“Why have you brought me here?” I whispered.
“What! again?” he said, shaking a finger at me.
“It seems, for no reason but to humble and abuse me. I was happy with
poor Gogo.”
“Damn Gogo!” he said, in such a sudden heat that it brought a cry from
me. Then, all in an instant, to my amazement and distress, he had
fallen on his knees beside the bed.
“What is Gogo to you, or you to him?” he cried, in a low, intense
voice. “Has he ruined himself for you as I have done? Has he risked
death, destruction, madness? pined for you in dreams, and plotted to
gain you waking, as I have ever since you, a child, took my reason by
storm, and bound it to you by golden chains?”
His fervour and passion quite overwhelmed me. I could only cower,
trembling, before him.
“What do you mean?” I whispered. “How have you ruined yourself--for my
sake?”
He caught at my hands. He was breathing fast and thick.
“O, child, you don’t know!” he cried--“the peril that has dogged
you--the love that has foreseen and provided--not for a moment the
truth of how my heart bled to hurt you. Now--now! O, will you not come
to me and hear?”
“No,” I whispered, in a hurry of emotion. “For pity’s sake leave me! I
will come to you presently: I will, indeed.”
He rose to his feet at once, commanding himself. He was all
changed--softened and transfigured. I felt swimming on the edge of a
whirlpool--fighting giddily against some helpless, rapturous plunge to
which I was being urged. I longed only for breathing time--some little
space to be alone in.
He went and stood by the trap: “I will wait for you,” he said
hoarsely; and so descended, closed it behind him, and was gone.
When, in an hour, I rejoined him, he was pacing the cellar like a
caged wolf. He uttered a glad exclamation upon seeing me, and took my
hand and led me to a stool. He was himself again, but with a new
strange wistfulness in his gaiety.
“You will not mind the ‘sewer’ now?” said he. “And presently you will
ask me everything, and I will tell you.”
He drew in our breakfast, by the same method as before; and I could at
last enjoy my collops with a free conscience and appetite. Then, our
meal over, he drew his stool beside me, and, without offering to
smoke, started upon his relation.
XIX.
I AM MAID MARIAN
“But, first,” said he, kindling, “ask me where you are.”
“Short explanations suit me best,” I said. “Immured in a wall. Is not
that enough?”
“Quite, for me,” said he, “since you are here. But whose wall, now?”