Meanwhile Perior marched off to the garden. He passed through the
morning-room where Mrs. Fox-Darriel was writing.
"So you didn't get your ride either?" said Mrs. Fox-Darriel, who had her
own reasons--and not at all complex ones--for disliking Mr. Perior. "It
_was_ rather hot."
Perior in his indifference did not even divine the suspicion that saw in
his arrival, and Camelia's defection and amusing headache, a
portentousness threatening to the object she had set her heart upon.
Perior replied shortly, and it was with very little love that she
watched him walk over the lawn. Camelia really was a fool, and who knew
how far her folly might not go.
Camelia was still under the copper-beech, and still talking to Mr.
Rodrigg. Perior perforce acknowledged her innocence of flirtatious
methods. Her earnest pose--elbows on the arm of her chair, hands
clasped, head gravely intent--denoted the seriousness with which she
took her rôle.
Mr. Rodrigg's smile might have warned her. He balanced a teaspoon neatly
on his cup, and looked from it to her, vastly unimpressed as to the real
purport of the conversation.
Perior's mood was too miserable, too savage, to allow him more than a
mere dart of cynical amusement at her folly. Camelia turned her head,
surprised at seeing him. Smiling a complacent little smile she patted
the chair beside her.
"So you came back after all."
"Yes." The nipped monosyllable, like a sudden _douche_ of icy water,
told her that since he had left her their relations had changed, and
changed very much for the worse. Her conjectures sprang immediately to
Mary. Bother Mary! what had she said? But at the thought of what she
might have said Camelia knew that her heart was shaking. Her look, on a
first impulse, would have been entreating, but in the presence of a
third person it grew cold in answer to his, and she turned again to Mr.
Rodrigg.
"Go, on, please; I want your answer. I have still that one fallacy to
demolish, you know."
Mr. Rodrigg observed Perior affably; he was a really important opponent.
"Miss Paton wishes, I believe, to institute a sort of eighteenth century
rôle for women in politics," he said, "the rôle that obtained in France
during that ominous century. She expects to rule England through her
_causeries_."
"Indeed, I fancy that England would be very prettily ruled!" said
Camelia, laughing.
Perior switched the dust on his boots and made no reply.
"You have been reading, I hear," Mr. Rodrigg continued, seizing
gratefully the chance of escaping from the bill, "a very interesting
number of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. I looked at it a day or two
since: the serial romance is quite a new departure in style. There is
certainly new leaven working in French literature. The revolt from
naturalism is very significant, very interesting, though some of the
extremes of opposition, such as symbolism, tend to become as unhealthy."
"Symbolism, mysticism, in the modern naturalistic French writer, is
merely the final form of decadence," Camelia observed with some
sententiousness, feeling Perior's silent presence as an impulsion
towards artificiality in tone and manner, "the irridescent stage of
decay--pardon me for being nasty--but they are so nasty! I have had
quite enough of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_--so to business, Mr.
Rodrigg." But though Camelia was quite willing to ignore the new-comer,
Mr. Rodrigg insisted on dragging him into the running, until at last,
perceiving a most unencouraging unwillingness, he rose and left him to
the _tête-à-tête_ for which he had evidently returned, going off to the
house very good-humoredly. Perior's position was altogether unique, and
not one of Camelia's lovers gave his intimacy a thought.
As Mr. Rodrigg's wide back disappeared through the morning-room windows
Camelia turned her head to Perior.
"Well," she said, leaning back in her chair and putting her finger-tips
together with a pleasantly judicial air, "what have you to say? You look
very glum."
"I met Mary, Camelia."
"Ah! Did she have a good afternoon?"
"No; I fancy it was as dull to her as it would have been to you."
"Impossible. Mary loves such things; besides, I do not find them dull."
Perior looked at her.
"What a liar you are," he said. If hate and scorn could wither, Camelia
felt they would then have withered her; she quite recognized them in his
tone.
But she was able to say with apparent calm--not crediting the endurance
of those unkind sentiments towards her, "indeed; you have called me that
before."
"Will you deny," said Perior, looking at her with his most icy
steadiness--Camelia keeping her eyes on his, and feeling that for the
moment the best thing she could do was to hold firmly to their calm and
luminous directness of expression--"will you deny that you went up to
ask Mary to take your place? that you found her ready to go with me?
that you pretended not to know that I had come for her?--she let that
out in excusing you from my disgust!--didn't suspect you!--that to me
you pretended she had gone to Mrs. Grier's of her own accord?"
The withering had begun to operate. Camelia felt his outward and her
inner press of feeling vanquishing the mild inquiry of her look. She
dropped her eyes. "Will you tell me why you take the trouble to debase
yourself--for such a trifle?"
Camelia gazed at the grass. She had cried when he accused her unjustly;
but now that her own hurrying, searching thoughts could find no
loop-hole for denial she felt no wish to cry. She was not touched, but
silenced, quelled. The enormity of her misdeeds made her thoughtful, now
that they were put so plainly before her. She felt herself contemplating
the sum of lies with an almost impersonal curiosity.
"Camelia!" The odd pitch of his voice, sharp with a sudden,
uncontrollable emotion, made her look up.
He rose, paused, looking back at her. "You are breaking my heart," he
said. He had not intended to say it, nor known the truth that now came
imperatively to his lips. How she had hurt him, after all! He felt that
he was almost appealing to her, that indignation, scorn, hatred of her
baseness, were as nothing compared with that appeal--not to hurt him;
and he grew very white. An answering pang shot through Camelia's
heart--whether pain, pity, or triumph she could not have told; but she
said quickly, her eyes rounded in unfamiliar solemnity, still on his--
"Breaking your heart?"
"I care for you," said Perior; "I only ask for a mere cranny, where a
friendly tenderness might find foothold--one ray of sincerity, of
honor--to make me feel that my fondness for you is not a--a
contemptible, a weakening folly. It's as if you dashed me down on the
rocks--just as I fancy I've found something to hold on by!" he spoke
brokenly, clutching and unclutching his hands on his riding cane. "And I
have to watch you dragging yourself through the dustiest meannesses;
would I care if it was another woman!--no--let her be contemptible,
ugly, puny, I could give it a laugh--one can only laugh; but you! to be
fond of you! to watch you growing more and more greedy, soulless; a
liar, a flatterer! Oh, it makes me sick!"
Camelia had again lowered her eyelids, but her eyes stared, startled at
the grass. A creeping coldness went through the roots of her hair; she
knew that her face was pale. For quite a long time there was perfect
silence.
"To rob that poor child of her little pleasure," Perior said at last,
"to lie to her--to me; and for what? What use had you for me? Were you
so anxious to read me the _Revue des Deux Mondes_? _Why_ did you lie?"
"I don't know," said Camelia feebly.
"_You don't know?_" he repeated.
"No--I thought Mary would not mind. I thought she would like to go."
"And you left me intending to ask her?"
"Yes."
"Telling me you were going to hurry her?"
"Yes."
"Pretending to her that you did not know I had come for her?"
"Yes." There was an impulse struggling in Camelia's heart--frightening
her--but worse than fright, the thought of not freeing it. "One ray of
sincerity." Mary had been noble enough not to tell him--she must be
noble enough to tell.
"More than that--" she added, feeling her very breath leave her.
"More!"
"Yes; I let Mary think you would rather stay with me;--that you didn't
care to ride with her----"
"_Camelia!_" They were in full view of the house, but his hand fell
heavily upon her shoulder; and so he stood for a long moment, too much
stupefied by the confession to find another word.
But Camelia took a long breath of recovery; sighed with it, and felt the
blood come back gratefully to her heart.
"But why?--why?--why?" Perior said at last, in a voice from which anger
seemed to have ebbed despairingly away, leaving only an immense and
wondering sadness, "_Why_, Camelia?"
A faint, appealing little sparkle lit her face as she glanced up at him;
that weight gone, all the buoyancy of her nature rose, ready to win
smiles and rewarding looks of caressing encouragement.
"I wanted to read you the _Revue des Deux Mondes_."
He stared at her, baffled and miserable.
"And though I was a viper--it was true, wasn't it? You _would_ rather
stay with me."
"Yes, no doubt I would," said Perior with a gloom half dazed.
"And you see I did want you so much! Mary could not have wanted you
nearly so much! Why, I gave up my ride to stay with you! I had no
headache!" she announced the fact quite joyously; "I simply thought
suddenly how nice it would be to spend the afternoon with you--like old
days--when we were young together! I really thought Mary would prefer
Mrs. Grier--really I did! And once embarked on a fib--for I did not want
her to think that I cared so much to have you--I had to go on--they all
came one after the other," said Camelia, dismally now, "and even when I
saw how disappointed she was I hardened my heart in its selfishness--a
perfect devil, of course; yes, I see quite well that I was a devil. So
there is the truth for you. Really the truth. More than _one ray of
sincerity_, is it not? And I need not have told you, since good old Mary
was such a trump. There! I have lain down under your feet--and you may
scrub your boots on me if you want to!"
"Alas, Camelia!" said Perior. He sat down again. Her confession had
indeed forced upon him a certain resignation. For some moments he did
not speak. "I believe I am the only person in the world to whom you
would humble yourself like this," he said at last. "I am a convenient
father-confessor for you. You find yourself more comfortable after
dumping your load of sins on me. It's a corner in your psychology I've
never quite understood--another little twist of egotism my mind is too
blunt to penetrate. I am not worth while deceiving--is that it?" and as
her eyes rested on his in mute, but unmistakable pain, he added, the
note of resignation deepened, "You do not repent, that is evident. You
confess; but it is very much as if I particularly hated dirty
finger-nails, and to please my fastidiousness you washed yours."
"I might have hidden them," Camelia murmured, glancing down at the
translucent pink and white of those _objets d'art_.
"Yes, you might; that is your advantage. The speck of dirt worried you,
knowing my taste. The matter to you is just about on that level of
seriousness. You are not sorry for Mary; you are merely preening
yourself for me. It is that; your heartlessness, your selfishness, your
hard indifference to other people's feelings that makes me despair of
you. For I do despair of you."
"Am I so heartless, so selfish, so hard?"
"I am afraid you are."
"And it breaks your heart?"
Perior laughed shortly.
"Ah; you find compensation in that! I shall survive, Camelia. I have
managed to survive a great many disagreeable experiences."
"And I am one. Don't you feel a little more kindly towards me? Are you
not a little flattered by the realization that my misdeeds arose
entirely from my affection for you?" Camelia smiled sadly, adding, "It's
quite true."
"You want to monopolize me, as you monopolize everything, Camelia. If
there was a cat that did not devote itself exclusively to you, you would
woo the cat. In this case I am the cat."
"Dear cat!" she stretched out her hand and put it on his arm. "May I
stroke you, cat?"
"No, thanks. You shall not enthral me." He rose as he spoke. "Good-bye."
"Good-bye? Will you not stay to dine?"
"No; I am in no dining humor."
"Haven't you forgiven me--absolved me--one little bit?"
"Not one little bit, Camelia."
His farewell look she felt to be steeled against her in its
resoluteness, though weak in its long dwelling. She knew that when he
was gone the resoluteness would remain with him; the weakness would
leave him with his departure from her presence. She enthralled him by
the mere fact of being before him, baffling and exquisite; therefore he
was leaving her. There was an air of finality in his very way of turning
from her in silence. She watched him walk away over the lawn, and sat on
in the dusk. She was a little dazed, and an evening dreaminess veiled
from her the poignancy of her own fear. She evaded it, too, by the
thought: he cares so much, so much. Then, too, what difference did it
make? She could always wrap herself, in case of a shivering emergency,
in that cloak of carelessness; but the fact of his caring so very much
kept her now from shivering. When she went into the house at last she
found Mrs. Fox-Darriel still alone in the morning-room.
"My dear Camelia," she said, looking round at her young friend, "when
next you submit to being shaken by Mr. Perior, I really would choose a
more secluded spot. The whole house might have been staring at you; and
I can assure you that the spectacle you offered was highly ludicrous. A
rabbit in an eagle's claws."
"And, really, if I choose to be whipped up and down the drive by Mr.
Perior, I shall do it, Frances, notwithstanding your disapproval."
Camelia was in no temper for smarting advice.
"The man is insufferable," said Mrs. Fox-Darriel, "_il porte sa tête
comme un saint sacrement_; provincial apostolics. Your flattering wish
to please him is not at all in character."
"Your knowledge of my character, Frances, is very restricted," Camelia
replied, walking away to her room.