It was twenty minutes since the last carriage had driven away. Julie was
still waiting in the little hall, pacing its squares of black-and-white
marble, slowly, backward and forward.
There was a low knock on the door.
She opened it. Warkworth appeared on the threshold, and the high moon
behind him threw a bright ray into the dim hall, where all but one faint
light had been extinguished. She pointed to the drawing-room.
"I will come directly. Let me just go and ask Léonie to sit up."
Warkworth went into the drawing-room. Julie opened the dining-room door.
Madame Bornier was engaged in washing and putting away the china and
glass which had been used for Julie's modest refreshments.
"Léonie, you won't go to bed? Major Warkworth is here."
Madame Bornier did not raise her head.
"How long will he be?"
"Perhaps half an hour."
"It is already past midnight."
"Léonie, he goes to-morrow."
"Très bien. Mais--sais-tu, ma chère, ce n'est pas convenable, ce que tu
fais là!"
And the older woman, straightening herself, looked her foster-sister
full in the face. A kind of watch-dog anxiety, a sulky, protesting
affection breathed from her rugged features.
Julie went up to her, not angrily, but rather with a pleading humility.
The two women held a rapid colloquy in low tones--Madame Bornier
remonstrating, Julie softly getting her way.
Then Madame Bornier returned to her work, and Julie went to the
drawing-room.
Warkworth sprang up as she entered. Both paused and wavered. Then he
went up to her, and roughly, irresistibly, drew her into his arms. She
held back a moment, but finally yielded, and clasping her hands round
his neck she buried her face on his breast.
They stood so for some minutes, absolutely silent, save for her hurried
breathing, his head bowed upon hers.
"Julie, how can we say good-bye?" he whispered, at last.
She disengaged herself, and, seeing his face, she tried for composure.
"Come and sit down."
She led him to the window, which he had thrown open as he entered the
room, and they sat beside it, hand in hand. A mild April night shone
outside. Gusts of moist air floated in upon them. There were dim lights
and shadows in the garden and on the shuttered facade of the
great house.
"Is it forever?" said Julie, in a low, stifled voice.
"Good-bye--forever?"
She felt his hand tremble, but she did not look at him. She seemed to
be reciting words long since spoken in the mind.
"You will be away--perhaps a year? Then you go back to India, and
then--"
She paused.
Warkworth was physically conscious, as it were, of a letter he carried
in his coat-pocket--a letter from Lady Blanche Moffatt which had reached
him that morning, the letter of a _grande dame_, reduced to undignified
remonstrance by sheer maternal terror--terror for the health and life of
a child as fragile and ethereal as a wild rose in May. Reports had
reached her; but no--they could not be true! She bade him be thankful
that not a breath of suspicion had yet touched Aileen. As for herself,
let him write and reassure her at once. Otherwise--
And the latter part of the letter conveyed a veiled menace that
Warkworth perfectly understood.
No--in that direction, no escape; his own past actions closed him in.
And henceforth, it was clear, he must walk more warily.
But how blame himself for these feelings of which he was now conscious
towards Julie Le Breton--the strongest, probably, that a man not built
for passion would ever know. His relation towards her had grown upon him
unawares, and now their own hands were about to cut it at the root. What
blame to either of them? Fate had been at work; and he felt himself
glorified by a situation so tragically sincere, and by emotions of which
a month before he would have secretly held himself incapable.
Resolutely, in this last meeting with Julie, he gave these emotions
play. He possessed himself of her cold hands as she put her desolate
question--"And then?"--and kissed them fervently.
"Julie, if you and I had met a year ago, what happened in India would
never have happened. You know that!"
"Do I? But it only hurts me to _think it away_ like that. There it
is--it has happened."
She turned upon him suddenly.
"Have you any picture of her?"
He hesitated.
"Yes," he said, at last.
"Have you got it here?"
"Why do you ask, dear one? This one evening is _ours_."
And again he tried to draw her to him. But she persisted.
"I feel sure you have it. Show it me."
"Julie, you and you only are in my thoughts!"
"Then do what I ask." She bent to him with a wild, entreating air; her
lips almost touched his cheek. Unwillingly he drew out a letter-case
from his breast-pocket, and took from it a little photograph which he
handed to her.
She looked at it with eager eyes. A face framed, as it were, out of snow
and fire lay in her hand, a thing most delicate, most frail, yet steeped
in feeling and significance--a child's face with its soft curls of brown
hair, and the upper lip raised above the white, small teeth, as though
in a young wonder; yet behind its sweetness, what suggestions of a
poetic or tragic sensibility! The slender neck carried the little head
with girlish dignity; the clear, timid eyes seemed at once to shrink
from and trust the spectator.
Julie returned the little picture, and hid her face with her hands.
Warkworth watched her uncomfortably, and at last drew her hands away.
"What are you thinking of?" he said, almost with violence. "Don't shut
me out!"
"I am not jealous now," she said, looking at him piteously. "I don't
hate her. And if she knew all--she couldn't--hate me."
"No one could hate her. She is an angel. But she is not my Julie!" he
said, vehemently, and he thrust the little picture into his
pocket again.
"Tell me," she said, after a pause, laying her hand on his knee, "when
did you begin to think of me--differently? All the winter, when we used
to meet, you never--you never loved me then?"
"How, placed as I was, could I let myself think of love? I only knew
that I wanted to see you, to talk to you, to write to you--that the day
when we did not meet was a lost day. Don't be so proud!" He tried to
laugh at her. "You didn't think of me in any special way, either. You
were much too busy making bishops, or judges, or academicians. Oh,
Julie, I was so afraid of you in those early days!"
"The first night we met," she said, passionately, "I found a carnation
you had worn in your button-hole. I put it under my pillow, and felt for
it in the dark like a talisman. You had stood between me and Lady Henry
twice. You had smiled at me and pressed my hand--not as others did, but
as though you understood _me_, myself--as though, at least, you wished
to understand. Then came the joy of joys, that I could help you--that I
could do something for you. Ah, how it altered life for me! I never
turned the corner of a street that I did not count on the chance of
seeing you beyond--suddenly--on my path. I never heard your voice that
it did not thrill me from head to foot. I never made a new friend or
acquaintance that I did not ask myself first how I could thereby serve
you. I never saw you come into the room that my heart did not leap. I
never slept but you were in my dreams. I loathed London when you were
out of it. It was paradise when you were there."
Straining back from him as he still held her hands, her whole face and
form shook with the energy of her confession. Her wonderful hair,
loosened from the thin gold bands in which it had been confined during
the evening, fell in a glossy confusion about her brow and slender neck;
its black masses, the melting brilliance of the eyes, the tragic freedom
of the attitude gave both to form and face a wild and poignant beauty.
Warkworth, beside her, was conscious first of amazement, then of a kind
of repulsion--a kind of fear--till all else was lost in a hurry of joy
and gratitude.
The tears stood on his cheek. "Julie, you shame me--you trample me into
the earth!"
He tried to gather her in his arms, but she resisted, Caresses were not
what those eyes demanded--eyes feverishly bright with the memory of her
own past dreams, Presently, indeed, she withdrew herself from him. She
rose and closed the window; she put the lamp in another place; she
brought her rebellious hair into order.
"We must not be so mad," she said, with a quivering smile, as she again
seated herself, but at some distance from him. "You see, for me the
great question is "--her voice became low and rapid--"What am I going to
do with the future? For you it is all plain. We part to-night. You have
your career, your marriage. I withdraw from your life--absolutely.
But for me--"
She paused. It was the manner of one trying to see her way in the dark.
"Your social gifts," said Warkworth, in agitation, "your friends,
Julie--these will occupy your mind. Then, of course, you will, you must
marry! Oh, you'll soon forget me, Julie! I pray you may!"
"My social gifts?" she repeated, disregarding the rest of his speech. "I
have told you already they have broken down. Society sides with Lady
Henry. I am to be made to know my place--I do know it!"
"The Duchess will fight for you."
She laughed.
"The Duke won't let her--nor shall I."
"You'll marry," he repeated, with emotion. "You'll find some one worthy
of you--some one who will give you the great position for which you
were born."
"I could have it at any moment," she said, looking him quietly in the
eyes.
Warkworth drew back, conscious of a disagreeable shock. He had been
talking in generalities, giving away the future with that fluent
prodigality, that easy prophecy which costs so little. What did
she mean?
"_Delafield?"_ he cried.
And he waited for her reply--which lingered--in a tense and growing
eagerness. The notion had crossed his mind once or twice during the
winter, only to be dismissed as ridiculous. Then, on the occasion of
their first quarrel, when Julie had snubbed him in Delafield's presence
and to Delafield's advantage, he had been conscious of a momentary
alarm. But Julie, who on that one and only occasion had paraded her
intimacy with Delafield, thenceforward said not a word of him, and
Warkworth's jealousy had died for lack of fuel. In relation to Julie,
Delafield had been surely the mere shadow and agent of his little cousin
the Duchess--a friendly, knight-errant sort of person, with a liking for
the distressed. What! the heir-presumptive of Chudleigh Abbey, and one
of the most famous of English dukedoms, when even he, the struggling,
penurious officer, would never have dreamed of such a match?
Julie, meanwhile, heard only jealousy in his exclamation, and it
caressed her ear, her heart. She was tempted once more, woman-like, to
dwell upon the other lover, and again something compelling and delicate
in her feeling towards Delafield forbade.
"No, you mustn't make me tell you any more," she said, putting the name
aside with a proud gesture. "It would be poor and mean. But it's true. I
have only to put out my hand for what you call 'a great position,' I
have refused to put it out. Sometimes, of course, it has dazzled me.
To-night it seems to me--dust and ashes. No; when we two have said
good-bye, I shall begin life again. And this time I shall live it in my
own way, for my own ends. I'm very tired. Henceforth 'I'll walk where my
own nature would be leading--it vexes me to choose another guide.'"
And as she spoke the words of one of the chainless souls of history, in
a voice passionately full and rich, she sprang to her feet, and, drawing
her slender form to its full height, she locked her hands behind her,
and began to pace the room with a wild, free step.
Every nerve in Warkworth's frame was tingling. He was carried out of
himself, first by the rebellion of her look and manner, then by this
fact, so new, so astounding, which her very evasion had confirmed.
During her whole contest with Lady Henry, and now, in her present
ambiguous position, she had Delafield, and through Delafield the English
great world, in the hollow of her hand? This nameless woman--no longer
in her first youth. And she had refused? He watched her in a speechless
wonder and incredulity.
The thought leaped. "And this sublime folly--this madness--was for
_me_?"
It stirred and intoxicated him. Yet she was not thereby raised in his
eyes. Nay, the contrary. With the passion which was rapidly mounting in
his veins there mingled--poor Julie!--a curious diminution of respect.
"Julie!" He held out his hand to her peremptorily. "Come to me again.
You are so wonderful to-night, in that white dress--like a wild muse. I
shall always see you so. Come!"
She obeyed, and gave him her hands, standing beside his chair. But her
face was still absorbed.
"To be free," she said, under her breath--"free, like my parents, from
all these petty struggles and conventions!"
Then she felt his kisses on her hands, and her expression changed.
"How we cheat ourselves with words!" she whispered, trembling, and,
withdrawing one hand, she smoothed back the light-brown curls from his
brow with that protecting tenderness which had always entered into her
love for him. "To-night we are here--together--this one last night! And
to-morrow, at this time, you'll be in Paris; perhaps you'll be looking
out at the lights--and the crowds on the Boulevard--and the
chestnut-trees. They'll just be in their first leaf--I know so
well!--and the little thin leaves will be shining so green under the
lamps--and I shall be here--and it will be all over and done
with--forever. What will it matter whether I am free or not free? I
shall be _alone_! That's all a woman knows."
Her voice died away. Warkworth rose. He put his arms round her, and she
did not resist.
"Julie," he said in her ear, "why should you be alone?"
A silence fell between them.
"I--I don't understand," she said, at last.
"Julie, listen! I shall be three days in Paris, but my business can be
perfectly done in one. What if you met me there after to-morrow? What
harm would it be? We are not babes, we two. We understand life. And who
would have any right to blame or to meddle? Julie, I know a little inn
in the valley of the Bièvre, quite near Paris, but all wood and field.
No English tourists ever go there. Sometimes an artist or two--but this
is not the time of year. Julie, why shouldn't we spend our last two days
there--together--away from all the world, before we say good-bye? You've
been afraid here of prying people--of the Duchess even--of Madame
Bornier--how she scowls at me sometimes! Why shouldn't we sweep all that
away--and be happy! Nobody should ever--nobody _could_ ever know." His
voice dropped, became still more hurried and soft. "We might go as
brother and sister--that would be quite simple. You are practically
French. I speak French well. Who is to have an idea, a suspicion of our
identity? The spring there is mild and warm. The Bois de Verrières close
by is full of flowers. When my father was alive, and I was a child, we
went once, to economize, for a year, to a village a mile or two away.
But I knew this place quite well. A lovely, green, quiet spot! With your
poetical ideas, Julie, you would delight in it. Two days--wandering in
the woods--together! Then I put you into the train for Brussels, and I
go my way. But to all eternity, Julie, those days will have been ours!"
At the first words, almost, Julie had disengaged herself. Pushing him
from her with both hands, she listened to him in a dumb amazement. The
color first deserted her face, then returned in a flood.
"So you despise me?" she said, catching her breath.
"No. I adore you."
She fell upon a chair and hid her eyes. He first knelt beside her,
arguing and soothing; then he paced up and down before her, talking very
fast and low, defending and developing the scheme, till it stood before
them complete and tempting in all its details.
Julie did not look up, nor did she speak. At last, Warkworth, full of
tears, and stifled with his own emotions, threw open the window again in
a craving for air and coolness. A scent of fresh leaves and moistened
earth floated up from the shrubbery beneath the window. The scent, the
branching trees, the wide, mild spaces of air brought relief. He leaned
out, bathing his brow in the night. A tumult of voices seemed to be
echoing through his mind, dominated by one which held the rest
defiantly in check.
"Is she a mere girl, to be 'led astray'? A moment of happiness--what
harm?--for either of us?"
Then he returned to Julie.
"Julie!" He touched her shoulder, trembling. Had she banished him
forever? It seemed to him that in these minutes he had passed through an
infinity of experience. Was he not the nobler, the more truly man? Let
the moralists talk.
"Julie!" he repeated, in an anguish.
She raised her head, and he saw that she had been crying. But there was
in her face a light, a wildness, a yearning that reassured him. She put
her arm round him and pressed her cheek to his. He divined that she,
too, had lived and felt a thousand hours in one. With a glow of ecstatic
joy he began to talk to her again, her head resting on his shoulder, her
slender hands crushed in his.
And Julie, meanwhile, was saying to herself, "Either I go to him, as he
asks, or in a few minutes I must send him away--forever."
And then as she clung to him, so warm and near, her strength failed her.
Nothing in the world mattered to her at that moment but this handsome,
curly head bowed upon her own, this voice that called her all the names
of love, this transformation of the man's earlier prudence, or ambition,
or duplicity, into this eager tenderness, this anguish in separation....
"Listen, dear!" He whispered to her. "All my business can be got through
the day before you come. I have two men to see. A day will be ample. I
dine at the Embassy to-morrow night--that is arranged; the day after I
lunch with the Military Secretary; then--a thousand regrets, but I must
hurry on to meet some friends in Italy. So I turn my back on Paris, and
for two days I belong to Julie--and she to me. Say yes,
Julie--my Julie!"
He bent over her, his hands framing her face.
"Say yes," he urged, "and put off for both of us that word--_alone_!"
His low voice sank into her heart. He waited, till his strained sense
caught the murmured words which conveyed to him the madness and the
astonishment of victory.
* * * * *
Léonie had shut up the house, in a grim silence, and had taken her way
up-stairs to bed.
Julie, too, was in her room. She sat on the edge of her bed, her head
drooped, her hands clasped before her absently, like Hope still
listening for the last sounds of the harp of life. The candle beside her
showed her, in the big mirror opposite, her grace, the white confusion
of her dress.
She had expected reaction, but it did not come. She was still borne on a
warm tide of will and energy. All that she was about to do seemed to her
still perfectly natural and right. Petty scruples, conventional
hesitations, the refusal of life's great moments--these are what are
wrong, these are what disgrace!
Romance beckoned to her, and many a secret tendency towards the lawless
paths of conduct, infused into her by the associations and affections of
her childhood. The _horror naturalis_ which protects the great majority
of women from the wilder ways of passion was in her weakened or dormant.
She was the illegitimate child of a mother who had defied law for love,
and of that fact she had been conscious all her life.
A sharp contempt, indeed, arose within her for the interpretation that
the common mind would be sure to place upon her action.
"What matter! I am my own mistress--responsible to no one. I choose for
myself--I dare for myself!"
And when at last she rose, first loosening and then twisting the black
masses of her hair, it seemed to her that the form in the glass was that
of another woman, treading another earth. She trampled cowardice under
foot; she freed herself from--"was uns alle bändigt, das Gemeine!"
Then as she stood before the oval mirror in a classical frame, which
adorned the mantel-piece of what had once been Lady Mary Leicester's
room, her eye was vaguely caught by the little family pictures and texts
which hung on either side of it. Lady Mary and her sister as children,
their plain faces emerging timidly from their white, high-waisted
frocks; Lady 'Mary's mother, an old lady in a white coif and kerchief,
wearing a look austerely kind; on the other side a clergyman, perhaps
the brother of the old lady, with a similar type of face, though
gentler--a face nourished on the _Christian Year_; and above and below
them two or three card-board texts, carefully illuminated by Lady Mary
Leicester herself:
"Thou, Lord, knowest my down-sitting and my uprising."
"Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."
"Fear not, little flock. It is your Father's good pleasure to give you
the kingdom."
* * * * *
Julie observed these fragments, absently at first, then with repulsion.
This Anglican pietism, so well fed, so narrowly sheltered, which
measured the universe with its foot-rule, seemed to her quasi-Catholic
eye merely fatuous and hypocritical. It is not by such forces, she
thought, that the true world of men and women is governed.
As she turned away she noticed two little Catholic pictures, such as she
had been accustomed in her convent days to carry in her books of
devotion, carefully propped up beneath the texts.
"Ah, Thérèse!" she said to herself, with a sudden feeling of pain. "Is
the child asleep?"
She listened. A little cough sounded from the neighboring room. Julie
crossed the landing.
"Thérèse! tu ne dors pas encore?"