REMORSE
That night the pair experienced a feeling of estrangement such as
neither of them had ever felt before.
Edris, while dressing for dinner, was suddenly seized by a fit of
remorse, and throwing herself wildly upon her bed, gave way to a
violent outburst of tears.
“Oh, why did I do it? I must have been mad!” she cried aloud between
her sobs. “Why did I do it, when I love Seti so well? But I know his
nature. He will never forgive me now that he has learned the depths of
my deceit. Yes, I am base and worthless. I am unworthy of his great
passion for me. What must he think? What must he think?” she cried in
despair, as the tears flowed in torrents.
She remembered how Karl, with his craft and cunning, had fascinated
her with those winning ways which he had so often practiced upon other
women. She recalled his pretty speeches--how, by slow degrees, he had
sought to possess her and poison her mind against the man she loved;
how he had so constantly declared that he was too old for her, and the
cruel and harsh things he had uttered concerning the man whom she held
in such esteem and admiration. She admired Karl for his figure, for
his physique, and for his own brave deeds which he related to her,
little dreaming, even then, that her hero was only a pinchbeck one,
and that his strong, manly figure was, after all, only stuffed with
sawdust.
That evening, however, she began, by slow degrees, to gauge the man at
his true worth. For the first time in her life she compared him with
Seton, and at once realized the great difference in their characters.
She began to wonder why she had ever become infatuated with Karl.
Then once again, in her bitter, tearful regret, she cried aloud: “Seti
can never forgive me! He knows the truth! He will go--and will never
meet me again. Oh, God!” she sobbed. “How can I convince him that I
love him, and have loved him all along--that I still love him; that
whatever I may have said--whatever I may have done--I am his, and his
alone?”
A long, deep sigh escaped her, for she saw plainly that he would never
believe that such was the real truth; that he would never believe in
her honesty; that, alas! he would never trust her in future.
“Why did I become engaged to Karl?” she cried to herself, her heart
bursting with grief and remorse. “Why did I tell him that I loved him
when it was not true? I must have been mad--utterly mad that night. He
fascinated me, just as a serpent fascinates a bird. I was helpless in
his hands when, an hour before the train left, he compelled me to
engage myself to him. He knew that I loved Seti, and I told him so.
But he would not hear me. And he forced me to accept him. What I felt
when, half an hour later, I faced Seti at the train--and I thought he
would never know the truth!” the girl sobbed in her bitter anguish,
and in her penitence she prayed earnestly for forgiveness and
assistance.
At the same time Seton was standing in his room grief-stricken and
heart-broken. Even now, when he knew everything, she was keeping up a
hollow pretense of loving him. Why? he asked himself. Was it because
of his popularity that she still sought to remain affianced to him,
yet at the same time meeting her lover in secret? Her protests of love
had sickened him.
“She is false--damnably false!” he cried in his sorrow--a pathetic
figure, bowed and broken. He stood by his bed and leaned upon it,
looking around him bewildered. “And I trusted her! I thought that at
last I had found happiness; that I had found my soul’s affinity, the
perfect woman!”
He choked down his sobs, and, going to the glass, tied his cravat and
reluctantly descended the staircase to the pretty drawing-room, with
its bowls of pink tulips, where Mrs. Temperley was sitting before the
fire.
“Edris tells me she is going to London to-morrow, Mr. Darville,” said
the General’s wife, a tall, well-preserved woman, who had been a great
hostess in India before the retirement of her husband. “You will
remain here with us, won’t you?”
“I fear that I must also go to London to-morrow,” replied the
novelist. “I have an appointment in town to-morrow night. Besides, I
can go up with Edris.”
“No, don’t. Remain with us. Do!” urged Edris’s mother.
But Seton made excuse that he was compelled to leave, and that moment
Edris, in a plain black dinner-frock, entered the room.
When, later on, at about eleven o’clock, they were left alone together
in the morning-room, Edris exclaimed, suddenly gripping his arm and
looking into his face:
“I know, Seti, that you can have no further confidence in me, but I
repeat what I have already said--that I love you, my wonderful lover,
and you alone. Karl is coming to London, and to-morrow night I am
meeting him at Victoria.”
“Yes,” he said brokenly, “I know. You have as him to come to London.”
Edris flushed up. “I do not deny it. I have done it in order to test
my love for you!” she said very seriously, her little hands trembling
upon his shoulders as she tried to bring her face up to his.
“How curious!” he remarked coldly. “You are engaged to me, and yet you
are compelled to test your love for me, eh? I really cannot understand
you,” he added, with a hard expression on his face.
“I know how base and cruel you must think me, Seti,” she cried in her
distress. “I--I can’t ask--I dare not ask you to forgive me. But if I
could only explain, you would, I know, think better of me--perhaps,
indeed, have pity for me.”
“Pity one who has acted as you have acted?” he said with withering
scorn. “You thought me in ignorance of it all--that I was a dotard,
and that I was one to be gulled and tricked. Instead, I am a man
strong in intelligence and health, with faculties more acute, perhaps,
than those of your straw-stuffed lover. No!” cried Darville in his
anger. “Go and meet him. You are longing for the hour, as you wrote to
him in your last letter four days ago.”
Edris did not answer. She knew that it was true that he had more fear
and jealousy of Karl Weiss than of any other man living.
The color mounted to her face and burnt there, but she did not draw
her hands away. His very words conjured up hatred and things she did
not want to think about, and which she resolutely put away at their
first appearance, now that Karl was on his way to London.
“I love you, Seti,” she said after a time, tired and heartsick as she
was. “I know that you have thrown me over because of my despicable
behavior. But I tell you that I will never marry anyone but you, if
that’s any consolation to you.”
He winced.
“Thank you,” he said very coldly.
She hesitated. Then, at last, summoning courage, she said with tears
in her eyes:
“Seti--my darling--can you ever believe, after all that has passed,
after my foolish infatuation, my abominable deceit and lies, that I
still love no other man but yourself?”
“No, Edris,” was his harsh reply, for his heart was now turned to
stone. “I regret I cannot. You are very young, and, the difference in
our ages being so great, perhaps it is, after all, best as it is. At
least, your lover says so!” he added bitterly.
Edris wondered fully what had torn the scales from his eyes so
roughly.
“Don’t you think I love you, Seti?” she cried in desperation. “You
shouldn’t talk like this.”
He put out his hand as though to touch hers, but stopped in time.
“Will you never forgive me?” She caught hold of him. “Seti, kiss me!”
But the man turned his head away. He had become sickened by her
treachery, her falsehoods, and her pretense of love.
Then her pent-up emotions found vent, and she opened the floodgates of
her soul and poured out the truth to him in short, quick
sentences--how the flirtation, begun by the kiss beneath the
mistletoe, had ended in a mutual attraction, and how Karl had forced a
profession of love from her lips, and a promise to marry him, just
before they had parted at Interlaken.
Edris, with tears streaming from her great, gray eyes, told him the
truth. On her knees she implored forgiveness, covering his hands with
passionate kisses.
Alas! it all left him quite cold. She saw that he had become a changed
man.
Next morning he accepted Mrs. Temperley’s pressing invitation to
remain until Edris returned from meeting Karl. He did not wish to
intrude upon their meeting, and, besides, the trap was set for his
enemy by the lucrative appointment awaiting him. It was Wednesday. She
said that she would return to Stagsden on Saturday.
So he went to the station with her. They uttered few words, both being
full of their own thoughts. Edris was going to meet his enemy in order
to see whether she preferred him to Seton Darville! When she entered
the compartment, her companion suddenly whispered to her:
“Do not forget that I await you!”
She turned quickly to him as she stood upon the footboard, and
replied:
“No, Seti, I shall not forget.”
And the train went off, leaving him alone. He saw her smiling face at
the window. She was expectant and happy. Then he turned, and, with
tears standing in his eyes, walked back to the car.
She had gone to meet his false friend, the traitor who had
extinguished the sun of his life.