Part 14 (1/2)
The idolator kept close watch over his valuable prize. He knew she was mistrustful of him.
”I only ask that you allow me to ease your suffering,” he said in a tone he believed persuasive, then with horrid suggestiveness: ”It won't hurt, I swear.” He stretched forth a hand for her to come. When she did not, her cold response roused fitful gleams within the eyes previously voluptuous in their attention. ”These words would lose their bitterness if you would but allow me a single chance,” he said, becoming intolerable.
He found it difficult to breathe the air, trying to inhale as little of the noxious vapours as possible. He began to feel their ill-effects. They did not affect her. She breathed with the same ease she would the purest air, and he knew her very blood must be tainted. ”Let me take you from here,” he persisted. ”Leave this place. It's riddled with darkness and suffering. There's nothing here for you but falsehoods and hopelessness. The very air you breathe is a malicious fume. There is no sensible reason to refuse, and I cannot believe you a fool ...There is nothing here for you but death.”
Magenta stood as one paralyzed. She felt herself overcome with the same anguish that had seized upon her before at his speech.
”I know what you would say,” he ventured to speak in the absence of response. ”You believe she will not allow it. She uses fear and despair to destroy all hope. But I know of places that are safe, where no one will know who you are, where she cannot find you. There is hope for you yet.”
”It's long since I've had any hope,” Magenta answered sadly, cautious of him still.
”But why?” he asked, madly perplexed. ”If you would come with me I could help you be at peace, start afres.h.!.+” After a time he added coolly, ”I'm all you have-of that single truth you may be certain.”
”My hope does not rest on a single certainty,” Magenta said, at last regaining her self-possession. She remained distant and never let his strong hands get in reach of her. It was her preference to throw herself into the black water and be drowned rather than to have this man lay his hands on her.
He was dismayed that she was unkind to him and would not give him a chance. ”Why do you stand so far away?” He looked to her with tormented eyes. She would not go to him, and he would not venture to force her. He was savage, prepared to resort to any form of cruelty to get his own way, but fear of the consequences such an action would produce paralyzed his yearning. ”You know what I feel for you, do you not?” he inquired, helplessly.
”Yes.”
”Perhaps, then,” he continued, agitated, ”you do not know the depths to which I feel it.” He swallowed with difficulty. His supreme request that she unveil the mysteries of her kind was so needful it hurt.
”I fear I do,” was the brief reply.
The pallor that overspread his countenance, the clench of his jaw, and the tremor in his voice, told at once she had touched a tender chord. ”Then why do you keep from me? Why do you treat me with only contempt and coldness?” He watched her closely. She would not support the conversation, keeping always out of his reach.
”There is not sufficient audience to give reason for you to shun me as you do,” he said, his tone ever increasing in fervor, resentful of the reluctance she had shown him and the distress he suffered. Persistently he sniffed and rubbed his irritated eyes. His flesh felt p.r.i.c.kly and twitchy. The ill-effects of the commingled perfumes had him in keen, aromatic pain. Their burning sweetness scalded the tongue and eyes with caustic severity. Another man would have been seized with violent sickness.
”Have you nothing to say?” he demanded finally, much excited that several of his attempts to renew the conversation were ineffectual. ”You have yet to answer my question.”
”Would you have my answer?”
”Yes,” he said. ”I would have it.”
Magenta looked at him long and steadily. ”Then let it be understood that there is, and never can be, even a breath of hope beyond the notion of acquaintance for you and me.”
For a long moment Fraomar regarded her. His set smile belied the intense hate in his eyes. He despised and was infatuated with her within the same moment. He rubbed his eyes furiously. He began to suffer giddiness. The mingled scents seemed with deliberate and purposeful intent to get inside his brain and drive him to insanity.
”You think me unworthy of your esteem,” he said, his voice tight. ”Perhaps there is another?”
The mere thought of another man's attainment of the unattainable, roused in him a fierce jealousy, that by some perversity, increased by the impossibility of his own success, heightened his desire. His want for her unsatisfiable, he fought a mad desire to force from her some sign of feeling, anything but this aloof indifference.
Profoundly agitated, Fraomar had until now retained the appearance of self-command, when, seized with a sudden attack of weakness, he turned recklessly upon a hapless plant, tore it half-down and cried, ”Tell me there is another, and I shall cut out his heart!”
His eyes were mad with suffering. A hot flame ran in his blood. He wanted to get hold of her. When she had roused him into a fit of madness he felt he would kill her. Magenta was struck with the sudden change that appeared in his countenance but remained unmoved.
”There is no other,” she said calmly.
Fraomar, believing that a heart such as hers had not the strength to bear the cold alone, was convinced there must be another. For a long while he looked into her face as if to reach into the very heart of her and uncover the secret love which she kept hidden there. Suddenly he drew very close to her, filled with the mad jealousy and the delusion of hope of one desperately infatuated.
”Then I would leave now, if I might carry with me a hope of being permitted to renew my sentiments-when you've had time enough to reconsider,” he said, trembling all over as he spoke. His eyes looked as if they hurt him. They burned and stung from emotion and from the torment of poisonous vapours.
”You have my answer,” replied Magenta. ”Take it and be done with it.”
”I see I have nothing to hope for.” There was an expression of caustic despair on his countenance, but his defeat was false. Never before had he been denied, and he would not be denied her. Whether she wished it or not, he would tear from her the veil of mystery. ”And you are to tell me there is no other?” he said doubtfully.
”There is no one.”
”That can be amended.”
”It has no need for amendment,” she said.
Her standing there like that, soft and pa.s.sive, but unknown, untouchable, enraged him beyond measure. ”I believe you are made of marble,” he said scornfully. He had grown white with anger. ”You are to tell me you are sorrowless, without need and without fear?”
”I say none of those things,” she answered. ”Only I wish not for companions.h.i.+p.”
Drunk on the garden's perfume, the benighted ranger yielded at last to his pa.s.sionate nature. His body was pained with an unmitigated longing, and with his body he expressed it. ”Tonight at least you shall!” He broke forth with sudden violence, and seizing her, made an attempt to lay his wild lips on hers.
Swiftly she retreated out of arm's length, and to his dismay, he discovered it impossible to follow. The black vines had made quick work round his arms and legs, preventing the forward movement he attempted. He had not perceived them creeping upon him. ”Curse you!” he cried in a fury, with a face made of hate itself. He struggled against the snare with a force made of wounded pride, hatred, and desire unsatisfied. After a short minute he had exhausted himself and momentarily let his head droop in agonized defeat. When he looked up there were tears in his eyes, but she, turning to leave, did not see.
”Magenta,” he whimpered in a voice so meek, and so weakly uttered, it pa.s.sed unheard. ”Magenta, I'm sorry.” He had not intended to make his voice so pathetic. At last he cried: ”Magenta!” He sent a desperate plea after her not to leave, but she did not heed his cries. A violent exclamation tore from his throat, and he wrenched his arm savagely in the viney ensnarement, as if he might tear it from its very roots. He wept as he spoke: ”Those walls will be your grave! Death will find you alone and in darkness!”
His voice rang clear in the night and shook her bleak soul. He knew the very thing she feared would come to pa.s.s; she would be locked away within that terrible darkness, alone, hopeless, desolate, left to wither and deteriorate with no sympathetic soul to hear her cries. This gave him a strange satisfaction.
Chapter25.
Emporium -he morning was grey and oppressive, the streets cheerless and damp. The spell book emporium was occupied by men and women who made not a sound, but for the periodic turning of pages, and a murmur over something here and there.
Against a quiet wall, lying in wait, Fraomar stood in the hope of encountering Magenta. He knew she was to see her father sometime in the day. There was a musky, sweet odour of parchment scrolls in the room, which stifled him. He suffered mildly an after-sickness. He had been left to endure intense aromatic distress, mental anguish, and disorientation from the many potent fragrances.
So here he waited, prepared to make excuses for the previous night's violent outburst. He would tell her in the most ardent and earnest tones that his efforts had been incited by the necessity of her love, without which he might perish, and, but though she had left him hopeless, he still adored her deeply and wors.h.i.+ped her intensely. These things he thought about, till he was again convinced of success. He promised himself he should have her soon. Her heart could not live without affection. Lost and forsaken, where else should she run but to his love, so constant and faithful?
The street was filled by many bleak figures. As Deacon approached the emporium, he saw coming toward him, on the opposite side, his cousins and Cade. He dropped his chin, trying to remain inconspicuous. They had not yet seen him there. Making his way purposefully through the moving figures, he kept his face tilted down, hoping to escape notice. At the entrance he paused. He would have liked to have quickly turned and gone inside, but, perceiving himself recognized, stood and waited patiently, while the others crossed over to join him.
”Thought we might find you here!” Derek said, cheerfully.
Deacon greeted them without smiling, and they followed him inside.
”What do you do with yourself all the blessed day?” asked Cade. ”Read these books? He looked at a cover as though he had found something of great interest, but after a quick flip through, tossed it aside unimpressed.
”Yes,” said Deacon with a shade of annoyance.
Taking the lead from Cade, Derek took up a book also. He frowned as his eyes came across pages and pages of some d.a.m.nable writing, unintelligible to him.
”What have you there?” Deacon asked, displaying more eagerness than was common with him. ”Give it to me.”
Before Derek had chance to register what he had asked, Deacon had s.n.a.t.c.hed the book from his hands, flipped through the leaves with a haste that told of singular purpose, then with a scornful grimace snapped shut the cover, so sharply as to make Derek flinch.