LOVE IN TWO SHADES.
All the next morning the snow fell persistently, and Sagan might have
been, as far as appearances went, a castle built in the air. Above,
below, around, the snow eddied like a fairy torrent, beating against the
solid walls and curling in curious ringed swirls about its buttresses as
water beats about a rock in midstream.
But the dominant grey of the outside world cast no appreciable
reflection on the spirits of Madame de Sagan's guests, with whom gaiety
and wild devices for killing time were necessary and familiar things.
But to Valerie the same suggestion of fear and unrest that had oppressed
her on the previous evening still held its silent sway over the place.
She stood at the broad window of the main staircase watching the swift
atoms of snow drift past, each one by itself a mere melting point, but,
in their millions, mighty. She shivered and looked round with an odd
sense of apprehension, as if the vague blind storm outside had its
counterpart in a vague blind danger within.
A tall man came leaping up the staircase. He stopped beside her. She
looked up at him, her deep eyes were full of some disturbing thought.
'Captain Rallywood, will you tell Major Counsellor from me,' she began
at once, in a low, hurried voice, 'that, in spite of what he has heard
of me, he must still believe Maäsau is the dearest thing on earth to me.
Tell him that, if needful, I am ready to prove it with my life! He may
make quite sure I meant all I said to him yesterday.'
Rallywood stood silent. The passion of her voice and speech echoed in
her own ears and suddenly seemed all excessive and uncalled for; a
blush--half anger, half shame--rushed over her face, bringing tears to
her eyes. Why was it decreed that she should always, in some small
foolish way, appear to disadvantage before this wretched Englishman.
'I will tell him,' said Rallywood at last, 'though I cannot understand.'
'No, you cannot understand! You are so cold, so self-centred that the
feelings and tumults which trouble most of us appear as weaknesses to
you. Since you cannot understand us, you should not judge us, we others,
who, in our own spasmodic way, love our country as you serve
yours--steadily and with a whole heart.'
Now, John Rallywood was perplexed. He longed to set himself right with
her. Her very accusations, her readiness to find fault, which might have
made matters clear to some men, only disheartened him with a renewed
sense of her dislike.
'You hate my nation,' he said, after a pause of consideration,
'therefore you condemn me, not because of anything I have done, but on
general grounds, putting the worst construction on--on everything. I
wonder why you judge me so hardly?'
Valerie laughed, her red lip finely edged with scorn.
'On the contrary, you judge us! Who made you a judge over us? You regard
us--you English--with that straight steady look. I suppose you feel what
futile creatures we others are, with our shifting moods and passions,
our little furies and desperations! Do you remember the night you joined
the Guard--the night in the Cloister of St. Anthony? How I trembled and
feared for you, I'--she laughed again--'I even wanted to help you! How
absurd it all seemed to you, didn't it? I remember you were very cool
and quiet, and I suppose you thought it very foolish--one of those
unnecessary, extravagant emotions in which we inferior races are apt to
indulge!'
'Stop!' Rallywood cut her short with a peremptory word, 'I will not
allow you to say such things of yourself nor--of me!'
Valerie threw back her head with the slight haughty lift he knew so
well.
'You are rather too certain of your own power,' she said.
'You say you remember that night?--not so well as I do? You think I am
very sure of myself. And yet I have been mistaken on points that touch
me close. I thought that night when I knew I might never see the
morning--I dared to fancy that we--you and I--understood each other--a
little.' He waited, but Valerie had turned away; her profile looked
exquisite, but cold, against the dark shutter as she watched the driving
snow. 'So I was the fool after all, you see!' he ended lamely.
According to the immemorial fashion of love, they understood and
misunderstood each other alternately playing high and low at every other
moment upon the wide gamut of feeling, touching faint sweet notes that
would echo for ever.
Rallywood's self-control was giving way a little, and she instinctively
felt her power and used it.
'I wonder what you really think of us behind that quiet alertness of
yours,' she said lightly, 'I believe I did imagine I--understood you a
little that night; but I imagine it no longer! Perhaps I misjudge you
now, but it cannot matter; you told me once you knew how to wait, and of
course you are certain that all unfair opinions of you must come right
in the end.'
But Rallywood passed over her many sentences to seize the central idea
that appealed to him.
'Yes, I have learned to wait. I told you that everything comes to him
who waits. Unfortunately a proverb is true often, not always. One thing
can never come to me however long I wait. For me there is no hope.'
'I don't know what you hope for,' replied the girl, slowly, as if she
were choosing her words; but she hardly knew what she said, she was lost
in a multitude of dreams, and her words but filled in the rare crevices
between them. 'I thought that every man carried his own fate in his own
hand.'
'A man can fight the tangible, but no man can struggle against the
ordinary laws of social life. We may laugh at conventional methods, but
even in Révonde there are some which must be yielded to.'
'I don't think,' said Valerie, 'we yield to many in Révonde.'
Rallywood saw a group of people advancing towards them. Valerie, with
her changes of mood and manner, distracted him, and drove him on to say
what he had resolved never to be tempted into saying.
'I am a soldier--only a soldier; I gain a livelihood, but no more. I
have no luck and no genius. To make a fortune or a name is beyond me.
And without fortune many desirable things are impossible.'
Valerie turned upon him a bewildering smile.
'I shall know for the future, Captain Rallywood, what you are thinking
of. You will be thinking, for all those grave eyes of yours, of the
fortune you cannot make!'
'Not quite that, Mademoiselle,' he answered, 'I shall be thinking of the
girl I cannot win.'
Valerie found herself drawn away from him by the passing group. She was
aware of a warm throb at her heart, she was trembling a little, and the
fear of the morning had temporarily vanished. For no definite reason
which she could afterwards discover, she felt suddenly happy.
By evening the _tsa_ had blown away the snow-clouds for the time, and a
thin moon gleamed fitfully over the wide expanses of white. Remote,
muffled in leagues of snow, and alive with hungry passions and
unscrupulous strength, the Castle of Sagan did not, on that wild January
night, offer desirable housing to the Grand Duke of Maäsau. He had yet
some thirty hours to spend as his cousin's guest before he could return
to his capital without showing suspicion or giving offence. A hundred
times he wished himself back in his great palace by the river bank where
the squadrons of the Guard lay within call. But he bore himself well
notwithstanding, and although, on the plea of chill and fatigue, he kept
to his rooms more than usual, his short appearances in public left in
one sense nothing to be desired. He did not carry himself as a man in
mortal anxiety, but was as dissatisfied, as discourteous, and as
disagreeable as it was his custom to be.
Late in the afternoon Madame de Sagan retired to take some rest before
dinner. Wrapped in lace and silk, she was standing in front of her
mirror with her women about her, when the Count entered. At his first
imperious word the attendants vanished.
Isolde continued to stare into the glass like one fascinated, for in it
she not only saw the reflection of her own slender white-clad figure,
but over her shoulder the fierce face she dreaded.
For a long minute husband and wife remained reading each other's faces
in the looking-glass.
She had seen aversion and menace in the Count's lowering face many a
time before, and was at length beginning to believe the almost
impossible fact to be true, that a man lived who hated her, over whom
her beauty had no power.
The young Countess shivered in mortal terror.
'Simon,' she wailed suddenly, 'you are changed,--you do not love me any
more!'
A broad smile flitted across the savage old face.
'You are a fool, but a very pretty fool, Isolde, and for that a man
might forgive you many things. Now listen to me. After you retire to
your rooms for the night, keep close to them, no matter what you hear.
There may be a disturbance, and you had better have Selpdorf's daughter
to keep you company.' His expression changed as he spoke of Valerie.
'There is danger,' she gasped, 'danger. What is it, oh, tell me what it
is!' Her first fear leaping towards Rallywood.
He stared into her shrinking eyes.
'If you ever hope to be Duchess of Maäsau,' he answered significantly,
'leave Valerie's lovers, Unziar and the Englishman, to take care of
themselves. Keep your tongue silent! Remember!' He caught her slender
wrist roughly as he spoke and pressed it to enforce the command.
The Countess made no reply, but her fingers closed in upon her palms.
'Come, give me a kiss, and promise me to do so much towards making
yourself a Grand Duchess.' He brushed her lips carelessly with his
moustache.
The caress brought no response; but as he bent over her she whispered,
'Have mercy on me Simon!' (it was a prayer born rather of some vague
instinct of danger than any defined fear); 'don't kill me!'
He put his thick arm round her and shook her impatiently.
'Kill you, Isolde? Are you mad? You are far more useful to me living
than dead. Get rid of your silly fears, and remember--silence!'
Then putting her back on the couch with more gentleness than might have
been expected of him, he walked out of the room. For a little while she
sat listening, then opened her eyes and glanced about her. Yes, he was
gone. But it was characteristic of her that at such a time her chief and
overpowering thought was Valerie as a rival! 'Valerie's lovers, Unziar
and the Englishman!' A score of trifles rushed back upon her memory; but
no it could not be. It was one of the Count's amiable ways to suggest
causes of jealousy to his wife. He meant nothing, for what could he
know? The soothing conviction grew upon her that the taunt was thrown at
her for what it was worth. Oh, how she hated Sagan--hated his
bloodshot, beast's eyes, his mocking laugh, his cruel hands, his
crueller gibes!
She pushed back the lace from her wrist and saw the thin parallels of
bruised flesh his fingers had left--entirely unaware, it must be
owned--upon her whiteness. Ah, she would show these to Rallywood--as a
proof that she was in danger, that she actually needed his protection,
and so win him from his post, which to-night would become the post of
death.
All her little vain soul thrilled within her at the possibility of
triumph--of defeating the honour of such a man--of winning him from his
watch for love's sake--of overcoming the scruples that had for so long a
time stood out against her wiles.
And yet in her poor way she loved him--loved him as she would probably
never love another. Some women are made in that way, they take pride in
the loftiness of the height from which they drag men down. Then he must
be saved, she told herself, at all costs saved! He would live to thank
her yet. A thought of him lying dead in his blood by the dark embrasure
that masked the entrance to the royal apartments flashed across her
mind. She stretched out her arms with a soft call like a bird's.
'Oh, love, love, I will save you!'