Treu und fest.
As the door closed, Flora advanced quickly. "Confess you are surprised
to see me," she said, holding out her little gloved hand. The courtesy
toward the sex, which was hereditary with the Livingstones, contrasting
strangely with their fierce, ungovernable tempers, made him not reject
it; but his lay passive and nerveless in her slender fingers, never
answering their eager pressure; it had no longer the elastic quiver of
repressed strength that she remembered and liked so well.
"I am surprised to see you here, and so soon," he answered, coldly; "but
I knew we should meet before long."
"The surprise does not seem too charming," Miss Bellasys said, pouting
her scarlet lip as she threw herself into a deep _bergère_ opposite to
the couch on which Livingstone had already sunk down again--he was very
weak and unsteady in his movements still.
Was it by chance or calculation that a fold of her dress disarranged
displayed the slender foot, with its arched instep--set off by the
delicate _brodequin_, a labor of love to the Parisian Crispin--and the
straight, beautifully-turned ankle, cased in dead-white silk? The
latter, I think; for Flora knew how to fall as well as Cæsar or
Polyxena, and had studied her part to its minutest shade. It was by the
senses that she had always been most successful in attacking Guy, and
she knew that, in old days, no point of feminine perfection had a
greater attraction for him.
The temptation, if so it was intended, had about as much effect upon him
now as it might have had on weather-beaten St. Simeon Stylites when his
penances had lasted twenty years.
After a minute's silence, during which Flora was gazing intently on her
companion, leaning her chin upon her hand, she spoke again.
"I fear you must have been very ill. How--how changed you are!"
Livingstone was, indeed, fearfully altered. The healthy brown of his
complexion had given place to a dull, opaque pallor; there were great
hollows under the prominent cheek-bones, and his loose dressing-robe of
black velvet hung straight down from the gaunt angles of the immense
joints and bones. His voice sounded deeper than ever as he replied,
"Yes, I have been very ill, and I am utterly changed. But you must have
had something more important to say to me, or you would hardly have
ventured on this step."
She was getting very nervous--inexplicably so for her, who generally
kept her head, while she made others lose theirs,
"No. I only wished--" she hesitated, trying to force a smile, and then
broke off suddenly--"Guy, do speak kindly to me. Don't look at me so
strangely."
His answer came, brief and stern.
"I will speak, then. Miss Bellasys, on what authority from me did you
venture to interfere in my concerns so far as to intercept my
correspondence?"
She tried denial still; it was her way; she always _would_ do it, even
when it could avail nothing--perhaps to gain time.
"I don't know what you mean. I never--"
Livingstone interrupted her, with a curl of contempt on his lip.
"Stop, I beg of you. It is useless to stoop lower than you have done
already. I have Willis's written confession here. Ah! I know your
talents too well to accuse you without material proof."
She raised her head, haughtily enough now. There was something Spartan
about that girl. She had such an utter recklessness of exposure--it was
in failure that she felt the shame.
"At least _you_ ought not to reproach me. You might guess my motive--my
only one--without forcing me to confess it. Have I not gratified your
pride enough already?"
"You know that is not the question," Guy answered, gravely. "Yet you are
half right. I could not reproach you for any fair, honest move. In much,
I own myself more guilty than you. But this is very different. Miss
Bellasys, you must have distrusted greatly your own powers of
fascination before you stooped to such cruel treachery."
"I did not know what I was doing," she whispered; "I did not know she
was dying. Ah! Guy, have pity!"
"But you knew it might kill her to find her letter--such a
letter--unanswered. You knew what she must have suffered before she
wrote it. You did all this in cold blood, and now you say to me, 'Have
pity!' If an accountable being--not a woman and her miserable
instrument--had wronged me so, I would have risked my soul to have
revenge; and, because that is impossible, you think that I feel less
bitterly? You might have known me better by this time."
Instead of being softened by her appeal, his heart, features, and tone
were hardening more and more.
The sting of defeat, imminent and unavoidable, that, ere this, has
driven strong and wise men headlong into the thickest of the battle to
hunt for death there, proved too much for a temper never well regulated.
"You have decided, then?" she cried, passionately, her eyes flashing and
her lip quivering. "After all I have risked and borne for you, I am to
be sacrificed to a shadow--a memory--the memory of that cold, pale
statue of propriety?" She checked herself suddenly, only just in time.
Guy had sprung to his feet, excitement bringing back for the moment all
his lost strength. If Ralph Mohun had seen him, he would not have feared
that the wrathful devil was cast out. It was raging within him then,
untamed and dangerous as ever.
"Do you dare to insult her now that she is dead--and to me, not a month
after I have lost her? It is not safe: take care, take care!"
The tempest of his passion made him forget, for the first time in his
life, the weakness of her who had roused it.
Flora was only a woman after all, though haughty and bold of spirit as
any that had breathed. Her own outbreak of anger vanished before that
terrible burst of wrath, just as the camp-fire, when the prairie is
blazing, is swallowed up in the great roaring torrent of flame. She
bowed her head on her hands, trembling all over in pure physical fear.
Guy felt ashamed when he saw the effect of his violence, and spoke more
gently than he had done yet.
"Forgive me. I was very wrong; but I have not learned to control
myself--I never shall, I fear; but you ought not to say such words, even
if I could bear them better. Now it is time that we should part; you
have staid here too long already. You must not risk your reputation for
me, who can not even be grateful for the venture. We shall never meet
again, if we can avoid it; it would be strange to do so as mere
acquaintance, and in any other way--no, don't stop me--it is impossible.
It will be long before I go much into society again, so I shall not
cross your path."
Flora knew it was hopeless then. She was quite broken down, and did not
raise her head from her hand, through the fingers of which, half shading
her face, the tears trickled fast. Guy heard her murmur, very low and
plaintively, "I have loved you so long--so dearly!"
Mistress as she was of every art that can deceive, I believe she only
spoke the simple truth then. With all the energy of her strong and
sensual nature, I believe she did worship Livingstone. To most men she
would have been far more dangerous thus, in the abandonment of her
sorrow, than ever she had been in the insolence of her splendid beauty.
There are some women, very few (Johnson's fair friend, Sophy
Streatfield, was one), whom weeping does not disfigure. Their eyelids do
not get red or swollen; only the iris softens for a moment; and the
drops do not streak or blot the polished cheeks, but glitter there,
singly, like dew on marble; their sobs are well regulated, and follow in
a certain rhythm; and the heaving bosom sinks and swells, not too
stormily. It is a rare accomplishment. Miss Bellasys had not practiced
it often, being essentially Democritian--not to say Rabelaisian--in her
philosophy; but she did it very well. Like every other emotion, it
became her.
Guy hardly glanced at her, and never answered a word.
She rose to go; then turned all at once to try one effort more. "Yes, we
must part," she said. "I know it now. But give me a kind word to take
with me. I shall be so lonely, now that you are my enemy. Will you not
say you wish me well? Ah! Guy, remember all the hours that I have tried
to make pleasant for you. Say 'Good-by, Flora,' only those two little
words, gently." Her voice was broken and uncertain, but full of music
still, like the wind wandering through an organ.
Just at that moment I opened the door. (I had not an idea Livingstone
was not alone.) I closed it before either had remarked my entrance, but
not before I had caught sight of a very striking picture.
Guy was leaning one arm against the mantel-piece; the other was crossed
over his chest: on that arm Flora was clinging, with both her hands
clenched in the passion of her appeal. Her slight bonnet had fallen
rather back, showing the masses of her glorious hair, and all her
flushed cheeks, and her eyes that shone with a strange lustre, though
there were tears still on their long, trailing lashes. I saw the
impersonation of material life, exuberant and vigorous, yet delicately
lovely--the Lust of the Eye incarnate.
He stood perfectly still, making no effort to cast her off. Had he done
so with violence, it would scarcely have evinced more repulsion than did
the expression of his face. There was no more of yielding or softening
in the set features and severe eyes than you would find in those of a
corpse three hours old, whose spirit has passed in some great anger or
pain. Can you guess what made him more than ever hard and unrelenting?
He was thinking _who_ tried to win a kind farewell from him six months
ago, and utterly failed. Should her rival have this triumph, too, over
the dead?
As he answered deliberately, each slow word shut out another hope, like
bolts shot, one by one, in the lock of a prison door.
"I remember nothing of the past except your last act, for which I will
never, never forgive you. I form no wish for your welfare or for the
reverse. There shall not stand the faintest shadow of a connecting link
that I can break asunder. Between you and me there is the gulf of a
fresh-made grave, and no thought of mine shall ever cross it--so help me
God in Heaven!"
Flora's last arrow was shivered: if she had had another in her quiver,
she would have had no courage to try it after hearing those terrible
words. She caught his hand, however, before he could guess her
intention, and pressed her lips upon it till they left their print
behind, and then she was gone. Her light foot hardly sounded as it
sprang down the stairs, but its faint echo was the last living sound
connected with Flora Bellasys that ever reached the ear of Guy
Livingstone.
When I heard more of the interview, I thought, and think still, that he
erred on the side of harshness. He was so fixed and steady in his
purpose that he could have afforded to have compromised a little in
expressing it. But he did things in his own way, and fought with his own
weapons--effective, but hardly to be wielded by most men, like the axe
of the King-maker or the bow of Odysseus. In carrying out his will, he
was apt to consider the softer feelings of others as little as he did
his own. It was just so with him when riding to hounds: he went as
straight as a line, and if he did not spare his horses, he certainly did
not himself.
To each man alive, one particular precept of the Christian code is
harder to realize and practice than all the rest put together. It was
this, perhaps, which drove the anchorites on from one degree of penance
to another, and made them so savage in self-tormenting. When the
macerated flesh had almost lost sensation, the thorn that had galled it
sometimes in their hot youth rankled incessantly, more venomous than
ever. That one injunction--"Forgive, as you would hope to be
forgiven"--was ever a stumbling-block to Guy.
Besides all this, he knew, better than any one, what sort of an
adversary he was contending against; one with whom each step in
negotiation or temporizing was a step toward discomfiture. It was like
the Spaniard with his _navaja_ against the sabre: your only chance is
keeping him steadily at the sword's-point, without breaking ground; if
he once gets under your guard, not all the saints in the calendar can
save you.
Perhaps, then, he was right, after all. Certainly Ralph Mohun thought
so, as he listened to a sketch of the proceedings with a grim
satisfaction edifying to witness.
As for me, before I went to bed that night, I read through those
chapters in the "Mort d'Arthur" that tell how the long, guilty loves of
Launcelot and Guenever ended. In the present case, there was certainly
wonderfully little penitence on the lady's side, but yet there were
points of resemblance which struck me. [I always think the queen must
have been the image of Flora.] It is worth while wading through many
chapters of exaggeration and obscurity to come out into the noble light
of the epilogue at last.
Good King Arthur is gone. It bit deep, that blow which Mordred, the
strong traitor, struck when the spear stood out a fathom behind his
back; and Morgan la Fay came too late to heal the grievous wound that
had taken cold. The frank, kind, generous heart, that would not mistrust
till certainty left no space for suspicion, can never be wrung or
betrayed again. The bitter parting between the lovers is over too; and
Launcelot is gone to his own place, without the farewell caress he
prayed for when he besought the queen "to kiss him once and never more."
After a very few short months, the beautiful wild bird has beaten
herself to death against her cage, and the vision comes by night,
bidding Launcelot arise and fetch the corpse of Guenever home. She
wandered often and far in life, but where should her home be _now_ but
by the side of her husband? Hardly and painfully in two days, he and
the faithful seven accomplish the thirty miles that lay between; so
utterly is that unearthly strength, before which lance-shafts were as
reeds, and iron bars as silken threads (remember the May night in
Meliagraunce's castle), enfeebled and broken down. He stands in the
nunnery-church at Almesbury; he hears from the queen's maidens of the
prayer that was ever on her lips through those two days when she lay a
dying, how "she besought God that she might never have power to see Sir
Launcelot with her worldly eyes." Then, says the chronicler, "he saw her
visage; yet he wept not greatly, but sighed. And so he did all the
observance of the service himself, both the dirge at night and the mass
on the morrow." Not till every rite was performed, not till the earth
had closed over the marble coffin, did Launcelot swoon.
I know nothing in fiction so piteous as the words that tell of his
dreary, mortal sorrow. "Then, Sir Launcelot never after ate but little
meat, nor drank, but continually mourned until he was dead; and then he
sickened more and more, and dried and dwined away; for the bishop nor
none of his fellows might make him to eat, and little he drank; so that
he waxed shorter by a cubit than he was, and the people could not know
him; for evermore day and night he prayed; but needfully as nature
required, sometimes he slumbered a broken sleep; and always he was lying
groveling on King Arthur's and Queen Guenever's tomb. And there was no
comfort that his fellows could make him; it availed nothing."
We know it can not last long; we know that the morning is fast
approaching, when they will find him "stark dead, and lying as he had
smiled;" when they will bear him forth, according to his vow, to his
resting-place in Joyous Guard; when there will be pronounced over him
that famous funeral oration--the truest, the simplest, the noblest, I
think, that ever was spoken over the body of a sinful man.