EVE IN THE GARDEN.
BUT that clear voice recalled me ere I had taken a dozen steps.
“What is it? Whither do you go?” she asked. “Not forward to Poitiers at
this hour!”
“Oh, no!” I answered. “I was merely going to--to think--to fight it
out. But I was rude. Pardon me. I--I did not realize what I was doing.”
“You are pardoned,” she said; and her voice was siren-sweet. “Perhaps I
can help you to fight it out, my friend--at least I should like to help
you. Besides I have not yet done talking to you. I have some further
advice at your disposal, if you care for it.”
“I _do_ care for it,” I said; and turned instantly back to her. “You
are very kind.”
“I wish to be kind,” she murmured; and looked up at me with a smile
that set my head to whirling. “But before I proceed,” she added, “you
must sit here beside me. I can’t talk to you when you are prowling up
and down like that. I feel as though I were _tête-à-tête_ with a wild
animal, and it disconcerts me.”
She patted the seat with an inviting hand, and smiled again that
alluring smile. I sat down obediently and looked at her, noting how the
moonlight touched her hair with silver and gave a strange glory to her
face.
“Since you are betrothed to another, M. de Tavernay,” she began,
turning in the seat so that she faced me, “doubly betrothed, with a tie
there is no breaking, and since I have satisfied myself that you are a
man of honor, I feel that I can be quite frank with you--almost as I
should be with my own brother, did I have one. What is it?” she asked,
noticing the cloud which swept across my countenance.
“Nothing, nothing,” I hastened to say. “Only there was a sting in the
words, as well as kindness.”
“A sting?” she repeated. “I fear you are very thin-skinned, M. de
Tavernay.”
“Perhaps I am,” I admitted humbly. “I shall try to remedy the fault.”
“Do,” she urged. “But I was about to say that you have not yet wholly
explained yourself.”
“I think I have told the whole story,” I said, casting my mind back
over its details. “I can think of nothing that I have omitted.”
She sat for a moment looking at me, her lips parted, the color coming
and going in her cheeks.
“You said some time ago,” she went on at last, “that I was concerned
with this story--that it was for that reason you desired my advice.”
“Yes, that is true, mademoiselle.”
“Well, you have not yet explained to me what you meant by that, my
friend.”
A sudden trembling seized me as I met her eyes.
“I thought you knew,” I began hoarsely. “I thought you guessed.”
“I am not good at guessing,” she said, looking up at me, her eyes
radiant, her hands against her heart.
“I meant,” I stammered, “I meant----”
But my lips refused to form the words; my heart turned faint----
“Oh,” she said, in a low voice. “I understand;” and she played for a
moment with the rose at her bosom. “You mean, then, that it is I who
have wrought this change in you?”
“Yes,” I assented; and caught my breath to choke back the sob which
rose in my throat.
She looked at me with a little frown, which changed in an instant to an
arch smile.
“Come,” she said, “confess that you are easily impressed, and that you
will forget as easily.”
“I shall never forget!”
“Remember the proverb--‘That which flames at a touch dies at a breath.’”
“I care nothing for proverbs. I know my own heart.”
“But consider, my friend;” and she leaned forward in her earnestness
until she almost touched me, until the sweet glow of her body
penetrated to me. “You have known me only a few hours. I am the first
woman you have met on riding forth into the world. You mistake a goose
for a swan. I assure you that there are many women beside whom you
would not give me a second glance. Indeed, it is very possible that
your betrothed may be one of them. So you will soon recover from this
madness; in a day or two it will have quite passed away. The path of
honor leads you to Poitiers and there you will find happiness as well.
In time you will come to wonder at this night’s emotion, and to laugh
at it. You will look back and you will say to yourself, ‘What a fool I
was!’”
“It is true,” I said slowly, “that I may be a fool in desiring what
I can never hope to possess; but at least, mademoiselle, do me the
justice to believe that I shall never cease to desire it. I do not know
how to tell you, for I have no skill in the phrases of love. I only
know that you have touched in me a chord which will never cease to beat
until the heart itself is still. It is not your beauty, though you are
very beautiful; it is not the tone of your voice, though that is very
sweet; it is not your smile, though that drives me to madness. It is
something beyond and behind all that; it is something which for want of
a better name I call your soul--that which looks out of your eyes so
clear and pure that I tremble before it, knowing my own unworthiness.
It is your soul that I love, mademoiselle, and no lapse of time, no
chance of fortune--nothing in earth or heaven--can alter that love one
atom.”
I have heard that love gives eyes to the blind, ears to the deaf, a
tongue to the dumb. I know that at that moment, as my heart burned
within me and the words rushed unbidden to my lips, the world appeared
a small and trivial thing, with nothing worthy in it save me and this
woman and the love I had for her. I have no words to describe the
emotion which shook me, the passion which flowed in my veins and took
possession of my being. It was as if a sudden miracle had been wrought
in me, a sublimation of everything unworthy; it was as though I had
climbed a mountain peak and come out under the clear stars, in the
thin pure air, with nothing between myself and God. I have never again
reached a height quite so sublime, or experienced a bliss quite so
poignant.
I was too blinded for the moment by my own emotion to see my companion
clearly; only her starry eyes I saw, and her parted lips, and her
clasped hands. Then she drew away from me and seemed to shake herself
as though awaking from a dream; and a cold breath blew upon me, and I,
too, awoke. The spell was broken, the vision ended, the glorious moment
gone.
“Indeed,” she said, her voice not wholly steady, but her eyes instinct
with mischief, “it seems to me that you are fairly eloquent, M. de
Tavernay, despite your lack of practise. I tremble to think what you
will be in a year’s time.”
“I shall be just what I am now,” I said doggedly, wounded at her tone.
“You have sounded the height and depth of my eloquence.”
“And am I to believe all this?”
“If you do not, mademoiselle, it is not because it is not true.”
“But your betrothed,” she persisted, “has she no attractions?”
“I have not seen her since she was a child of eight,” I answered
coldly. “I remember only that she had white hair and a red nose.”
She burst into a peal of laughter which shook her from head to foot,
and which I thought exceedingly ill-timed.
“Many children have,” she said, when she could speak articulately. “I
should not allow such little things as those to prejudice me against
her. No doubt her hair is darker now, and that redness of the nose
may have been only temporary. Perhaps her memory of you is no more
complimentary.”
“That is very likely,” I admitted.
“Think, then,” she cried, “how agreeably she will be surprised when she
sees you! Unless indeed she has already lost her heart to some handsome
fellow of Poitiers.”
“I trust not,” I said. “I trust not.”
“And why?” she queried sharply.
“I would not wish her to be unhappy also.”
She sat a moment silent at that.
“You mean that even if she has,” she asked at last, “you will hold her
to the betrothal?”
“Oh, no!” I answered, instantly; “she would be free--that is, if she
chose to be free.”
“If she chose to be?”
“Her father would hold her to her oath,” said I.
“And you believe he would have a right to do that?” she demanded,
wheeling upon me fiercely. “You believe that he would have a right to
compel her obedience, to force her into this marriage, to make her
miserable?”
“Yes,” I answered, after a moment’s thought, “I am sure he would. The
law is very clear.”
“Oh, the law!” she cried, impatiently. “I was not thinking of the
law--I care nothing for the law--a poor, stumbling device of stupid
men, whose meaning even they do not understand! Would he have the
_right_?”
“Yes,” I repeated, “I believe he would. He had passed his word.”
“And his word is of more importance than his daughter’s happiness?” she
demanded, her eyes blazing.
“Undoubtedly,” I answered, feeling myself on firm ground at last. “His
honor is of more importance to him than anything else on earth.”
“Honor!” she echoed, contemptuously. “An empty word men frighten women
with!”
“No!” I cried. “A rock to cling to in time of storm, even as I am
clinging to it now.”
She sat for a moment looking at me darkly.
“You men are all alike,” she said at last. “Lords of creation, before
whom we women must bow in all humility.”
“Even as you are doing at this moment,” I retorted.
She laughed at that, and the cloud vanished from her face.
“Thank you,” she said. “After all, I was tilting at windmills. There
is small danger that your betrothed has given her heart into another’s
keeping. More probably she is guarding it sacredly for you. A girl
has not a man’s opportunities for falling in love--nor a man’s
temptations. Besides--oh, I can be frank with you, for I feel almost
like your sister!--permit me to tell you, monsieur, that I think you a
very handsome fellow, quite capable of consoling her for the loss of
any girlish flame!”
I did not like the words, nor the tone in which they were uttered. They
lacked that sympathy, that consideration, which I felt I had the right
to expect from her. Perhaps, too, my vanity was wounded by my very
evident failure to touch her heart.
“You are not treating me fairly, mademoiselle,” I said, “nor kindly.”
“You will pardon me,” she retorted, her face fairly beaming, “if I fail
to see the situation in such tragic light as you. It has for me an
element of humor.”
“It is fortunate that I at least continue to amuse you,” I said grimly.
“Yes; there are not many people who amuse me. Besides, I am quite
certain that a year hence, when you look back at this night, you also
will be amused. I am flattered by your passion, since it proves that
under certain favorable circumstances I am not devoid of attraction.
But I should be extremely foolish to take it seriously--more especially
since you are already betrothed.”
“You are right,” I assented bitterly. “I am a coward to try to entangle
you.”
“Oh, you will not entangle me,” she answered easily. “I shall take
good care to keep a tight grip on my heart. But all that does not
prevent me liking you immensely, M. de Tavernay. I have often wished,”
she went on, gazing at me from under half-closed lashes in a most
provoking fashion, “that it were possible for me to have as a friend a
man in whom I could wholly trust--a man young enough to understand the
illusions of youth--young enough not to adopt toward me that paternal
attitude which I detest--one whose kindness and sympathy I could
always count upon and in whom I could confide. But I told myself that
such a wish could never be fulfilled; that such friendships were too
dangerous, that such a man did not exist. And yet, behold, here I have
found him and he is bound in such a manner that there is no danger for
either of us.”
“I would not be too sure of that, mademoiselle,” I interrupted. “The
bonds have not yet been forged which could not somehow be broken.”
“But bonds of honor!” she protested. “It is your word!”
“Yes, even those! There is a limit to endurance;” and I gripped my
hands together to keep them away from her.
“Well, that limit shall not be passed, M. de Tavernay,” she assured me,
her lips breaking into a smile, and, quite regardless of her danger,
she leaned nearer to me. “Besides I have a deep confidence in you. The
sentiments you have to-night expressed completely reassure me--I see
now how foolish I was to think there could be any risk in coming here
with you.”
It was a two-edged compliment and I did not relish it, but she was
gazing up at me with eyes so guileless and trusting that I choked back
the words which rose in my throat. Perhaps, had I been older and more
experienced with women, I might have seen the flicker of mischief which
I suspect dwelt in their depths. Guilelessness is a favorite snare of
Circe’s.
“Let me whisper you a secret,” she added, leaning toward me, a little
quirk at the corner of her lips, “your betrothed is a charming girl!”
“Oh, you know her!” I said, and stared at her gloomily, for she seemed
to delight in torturing me.
“No--I have never met her--have never even seen her,” and she laughed
to herself as she uttered the words; “but I have heard her spoken of.
With her, you will soon forget this poor Charlotte de Chambray--you
will fall in love with her even more desperately than you have with me,
and she will make you happy.”
“And will you regret that, mademoiselle?” I asked, realizing the folly
of the question, but unable to suppress it.
“Not in the least!” she retorted, and burst into a peal of laughter at
sight of my crestfallen countenance--though it seemed to me that her
face showed traces of crimson, too.
But there is, as I had said, a limit to endurance. Her mockery raised
in me suddenly a fierce madness--a carelessness of what might follow.
I groped for her blindly, my arms were about her, crushing her to me
with a sort of savage fury. The mockery was gone from her eyes now;
she tried to beat me off, then, with a little sob, hid her face upon
my shoulder. But pity was not in me, only a fierce exulting, and I
raised her face, I lifted her lips to mine and kissed them desperately,
passionately, again and again.
Then I released her and stood erect, my blood on fire, a great joy at
my heart.