“DON’T YOU KNOW ME, DELAVAL?”
“And where the red was--lo! the bloodless white,
And where truth was--the likeness of a liar,
And where day was--the likeness of the night,
This is the end of every man’s desire!”
The world seems very dark to Lord Delaval to-day--a terrible chaos, in
fact, in which right is hopelessly, inextricably, mingled with wrong.
He hates and scorns himself for this passion for Marguerite Ange, which
gives him neither rest nor peace.
He swears he will leave Paris and never set eyes on her again; then he
believes it is Kismet, bows to the inevitable, and resolves not to
struggle against a feeling that is evidently stronger than himself.
Then comes a reaction once more.
“There is nothing to be done but to go right away. There’s not much fear
she’ll break her heart, or that I have really inspired a _grande
passion_. _Her_ sort are not much given to fretting after one man, when
a dozen are at her beck,” he says to himself sardonically. “But I will
go and wish her good-bye. That much will be but gentlemanly.”
So he goes, a few days after the supper party, to the Rue Tronchet.
The lovely cause of so much heartburning leans back as usual among her
vivid scarlet cushions, doing nothing, as is her wont--like the lilies
of the field, she neither toils nor spins, but she looks in her shady,
luxurious room, provokingly cool and languid, and far away from the
troubles and perplexities of this work-a-day world.
But the dreaminess of her eyes is lost in the radiant light that
transfigures her face as Lord Delaval enters, and starting up, she holds
out two hands without a word, but with a smile that is more than a
welcome.
He takes them absently and seats himself beside her in rather an
abstracted way, and when he speaks, it is of the subject that is
uppermost in his mind.
“I’ve come to say good-bye, Marguerite.”
“Good-bye?” she repeats in a startled voice.
“Yes. I am going away.”
“Where?”
Her accents tremble, her face blanches. It dawns upon her at once that
this is no ordinary leave-taking.
“Oh, somewhere! Anywhere! What does it matter _where_, since it will be
where I shall not see _your_ face?” he asks, and he bites his lip to
hide its quivering.
Not a word falls from her at this speech. She sits quite still and as
white as snow, her hands clench together, and her breath comes quick and
hard.
“But I _couldn’t_ go away without coming to see you once more,
Marguerite--without carrying away with me one more glimpse of your
face.”
In spite of him he falters, and with the perverse nature of his sex, is
angry with himself for rolling the stone to his own sepulchre.
“Why must you go?” she pleads, looking up wistfully. “Why can’t you
stay? If you go I shall feel that I shall never, _never_ see you again.”
“Are you sorry to lose me, Marguerite?” he asks softly. “I believe you
_are_. I believe you really care for me just _a little_.”
“A little! Oh, Heavens!” she murmurs with her face all set and drawn,
and her figure rigid, as if despair had turned her into stone. “You
_dare_ to say that!” she cries suddenly and fiercely. “You _dare_ to say
that, when you know--ay, _must_ know--that all my life, all my love--ah!
what am I saying?”
Then her passion, her bitterness, melts, and she wails out:
“Have you no mercy, Lord Delaval? Am I so low--_so low_, that you cannot
even feel pity for me? See! I am praying here for clemency, for pity at
your hands! Praying you not to break my heart!--not to ruin my life for
ever and ever!” and she flings herself down on her knees and lifts up a
face still more wondrously beautiful through the emotion that lives in
every feature.
“Marguerite! Oh! what have I said?” he cries in an agony of remorse. “I
would not give you a moment’s pain for the world. You say I deem you
‘low,’ Marguerite! Ah! if you could see into my heart, you would find
that it is because I not only love you, but _honour_ you, that I have
come to say good-bye!”
He tries to draw away the hands with which she has hidden her face--the
face that has undone him--but she droops her head, while her whole frame
trembles with uncontrolled passion.
“You must not mind what I say,” she whispers, after a moment, in a low,
hoarse voice; “it’s only my own folly--only I cannot help--oh! _how_ can
I _help_ loving you? Listen to me!” she goes on, pouring out her words
in an eager, impetuous torrent. “I shall never see you again, you
say--shall never speak to you! I will tell you all the truth then, and
after that we shall part, and you will forget my madness, and I--never
mind what I shall do--anyway, I shall not blame you; it isn’t your fault
that you are _yourself_! and that I could not help loving you. You have
been the one man in all the world to me. Ah! you can’t imagine how I
have worshipped you, how you have seemed to me as the light of Heaven,
as a being of another world who had deigned to speak, to look, to smile
on me. It was idolatry I felt when I first looked on your face, the germ
of a love that was to wreck my whole life. It has been my one ambition
that you should do justice to the attraction I possess; you have been my
religion, my conscience; and all I have wanted was to prove to you that
I was capable of winning men’s hearts, though yours might be denied me.
I have gloried in my beauty because I believed it had won you; I thanked
God only yesterday on my knees that my life was crowned with your love!
But it’s all over now! I have hung on every word you have spoken, I have
clung to every kindly look, believing, hoping, praying that at last--at
last!--no one could come between us two!”
She drops his hand, and, springing up, stands opposite him, speaking
fast and almost incoherently now.
“It has come to this now--_now_, that you have decided to part--that I,
who thought myself strong and brave, cry out in my weakness to you,
tearing open the wound that you may see me writhe under it. You may
scorn me, despise me, hate me if you will! I have been wicked,
treacherous, unscrupulous, but if you had loved me and stayed with me I
should have become a better woman. You have wrecked my whole life, but
through it all, through everything, through heartlessness, caprice,
falsity, dishonour, and even insult, I have loved you--loved you as no
woman will ever love you in this world! I have given you my life, my
soul, everything! Don’t you know me _now_, Delaval?”
Dazed, almost stunned, he stares at her aghast, while his face grows
ashy white, even to his lips, from which no word issues, only--only, as
he gazes, in his mind dawns a misty memory, a doubt, _a repulsion_.
“Is there so little of love’s instinct in your heart that a paltry mask
of pink and white, a little Golden Wash, has hidden from you that I
am----?”
“_Gabrielle!_”
He almost shouts in a voice that has a sharp ring of pain and horror in
it, and he shrinks back from her, while the warmth and tenderness his
face had worn fade right away, and in their place comes a cold, hard,
pitiless, passionless look that stings her to the very core.
She shivers from head to foot, with a dumb agony in her eyes that might
touch a heart of granite, but it does not touch this man, who only
cries:
“Thank God!--Thank God! I have been saved in time!”
She falls upon her knees once more, grovelling at his feet.
“Oh, Delaval! my love!--my love! don’t despise me! don’t loathe me!
Have you no pity for me?--_one word!_”
But he spurns her from him with a rough gesture, and rising, she stands
a little apart.
“No!” he says, in a hard, metallic tone, “I have no word for you--_not
one_! If there are things I hate, they are lies and deceit. If there is
a thing I never forgive, it is being made a fool of. Thank Heaven you
have told me now who you are. _What_ you are, I do not care to know!
Under the mask of youth and guilelessness you had nearly made me your
slave, you had fired the train that was to bring me to everlasting shame
and disgrace. Oh! I could kill myself for my cursed folly, my credulity,
my utter blindness! But I am saved!--saved from being a dupe to a base
woman, who scruples at nothing, not even the ruin of her sister’s home
and life, just to salve a paltry wound to her vanity, to hold in her
chains a man who had set her aside long ago, knowing her to be--_what
she is_!”
Clear and cutting, like a knife, his words fall on the shady, luxurious,
silent room.
Silent for one moment only, while he goes towards the door without one
backward glance.
Before he reaches it, however, a sharp click breaks the silence and Lord
Delaval falls across the threshold----
_Shot!_
Gabrielle Beranger stoops down and gazes at the face of the man who has
insulted her, then she kisses his lips, and, closing the door after
her, steals noiselessly away.
* * * * *
The stars cluster thickly in the clear sky, and lights twinkle at each
other across the broad bosom of the Seine, when a woman comes slowly
and, pausing, looks down on the shimmering water.
“Better to die _so_,” she mutters. “I am not good, neither was _he_, so
we two may yet meet again!”
A dull sound like a break in the water, a glint of golden hair on the
edge of a ripple----
* * * * *
Her face is fair even in death, as she lies here, in the terrible
Morgue, among ghastly things that bring horror and shrinking to human
hearts.
“_Sapristi! C’est Marguerite Ange! La Blonde aux Yeux Noir_,” a man in a
blouse says in a hushed voice, as he peers through the little glass
window.
“_Elle est belle à faire peur!_” answers his companion.
And this is her requiem.
[Illustration]