WHEREIN ADRIAN SAVAGE SUCCEEDS IN AWAKENING
LA BELLE AU BOIS DORMANT
In consequence of the bad weather every one returned to Paris early
that autumn. Anastasia Beauchamp's first reception--the fourth
Thursday in September--proved a crowded and animated function. Each
guest expressed rapture at meeting every other guest, and at being
back, yes, once again veritably established in our dear, good, brave,
inexhaustibly interesting, intelligent and entertaining Paris! How
they--the speakers--ever mustered sufficient fortitude to go away,
still more to stay away, they could really now form no conception. But
it was finished, thank Heaven! the mortally tedious exile; and they
were restored to the humanities, the arts, the sciences, in short, to
civilization, of which last dear Mademoiselle Beauchamp's hospitality
represented so integral and so wholly charming a part. This and much
more to this effect. The French mind and French diction rarely fumble;
but arrive, with graceful adroitness, squarely on the spot. Lightness
of touch and finish of phrase effectually safeguarded these raptures
against any suggestion of insincerity or absurdity. They were
diverting, captivating, as were the retailers of them. And Anastasia
listened, retorted, sympathized, capped a climax with further witty
extravagance, heartily pleased and amused.
Nevertheless, to her, this yearly _rentrée_ was not without an element
of pathos. In the matter of reminiscence and retrospect Miss Beauchamp
was the least self-indulgent of women; her tendency to depress her
juniors by exaltation of the past at expense of the present being of
the smallest. To hours of solitary communing in her hidden garden she
restricted all that. Still this joyous homing, when the members of her
acquaintance taking up their residence once again in Paris blossomed
into fullness of intellectual and social activity, left her a little
wistful, a little sad. Recognition of the perpetual shifting of the
human scene, of the instability of human purpose, oppressed her. How
few of those who greeted her to-day with such affectionate
_empressement_ were precisely the same in thought, circumstance or
character as when they bade her farewell at the end of May! She could
not but note changes. Those changes might be slight, infinitesimal,
but they existed. Not only do things, as a whole, march on; but the
individual marches on also--marches on, too often, out completeness of
sympathy, completeness of comprehension, or, through the ceaselessly
centrifugal, scattering action of the social machine, marches on
actually out of hearing and out of sight! And this thinning of the
ranks, these changes in those who remained, did cause her sorrow. She
could not bring herself to acquiesce in and accept them with entire
philosophy.
Arrayed in a dress of clove carnation satin veiled with black _ninon de
soie_, Miss Beauchamp stood near the door opening from the first of the
suite of reception-rooms--in which tea had been served--on to the
entrance hall. She had taken up her position there when bidding her
guests adieu. In the second room two persons were talking, Lewis
Byewater's slow, detached, slightly nasal accents making themselves
clearly audible.
"Lenty Stacpole feels Madame Vernois is just the loveliest mature
French feminine type he has yet encountered. He would be gratified to
work up those thumbnail sketches of her he made at Ste. Marie into a
finished portrait for exhibition with his other work in New York this
winter--"
With an unconscious, but very expressive, little gesture of reprobation
Anastasia moved across to the embrasure of the near window, pleasant
from the fresh, pungent scent of a bank of white and lemon-colored
chrysanthemums. She looked up into the limpid clarity of the twilight
sky seen above the house-roofs on the opposite side of the quiet street.
... Yes, the perpetual shifting of the human scene, the instability of
human purpose. And, as concrete example of all that, a portrait of
gentle, shrinking, timid, pre-eminently old-world Madame Vernois on
exhibition in New York! The shouting incongruity of the proposition!
Would her daughter, _la belle Gabrielle_, entertain it? And there, as
Anastasia confessed to herself, she ran up against the provoking cause
of her quarrel with existing conditions and tendencies. For, of the
two living persons whom she had recently come to hold dearest, wasn't
the one changed and the other absent?
Since that pleasant afternoon at Ste. Marie she had neither sight nor
word of Adrian Savage. The young man appeared to have incontinently
vanished. She rang up his office in the _rue Druot_. The good Konski
replied over the telephone, "Monsieur was, alas! _encore en voyage_."
She rang up his home address in the _rue de l'Université_, only to
receive the same response; supplemented by the information that Adrian
had not notified the date of his return, nor left orders as to the
forwarding of his letters. What did this mean? She became anxious.
"Lenty has worried quite a wearing amount," Byewater was saying,
"whether it would be suitable he should ask you to let him work up a
portrait. I tell you, Madame St. Leger, Lenty's silver-point is just a
dream. Do not go thinking it is because I am his friend I judge it so.
Mr. Dax positively enthused when he saw some samples last fall; and
Lenty has broken his own record since then--"
Anastasia, still consulting the calm evening sky, began to play a quite
other than calm little fantasia with the fingers of one hand upon the
window-pane. For why, in the name of diplomacy, of logic, of Eros
himself, had Adrian Savage elected to vanish at this moment of all
conceivable moments? The goal of his ambitions was in sight--hadn't
she told him as much at Ste. Marie? Eros awaiting, as she believed, to
crown him victor in the long, faithful fight. And then that he, the
dear, exasperating young idiot, should gallop off thus, the Lord only
knew whither, instead of claiming the enchanting fruit of his victory!
Really, it was too wildly irritating. For _la belle Gabrielle_ wasn't
pleased--not a bit of it. She resented his absence at this particular
juncture, as any woman of spirit not unreasonably must. Only too
probably she would make him pay for his apparent slight of her. And to
what extent would she make him pay? Faster and faster grew the time of
the fantasia upon the window-pane, for this question greatly disturbed
Anastasia.
For if Adrian must be cited as an example of the absent, _la belle
Gabrielle_ must be cited as among the changed. Miss Beauchamp, who
watched her with affectionate solicitude, perceived something was a
little bit wrong with her. She was not quite contented, not quite
happy. Her manner had lost its delightful repose, her beauty, though
great, its high serenity. Her wit had a sharp edge to it. She avoided
occasions of intimacy. To-day she had helped Anastasia receive; and
the latter remarked that, during the whole course of the afternoon, men
had gathered about her and that she flirted--gracefully--yet
undeniably--with each and all in turn. Since her return to Paris she
had discarded the last outward signs of mourning. The smoke-gray
walking-suit she wore to-day was lavishly embroidered in faint pastel
shades of mauve, turquoise, and shell-pink, the pattern outlined here
and there in silver thread, which glinted slightly as she moved. The
same delicate tones tipped the _panache_ of smoke-gray ostrich plumes
set at the side of her large black hat. In this donning of charming
colors Anastasia read the signing of some private declaration of
independence, some assertion, not only of her youth and youth's
acknowledged privilege of joyous costume, but of intention to make
capital out of the admiration her youth and beauty excited after the
manner of other fair _mondaines_.
Clearly Madame St. Leger had arrived at a definite and momentous
parting of the ways. Her mourning, all which it implied and which went
along with it, was a thing of the past. Her nature was too rich--let
it be added, too normal and wholesome--for the senses not to play their
part in the shaping of her destiny. She had coquetted with Feminism,
it is true; but such appeals and opportunities as Feminism has to offer
the senses are not of an order wholesome natures can accept. To
Gabrielle those appeals and opportunities were, briefly, loathsome;
while, in her existing attitude, an exclusively intellectual
fanaticism--such as alone can render advanced Feminism morally
innocuous--no longer could control or satisfy her. Against it her
ironic and critical humor rebelled, making sport of it. It followed,
therefore, as Anastasia saw, that _la belle Gabrielle_ would inevitably
seek satisfaction, scope for her young energies, for her unimpaired joy
of living, elsewhere. And this signaled possible danger. For, just
now, being piqued, as Anastasia believed, and pushed by wounded pride,
she might commit a folly. She might marry the wrong man, marry for
position merely, or for money. Plenty of aspirants, judging by this
afternoon, needed but little encouragement to declare themselves. She
had borne the trials of one loveless marriage bravely, without faintest
breath of scandal or hint of disaster. Throughout she had been
admirable, both in taste and in conduct. But what about a second
loveless marriage, made now in the full bloom of her womanhood?
Miss Beauchamp's fingers positively drummed upon the window. For she
had come to love them both so closely, love them foolishly, even
weakly, much--perhaps--this very attractive young couple, of whom the
one, just now, was absent, the other changed! Beyond measure would it
grieve her if the consummation of their romance should be frustrated or
should come about other than quite honest and noble lines. Why, oh!
why, in Heaven's name, did Adrian Savage absent himself? Why, at this
eminently psychologic moment, was he not here? Anastasia could have
wept.
Then, becoming aware of footsteps, and some presence entering from the
hall behind her, she turned round hastily to find herself confronted by
Adrian himself.
"_Enfin!_" she cried, enthusiastically. "What an inexpressible relief
to see you, my dear Savage! You discover me in the very act of
exhaling my doubtfully pious soul in prayers for your speedy return.
You are late, in some respects perhaps dangerously late; but 'better
late than never'--immeasurably better in this connection. Only, pardon
me, where on earth have you been?"
The young man held her hand affectionately.
"In a land which possesses no frontiers, alas!" he said; "a land which
bears no relation to geography."
"Hum! Hum!" Anastasia responded, just a trifle impatiently, shaking
her head. "And in addition to its other peculiarities is this famous
country devoid of a postal system, may I ask?"
"Practically, yes," Adrian answered. "Unless one is prepared to make
oneself a really unpardonable bore. Some people call it the Land of
Regrets, dear friend, others call it Purgatory. The two names are
synonymous for most of us, I imagine. I have spent several weeks
there, and the atmosphere of the accursed place still so clings to me
that, although I needed immensely to see you, I shrank from coming here
to-day until, as I supposed, all your other guests would have gone."
Then Anastasia, looking at him, perceived that this delightful young
man--her great fondness for whom she did not attempt to disguise or
deny--must also be added to the number of the homing Parisians who had
suffered change since she saw them last.
To begin with, he was in mourning of the correct French order, which,
in man's attire only in a degree less than in woman's, prescribes
uncompromising severity of black. But the change in him, as she
quickly apprehended, went deeper than such merely outward
acknowledgment of mournful occurrence. Some profound note had been
struck since she saw him at Ste. Marie of the gleaming sands and
alluring horizons, revealing tremendous and vital issues to him; and,
in view of those same issues, revealing him to himself. From the
effect of this revelation his whole being was still vibrant.
Anastasia's heart went out to him in large and generous sympathy; but
she abstained from question or comment. The matter, whatever it might
be, was grave, not to be taken lightly or played with. If he intended
to give her his confidence, he would find an opportunity for doing so
himself. Men, as she reflected, in their dealings with women are made
that way. Express no desire to learn what troubles them, and they
hasten to tell you. Show, however discreetly, your anxiety to hear,
and they roll like hedgehogs, prickles outward, at once! So she merely
said, smiling at him:
"I am afraid you should have waited even longer, my dear Savage, if
your object was to avoid all my guests. Two, in any case, still
linger. Listen--we cannot hope for solitude _à deux_ just yet."
For once more Byewater's slow, penetrating accents made themselves
audible.
"If you feel not to be able to entertain Lenty Stacpole's proposal,
Madame St. Leger, I would not have you hesitate to tell me. I believe
I catch on to your objection, though in America our ladies do not have
such strong prejudices against publicity. I will explain to Lenty the
way you feel. I would not wish to put you to any worry of refusing his
proposal yourself."
"Eh! _Par exemple_! And pray what next?" Adrian said, under his
breath, with raised eyebrows, looking his hostess inquiringly in the
face.
"Ste. Marie offered only too many fatally magical quarters of an hour.
They are both very hopelessly far gone, the two poor innocents!"
"Both? But it is preposterous, incredible! Dearest friend, you do not
say to me both--not both?" Adrian cried, in a rising scale of heated
protest.
To which Anastasia, hailing these symptoms of militant jealousy as
altogether healthy, replied genially, taking his arm:
"If you doubt my word, come and judge for yourself."
Lewis Byewater, his hands clasped behind him, leaned his limp height
against one of the few wall-spaces unincrusted with pictures, mirrors,
china and other liberal confusion of ornament. Madame St. Leger stood
near him, smoothing out the wrinkles in the wrists of her long gloves.
To Adrian, as he entered the room, her charming person presented itself
in profile. He perceived, and this gave him a curious turn in the
blood, half of subtle alarm, half of high promise, that she once more
wore colors.
Anastasia Beauchamp felt his arm tremble.
"Yes," she murmured, "a certain enchanting woman puts on her armor and
takes the field again. Believe me, it is time, high time, you came
back!"
"You are so very good to try to spare me the pain of making Mr.
Stacpole a refusal," Gabrielle was saying sweetly to the young
American. "But you do always show yourself so very amiable, so
thoughtful I think your countrymen are of the most--how do you
say?--the most unselfish of any--"
Turning her head--"Ah!" she exclaimed, quite sharply, living red
leaping into the round of her cheeks and living light into her
eyes--"it is you, Mr. Savage?"
But even while the answering light leaped into Adrian's eyes, very
effectually for the moment dissipating their melancholy, her expression
hardened, becoming mocking and ironic.
"You have the pleasure to know my kind friend, M. Byewater?" she asked,
with a graceful wave of the hand toward that excellent youth, who had
ceased to lounge against the wall and stood rather anxiously upright,
the blankness of unexpected discomfiture upon his ingenuous countenance.
"Incontestably I have the pleasure of knowing M. Byewater," Adrian
replied. "I have also had the pleasure of reading, and further, of
publishing, two of his a little--yes, I fear, perhaps just a
little--lengthy articles."
"I did condense all I knew," Byewater put in ruefully, addressing his
hostess. "But I presume I was over-weighted by the amount of my
material."
"Quite so; and the whole secret both of style and of holding your
reader's attention lies in selection, in the intuitive knowledge of
what to leave out," Adrian declared, his eyes fixed with positively
ferocious jealousy upon _la belle Gabrielle's_ partially averted face.
That poor, inoffensive Byewater should receive this public roasting was
flagrantly unjust, Anastasia felt, still she abstained from
intervention. The silence which followed was critical. She refused to
break it. The responsibility of doing so appeared to her too great.
One or other of the two principal actors in the little scene must
undertake that. She really couldn't. At last, coldly, unwilling, as
though forced against her inclination to speak, Madame St. Leger,
turning to Adrian Savage, said:
"It is long since we have any news of him. How is M. Dax?"
Adrian shrugged his shoulders.
"I have not heard, _chère Madame_," he replied.
Whereupon Miss Beauchamp, satisfied that, whether for good or ill,
relations were safely established between this altogether dear and not
a little perverse young couple, called cheerfully to the American youth.
"Come here, come here, Mr. Byewater. I have hardly had one word with
you all this afternoon, and there is something I greatly wish to ask
you. What is this that I hear about our good, clever Mr. Stacpole's
leaving for New York?"
"It is so, Miss Beauchamp. Lenty is fairly through with the work for
his winter exhibition, and he looks to start the first of the month."
"But I do not comprehend how it is you do not bring any news of M. Dax.
Have you not then been with him all the time since we have last seen
you?"
"I have been abroad," Adrian replied. "My cousin, of whom you may
remember to have heard me speak--Joanna Smyrthwaite--"
He hesitated, and his companion, though stoutly resolved against all
yielding and pity in his direction, could not but note the melancholy
and extreme pallor of his handsome face.
"But certainly I remember," she returned rather hastily. "Is she ill,
then, poor lady, one of those pensive abstractions whom it has been
your interesting mission to materialize and rejuvenate?"
"She is no longer ill," he answered. "She is dead."
"_Ah! quel malheur inattendu_! Truly that is most sad," Gabrielle said
in accents of concern. Then for a moment she looked at Adrian with a
very singular expression. "I offer you my sympathy, my condolences,
Mr. Savage, upon this unhappy event."
And, turning aside, she began to move toward the doorway of the outer
room, upon the threshold of which her hostess stood talking to Byewater.
But Adrian arrested her impetuously.
"Stay, Madame!" he cried, joining his hands as in supplication. "Stay,
I implore you, and permit me a few minutes' conversation. By this you
will confer the greatest benefit upon me; for so, and so only, can
misunderstandings and misconstructions be avoided."
Thus admonished, Gabrielle paused. Her aspect and bearing were
reserved, as those of one who yields in obedience to good manners
rather than to personal inclination. But Adrian, nothing daunted,
followed up his advantage.
"I came here to-day, _chère Madame_," he said, "as soon as possible
after my return. My idea was to consult our friend Miss Beauchamp, to
ask her advice and enlist her assistance. I feared my conduct might
have appeared erratic, inexplicable. I proposed begging her to act as
my ambassadress, asking her to recount to you certain things which have
taken place since we parted at Ste. Marie--things very grievous, in a
way unexampled and unnatural. But as I have the good fortune to find
you here, I entreat you to wait and hear me while I acquaint you with
those occurrences myself. You will remain, yes? Let us go over there
then, out of earshot of the insupportably recurrent Mr. Byewater. I
need to speak to you alone, _chère Madame_, without frivolous
interruptions. And Mr. Byewater is forever at hand. He annoys me. He
is so very far from decorative. He reminds me of a fish--of an
underdone _filet de sole_."
Madame St. Leger's reserve gave slightly.
"Unhappy Mr. Byewater!" she murmured.
"Yes, indeed unhappy, since you too observe the likeness," Adrian
pursued, darting positively envenomed glances in the direction of the
doorway. "Yet is it not unpardonable in any man to resemble the
insufficiently fried section of a flat fish? You recognize it as
unpardonable? Sit down here then, _trés chère Madame_, at the farthest
distance possible from that lanky _poisson d'Amérique_. Ah! I am
grateful to you," he added, with very convincing earnestness. "For in
listening you will help to dissipate the blackness of regret which
engulfs me. You will hear and you will judge; yes, it is for you, for
you only and supremely to do that--to judge."
"I fear you will be no end fatigued, Miss Beauchamp, standing all this
long time talking," the excellent, and, fortunately, quite unconscious
Byewater was meanwhile saying. "I believe I ought to go right now. I
had promised myself I would escort Madame St. Leger home to the _Quai
Malaquais_. But I don't believe I stand to gain anything by waiting.
Recent developments hardly favor the supposition that promise is likely
to condense into fact."
He nodded his head, indicating the couple ensconced at the opposite end
of the room in two pillowed, cane-seated, cane-backed gilt chairs of
pseudo-classic pattern. The wall immediately behind them carried a
broad, tall panel of looking-glass, the border of which blossomed on
either side at about half its height into a cluster of shaded electric
lamps. The mellow light from these covered the perfectly finished
figures of the young man and woman, sitting there in such close
proximity, and created a bright circle about them, as Anastasia
Beauchamp noted, curiously isolating them from all surrounding objects
save their own graceful images repeated in the great looking-glass.
Her eyes dwelt upon them in indulgent tenderness. Might they prosper!
And therewith, very genially, she turned her attention to the fish-like
Byewater once more.
But that same bright isolation and close proximity worked strongly upon
Gabrielle St. Leger. Her pulse quickened. A subtle excitement took
possession of her, which, just because of her anxiety to ignore and
conceal it, obliged her to speak.
"Your cousin's death has evidently pained you. You mourn her very
truly, very much?"
"I cannot mourn enough."
"Indeed!" she said, dwelling upon the word with a peculiar and slightly
incredulous inflection.
"No," he repeated, "I cannot mourn enough. But to make my state of
mind intelligible to you--and it is vitally important to me to do
so--it is necessary you should know what has happened. I cannot deny
that I am very sad."
He bowed himself together, setting his elbows on his knees, pressing
his hands against either side of his head.
"I have cause to be sad," he continued. "Involuntarily I have
contributed to the commission of a crime. All the values are altered.
I am become a stranger to myself. Therefore I ask just this of you, to
hear me and to judge."
Surprised, impressed, alarmed even, Gabrielle St. Leger gathered
herself back gravely in her gilded, long-seated pseudo-classic chair.
The young man's genuine and undisguised trouble combined with his
actual physical nearness to threaten her emotional equilibrium. More
eagerly than she cared to admit even to herself had she looked forward
to his return to Ste. Marie. Her disappointment was proportionate,
causing her anger. The thought of the slight he had put upon her
rankled. She was, or rather wished to be, angry still. But just now
wishes and feeling ranged themselves in irritating opposition and
conflict. And during the silence following his last strangely
sorrowful and self-accusing words--he so very near to her, dejected,
abstracted, with bent head--feeling gained, waxing masterful and
intimate. The personal charm of the man, his distinction of
appearance, his quick brain and eloquent speech, his unimpeachable
sincerity, his virility--refined, but in no degree impaired by the
artificial conditions of modern life--even his boyish outbreak of
jealousy toward Lewis Byewater, stirred and agitated her, proving
dangerous alike to her senses and her heart. The culminating moment of
that terrible experience in René Dax's studio, when, half beside
herself from the horror of madness and death, she had flung herself
upon Adrian's breast, there finding safety and restoration to all the
dear joys of living, presented itself to her memory with importunate
insistence. Was it conceivable that she craved to have that moment
repeat itself?
"Mr. Savage--you asked me to listen. I listen," she said, and her
voice shook.
In response the young man looked up at her, a rather pitiful smile on
his white face.
"Thank you--it was like this, then, _chère Madame et amie_," he said.
"Pushed by certain sinister fears, without waiting to communicate with
you or with any one, I went straight to England on receiving from her
sister the announcement of my cousin's death. Letters had passed
between us during the previous fortnight which rendered that
announcement peculiarly and acutely distressing to me."
Adrian bent his head again and sat staring blindly at the floor.
"She had asked a pledge of me which neither in honor nor in honesty
could I give," he said, bitterly. "My cousin was an admirable woman of
business. I knew that all her worldly affairs were scrupulously
regulated. I was in no way concerned in the distribution of her
property. I went to attend her funeral as a tribute of regard and
respect. I also went in the hope the sinister fears of which I have
spoken might prove unfounded. I stayed in London, merely going down to
Stourmouth for a few hours. It was a wretched, wretched day, the
weather cold and wet."
He ceased speaking. For at this moment--whether through some inward
compelling, some mental necessity to arrive at a just and comprehensive
estimate of the history of the last eight months, or whether through
some external influence emanating from the unseen world of spirit and
striving to dominate and coerce him, he could neither then, nor
afterward, determine--the whole gloomy _affaire_ Smyrthwaite, in its
entirety, from start to finish, presented itself to his mind. The
slightly bizarre yet charming room, its crowded furniture, subdued
gaiety of lights and flowers, even Gabrielle St. Leger's well-beloved
and ardently desired presence, became strangely unreal to him and
remote; while his mind fixed itself in turn upon the autocratic,
self-centered husband and father warping the lives of wife and children
in obedience to cold-blooded theory; upon the interruption of his own
work, and prosecution of his fair romance, by the tedious labors of the
executorship; of his long fruitless search amid the filth of the Paris
underworld for the wastrel degenerate, Bibby; of the squalid finding,
the still more squalid redisappearance of the wretched fellow, and the
disquieting uncertainty which even now covered his whereabouts and his
fate; and lastly, with sharp inward shrinking, upon the commencement,
the progress, the extinction, of Joanna's infatuation for himself.
And as sum total and result what remained? What was there to show in
the way of harvest for all that strenuous and painful sowing? Only
this--that now, very strangely, he himself at once participant and
spectator, he saw in the mournful chill of the rain-swept September day
a dark, straggling, ill-assorted procession passing up a trampled,
puddle-pocketed road between ranks of pale and vulgarly commonplace
monuments set against a backing of somber fir-trees and heather.
Margaret Smyrthwaite, composed, callous, and comely, swathed in
abundance of brand-new crape, walked beside him immediately behind a
coffin--the hard, polished lines of which were unsoftened by pall or by
flowers--carried shoulder high. The big Yorkshireman, Andrew Merriman,
followed in company with Joseph Challoner--the latter oddly subdued and
nervous, obsequious even in bearing and in speech. Next came fussy
little Colonel Haig, Doctor Norbiton, and the amazon Marion Chase. A
contingent of servants from the Tower House, headed by Smallbridge, the
butler; Johnson, the portly coachman, and Mrs. Isherwood, brought up
the rear. Isherwood, alone of the company, wept, silently but
heart-brokenly, mourning not only a mistress who was to her as a
daughter, but the passing of an order of things which had filled and
molded her life and in the service of which she had grown old. To
Adrian the faithful woman's tears supplied the one sincere and human
note in the otherwise cruelly barren and perfunctory performance. And,
to his seeing, her desolation found sympathetic echo in the desolation
of the autumn moorland, of the bare coffin, and the gray curtain of
drifting mist blotting out the distance--the vast amphitheater of the
Baughurst Park woods, the streets and buildings of Stourmouth, and all
the noble freedom of the sea. The hopelessness of that desolation
clutched at him still, penetrating him, even now and here, with
conviction of failure and futility, with doubt of any eternal and
reasoned direction and purpose in things human, and with very searching
doubt of himself. His fine and healthy optimism--in other words, his
faith in God's goodness--suffered bitter eclipse.
"I would not be surprised if I concluded to take the trip with Lenty
the first of the month, Miss Beauchamp."
As he spoke Lewis Byewater's mild and honest eyes, half humorously,
half reproachfully, sought the delightful young man and young woman
sitting silent in their gilded chairs.
"I am ever so grateful to you for all the splendid times you have given
me," he continued, rather irrelevantly; "but I begin to have a notion
it would prove healthier for me to leave Paris this fall."
Again his eyes sought the silent couple enthroned before the tall
mirror.
"Yes," he said, "I feel pretty confident I will accompany Lenty. Seems
as though this gay city had turned ever so lonesome and foreign
to-night. Europe is enervating for a continuance. I know others who
have found it affect them that way. There is too much atmosphere over
here. I have a notion my moral system is in need of toning up; and I
believe our bright American climate might help me some if I took a
spell of it."
Madame St. Leger threw back her head and loosened the lace scarf about
her rounded throat.
"Return, Mr. Savage. Again I remind you that I wait to hear that which
you ask to tell me, that I listen. Return, lest I grow too impatient
of waiting," she said.
Adrian straightened himself. His looked dazed, absorbed. He passed
his hands across his eyes and forehead, as one who awakens from a
feverish sleep.
"Ah! forgive me, _chère Madame_," he answered. "But that is precisely
what I need, what I desire--just that--to return, to come back; and to
come back by your invitation, at your calling. I ask nothing better,
nothing else."
He spread out his hands, leaning sideways in his chair, looking at her.
"Forgive me. I am very stupid, incoherent; but the events of the last
three weeks are still so vividly present to me that they confuse and
distract me. I cannot see my way clearly. I find it difficult to tell
you what is necessary, just what I should. See, then, it had been the
habit of my cousin to keep a journal daily from early childhood. The
last volume of that journal she had, I found, left as a legacy to me.
Her sister gave it to me after the funeral. I took it back with me to
London. The night was wet, and I was in no humor for amusement. I
remained indoors, in my room at the hotel. The sinister fears which I
entertained in connection with my cousin's death had not been allayed
by my visit to Stourmouth. A certain mystery appeared to surround the
circumstances attending it. I perceived a great unwillingness to
answer my inquiries on the part of those most nearly concerned. That
night, after dinner, I opened the packet containing the journal,
unwillingly, I own; I would rather have delayed. But I could not do
so. With the muffled roar of the ceaseless London traffic in my ears I
sat and read the journal from cover to cover. Having once begun, I
could not leave off. I did not go to bed that night. In the morning
early I left London. I left England. I traveled. I hardly know where
I went, Madame. I wanted to escape. I wanted to get away from every
person I knew, whom I had ever seen. Above all I wanted to get away
from myself; but I was obliged to take myself along with me. And I
found myself a dreadful companion. I hated myself."
Madame St. Leger moved slightly in her gilded chair.
"My poor friend!" she murmured almost inaudibly.
"Yes, I hated myself," Adrian repeated. "That journal is the most
poignant, the most convincing human document I have ever read. My
cousin had the misfortune to love a person who did not return her
affection. In the pages of her journal, with uncompromising
truthfulness, with appalling self-scrutiny, self-revelation and
unflinching courage, with, I may add, the amazing abandon possible only
to a rigidly virtuous woman, she has recorded the successive phases of
that love, from its first unsuspected and almost unconscious inception
to the hour when by an act of will, so extraordinary as to be little
short of miraculous, she sent her soul out of her body, across land and
sea, in pursuit of the man whom she loved and forced from his own lips
the confession of his indifference to her."
Again Madame St. Leger moved slightly.
"You tell me this soberly, Mr. Savage?" she asked. "In good faith?"
Adrian looked fixedly at her. Her beautiful face, her whole attitude,
was tense with excitement.
"In absolute good faith, Madame," he replied. "I have not only the
detailed testimony of her journal, but the perfectly independent and
equally detailed testimony of the person whom she loved. The two
statements agree in every particular."
"Still," Gabrielle cried, a sudden yearning in her eyes, "still I
cannot count her as altogether unfortunate, your poor cousin! For it
is not given to many--it is the mark of a very strong, a very great
nature, to be capable of such love. And when she had obtained this
man's confession?"
"She decided to live no longer," Adrian replied hoarsely. "She had no
religion, no faith in Almighty God or in the survival of human
personality and consciousness, no hope of a hereafter, to restrain her
from taking her own life. She made her preparations calmly and
silently, with the dignity of sincere and very impressive stoicism.
The concluding words of the terrible book, in which she has dissected
out all the passion and agony of her heart, of her poor tortured body
as well as her poor tortured soul, are words of pity, of tenderness,
toward the man who found himself unable to return her affection."
For a time both remained silent, while in the outer room Miss Beauchamp
bade a genial farewell to the disconsolate Byewater.
"Yes, go, my dear young man, go," she said, "and breathe the surprising
air of your very surprising native land. I shall miss you. But I
understand the position, and give you my blessing. Later you will
return to us--for Europe is full of illumination and of instruction.
You will return, and, be very sure, we shall all be delighted to see
you. Be sure, also, that you leave an altogether pleasant and friendly
reputation behind you."
"But, but," Gabrielle said, presently, with a certain protest and
hesitancy, "it pains, it angers me to think of so great a waste. For
it is no ordinary thing, the bestowal by any woman of so magnificent a
gift of love. That a woman, young and rich, should die for love--and
now, at the present time, when our interest moves quickly from person
to person, when we console ourselves easily with some new occupation,
new friendship, when our morals are perhaps a little--how do you
say?--easy, is it not particularly surprising, is it not, indeed,
unique? To reject such affection, is not that to throw away, in a
sense, a positive fortune? How could such devotion fail to attract,
fail to create a response? Why, Monsieur, could not this man of whom
you tell me return your cousin's great love?"
Adrian Savage spread out his hands with a gesture at once hopeless and
singularly appealing.
"Because, Madame, because the man already loved you," he said. "And,
that being so, for him there could be no possible room, no conceivable
question, of any other love."
Madame St. Leger remained absolutely motionless, expressionless, for a
moment; then she threw back her head, closing her eyes. "Ah!" she
sighed, sharply. "Ah!"
And Adrian waited, watching her, a sudden keenness in his face. For
what, indeed, did it betoken, where did it lead to, this praise and
advocacy of Joanna Smyrthwaite's tragic devotion, followed by that
singularly unrestrained and unconventional little outcry? The said
outcry struck right through him, giving him a queer turn in the
blood--carrying him back in sentiment, moreover, to the horrible yet
perfect experience in René Dax's studio, when he had felt the whole
weight of Gabrielle's beloved body flung against him and the clasp of
her arms about his neck. He straightened himself, took a deep breath,
his nostrils dilated, his lips parted. He emerged from the confusion
and lethargy which had oppressed him, quickened by that same outcry
into newness and fullness of life. To him all this was as the drawing
aside of some gloomy, jealously impenetrable curtain--the curtain of
desolate gray mist, was it, blotting out the distance, the town, the
great woods, and the noble freedom of the sea, when he walked in that
ill-assorted funeral procession up the wet road behind Joanna's
coffin?--a drawing of it aside and letting the glad and wholesome
sunlight shine on him once more. He no longer felt a stranger to
himself. The past--all which had happened, all which went to shape his
character and inspire his action, all which he had desired and held
infinitely dear before the _affaire_ Smyrthwaite imposed itself upon
him--linked up with the present, in sane and intelligible sequence of
cause and effect. Thus, chastened, it is true, a little older, sadder,
wiser, but fearless, ardent, purposeful as ever, did Adrian the
Magnificent come into his own again.
He drew nearer to her, laid his right arm somewhat possessively upon
the arm of Madame St. Leger's chair, and spoke softly, yet with much of
his former impetuosity.
"See, _chère Madame_, see," he said; "do you perhaps remember, this
winter, in the week of the great snow, when I came to tell you I was
summoned to my cousins' home in England? You were not quite, quite
kind. You mocked me a little, suggesting a solution of the problems
raised by my impending visit. The solution you proposed was, as I
ventured to explain to you, impossible then. It remained impossible to
the end, the cruel end, and for the same reason."
His manner changed. His voice deepened.
"Yet, believe me, when by degrees, against my will, against my respect
for my cousin and sincere desire for her happiness, the fact of her
unfortunate partiality was brought home to me, I tried with all my
strength to command my heart. Twice I faced the situation without
reserve, and tried to submit, to sacrifice myself, rather than cause
her humiliation and distress."
Adrian looked away across the crowded, pleasant room, with its scent of
autumn flowers, cedar, and sandalwood, and its many shaded lights. His
lips worked, but at first no sound passed them.
"I could not do it," he said. "I could not. I loved you too much."
He raised his hand from the arm of _la belle Gabrielle's_ chair,
turning proudly upon her, as a man who on his trial fiercely protests
his own innocence.
"I had given her no cause for her disastrous delusion--before God,
Madame, I had not. And my passion, too, has its authority, its
unalienable rights. I could not, I dared not, betray them. It may be
that the happiness to which I aspire will never be granted me. Very
well. I shall suffer, but I shall know how to accommodate myself. But
to cut myself off voluntarily from all hope of that happiness by
marriage with another woman was like asking me to mutilate myself. I
refused. Could the situation repeat itself, I should again refuse,
although when I read her terrible journal and learned the reason of my
cousin's suicide I was consumed by remorse, by grief and self-reproach."
Adrian paused.
"Now I have told you everything, Madame," he added, quietly. "I leave
myself in your hands. It is for you to condemn or to acquit me, to
judge whether I have behaved as an honorable man, whether I have done
right."
After a silence, a pathetic bewilderment in her mysterious eyes,
Gabrielle St. Leger answered brokenly:
"I do not know. I do not know. I cannot presume to judge. What you
tell me is all so difficult, so sad--only I may say, perhaps, that I am
glad you did not sacrifice yourself."
"You are glad? Then--" Adrian stammered, "then you will marry me?"
"Eh! but," _la belle Gabrielle_ cried, and her voice shook, though
whether with tears or with laughter she herself knew not, "you go so
quick, so very quick!"
"You are mistaken--pardon me. I do not go quick, but slow, slow as the
centuries, as æons, as innumerable and cumulative eternities. Have I
not served for you, _tres chère Madame_, a good seven years?"
"So long as that?"
"Yes, as long as that. Ever since the day I first saw you. You had
but recently come to Paris. Much has happened--for both of us--since
that date. Yes, I can still describe to you the gown you wore, the
manner in which your hair was dressed, can recall the subjects of our
conversation, can repeat the words which you said."
Madame St. Leger gathered herself back in her gilded chair, her head
bent. For a quite perceptible space of time she remained absolutely
still. The inclination of her head and the shadow cast by the brim of
her hat concealed her face. Adrian's heart thumped in his ears. His
breath came short and thick. At last he could bear the suspense no
longer. He leaned forward again.
"Madame, Madame," he called softly, urgently, "think of the seven
years. Remember that I am young and that I am on fire, since I love as
the young love. Do not prolong my trial. Give me my answer--yes or
no--now, here, at once."
Thus adjured, Madame St. Leger raised her head, looked full at him with
wide-open eyes, something profound, exalted, in a way desperate, in her
expression. She shivered slightly, and holding out both her hands:
"I surrender," she said.
The young man took her extended hands in his, bent down and kissed them
reverently; then looked back at her gravely, resolutely, though he was
white to the lips.
"But not under compulsion, not out of pity?" he said. "Now, even now,
with the consummation of all my hopes and desire within my grasp, I
would rather you sent me away than, than--that--"
_La belle Gabrielle_ shook her head gently, smiling.
"No, no," she answered. "Not under compulsion, not out of pity, _mon
ami_; but because I find nature is too strong for me. Because I find I
too love, and find--since you will have me lay bare my heart and tell
you everything--it is you, precisely and solely you, whom I love."
And from the inner room--into which Anastasia Beauchamp had passed
unperceived by her two guests during this, for them, momentous
colloquy--came strains of heroic music, good for the soul.
THE END