Part 33 (2/2)

”Ricardo B. F. R. Ethenard-Eskurola (d'Alegria).”

A limb of wisteria had climbed to the window and hung a cl.u.s.ter of its purple flowers on the sill. Below, Refrogne's lilacs were in full bloom, and the laughter of Refrogne's children rose from among them as piercing sweet as the scent of the flowers. Cartaret took a match from his pocket, struck it and set the bit of paper aflame. He held it until the flame burnt his fingers, crushed it in his palm and watched the ashes circle slowly downward toward the lilac-trees.

The sun had set and, as Cartaret walked aimlessly toward the front windows, the long shadows of the twilight were deepening from wall to wall. Summer was in all the air.

So much the same! He leaned forward and looked down into the silent rue du Val-de-Grace. He was thinking how she had once stood where he was leaning now; thinking how he had leaned there so often, looking for her return up that narrow thoroughfare, waiting for the sound of her light footfall on the stair. So much the same, indeed: the unchanged street outside, the unchanged room within; the room in which he had found her on that February night. Here she had admitted that she loved him, and here she had said the good-by that he would not understand--a few short weeks ago. And now he was back--back after having heard her repudiate him, back after losing her forever.

Fate works everywhere, but her favorite workshop is Paris. Something was moving in the deepest shadow in the room--the shadow about the doorway. Blue-black hair and long-lashed eyes of violet, lips of red and cheeks of white and pink; the incredible was realized, the miracle had happened: Vitoria was here.

He was beside her in a single bound. He thought that he cried her name aloud; in reality, his lips moved without speech.

”Wait,” she said. She drew away from him; but the statues of the Greek G.o.ds in the Luxembourg gardens must have felt the thrill in the evening air as she faced him. She was looking at him bravely with only the least tremor of her lips. ”Do you--do you still love me?” she asked.

Her voice was like a violin; her words dazed him.

”Love you? I--I can't tell you how much--I--haven't the words to say----”

He seized the hand with which she had checked him and kissed its unjeweled fingers.

”What is it?... Why did you say you hated me?... What has brought you back?... Is is true? Is it _true_?”

From Refrogne's garden came the last good-night-song of the birds.

”Love you? Why, from the day I left you--no, from that night I found you here, I've thought nothing but Vitoria, dreamed nothing but Vitoria----”

Now incoherent and afraid, then with hectic eloquence and finally with a complete abandon, he poured out his soul in libation to her. With the first word of it, she saw that she was forgiven.

”I came,” she said, ”to--to tell you this: You know now that I ran away from Paris because I loved you and knew that I could not marry you; but you do not know why I said that terrible thing which I said in the tower-room. I was afraid of what my brother might do to you.

That is why I would not take your kisses. To try to make you leave before he found you, I said what first came to my mind as likely to drive you away. I said it at what fearful cost! I blasphemed against my love for you.”

Cartaret was recovering himself. Love gives all, but it demands everything.

”Your brother said that I had offered you some insult. He said you'd told him so. I thought you'd told him that in order to make him all the angrier against me.”

”Ever since Chitta and I returned to our home, he had been suspecting,” she said. ”He would not forgive me for going away. Chitta he tortured, but she told him nothing. Me, he kept almost a prisoner.

When you came, I knew that he would soon guess what was true, so I sent for you that morning to send you away, and when that failed and he found us together, I told him that we loved each other, because I hoped that he would spare the man I loved, even though he would never let me--let me marry that man. I should have known him too well to think that, but I was too afraid to reason--too afraid for your sake.

He was so proud that he would not repeat it to you as I said it to him: he repeated it in the way least hateful to him--and after you had gone, I found that all I had done served only to make him try to kill you. Of this I knew nothing until hours later. Then--then----”

The birds had ceased their song, but the scent of the lilacs still rose from the garden.

”Don't you understand now?” she asked, her cheeks crimson in the fading light. ”I guessed you did not understand then; but don't you understand now?”

He stood bewildered. She had to go through with it.

”My brother had to live--you made him live. To kill himself is the worst disgrace that a Basque can put upon his family. Besides, the thing was done; you had fired into the air; nothing that he might do would undo that. At the bridge he tried to tell you so, but you rode by. You know--my brother told it you--that one reason which allows a foreigner to marry a Basque. We Eskurolas pay our debts; to let you go a creditor for that was to put a stain upon our house indelibly. I would have accepted the disgrace and made my brother continue to accept it, had you not now said that you still loved me; but you have said it. Oh, do--do, please, understand!” She stamped her foot. ”My brother is the last man of our name. In saving him, you saved the house of Eskurola.”

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