"ADREA'S DIARY"
"By love stalks hate, his brother and his mate."
I am scarcely calm enough to write! Yet I must write! My heart is
full; my very pulses are throbbing with excitement! What is it that
has happened? It is all confused in my mind. Let me try and set it
down clearly; then perhaps I shall be able to see my way.
Yesterday it seemed to me that my being was all too small for one
passion. Now it holds two! The one, perhaps, intensifies the other.
That is possible, for they are opposites, and one has grown out of the
other. Now I cannot tell which is the stronger, the love or the hate.
I love one man, and I hate another. Perhaps I should say I love one
man because I hate another. You, my dumb confidant, may be trusted
with names, so I will be clearer still. I love Paul de Vaux, and I
hate Father Adrian!
Oh! that he should have dared! that he should have dared to speak so
to me! If only Paul had been there, he should have beaten him. If I
had had the strength and the means, I would have killed him where
he stood, and silenced those thin, cruel lips for ever. I could have
stabbed him to the heart, and my hand would never have faltered.
Let me try to recall that scene. It is not difficult. His words are
ringing still in my ears, and his white, passionate face seems to
follow and mock me wherever I look. I see it out there in the white
moonlight, and it rises up from the dark corners of the room. It
haunts me, and I hate it! I hate him as a woman hates any one who
comes between her and the man she loves!
We were alone, Paul and I; at least, we thought so. I had heard no one
enter, nor had he. But suddenly a voice rang out and filled the room;
a fierce, cruel voice, so changed and hardened with passion that I
scarcely recognised it. But when we sprang up, and peered through the
twilight of the chamber we saw him standing close to us,--so close
that he might even have heard our whispered words to one another.
There had been some ceremony at the monastery amongst the hills where
most of his time here is spent, and he had evidently come straight
from there. His flowing black robes were splashed with mud and torn by
brambles, and his white face was livid with exhaustion and anger. His
dark eyes burned like fire in their hollow depths, and his right
hand was raised above his head, as though he had been on the point of
striking or denouncing us. I shall not forget his appearance while I
live. It will haunt me to my dying day.
I think that it is the mystery of it all which tortures me so. What
has Paul to fear from him? Whence comes his power? What evil is it
which he holds suspended over his head? There is only one that I can
imagine. Father Adrian must hold the key to that awful deathbed scene
at the monastery of Cruta. As I write the words, my hand shakes, my
heart sickens with the horror of that memory. Well have I cause to
shrink from all thought of that hideous night;--I, to whom the son of
Martin de Vaux has become the dearest amongst men! What was it Paul
said to me? "He knows something which my father told him whilst he lay
dying." Is it that knowledge which gives him this strange power? I
did not believe in it! I would not have believed in it! But, in that
dreadful moment, I turned to Paul, and I saw his face!
A volley of words seemed trembling on Father Adrian's lips; yet he did
not speak. We waited for the storm to burst; we waited till I could
bear the silence no longer, and I felt that if it was not broken I
should go mad. So I drew near to him, and spoke a single word in his
ear. Then I glided back to Paul's side.
"Spy!"
He treated the insult as one might treat the bite of an insect in
the face of some imminent danger. He did not reply to it; he did not
appear to have heard it. His eyes traveled over me, as though they
had been sightless, and challenged Paul's. In the excitement of the
moment, his words sounded tame, and almost meaningless.
"This is your answer, then, Paul de Vaux! Let it be so! I accept your
decision!"
There was no defiance in Paul's answer. His manner was quite subdued.
I think that both his words and his tone surprised me.
"You have seen! I am in your hands!"
I looked from one to the other, troubled. I felt that there was a
hidden meaning in their words which I could not understand. There
was something between them from which I was excluded. But this much
I knew. There was a threat in Father Adrian's words, and it was I who
was the cause of it. Oh! if this man should bring evil upon Paul! The
thought of it is like madness to me! See, there goes my pen! I cannot
write when I think of it!
I have opened my window. The very air is sad with the moaning of
the sea, and the rustling of the night breeze in the thick, tangled
shrubbery below. But to me it is sweet and grateful! I am in no mood
for pleasant sounds or sights. The dreariness of the night finds its
echo in my heart. The damp breeze cools my forehead! To-night I feel
conscious of a new strength. It is the strength of hate! My mind is
full of dim purposes; time will aid them to gather strength! As they
group themselves together, action will suggest itself. To time I leave
them!
Let me go back to my recital of what passed between us three. A
strange lethargic calm seemed to have fallen upon Paul. He turned to
me without even a single trace of the passion which had lit up his
face a few moments before.
"I must go!" he said quietly. "Farewell!"
I could scarcely believe that he meant it; that he was going away
without another word, at what was really this priest's unspoken
bidding. But it was so. From that moment, the fear of Father Adrian
which had grown up in my heart leaped into a new strength. I was
angry, and full of resistance.
"Why should you go?" I cried. "I have much to say to you!"
"I must go now, Adrea," he answered simply. "When I came I had no
thought of staying. It is late!"
I felt my face grow hot with passion as I turned swiftly round towards
Father Adrian. "It is you who should go," I cried. "Why have you come
here? Why are you always creeping across my life like a dark, noisome
shadow? Go away! Begone! I will not be left with you!"
He turned a shade paler, but he did not sacrifice his dignity, as
I hoped that he would, by answering me with anger. He did not even
answer me at all. He looked over my head at my lover.
"To-morrow night!" he said calmly.
"To-morrow night!" Paul answered.
I stood between them, angry but helpless. A log of wood had just
fallen from the fire on to the hearth, and in its sudden blaze I could
see their faces distinctly. The utter contrast between the two men
threw each into strong relief. Paul, in his scarlet coat and riding
clothes, pale and impassive, but _debonnaire_; and Father Adrian, his
strange black garb mud-bespattered and disordered, and his dark, angry
face livid with the passion so hardly suppressed. It was odd to think
of them as creatures of the same species. Odder still to think that
there should be this link between them.
I walked with Paul to the door, holding to his arm, and talking,
half-gaily, half-reproachfully, all the way. We stood on the
step together while his horse was being brought round, and in the
half-lights he stooped down and kissed me. But his manner had changed.
Even his lips were cold, and his eyes were no longer bright. There was
a far-away look in them, and his face was white and set. There were
tears in my eyes as I watched him ride away on his great brown horse,
and listened to the distant thunder of hoofs across the moor. His face
had told its own story. He was nerving himself to face some expected
danger. From whose hands? Surely from Father Adrian's.
The thought worked within me. I stood for a moment, trying to quiet
my passion. As I turned away I heard the stable-yard doors open, and a
carriage, laden with luggage, drove slowly out, and, without coming
to the front at all, turned down the avenue. I ran out, heedless of my
slippers, and called to it to stop. The man obeyed me, and I caught it
up, breathless. The blinds were closely drawn, but I opened the door.
As I expected, it was she who sat inside, closely veiled and weeping.
"You were going, then, without a single word of farewell!" I cried
reproachfully. "Is that kind? Have I deserved it from you?"
She threw up her veil. Her eyes were red and swollen with weeping. She
looked at me pleadingly.
"Do not blame me more than you can help!" she said. "It was a great
shock to me to see you--with the son of Martin de Vaux. It was more
than a shock; it was a horror to me! He is like his father! He is very
like his father!"
I knew that she had passed through a fiery sea of suffering, and I
kept back the anger which threatened me. I pointed upwards.
"We cannot keep the dark clouds from gathering in the sky, nor can we
make love come and go at our bidding. We are but creatures; it is fate
which ordains!"
She bowed her head. "Fate, or the unknown God! I am not your judge,
child! I do not leave you in anger!"
"Why do you go, then, and leave me here alone? It is not kind! It is
not what I should expect from you!"
The tears started again into her eyes, but she shook them away. "I
cannot explain as yet," she said. "You will think me ungrateful, I
fear! I cannot help it! I must go. Farewell, Adrea!"
A sudden thought came to me. It was an inspiration. "You are not going
of your own free will," I cried. "Some one has been influencing you!"
Her face was suddenly full of nervous terror. "Hush! hush!" she cried.
"He will hear you! Let me go now! Let me go, I beseech you!"
I held her hands. "It is Father Adrian who is sending you away," I
cried passionately. "He is my enemy. I hate him! Why should you obey
him? Stay with me! Do, do stay!"
She looked at me as one would look at an ignorant child who
blasphemes. "You are talking wildly! Father Adrian is far from being
your enemy. You do not understand!"
Her voice had changed; the note of sympathy had died away. I turned
away from the carriage door in despair. Father Adrian's power was
greater than mine.
"You can go!" I said bitterly. "You would have left me here without
one word, at his bidding. As you say, I do not understand."
She leaned forward, with a strange light in her eyes. "Child," she
whispered, "I am going to Cruta."
The carriage drove away and I walked back to the house. The air seemed
full of voices, and the grey rising mists loomed into strange shapes.
Cruta! She was going to Cruta! What power had this man in his hands to
send my lover from me with a heart like a stone, and this woman back
into the living hell from which she had just freed herself. It was my
turn now! Would he be able to subdue me to his bidding? The thought
made me shudder.
I ran upstairs into my room, and bathed my forehead, and re-arranged
my gown. Then I set my teeth together, and went down to him. It was to
be a battle! Well! I was prepared!
* * * * *
It is over now. I know his strength, and I know his weakness. What
passed between us I shall put down to-morrow. To-night I am weary.