Part 26 (1/2)
Guy had sprung to his feet, excitement bringing back for the moment all his lost strength. If Ralph Mohun had seen him, he would not have feared that the wrathful devil was cast out. It was raging within him then, untamed and dangerous as ever.
”Do you dare to insult her now that she is dead--and to me, not a month after I have lost her? It is not safe: take care, take care!”
The tempest of his pa.s.sion made him forget, for the first time in his life, the weakness of her who had roused it.
Flora was only a woman after all, though haughty and bold of spirit as any that had breathed. Her own outbreak of anger vanished before that terrible burst of wrath, just as the camp-fire, when the prairie is blazing, is swallowed up in the great roaring torrent of flame. She bowed her head on her hands, trembling all over in pure physical fear.
Guy felt ashamed when he saw the effect of his violence, and spoke more gently than he had done yet.
”Forgive me. I was very wrong; but I have not learned to control myself--I never shall, I fear; but you ought not to say such words, even if I could bear them better. Now it is time that we should part; you have staid here too long already. You must not risk your reputation for me, who can not even be grateful for the venture. We shall never meet again, if we can avoid it; it would be strange to do so as mere acquaintance, and in any other way--no, don't stop me--it is impossible.
It will be long before I go much into society again, so I shall not cross your path.”
Flora knew it was hopeless then. She was quite broken down, and did not raise her head from her hand, through the fingers of which, half shading her face, the tears trickled fast. Guy heard her murmur, very low and plaintively, ”I have loved you so long--so dearly!”
Mistress as she was of every art that can deceive, I believe she only spoke the simple truth then. With all the energy of her strong and sensual nature, I believe she did wors.h.i.+p Livingstone. To most men she would have been far more dangerous thus, in the abandonment of her sorrow, than ever she had been in the insolence of her splendid beauty.
There are some women, very few (Johnson's fair friend, Sophy Streatfield, was one), whom weeping does not disfigure. Their eyelids do not get red or swollen; only the iris softens for a moment; and the drops do not streak or blot the polished cheeks, but glitter there, singly, like dew on marble; their sobs are well regulated, and follow in a certain rhythm; and the heaving bosom sinks and swells, not too stormily. It is a rare accomplishment. Miss Bellasys had not practiced it often, being essentially Democritian--not to say Rabelaisian--in her philosophy; but she did it very well. Like every other emotion, it became her.
Guy hardly glanced at her, and never answered a word.
She rose to go; then turned all at once to try one effort more. ”Yes, we must part,” she said. ”I know it now. But give me a kind word to take with me. I shall be so lonely, now that you are my enemy. Will you not say you wish me well? Ah! Guy, remember all the hours that I have tried to make pleasant for you. Say 'Good-by, Flora,' only those two little words, gently.” Her voice was broken and uncertain, but full of music still, like the wind wandering through an organ.
Just at that moment I opened the door. (I had not an idea Livingstone was not alone.) I closed it before either had remarked my entrance, but not before I had caught sight of a very striking picture.
Guy was leaning one arm against the mantel-piece; the other was crossed over his chest: on that arm Flora was clinging, with both her hands clenched in the pa.s.sion of her appeal. Her slight bonnet had fallen rather back, showing the ma.s.ses of her glorious hair, and all her flushed cheeks, and her eyes that shone with a strange l.u.s.tre, though there were tears still on their long, trailing lashes. I saw the impersonation of material life, exuberant and vigorous, yet delicately lovely--the l.u.s.t of the Eye incarnate.
He stood perfectly still, making no effort to cast her off. Had he done so with violence, it would scarcely have evinced more repulsion than did the expression of his face. There was no more of yielding or softening in the set features and severe eyes than you would find in those of a corpse three hours old, whose spirit has pa.s.sed in some great anger or pain. Can you guess what made him more than ever hard and unrelenting?
He was thinking _who_ tried to win a kind farewell from him six months ago, and utterly failed. Should her rival have this triumph, too, over the dead?
As he answered deliberately, each slow word shut out another hope, like bolts shot, one by one, in the lock of a prison door.
”I remember nothing of the past except your last act, for which I will never, never forgive you. I form no wish for your welfare or for the reverse. There shall not stand the faintest shadow of a connecting link that I can break asunder. Between you and me there is the gulf of a fresh-made grave, and no thought of mine shall ever cross it--so help me G.o.d in Heaven!”
Flora's last arrow was s.h.i.+vered: if she had had another in her quiver, she would have had no courage to try it after hearing those terrible words. She caught his hand, however, before he could guess her intention, and pressed her lips upon it till they left their print behind, and then she was gone. Her light foot hardly sounded as it sprang down the stairs, but its faint echo was the last living sound connected with Flora Bellasys that ever reached the ear of Guy Livingstone.
When I heard more of the interview, I thought, and think still, that he erred on the side of harshness. He was so fixed and steady in his purpose that he could have afforded to have compromised a little in expressing it. But he did things in his own way, and fought with his own weapons--effective, but hardly to be wielded by most men, like the axe of the King-maker or the bow of Odysseus. In carrying out his will, he was apt to consider the softer feelings of others as little as he did his own. It was just so with him when riding to hounds: he went as straight as a line, and if he did not spare his horses, he certainly did not himself.
To each man alive, one particular precept of the Christian code is harder to realize and practice than all the rest put together. It was this, perhaps, which drove the anchorites on from one degree of penance to another, and made them so savage in self-tormenting. When the macerated flesh had almost lost sensation, the thorn that had galled it sometimes in their hot youth rankled incessantly, more venomous than ever. That one injunction--”Forgive, as you would hope to be forgiven”--was ever a stumbling-block to Guy.
Besides all this, he knew, better than any one, what sort of an adversary he was contending against; one with whom each step in negotiation or temporizing was a step toward discomfiture. It was like the Spaniard with his _navaja_ against the sabre: your only chance is keeping him steadily at the sword's-point, without breaking ground; if he once gets under your guard, not all the saints in the calendar can save you.
Perhaps, then, he was right, after all. Certainly Ralph Mohun thought so, as he listened to a sketch of the proceedings with a grim satisfaction edifying to witness.
As for me, before I went to bed that night, I read through those chapters in the ”Mort d'Arthur” that tell how the long, guilty loves of Launcelot and Guenever ended. In the present case, there was certainly wonderfully little penitence on the lady's side, but yet there were points of resemblance which struck me. [I always think the queen must have been the image of Flora.] It is worth while wading through many chapters of exaggeration and obscurity to come out into the n.o.ble light of the epilogue at last.
Good King Arthur is gone. It bit deep, that blow which Mordred, the strong traitor, struck when the spear stood out a fathom behind his back; and Morgan la Fay came too late to heal the grievous wound that had taken cold. The frank, kind, generous heart, that would not mistrust till certainty left no s.p.a.ce for suspicion, can never be wrung or betrayed again. The bitter parting between the lovers is over too; and Launcelot is gone to his own place, without the farewell caress he prayed for when he besought the queen ”to kiss him once and never more.”
After a very few short months, the beautiful wild bird has beaten herself to death against her cage, and the vision comes by night, bidding Launcelot arise and fetch the corpse of Guenever home. She wandered often and far in life, but where should her home be _now_ but by the side of her husband? Hardly and painfully in two days, he and the faithful seven accomplish the thirty miles that lay between; so utterly is that unearthly strength, before which lance-shafts were as reeds, and iron bars as silken threads (remember the May night in Meliagraunce's castle), enfeebled and broken down. He stands in the nunnery-church at Almesbury; he hears from the queen's maidens of the prayer that was ever on her lips through those two days when she lay a dying, how ”she besought G.o.d that she might never have power to see Sir Launcelot with her worldly eyes.” Then, says the chronicler, ”he saw her visage; yet he wept not greatly, but sighed. And so he did all the observance of the service himself, both the dirge at night and the ma.s.s on the morrow.” Not till every rite was performed, not till the earth had closed over the marble coffin, did Launcelot swoon.
I know nothing in fiction so piteous as the words that tell of his dreary, mortal sorrow. ”Then, Sir Launcelot never after ate but little meat, nor drank, but continually mourned until he was dead; and then he sickened more and more, and dried and dwined away; for the bishop nor none of his fellows might make him to eat, and little he drank; so that he waxed shorter by a cubit than he was, and the people could not know him; for evermore day and night he prayed; but needfully as nature required, sometimes he slumbered a broken sleep; and always he was lying groveling on King Arthur's and Queen Guenever's tomb. And there was no comfort that his fellows could make him; it availed nothing.”