Part 36 (1/2)
Don't you know why I have forced myself to be unhappy during the past few weeks? Can't you see why I am making you unhappy, too, in my struggle to beat down the something that has driven everything else out of my mind?”
”Don't talk so, Hugh; it will be all right. Come home now and I will give you some wine and put some cool bandages on your head. You are not well.” She was so gentle, so unsuspecting that he could contain himself no longer.
”I love you--I wors.h.i.+p you! That is why I am cruel to you!” he burst out. A weakness a.s.sailed him and he leaned dizzily against the tree at his side. He dared not look at her, but he marvelled at her silence. If she loved him, as he believed, why was she so quiet, so still?
”Do you know what you say?” she asked slowly.
”I have said it to myself a thousand times since I left you at the temple. I did not intend to tell you; I had sworn you should never know it. What do you think of me?”
”I thought you called it love that sent you to Manila,” she said wonderingly, wounding without malice.
”It was love, I say. I loved her better than all the world and I have not forgotten her. She will always be as dear to me as she was on the night I lost her. You have not taken her place. You have gone farther and inspired a love that is new, strange, overpowering--infinitely greater, far different from the love I had known before. She was never to me what you are. That is what drives me mad--mad, do you hear? I have simply been overwhelmed by it.”
”I must be dreaming,” she murmured.
”I have tried to hide it from myself, but it has broken down all barriers and floods the world for me.”
”It is because we are here alone in this island--”
”No, no! Not that, I swear. It would have come sooner or later.”
”You are not like other men. I have not thought of you as I see you now.
I cannot understand being loved by you. It hurts me to see that you are in earnest. Oh, Hugh, how sorry I am,” she cried, laying her hand upon his arm. His heart dropped like lead. He saw that he had been mistaken--she did not love him.
”You are learning that I am not the harlequin after all,” he said bitterly.
”There is no one in all the world so good and strong and true.”
”You--you _will_ love me?”
”You must not ask that of me. I am still Lady Huntingford, a wife for all we know. Yet if I loved you, I would tell you so. Have I not told you that I cannot love? I have never loved. I never shall. Don't look like that, Hugh. I would to G.o.d I could love you,” she exclaimed. His chin had sunk upon his breast and his whole body relaxed through sheer dejection.
”I'll make you love me!” he cried after a moment's misery in the depths, his spirits leaping high with the quick recoil. His eager hands seized her shoulders and drew her close, so close that their bodies touched and his impa.s.sioned eyes were within a few inches of hers of startled blue. ”I'll make you love me!”
”Please let me go. Please, Hugh,” she murmured faintly.
”You must--you shall love me! I cannot live without you. I'll have you whether you will or no,” he whispered fiercely.
She did not draw back, but looked him fairly in the eye as she spoke coldly, calmly, even with a sneer.
”You are master here and I am but a helpless woman. Would you force me to forget that you have been my ideal man?”
”Tennys!” he cried, falling back suddenly. ”You don't think I would harm you--oh, you know I didn't mean that! What must you think of me?”
He put his hand over his eyes as if in deep pain, and, turning away, leaned against the tree unsteadily. With his first words, his first expression, she knew she had wronged him. A glad rush of blood to her heart set it throbbing violently.
She could not have explained the thrill that went through her when he grasped her shoulders, nor could she any more define the peculiar joy that came when she took a step forward and placed her hands gently, timidly on his arm.
”Forgive me, Hugh, I must have been mad to say what I did. You are too n.o.ble--too good--” she began in a pleading little quaver.