Part 35 (1/2)
Cold grew the fever in my veins and the litany died on my lips.
Who and what is she whom I love? There have been days when her eyes have carried in their depths the allurements of a sorceress, when her limbs have woven Venusberg enchantments which it has taken all my strength to withstand. But tonight, when I take the greatest step and claim her as mine till our lives' end, she yields with the complaisance of an ignorant child and raises up between us the barrier of her innocence.
When shall I learn the soul of her?
Well, _jacta est alea_. The events of to-night have precipitated our destiny. In all probability Hamdi is powerless to take her from my protection, and this marriage is unnecessary as a safeguard. I have no notion of the international law on such points--but at any rate it will make the a.s.surance of her safety absolute. No power on earth can take her from me. Great Heaven! The thought of her gone forever out of my life brings the cold sweat to my forehead. Without her, child, enchantress, changeling that she is, how could I face existence?
I shall have my heart's desire. Why, I should be athrill with the joy and the flame of youth! I should laugh and sing! I should perform the happy antics of love's exuberance! I should be transported to the realms where the fairy tales end!
Instead, I sit before a dying fire, as I sat last night, and am oppressed with the sense of tragedy. It was not altogether Carlotta's innocence that formed the barrier between us. That which rendered it impa.s.sable was Judith's white face.
Judith's white face will haunt my dreams to-night.
CHAPTER XVI
October 27th
I do not like living. It is thoroughly disagreeable. Today Judith taunted me with never having lived, and I admitted the justice of the taunt and regretted in poignant misery the change from my old conditions. If to live is to have one's reason cast down and trampled under foot, one's heart aflame with a besotted pa.s.sion and one's soul racked with remorse, then am I living in good sooth--and I would far rather be dead and suffering the milder pains of Purgatory. Men differently const.i.tuted get used to it, as the eels to skinning. They say _”mea culpa,”_ ”d.a.m.n,” or _”Kismet,”_ according to their various traditions, and go forth comforted to their workaday pursuits. I envy them. I enter this exquisite Torture Chamber, and I shriek at the first twinge of the thumbscrew and faint at the preliminary embraces of the scavenger's daughter.
I envy a fellow like Caesar Borgia. He could murder a friend, seduce his widow, and rob the orphans all on a summer's day, and go home contentedly to supper; and after a little music he could sleep like a man who has thoroughly earned his repose. What manner of creatures are other men? They area blank mystery to me; and I am writing--or have been writing--a sociological study of the most subtle generation of them that has ever existed! I am an empty fool. I know absolutely nothing. I can no more account for the peaceful slumbers of that marvellous young man of five-and-twenty than I can predicate the priority of the first hen or the first egg. I, with never a murder or a seduction or a robbery on my conscience, could not sleep last night. I doubt whether I shall sleep to-night. I feel as if I shall remain awake through the centuries with a rat gnawing my vitals.
So unhappy looking a woman as Judith, when I called on her early this forenoon, I have never beheld. Gone was the elaborate coquetry of yesterday; gone the quiet roguishness of yesteryear; gone was all the Judith that I knew, and in her place stood a hollow-eyed woman shaking at gates eternally barred.
”I--thought you would come this morning. I had that lingering faith in you.”
”Your face haunted me all night,” I said. ”I was bound to come.”
”So, this is the end of it all,” she remarked, stonily.
”No,” said I. ”It only marks the transition from a very ill-defined relations.h.i.+p to as loyal a friends.h.i.+p as ever man could offer woman.”
She gave a quivering little shrug of disgust and turned away.
”Oh, don't talk like that 'I can't offer you bread, but I'll give you a nice round polished stone.' Friends.h.i.+p! What has a woman like me got to do with friends.h.i.+p?”
”Have I ever given you much more?”
”G.o.d knows what you have given me,” she cried, bitterly. She stared out of the window at the sodden street and murky air. I went to her side and touched her wrist.
”For heaven's sake, Judith, tell me what I can do.”
”What's done is done,” she said, between her teeth. ”When did you marry her?”
I explained briefly the condition of affairs. She looked at me hard and long; then stared out of the window again, and scarce heeded what I said.
”It was to set myself right with you on this point,” I added, ”that I have visited you at such an hour.”
She remained silent. I took a few turns about the familiar room that was filled with the a.s.sociations of many years. The piano we chose together.