THROUGH THE SHADOWS.
“It is not much that a man can save
On the sands of life--in the straits of Time,
Who swims in sight of the third great wave,
That never a swimmer shall cross or climb.
Some waif washed up with the strays and spars
That ebb-tide throws to the shore and the stars.
Weed from the water--grass from a grave--
A broken blossom--a ruined rhyme!”
Through the mantle of dusk the lights shine brightly in the Place
Vendôme, but the room in the Hotel Bristol looks dark and dreary, save
for the fitful flame of the fire, when Zai, who has grown tired of her
own society, hears footsteps on the stairs.
All the long afternoon she has been alone; even “Baby,” her resource on
most occasions, has slept through the hours as sound as the Seven
Sleepers.
So, when a human tread falls welcome on her ear, she forgets that it is
not quite the thing for a countess to rush out on the landing of a
hotel.
“Is that you, Delaval?” she cries in a bright ringing voice, for she is
longing to see him again, longing with a great longing that will not
allow her to study the _convenances_. But she draws back as the figure
of a stranger, a tall, handsome man, with a face after Velasquez,
confronts her.
“Pardonne, Madame!” he says in a very low voice--and there is a gentle
sympathetic ring in it, for De Belcour is a thorough gentleman by nature
as well as by birth--“I have a mission to fulfil, a mission which pains
me more than I can say,” he adds earnestly, as he looks on the fair
sweet young face of his rival’s wife.
But Zai does not speak, something--a dreadful instinct--seems to gather
round her heart, like an iron band. She stands as white as an image of
marble and as motionless as if she were rooted to the ground--with the
glad laugh on her pretty lips hushed into an awful silence, and with a
terrible fear filling her big grey eyes, as, slowly passing her, they
bear their burden into the room, and place it upon the very couch where
she had lain this afternoon full of hope and happiness and with the
sunshine of life dancing in her eyes and breaking into smiles on her
mouth, for Zai is young and lovely and rich, and she adores her husband
and the child that God has given her.
Not a word falls from her now, and she never stirs from the spot where
she stands, but all the while she vigilantly watches the movements of
the men, and follows them with great piteous looks, and her little hands
clench and twist together in terror and despair.
“He is not dead!” De Belcour whispers, “but--_dying_, I fear.”
“_Not dead!_” The words break from her almost in a shout of joy, and she
springs past him and crouches down beside what they have brought
her--beside all that is left of _him_. Her eyes are quite dry, and
glitter, undimmed by a single tear, as she sways backwards and forwards
in the plenitude and abjectness of her suffering.
Then she raises a white, forlorn face, and falters:
“Is no one coming to him?”
And De Belcour, who feels himself moved to a great compassion for this
slender bit of a girl, stricken down in the very beginning and flush of
her life, bows his head in answer.
She forgets his presence then. Bending over her husband, she touches his
closed lids and his cold cheeks very softly and caressingly, as if her
little fingers loved to linger in their task. She puts her hand on his
heart, which beats, but so faintly as if each throb were its last, and
she keeps on murmuring tender words to the ears which do not hear them.
“Delaval, darling, speak to me, only one word--one little word, Delaval,
that I may just hear your voice. Oh, God! won’t he speak to me again?
shall I never hear him speak kind, dear words as he did to-day--before
he went away to--die? Die! Oh! you won’t die, Delaval, darling, my own
darling, you have not left me--left me--_for ever_!”
The last words go out from her in a wail loud enough, and piteous
enough, to reach the sky.
Faint and dizzy with fear, she stretches out her trembling hands, like a
blind woman, towards the form lying before her with the rigidity of
death, but, before they reach it, she falls back and drops senseless on
the floor.
* * * * *
Maybe her piteous cry has reached beyond the sky, for he has not left
her “for ever.”
The shot of a vengeful woman, wounded in her terrible love, driven to
the phrensy of a wild beast, has grazed the right lung, and for a long
time he hovers between life and death, while his wife nurses him
unwearyingly night and day with a devoted unselfish love that is not
often to be found in the worldly daughters of Belgravia.
Then, after a little, when they tell him he has crept slowly--slowly,
but surely--out of the shadows--and that life (not the old life, but one
twin with suffering perchance) yet lies before him, he feels that he
will regain health and strength sooner if the burden of a secret is
removed from him.
It is very hard to face Zai as he makes a clean breast of it, but he
does it.
“My pet,” he murmurs, in a low weak voice which is very unlike his old
accents, and the sound of which goes right to her heart, “I have
something to say to you.”
So she kneels down beside him. It is the place she likes best now in the
world.
“Do you love me very much, Zai?” he asks her, while his thin white hand
rests on her shining chesnut hair, and, looking up, she sees that there
is an actual mist of tears in his handsome ultramarine eyes.
“Ah, don’t I?” she whispers, catching hold of his hand and kissing it
passionately, and he reads plainly enough the love that is patent on her
face.
“But would you love me so much, Zai, if you knew that I had been
unfaithful--that I had forgotten you just for a little while?” he asks,
his lips quivering and his heart beating very fast. For somehow he holds
on to her love with a strange tenacity. It seems, in truth, to be the
only--only--thing worth living for.
She does not answer for a moment, but she has his hand still clasped
close in her own, while her face grows deathly white, and there is a
startled, stricken look in her grey eyes that cuts him to the heart.
“It is _quite_ true, Zai. For a little while I _did_ forget you. Another
woman’s face came between us, and for the life of me I _couldn’t_ shake
off its power over me, though I tried. Upon my soul I _tried_!”
He pauses, breathless, and a pallor creeps over his face--a face as
handsome as Apollo’s, in spite of suffering.
“Well, Zai, I saw her, not more than half-a-dozen times, perhaps, but
each time she seemed to draw me closer and closer to her, and
further--from--you--till the--_last time_.”
Zai listens to it all--to this confession of sin and wrong--her gaze
never swerving from his face, and her heart full to bursting.
“Did you _kiss_ her, Delaval?” she whispers at last in a faint, scared
voice, and on the impulse of the moment she puts up her little fingers
to stop her ears, in dread of his saying “Yes.” Then she drops them
desolately.
“No! thank God I never did!” he says quite heartily, and Zai breathes
more freely. And, the tension gone, she lays her head down on his arm
and cries like a child, but the tears are more of relief than of
bitterness, and the world does not look half as dreary to her as it did
a few minutes ago.
“No! I thank God, that you have nothing to forgive on that score, though
I am bound to say that both the spirit was willing and the flesh was
weak; but a lucky fate prevented it. No! it was only my _heart_, Zai!
Pshaw! fancy my calling it my _heart_. It was only my senses, Zai!”
She ponders a moment. It is dreadful to know that he has been caring for
another woman; but still it is a great comfort--a very, very great
comfort--to know that he has not _kissed_ her. So she lifts up her face
with a smile, half-piteous, half-glad, on her mouth, and her arm steals
round his neck.
Poor fellow, he looks so thin and white and haggard, she could not be
angry with him for the world.
“Well, my little one?” he says, but he knows quite well that she loves
him so much she will never be hard on him, and, after all, it was only a
venial sin, he thinks, with the self-indulgent complacency so common to
the style of man he is.
“I forgive you!” she whispers between fond fervent kisses on his lips,
“for you know, darling, that ‘to err is human.’”
“Yes! my own, own love! And ‘to forgive--divine!’”
* * * * *
But there is one secret yet that Lord Delaval keeps religiously from his
wife’s innocent ears. It is, that the woman who tempted him
was--_Gabrielle_!
THE END.