"Is it that you are already pledged to marry some other man?"
"No," she answered, quickly and earnestly.
"Then it is because you do not wish me to love you," I observed
reproachfully.
Her look startled me, for it contained besides a world of grief and
pity, something of self-reproach. She regarded me strangely, first as
if my words were a welcome truth, then, while her brow darkened, a
mental anguish forced itself into her expression.
"You were mad to come here to me," she said, with a quick, apprehensive
look. "If you knew the truth you would never again cross the threshold
of this house."
"Why?" I demanded, in an instant alert.
"For a reason that is secret," she responded with a shade of sadness.
That ring of earnestness in her voice it seemed impossible to
counterfeit. Puzzled, I gazed at her, striving to read her countenance.
Her head was bent, her colour changing; do what she would she could not
keep the blood quite steady in her cheek.
"But may I not know, Eva?" I implored. "Surely you will not refuse to
warn or guide one who is so entirely devoted to you as I am?"
"I cannot warn you, except to say that treachery may be sweetly
concealed, and danger lurk where you may least suspect its presence."
"You wish to place a gulf between us," I cried impatiently. "But that's
impossible. I cannot rest without you; I am drawn to you as though by
some power of magic. I am yours in life, in death."
"Ah, no!" she cried suddenly, putting up her hands to her face. "Speak
not of death. You are making vows that must ere long be broken," and
she sighed deeply.
Was not her attitude, standing there pale and trembling, the attitude of
a guilty woman who feared the revelation of her crime? I looked again
at her, and becoming convinced that it was, I regarded her with
inexpressible scorn and love, horror and adoration. She seemed to have
changed of late. She pondered over my words, weighing them without any
idle misleadings of fancy. Did she never dream as she had done when we
first met?
"Why must my vows be broken when my love for you is so fervent, Eva?" I
demanded, in a voice a trifle hard, I think.
She shuddered and gave a gesture of despair as if there were, indeed, no
defence for her. A great darkness was over my mind like the plague of
an unending night.
"I have warned you," she responded, in a strange low tone. "If you
really love me as you say you do, remain away from this house."
"Why are you so anxious that I should not visit you?" I demanded,
puzzled. Then I added: "Of course in order to gain your love I am
prepared to accept any conditions you may propose. If I do not again
come here, will you meet me in London?"
"I can say nothing of the future," she answered slowly. "For your own
sake--indeed, for mine also--do not come here again. Promise me, I beg
of you."
This request was the more curious in the light of recent events. Was it
that she could not bear me to kiss the hand that had attempted to slay
me?
"All this is very strange, Eva," I said with a sudden seriousness. "I
cannot understand your attitude in the least. Why not be more
explicit?"
The heart of man is an open page to women. Love, though greatest of all
selfish ecstasies, must yet have self-forgetfulness. She had none. She
glanced at me and seemed to divine my thoughts. She cast a furtive look
across the room to the lawn beyond, and I read on her face the birth of
some new design.
"I have been quite explicit," she laughed, with a strenuous attempt to
preserve her self-control. "I merely give you advice to keep away from
this house."
"Yes, but you give me no reason. You do not speak plainly and openly,"
I protested.
"One cannot speak ill of those of whose hospitality one is partaking,"
she answered with a calm smile. "Is it not sufficient for the present
that you are warned?"
"But why?" I demanded. "I am always a welcome guest here."
Again she smiled, with a strange curl of the lip, I thought.
"I do not deny that," she answered. "Have I not, however, already
pointed out that treachery may be marvellously well concealed?"
Did she really warn me of the danger of associating with these intimate
friends of hers merely because in her heart she really loved me? or had
she some ulterior motive in getting me out of the way? She was
hand-in-glove with this suspected family, therefore the latter seemed
the theory most feasible.
Yes, she was undoubtedly playing me false.
A new thought suddenly arose within me, and with my eyes fixed upon her
I said, in a voice hard and determined--
"Eva, just now you gave utterance to a remark which is to me full of
meaning. You said that I had escaped death by little short of a
miracle. True, I have." Then I paused. "Yet, if the truth were told,
have you not also escaped a swift and sudden end by means almost as
miraculous?"
Her face blanched instantly, her mouth, half-opened, seemed fixed. She
was unable to articulate, and I saw what an effect this speech of mine
had upon her. She tottered to the table and laid her hand upon it in
order to steady herself. Her eyes glared upon me for an instant, like
those of some animal brought to bay.
Yet, with a marvellous self-control, her white face a moment later
relaxed into a smile, and she replied--"I really don't know to what you
refer. In the course of our lives we have many hairbreadth escapes from
death, for dangers are around us on every side." By this I saw what a
consummate actress she was, and was filled with regret that I had thus
referred to the tragedy at Kensington, fearing lest this revelation of
my knowledge should hamper Boyd in his inquiries. Through all she kept
a calm and steady judgment that was remarkable.
"Reflect at leisure," I responded, "and perhaps you will not find my
words quite so puzzling as your own veiled references."
"A few minutes ago," she exclaimed reproachfully, "you declared that you
loved me. Now, however, you appear to entertain a desire to taunt me."
"With what?"
She hesitated, for she saw how nearly she had been entrapped. Every
woman is a born diplomatist, so she answered--
"With having endeavoured to mislead you."
"I only know that I love you, Eva," I said in softer tones, again
tenderly taking her hand. "I only know that I think of no other woman
in all the world besides yourself. I only know that I cannot live
without your love."
Her bosom heaved and fell painfully, and from her large blue eyes tears
sprang--quick, salt, bitter drops that burned her as they fell.
"Ah, no?" she cried protestingly. "Do not let us talk of that. Do not
let us dream of the impossible."
"Then you really love me?" I cried in quick earnestness, bending over
her, my arm about her slim waist.
But she shuddered within my grasp. Her frame was shaken by a convulsive
sob, and gazing upon me with serious eyes she, in a low whisper, gave
her answer.
"Alas! I cannot--I--I dare not!"
I drew back crushed and hopeless. Once again the strange thought
possessed me that Mary Blain held her within her power; that although
she actually loved me she feared the relentless vengeance of that woman
who posed as her most intimate friend, who smiled upon us both, although
in her heart was a fierce and jealous hatred.
Eva's was a strange character. She seemed a brilliant antithesis--a
compound of contradictions--of all that I most detested, of all that I
most admired. Her whole character seemed a triumph of the external over
the innate; even though she presented at first view a splendid and
perplexing anomaly, there was yet deep meaning and wondrous skill in the
enigma when I came to analyse and decipher it. What was most
astonishing in Eva's character was its antithetical construction, its
consistent inconsistency, which rendered it quite impossible to reduce
it to any elementary principles. The impression she gave was that of
perpetual and irreconcilable contrast.
In those months I had known her she had enchanted me. Her mental
accomplishments, her unequalled grace, her woman's wit and woman's
wiles, her irresistible allurements, her starts of hauteur, her vivacity
of imagination, her petulant caprice, her fickleness and her falsehood,
her tenderness and her truth, all had dazzled my faculties and bewitched
my fancy. She held absolute dominion over me.
My reference to that fatal night when I had discovered her apparently
dead in that weird house in Kensington had utterly unnerved her. I had
apparently, by those words, given her proof of the strong suspicion
which she had entertained, and now she held aloof from me as from an
enemy. Again and again Boyd's forcible words recurred to me. Try how I
would I could not place from me the increasing belief that she had
actually given me that fatal draught on the last occasion when we met.
Yet, after all, she had my welfare at heart to some extent, or she would
not utter this strange inexplicable warning; she would not have so
pointedly told me that the family whose guests she was were my actual
enemies. The latest passion of my love had long ago kindled into a
quenchless flame, and again, after this declaration of fear which she
had uttered, I repeated my inquiry as to its cause.
But she shook her head, and remained silent to all my entreaty, even
though her panting breast plainly showed her agitation. Had she, I
wondered, really perpetrated a deed of horror? Was she, although so
pure-looking and so beautiful, one of those women with inexorable
determination of purpose, an actual impersonation of the evil powers?
At her invitation we strolled together across the lawn to a shady spot
at the river's brink, where we sat in long wicker chairs, tea being
brought to us by the smart man-servant. Again and again I sought to
discover some truth from her, but she was ever wary not to betray either
herself or those under whose roof she was now living. As I lounged
there by her, gazing upon her neat-girdled figure, so graceful and
striking in every form, I could not help reflecting that, in a mind not
utterly depraved and hardened by the habit of crime, conscience must
awake at some time or other, and bring with it a remorse closed by
despair, and despair by death.
Had her conscience been awakened that afternoon? To me it seemed very
much as though it had.
"How strangely you talk, Eva," I said, when we had been conversing
together a long time beneath the trees, and the sun was already sinking.
"You seem somehow to entertain an extraordinary antipathy towards me."
"Antipathy!" she echoed. "Oh, no, you are really mistaken. You ask me
to love you, and I express myself unfortunately unable."
"But why unable?"
She sighed, but was silent. Her eyes were fixed far away down the
tranquil river which ran with liquid gold in the sunset.
From my lips there poured swift, eager, breathless, unconsidered words
in all their unreason, all their wisdom, their nobility, their
ignorance, their folly, their sublimity. Yet I meant to their very
uttermost every syllable I uttered.
"Tell me now," I urged. "You wish me to leave you without a single word
of hope. You give me a negative reply without reason or explanation."
"I have a reason," she answered in a low, mechanical tone, a voice quite
unusual to her.
"What is it?"
"I am a stern fatalist in principle and in action," she responded.
"And is it that which prevents you from reciprocating my affection?"
"No," she answered, shaking her head sadly, and glancing at her rings.
"I know that happiness can never more come to me. To love would only be
to increase my burden of remorse."
"Remorse?" I cried, in a moment recollecting all the mysterious past.
"Yes," she answered in a hard tone of melancholy and despair. "A
remorse that arises from the pang of a wounded conscience, the recoil of
the violated feelings of my nature, a horror of the ghastly past, a
torture of self-condemnation strong as my soul, deep as my guilt, fatal
as my resolve, and terrible as my crime."
"Your crime!" I gasped.
She had at last confessed. I sat gazing at her absolutely dumbfounded.
My brain seemed dead in me.
"Yes, my crime," she responded, her face white and hard set, her
clenched hands perceptibly trembling. "Now at least you are aware of
the reason that I will not accept your love. I, the woman whom you
love, am unworthy, degraded and perverted, a woman who would have
suffered a thousand deaths of torture rather than have betrayed myself,
but who is now without pity or fear, unconscious, helpless,
despair-stricken, although still linked with my sex and with humanity.
Death alone would be welcome to me as bridegroom." Then panting, she
added, rising to leave me: "No, Frank, this must all end to-day. I can
never love you. It is utterly impossible. You cannot know--you will
never know--how I suffer."
She had gone from me. She was to me a thing terrible, and almost
loathsome. Yet she was dear to me. I was ready to give my life to
ransom hers.
She stretched out her hand and musingly touched mine. I shrank as if
the contact burned me. She saw my involuntary gesture of aversion. It
set her heart harder on the thing she meant to do.