
"That's a strong word!" Garth blurted out. They were standing in the
middle of the room, eyeing each other as might a pair of duellists
obliged to fight over some technical dispute. "Have I been so brutal to
you as all that?"
"You haven't been brutal lately. You were--_dreadfully_--at first."
"H'm! You weren't exactly angelic to me."
"There's nothing very angelic in the--in the affair."
"What, precisely, do you mean by 'the affair'?"
"The--er--bargain."
"I thought I'd convinced you that the 'bargain' had collapsed."
"Well, our--marriage, then, if you like that better. I've wondered every
minute what you did marry me for, if it wasn't money. And sometimes I
think it couldn't have been, because you seem to have plenty of your
own. Still----"
"Some men with plenty could do with more. Is that what you'd say?"
"I'm not sure what I'd say--about you."
"I suppose you think that a million dollars would always be worth
having. I'm sure your mother would think that."
"The question is, not what _we'd_ think, but what you thought--when you
married me."
Garth looked at her for a moment in silence, as if weighing his answer,
wondering whether to stick to his fixed plan of remoteness, or risk
"giving himself away."
"Do you remember any of the things I said to you the first day we met?"
he asked at last.
"Yes, I remember you thought--then--you lo--you admired me a good deal.
But you were a different man that day from what you were afterwards."
"You're right! I was. A different man. The word you broke off just now
was the one word for what I felt. Only it didn't express half. I loved
you with all there was of me. I adored and worshipped you. But--I don't
believe you've ever been in love yourself except on the surface, or I'd
ask you how much you think love can stand, and live?"
Marise felt the blood pour up to her cheeks and tingle in the tips of
her ears. So it was true that he _didn't_ love her now! The thought hurt
her vanity. She hated to believe that a man who'd loved her once could
_un_love her in a few days or weeks. But it annoyed her very much to
flush. She wished to look entirely unmoved. Instead, she wanted to cry.
"Please do tell me once for all _why_ you married me if it wasn't either
for love or money!" she said crossly, with a quiver in her voice.
"When one makes a bold move on the chessboard--the chessboard of
life--there are often several motives," Garth replied. "Sometimes it's
to save the queen from being taken by an enemy piece. Perhaps that was
my principal motive, who can tell?--I don't know just what piece to
compare with Severance, though with a _card_ it would be easy. He's not
a knight. Nor yet a bishop. We might call him a castle. I hear he's got
one--which needs a bit of doing up before it would suit a queen."
"You married me only to keep Tony Severance from getting me?"
"That might have had something to do with it."
"Not for the million?"
"I leave you to guess that, from what you say you know of me."
"And not because you wanted me yourself?"
"I don't get much good from having you, do I?"
"Then it was like the dog in the manger."
Garth shrugged his shoulders. "Let it go at that for to-night, anyhow.
We must talk more softly if we don't wish to keep Bill and Cath awake in
the next room."
This warning was a dash of cold water!
"We won't talk at all," half whispered Marise. "If you'll arrange the
screens for me, I'll rest on the bed."
There were two large, four-leaved screens in the room, one in a corner
behind a sofa, keeping off a window draught, one in front of the door.
Placed as Garth placed them, they formed a room within a room, hiding
the bed from view. Marise stepped behind this "barricade," as Garth had
called it, contrived with great difficulty to unfasten a complicated
family of tiny hooks, wriggled out of her sparkling dress and into a
_robe de chambre_, turned off the light of an electric candelabrum,
turned on that of a green-shaded bedside lamp, and lay down under a silk
quilt.
From Garth's part of the room she heard no sound, except when several
electric lights were switched off, and Marise imagined him uncomfortably
folded up on the sofa which was far too small for what she called "an
out-size" of man.
It was dark in the room save for her bedside lamp, the shade of which
drank most of the light. So dim was it, so still was it, that after a
while Marise grew drowsy.
She hadn't meant to sleep at all, but she realised that Nature was too
strong for her. Besides, what did it matter? Garth was probably asleep
too--and there were hours before dawn.
The girl ceased to resist the soft pressure as of fingers on her
eyelids. They drooped, closed, and--she slept. By and by she dreamed.
She dreamed most vividly of Zelie Marks, as she had dreamed once or
twice before.
She--Marise--was in this house of Mothereen's; in this very room, though
Garth was not with her. He existed, but he had gone out--or away. Marise
had taken off the jewels he had given her, and was laying them on a
table. They were beautiful! It was a pity not to keep them for her own!
Suddenly there was a knock at the door, and without waiting for
permission Zelie Marks burst in.
"I've come for the jewels," she announced, in a hateful voice, looking
at Marise with angry, wicked eyes.
"They're not yours, and you're not to have them," said Marise in the
dream. She spoke with courage; but suddenly she was afraid of Zelie. She
knew that the girl meant to do her harm. Some dreadful thing was going
to happen. But her voice was gone. She could not cry out. She couldn't
even speak. It was impossible to move. She felt like a bird fascinated
by a snake. The dream had become a nightmare.
Zelie saw her helplessness. The big black eyes became more and more
evil. The girl advanced slowly, yet with set purpose. Without removing
her stare from Marise's face, she picked up the rope of pearls.
"As you won't give these to me, though Jack wants me to have everything
of his, I'm going to make you swallow them," she said in a low voice,
cold as the tinkle of ice.
Marise strove with all her might to cry out, "No--no!" but could not.
She tried to turn and dart away before Zelie could touch her, but she
was immovable as the pillar of salt that had been Lot's wife.
Zelie took a handful of pearls and began stuffing them into Marise's
mouth. It was suffocation! Marise wrenched herself free of the frozen
spell and uttered a shriek.
It waked her; and at the same time she was conscious of another sound--a
sound which brought back to her brain a whirling vision of things as
they really were.
She remembered the screens, and why they were there.
Garth had bounded up from some resting-place and had knocked over a
chair. He must think, either that she was _in extremis_, or else that
she had cried out as an excuse to bring him to her. She saw one of the
two screens sway, as if Garth had struck against it inadvertently. Then,
hastily she closed her eyes. He must be made to realise that she had
truly screamed in her sleep, and that there was no horrid coquettish
trick.
Marise lay quite still, so that she hardly breathed; and Garth's steps
made scarce a sound; yet she knew that he had come round the screens and
was looking at her.
After the things he had said, she was wild to know _what that look was
like_. If she could see his face at that moment, when she'd just given
him a fright, she would know without any possible doubt whether he'd
spoken the plain truth in hinting (he hadn't exactly _said_!) that he
didn't love her because she had tried him too far. But she couldn't see
his face without opening her eyes; and if she opened her eyes he'd know
she was awake. He'd suspect that she had screamed on purpose.
The girl tried to breathe with long, gentle sighs, hardly moving her
breast, as she did when she played the part of a sleeper on the stage.
It was easy enough _there_; but she couldn't be a good actress after
all, because she was unable to control her breath now. Her heart was
beating fast, and her bosom rose and fell in jerks.
A long time seemed to pass. Was Garth standing there gazing down at her
still, or had he tiptoed away? Marise simply _had_ to know! Surely she
could just peep from under those celebrated eyelashes of hers for half a
second, without his catching her in the act, if he were there?
The lashes flickered, and were still again. But Marise had seen. Garth
_was_ there. He was looking down at her. Yet all her subtleties had been
vain. She couldn't read his face. It was as inscrutable as that of the
Sphinx, which she knew only from photographs. Presently she heard a
slight, almost indefinable sound, and peeping again, saw Garth in the
act of disappearing behind a leaf of the taller screen. Had he caught
that tell-tale flicker, or not?
Garth went back to his darkened corner of the room, but his brain felt
as it had been brilliantly lit up, with a hundred electric candles
suddenly turned on in it. They dazzled him. But he composed himself
outwardly and lay down again on the crampingly short sofa.
He had taken off collar, tie, coat and waistcoat, slipping on instead a
futurist dressing-gown which a haughty salesman in a smart shop had
forced upon him as "_the_ thing." Zelie would probably have approved it.
In any case, it would have graced a Russian ballet.
Minutes, hours perhaps, passed before he felt even somnolent. But the
ring of light on the ceiling above Marise's concealed lamp, resembling a
faint, round moon in a twilight sky, hypnotised him. At last sleep
caught him like a wrestler, and downed him for a moment. In a flash came
a dream. He thought that Marise had cried out again. Then he waked, in
another flash, and knew that it was not true. Vividly he saw her face,
as it had been in that last glimpse he had stolen; sweet as a rose; lips
apart, long lashes shadowing the cheeks; then--a flicker; and he saw the
bosom that had been shaken all through the silent scene with heart-beats
too quick for those of a sleeper.
With this photograph upon his retina, he deliberately rolled off the
sofa, and fell with a bump on the floor.
Crash! went a screen.
Marise was beside him.
"Are you _dead_?" she gasped.
"No. Only asleep," he answered with a yawn.