Part 10 (1/2)
”And will you not come back again?” she added, breathlessly almost. The news was so sudden that it made her breathless. This was the last time--the very last!
They might never see each other again in this world, and if they did ever chance to meet, Priscilla Gower would be his wife. And yet he was standing there now, only a few feet from her, so near that her outstretched hand would touch him. The full depth of misery in the thought flashed upon her all at once, and drove the blood back to her heart.
”Why?” she gasped out unconsciously, through the very strength of her pangs. ”You are going away forever.”
She scarcely knew that she had uttered the words until she saw how deathly pale he grew. The beads of moisture started out upon his forehead, and his nervous hand went up to brush them away.
”Not forever, I trust,” he said, huskily. ”Only until--until--”
”Until July,” she ended for him; ”until you are married to Miss Priscilla Gower.”
She held up one little, trembling, dusky hand, and actually began to tell the intervening months off her fingers. She was trying so hard to calm herself that she did not think what she was doing. She only knew she must do or say something.
”How many months will it be?” she said. ”It is February now; March, April, May, June, July. Five months--not quite five, perhaps. We may not be here then. Lady Throckmorton intends to visit the Spas during the summer.”
From the depths of her heart she was praying that some chance might take them away from Paris before he returned. It would be his bridal tour--Priscilla's bridal tour. Ah, if some wildly happy dream had only chanced to make it her bridal tour, and she could have gone with him as Priscilla would, from place to place; near him all the time, loving and trusting him always, depending on him, obedient to his lightest wishes.
Miss Priscilla was far too self-restrained to ever be as foolishly, thrillingly tender and fond, and happy as she, Theodora North, would have been. She could have given a little sob of despair and pain as she thought of it.
As it was, the hopeless, foolish tears rose up to her large eyes, and made them liquid and soft; and when they rose, Denis Oglethorpe saw them. Such beautiful eyes as they were; such ignorant, believing, fawn-like eyes. The eyes alone would have unmanned him--under the tears he broke down utterly, and so was left without a shadow of control.
He crossed the hearth with a stride and stood close to her, his whole face ablaze with the fierceness of his remorseful self-reproach and the power of his love.
”Listen to me, Theo,” he said. ”Let me confess to you; let me tell you the truth for once. I am a coward and a villain. I was a villain to ask a woman I did not truly love to be my wife. I am a coward to shrink from the result of my vanity and madness. She is better than I am--this woman who has promised herself to me; she is stronger, truer, purer; she has loved me, she has been faithful to me; and G.o.d knows I honor and revere her. I am not worthy to kiss the ground her feet have trodden upon. I was vain fool enough to think I could make her happy by giving to her all she did not ask for--my life, my work, my strength--not remembering that Heaven had given her the sacred right to more. She has held to our bond for years, and now see how it has ended! I stand here before you to-night, loving you, adoring you, wors.h.i.+pping you, and knowing myself a dishonored man, a weak, proved coward, whose truth is lost forever.
”I do not ask you for a word. I do not say a word further. I will not perjure myself more deeply. I only say this as a farewell confession. It will be farewell; we shall never see each other again on earth perhaps; and if we do, an impa.s.sable gulf will lie between us. I shall go back to England and hasten the marriage if I can; and then, if a whole life's strenuous exertions and constant care and tenderness will wipe out the dishonor my weakness has betrayed me into, it shall be wiped out. I do not say one word of love to you, because I dare not. I only say, forgive me, forget me, and good-by.”
She had listened to him with a terrified light growing in her eyes; but when he finished she got up from her seat, s.h.i.+vering from head to foot.
”Good-by,” she said, and let him take her cold, lithe, trembling hands.
But the moment he touched them, his suppressed excitement and her own half-comprehended pain seemed to frighten her, and she began to try to draw them from his grasp.
”Go away, please,” she said, with a wild little sob. ”I can't bear it. I don't want to be wicked, and perhaps I have been wicked, too. Miss Gower is better than I am--more worth loving. Oh, try to love her, and--and--only go away now, and let me be alone.”
She ended in an actual little moan. She was s.h.i.+vering and sobbing, hard as she tried to govern herself. And yet, though this man loved her, and would have given half his life to s.n.a.t.c.h her to his arms and rain kisses of comfort upon her, he let the cold little hand drop, and in a moment more had left her.
CHAPTER VIII.
THEO'S FIRST TROUBLE.
He had been gone three days, and, in their lapse, Theo felt as if three l.u.s.trums had pa.s.sed. Their parting had been so unexpected a one, that she could not get used to it, or believe it was anything else but a painful dream. After all, it seemed that Fortune was crueller than she had imagined possible. He was gone, and to Priscilla Gower; and she had never been able to believe that some alteration, of which she had no very definite conception, would occur, and end her innocent little ghost of a love-story, as all love-stories should be ended. It had never been more than the ghost of a story. Until that last night he had never uttered a word of love to her; he had never even made the fine speeches to her which she might have expected, and, doubtless, would have expected, if she had been anybody else but Theodora North. She had not expected them, though, and, consequently, was not disappointed when she did not receive them. But she found herself feeling terribly lonely after Denis Oglethorpe left Paris. The first day she felt more stunned than anything else. The second her sensibilities began to revive keenly, and she was full of sad, desperate wonder concerning him--concerning how he would feel when he stood face to face with Priscilla Gower; how he would look, what he would say to her. The third day was only the second intensified, and filled with a something that was almost like a terror now and then.
It was upon this third day that Lady Throckmorton was unexpectedly called away. A long-lost friend of her young days had suddenly made her appearance at Rouen, and having, by chance, heard of her ladys.h.i.+p's presence in Paris, had written to her a letter of invitation, which the ties of their girlhood rendered almost a command. So to Rouen her ladys.h.i.+p went, for once leaving Theo behind. Madam St. Etunne was an invalid, and the visit could not be a very interesting one to a young girl. This was one reason why she was left--the other was the more important one, that she did not wish to go, and made her wishes known.
She was not sorry for the chance of being left to herself for a few days--it would be only a few days at most.
”Besides,” said Lady Throckmorton, looking at her a trifle curiously, ”you do not look well yourself. Theo, you look feverish, or nervous, or something of the kind. How was it I did not notice it before? You must have caught cold. Yes, I believe I must leave you here.”
Consequently, Theo was left. She was quiet enough, too, when her ladys.h.i.+p had taken her departure. It was generally supposed that Miss North had accompanied her chaperon, and so she had very few callers. She spent the greater part of her time in the apartment in which Denis Oglethorpe had bidden her farewell, and, as may be easily imagined, it did not add to her lightness of spirit to sit in her old seat and ponder over the past in the silence of the deserted room. She arose from her ottoman one night, and walked to one of the great mirrors that extended from floor to ceiling. She saw herself in it as she advanced--a regal-like young figure, with a head set like a queen's, speechful dark eyes, and glowing lips; a face that was half child's, half woman's, and yet wholly perfect in its fresh young life and beauty. Seeing this reflection, she stopped and looked at it, in a swift recognition of a new thought.
”Oh, Pam!” she cried out, piteously. ”Oh, my poor, darling, faded Pam.