THE next morning Martha drove to the apartment in the Rue Presbourg, and
found her friend in bed, suffering from a headache which had been so
severe that she had had a doctor. She had passed a sleepless night, and
it distressed Martha much to see how really ill her beautiful princess
looked. There were dark rings around the lovely eyes, and the sweet
mouth, which the girl so loved, had a pathetic droop which showed that
tears were not far off.
Martha tried to cheer her up, by telling her how much her picture had
been noticed, and repeating some of the comments which she had
overheard.
It was strange how little all this was to Sonia. Her pulses did not
quicken, by one beat, until suddenly Martha said that Harold had been
fascinated by it, had lingered before it and gone back to it, and that
somehow she could not help thinking that he suspected that she had
painted it.
“How could he? It is impossible!” Sonia cried, a faint flush rising to
her face.
“Yes; I suppose it must be,” Martha conceded; “and yet there was
something special about the picture to him; and after he had seen it, he
certainly took no further interest in looking yours up, which, in the
beginning, he had told me he was going to do.”
“Martha, you must never let him know it! I trust you for that. I shall
never own the picture as long as I live; and I have the solemn pledge of
both you and Etienne not to betray me. You know it was against my will
that I consented to exhibit it, and I could not endure to have it known
that a melodramatic thing like that (for that is what it will be called)
had been painted and exhibited by me. Did your brother laugh at it? Tell
me the truth. If he laughed at it, I wish to know it.”
She had raised herself in the bed, and sat upright, looking at Martha
with commanding eyes.
“Laugh at it, Sonia? Could any one laugh at that picture--least of all
Harold? It is one of the most deadly things that I ever looked at. No;
he did not laugh. Indeed, I think it took from him all power of being
amused for the rest of the day. I only say this to prove that the
impression which your picture made was a serious one. He said nothing
about it, but I know he was impressed by it.”
The princess fell back on her pillows, with a face so flushed and eyes
so brilliant that Martha feared that she must be in a fever, and blamed
herself for having talked to her on a subject so exciting as the Salon.
In a few moments she rose to go. Her friend, although she declared that
the visit had done her no harm, did not try to keep her, for a sudden
and excited fancy had seized her.
No sooner was Martha gone than she rose quickly, rang for her maid, and
began to dress, regardless of the fact that her head felt light, and her
limbs were trembling. She put on a long cloak and a large black hat;
and, ordering her carriage, had herself driven to the Palais de
l’Industrie.
A feverish desire to see the picture again had laid hold upon her. She
wanted to look at it after knowing that Harold had done so, and to judge
how much she had betrayed of
[Illustration: “SHE PUT ON A LONG CLOAK.”]
what her own heart had felt, and her own eyes had expressed, when she
had painted that picture before her mirror, trusting in the complete
disguise of the decided changes in features and coloring which she had
made. She had painted the expression as faithfully as she could, knowing
that no one who had never seen her completely off guard would recognize
it. She felt now that if she should discover that there was a trace of
possible identification in either features or expression, she could not
endure it. Harold would think, and would have a right to think, that she
had made capital out of her most sacred shame and sorrow; and he was the
sort of man to whom that idea would be monstrous. She knew that she
never could have painted it if she had had the least idea of exhibiting
it; but when it was done, and she had shown it to Etienne to get his
criticism on the technique, and he had been so plainly delighted with
it, and urged her not to carry it any farther, but to exhibit it as it
was, she had agreed to it for three reasons. One was to please her
master, who was not very easily pleased; another was because she knew
she could keep it secret by telling no one except the two people who
already knew; and the third and decisive one was that it was a way
suddenly opened to her of giving her message to the world impersonally.
She felt a sort of exultation in the thought that in this way she could
say: “Look in my face, and see. This is marriage!”
When Sonia got out of her carriage she dismissed it with the maid, and
mounted the steps with a look of greater firmness and resolution than
she really felt, for physically she was ill and weak. She knew, however,
that she might meet with acquaintances here, and might attract the
attention of strangers by being quite alone, and therefore she realized
the necessity of calmness in her outward manner. Her face was partly hid
by a veil, and she had managed to avoid the gaze of one or two people
whom she had recognized as she made her way quickly to the room in which
she knew that her picture was hung.
In spite of her preoccupation, it quickened her pulses a little to see
that there was a small group of people in front of it, evidently talking
about it. As she stood behind these, and looked full at the face on the
canvas, which was looking full at her, a sudden sense of conscious
power, the knowledge that she had created a thing of intrinsic
character, came over her, and she could hardly realize that it was she
who had done it.
There was certainly no trace of her feature and coloring in this
picture, and yet she shrank back, and had an impulse to conceal herself,
for what she saw before her was undoubtedly the picture of her soul. Her
heart fluttered, and she felt herself beginning to tremble. Was she
going to faint here, alone? A wild sense of helplessness seized her, and
at the same moment she was conscious of a certain familiarity in the
outline of a shoulder and arm between her and the picture. She glanced
quickly up at the head of this man, and saw that it was Harold. A little
sound--scarcely more than a stifled breath--escaped her, and he turned
suddenly, just in time to go to her and take her arm in his steady,
reassuring grasp, which seemed to nerve her soul as well as her body to
make a desperate effort for self-control.
“You are ill. You should not have ventured out alone,” he said. (Oh, the
strong, protecting voice; the firm, availing touch!) Then he led her to
a seat, with some quiet words that seemed to put new power into her to
endure and to resist.
“I must go home,” she said, rising as she felt her strength return. “I
have been ill. I did not know how weak I was.”
“I will take you to your carriage,” he said; and without seeming to
recognize the possibility of resistance, he drew her arm in his, and led
her from the room and down the steps.
It came to her, suddenly, that her carriage was not there.
“I sent the carriage away,” she said. “I thought I would stay awhile,
and see the pictures.”
He signaled to a waiting cab, and as it drew up to the sidewalk, and he
put her in, he said quietly, but with resolution:
“I cannot let you go alone in this cab, ill and faint as you are. I beg
your pardon, princess; but I must go with you”; and he gave the number
to the cabman, and got in beside her.
That word _Princess_ stung her pride, and gave her a sudden feeling of
strength. She knew that he meant to convey by its use the idea that it
was only as a matter of formal courtesy that he felt bound to care for
and protect her now. She drew herself upright, with a slight bend of
the head in acknowledgment of his civility.
For a few moments they drove along in silence, utterly alone together.
Harold wondered if the thoughts of other days and hours were in her
mind. At the same instant she was wondering the same thing about him.
She had forgotten that he had just spoken of her with formality, and
called her princess. Apparently he had forgotten it, too; for he now
said in a low tone and with suddenness:
“Your picture is remarkable. You have told your story well.”
She felt that denial would be useless. Since he had found her standing
there before it, she was certain that he knew the truth as well as she
did.
“I never meant that it should be known that I painted it,” she said.
“You must know that.”
“Why should it not be known?” he said. “If a woman has looked on what
those eyes have seen, surely she is called upon to give her warning. If
that is what marriage meant to you, God pity you! God be thanked that
you are out of it!”
At his words there rushed across her mind the memory of a thousand acts
and thoughts and words of tenderness, of love, of strong protection, of
help in need and comfort in distress, which this man beside her had
given her. How could she tell him, though, that the ground of the
despair which she had painted had been the renunciation of these--the
thought that she had had a vision of what the love of man and woman
could be in a wedded life, and had been shut out from it? Where were now
the reasons that had seemed so powerful and sufficient for the course
which she had taken? Why was it that, try as she might, she could get no
sense of support and satisfaction from recalling these? Was it because
she felt them to be the foolish qualms of an ignorant girl, who was
prepared to fight against any and all conditions of life which did not
answer to her whim? O God, the hideous possibilities of error and of
wrong that were about one! How confident of right one might be in doing
an act of weakness and of shame!
She could not answer his last words. She felt herself suddenly so
possessed of the sense of his nearness that she could neither collect
nor control her thoughts. Her eyes were lowered, and she could not see
his face; but the very sight of his strong brown hand lying ungloved
upon his knee, the very bend of that knee and fold of the gray trousers,
seemed as familiar to her as her own body.
Suddenly she seemed to feel that he was hers, and that she was his,
whether they chose to recognize the fact or not; that God had joined
them, and no man, not even themselves, had power to put them asunder.
Harold, meantime, was wondering at her silence. Why was it that, after
her old defiant fashion, she had had no answer ready for his bitterly
felt and spoken words? That picture had stung his soul, and he would
have died sooner than have owned to himself even a wish to have her
back.
In spite of this, he could not forget that they were alone together, and
that she was ill and weak, and needed pity. He wondered suddenly if he
had been cruel in what he had said to her, and had put too great a tax
upon her strength.
As this thought crossed his mind the cab stopped, and he became aware of
a din of sound, made by the tramping of men and horses, and the blare
of brass instruments and the beating of drums. The cabman leaned down
and called to him, saying that the way had been crossed by a procession.
It would be some time passing. Was monsieur in a great hurry? Harold
answered no; and as he turned from the window he glanced toward the
woman at his side, and saw that she was leaning back weakly in her
corner, deadly pale. Her eyes met his, however, with a wide, direct,
unflinching look, and he saw that there was no danger of her fainting.
Consciousness, acute and powerful, was written in those eyes.
Outside, the crowd pushed and jostled by, while the clatter of hoofs and
feet came more distinctly to the ears as the sound of the band moved off
in the distance. An instinct to protect that pallid face from being
gazed upon made him draw down the thick silk blinds. He did this,
explaining his motive to his companion in a few quick words. Then he
turned and looked at her, and in the suddenly created gloom their eyes
met.
He was striving with all his might to keep the fire out of his; but
suddenly he became aware of the same effort on her part, as she closed
her lids an instant, and then, as if mastered by a feeling stronger
than her will, opened them wide, and looked at him again.
His heart leaped. His pulses throbbed. His cheeks flushed darkly. He
moved a little nearer to her, so that their faces were close, and still
her eyes met his with that wild, burning, concentrated gaze.
“For God’s sake, what is it?” he said. But she did not move a muscle or
an eyelash. She only gave her eyes to his, as one would hold up the
printed page of a book to be read and understood.
“What is it?” he said again, coming so near as to speak in the lowest
whisper, while his hands grasped hard the top of his stick, and his
breath came thick and fast.
Her eyes still clung to his, but her lips were wordless.
“I do not understand,” he said. “For God’s sake, speak! I do not want to
lose control of myself, but I cannot forget that you have been my wife.”
These words, which moved him so that he shook visibly, made apparently
no impression upon her. Her breathing was so scant and so light as
scarcely to lift the lace upon her breast; and, near as he was to her,
he could not hear it. Was she, perhaps, unconscious? He might have
thought so, but for the deep, intense consciousness in the gaze that she
fixed upon him, and the flutter of her long-lashed lids as she shut and
opened them occasionally from the strain of that prolonged look.
Outside, the drum throbbed distantly, like the beating of a great
excited heart. The thin call of a trumpet sounded keenly like a sigh of
pain. Nearer the tramp of men and horses could be heard. But all these
things only made them feel more absolutely alone together--this man and
this woman who had once been one in marriage! With his breast heaving
quickly with deep, uneven breaths, he suddenly uttered her name in a
thick whisper.
Still she remained as she had been before, motionless and wordless,
while he read her eyes. He dropped his stick, and seized her hands in
both his own, which were cold and shaking.
“Speak!” he said commandingly. “In God’s name, what do you mean, unless
it is that you love me still?”
Her hands were quiet and nerveless in his grasp, and in another instant
he would have lost control and consciousness of what he was doing. But
at this very moment the cabman called to his horse and cracked his whip,
the carriage gave a lurch forward, and they rattled rapidly away.
Recollecting himself, Harold dropped the hands which he had seized so
recklessly, and touched the springs of the curtains, which instantly
flew up, letting in the full light of day.
The fresh air which came in seemed to calm his heated blood, and he was
master of himself again.
When he turned to look at his companion, she was leaning back in exactly
the same position, only her heavy, richly fringed white lids were
dropped over her eyes.
In this way she remained quite still until the carriage stopped before
the door of her apartment. Harold, who thought that she had now really
fainted, was about to summon help from the concierge, when she opened
her eyes with a look of entire self-possession in them, got out of the
cab without the aid of his offered hand, and, bowing her thanks, without
speaking walked past him into the house, with a look of cool dismissal
which made it impossible for him to follow.
Puzzled, confused, bewildered almost to the point of frenzy, he got
back into the cab, and ordered the driver to drive in the Bois until he
should tell him to turn.
Sonia, during that same time, was shut within her room, thinking as
intensely as he. She had been able, by dint of enormous will-power, to
control herself in all other points while indulging herself in one. She
had said to herself during those crucial minutes in the cab, while she
consciously threw open the windows of her soul to this man in that clear
and unrestricted gaze, that she would neither speak nor stir, though the
effort should kill her. She found that she could best carry out this
resolve by relaxing her body utterly, while her will got every moment
tenser in its strain. She had said to herself over and over to what
seemed a thousand times: “Don’t move--don’t speak. Don’t move--don’t
speak”; and the very consciousness that she was equal to this effort
made her the more free in the abandonment with which she had let him
read her heart in her eyes.
Now, as she threw her wraps aside, and paced up and down her room, a
feeling of delicious exultation possessed her, and the physical weakness
which she had lately felt was gone and forgotten. It had been a draught
of intoxicating joy simply to look at him with free and unbridled eyes.
Was he not her husband, who could not be, by any act of man, really
parted from her? What had she shown him but a woman’s feeling for her
wedded lover? Was she crazy, she wondered, that she could have done it
then, and could feel now no regret--only a wild delight--in having done
it? O God, O God, how long it was that she had shut herself off from
feeling, and how good it was to feel once more! She was alive in every
nerve and pulse, as she had not been for so long; and the throbbing of
life was sweet, sweet, sweet! Never mind about the future; she would
meet it boldly, and make up some excuse--that she had been ill or
unconscious in the cab--pretend that she had forgotten the whole
thing--do anything that was needed, as to that!--but the throbbing bliss
of that one half-hour, she exulted that she had been bold enough to make
her own.