CHAPTER XXXII.
"VENETIA."
How that night was spent Cecil could never recall in full. Vaguememories remained with him of wandering over the shadowy country,of seeking by bodily fatigue to kill the thoughts rising in him, ofdrinking at a little water-channel in the rocks as thirstily as somedriven deer, of flinging himself down at length, worn out, to sleepunder the hanging brow of a mighty wall of rock; of waking, when thedawn was reddening the east, with the brown plains around him, and faraway, under a knot of palms was a goatherd with his flock, like an idylfrom the old pastoral life of Syria. He stood looking at the light whichheralded the sun, with some indefinite sense of heavy loss, of freshcalamity, upon him. It was only slowly that he remembered all. Yearsseemed to have been pressed into the three nights and days since hehad sat by the bivouac-fire, listening to the fiery words of the littleFriend of the Flag.
The full consciousness of all that he had surrendered in yielding upafresh his heritage rolled in on his memory, like the wave of some heavysea that sweeps down all before it.
When that tear-blotted and miserable letter had reached him in the greenalleys of the Stephanien, and confessed to him that his brother hadrelied on the personal likeness between them and the similarity of theirhandwriting to pass off as his the bill in which his own name andthat of his friend was forged, no thought had crossed him to take uponhimself the lad's sin. It had only been when, brought under the charge,he must, to clear himself, have at once accused the boy, and havebetrayed the woman whose reputation was in his keeping, that, rather bygenerous impulse than by studied intention, he had taken up the burdenthat he had now carried for so long. Whether or no the money-lendershad been themselves in reality deceived, he could never tell; but it hadbeen certain that, having avowed themselves confident of his guilt, theycould never shift the charge on to his brother in the face of his ownacceptance of it. So he had saved the youth without premeditation orreckoning of the cost. And now that the full cost was known to him, hehad not shrunk back from its payment. Yet that payment was one thatgave him a greater anguish than if he had laid down his life in physicalmartyrdom.
To go back to the old luxury, and ease, and careless peace; to go backto the old, fresh, fair English woodlands, to go back to the power ofcommand and the delight of free gifts, to go back to men's honor, andreverence, and high esteem--these would have been sweet enough--sweet asfood after long famine. But far more than these would it have been togo back and take the hand of his friend once more in the old, uncloudedtrust of their youth; to go back, and stand free and blameless among hispeers, and know that all that man could do to win the heart and thesoul of a woman he could at his will do to win hers whose mere glanceof careless pity had sufficed to light his life to passion. And hehad renounced all this. This was the cost; and he had paid it--paid itbecause the simple, natural, inflexible law of justice had demanded it.
One whom he had once chosen to save he could not now have deserted,except by what would have been, in his sight, dishonor. Therefore, whenthe day broke, and the memories of the night came with his awakening, heknew that his future was without hope--without it as utterly as was everthat of any captive shut in darkness, and silence, and loneliness, in aprison, whose only issue was the oubliettes. There is infinite miseryin the world, but this one misery is rare; or men would perish from theface of the earth as though the sun withdrew its light.
Alone in that dreary scene, beautiful from its vastness and itssolemnity, but unutterably melancholy, unutterably oppressive, he alsowondered whether he lived or dreamed.
From among the reeds the plovers were rising; over the barren rocks thedazzling lizards glided; afar off strayed the goats; that was theonly sign of animal existence. He had wandered a long way from thecaravanserai, and he began to retrace his steps, for his horsewas there, and although he had received license to take leisure inreturning, he had no home but the camp, no friends but those wild-eyed,leopard-like throng around him like a pack of dogs, each eager for thefirst glance, the first word; these companions of his adversity and ofhis perils, whom he had learned to love, with all their vices and alltheir crimes, for sake of the rough, courageous love that they couldgive in answer.
He moved slowly back over the desolate tracks of land stretched betweenhim and the Algerian halting-place. He had no fear that he would findhis brother there. He knew too well the nature with which he had to dealto hope that old affection would so have outweighed present fear thathis debtor would have stayed to meet him yet once more. On the impulseof the ungovernable pain which the other's presence had been, he hadbidden him leave Africa at once; now he almost wished he had bid himstay. There was a weary, unsatisfied longing for some touch of loveor of gratitude from this usurper, whom he had raised in his place. Hewould have been rewarded enough if one sign of gladness that he livedhad broken through the egotism and the stricken fear of the man whom heremembered as a little golden-headed child, with the hand of their dyingmother lying in benediction on the fair, silken curls.
He had asked no questions. He had gone back to no recriminations. Heguessed all it needed him to know; and he recoiled from the recital ofthe existence whose happiness was purchased by his own misery, and whosedignity was built on sand. His sacrifice had not been in vain. Placedout of the reach of temptation, the plastic, feminine, unstablecharacter had been without a stain in the sight of men. But it waslittle better at the core; and he wondered, in his suffering, as he wentonward through the beauty of the young day, whether it had been worththe bitter price he had paid to raise this bending reed from out thewaters which would have broken and swamped it at the outset. It grewfair, and free, and flower-crowned now, in the midst of a tranquil andsunlit lake; but was it of more value than a drifted weed bearing thesnake-egg hidden at its root?
He had come so far out of the ordinary route across the plains thatit was two hours or more before he saw the dark, gray square of thecaravanserai walls, and to its left that single, leaning pine growingout of a cleft within the rock that overhung the spot where the keenestanguish of all his life had known had been encountered and endured--thespot which yet, for sake of the one laid to rest there beneath thesomber branches, would be forever dearer to him than any other place inthe soil of Africa.
While yet the caravanserai was distant, the piteous cries of amother-goat caught his ear. She was bleating beside a water-course, intowhich her kid of that spring had fallen, and whose rapid swell, filledby the recent storm, was too strong for the young creature. Absorbedas he was in his own thoughts, the cry reached him and drew him to thespot. It was not in him willingly to let any living thing suffer, andhe was always gentle to all animals. He stooped, and, with some littledifficulty, rescued the little goat for its delighted dam.
As he bent over the water he saw something glitter beneath it. He caughtit in his hand and brought it up. It was the broken half of a chainof gold, with a jewel in each link. He changed color as he saw it; heremembered it as one that Venetia Corona had worn on the morning thathe had been admitted to her. It was of peculiar workmanship, and herecognized it at once. He stood with the toy in his hand, looking longat the shining links, with their flashes of precious stones. They seemedto have voices that spoke to him of her about whose beautiful whitethroat they had been woven--voices that whispered incessantly in hisear, "Take up your birthright, and you will be free to sue to her atleast, if not to win her." No golden and jeweled plaything ever tempteda starving man to theft as this tempted him now to break the pledge hehad just given.
His birthright! He longed for it for this woman's sake--for the sake,at least, of the right to stand before her as an equal, and to risk hischance with others who sought her smile--as he had never done for anyother thing which, with that heritage, would have become his. Yet heknew that, even were he to be false to his word, and go forward andclaim his right, he would never be able to prove his innocence; he wouldnever hope to make the would believe him unless the real criminal madethat confession which he held himself forbidd
en, by his own past action,ever to extort.
He gazed long at the broken, costly toy, while his heart ached with acruel pang; then he placed it in safety in the little blue enamel box,beside the ring which Cigarette had flung back to him, and went onwardto the caravanserai. She was no longer there, in all probability; butthe lost bagatelle would give him, some time or another, a plea on whichto enter her presence. It was a pleasure to him to know that; though heknew also that every added moment spent under the sweet sovereigntyof her glance was so much added pain, so much added folly, to thedream-like and baseless passion with which she had inspired him.
The trifling incident of the goat's rescue and the chain's trouvaille,slight as they were, still were of service to him. They called him backfrom the past to the present; they broke the stupor of suffering thathad fastened on him; they recalled him to the actual world about him inwhich he had to fulfill his duties as a trooper of France.
It was almost noon when, under the sun-scorched branches of the pinethat stretched its somber fans up against the glittering azure of themorning skies, he approached the gates of the Algerine house-of-call--astudy for the color of Gerome, with the pearly gray of its stone tints,and the pigeons wheeling above its corner towers, while under the archof its entrance a string of mules, maize-laden, were guided; and on itsbench sat a French soldier, singing gayly songs of Paris while he cutopen a yellow gourd.
Cecil went within, and bathed, and dressed, and drank some of the thin,cool wine that found its way thither in the wake of the French army.Then he sat down for a while at one of the square, cabin-like holeswhich served for casements in the tower he occupied, and, looking outinto the court, tried to shape his thoughts and plan his course. Asa soldier he had no freedom, no will of his own, save for this extratwelve or twenty-four hours which they had allowed him for leisure inhis return journey. He was obliged to go back to his camp, and there,he knew, he might again encounter one whose tender memories would be asquick to recognize him as the craven dread of his brother had been. Hehad always feared this ordeal, although the arduous service in whichhis chief years in Africa had been spent, and the remote expeditions onwhich he had always been employed, had partially removed him from theever-present danger of such recognition until now. And now he felt thatif once the brave, kind eyes of his old friend should meet his own,concealment would be no longer possible; yet, for the sake of thatpromise he had sworn in the past night, it must be maintained at everyhazard, every cost. Vacantly he sat and watched the play of the sunshinein the prismatic water of the courtyard fountain, and the splashing, andthe pluming, and the murmuring of the doves and pigeons on its edge. Hefelt meshed in a net from which there was no escape--none--unless, onhis homeward passage, a thrust of Arab steel should give him liberty.
The trampling of horses on the pavement below roused his attention. Athrill of hope went through him that his brother might have lingeringconscience, latent love enough, to have made him refuse to obey thebidding to leave Africa. He rose and leaned out. Amid the little throngof riding-horses, grooms, and attendants who made an open way throughthe polyglot crowd of an Algerian caravanserai at noon, he saw the onedazzling face of which he had so lately dreamed by the water-freshet inthe plains. It was but a moment's glance, for she had already dismountedfrom her mare, and was passing within with two other ladies of herparty; but in that one glance he knew her. His discovery of the chaingave him a plea to seek her. Should he avail himself of it? He hesitateda while. It would be safest, wisest, best, to deliver up the trinketto her courier, and pass on his way without another look at that beautywhich could never be his, which could never lighten for him even withthe smile that a woman may give her equal or her friend. She could neverbe aught to him save one more memory of pain, save one remembrance themore to embitter the career which not even hope would ever illumine. Heknew that it was only madness to go into her presence, and feed, withthe cadence of her voice, the gold light of her hair, the grace andgraciousness of her every movement, the love which she would deem suchintolerable insult, that, did he ever speak it, she would order herpeople to drive him from her like a chidden hound. He knew that; but helonged to indulge the madness, despite it; and he did so. He went downinto the court below, and found her suite.
"Tell your mistress that I, Louis Victor, have some jewels which belongto her, and ask her permission to restore them to her hands," he said toone of her equerries.
"Give them to me, if you have picked them up," said the man, putting outhis hand for them.
Cecil closed his own upon them.
"Go and do as I bid you."
The equerry paused, doubtful whether or no to resist the tone and thewords. A Frenchman's respect for the military uniform prevailed. He wentwithin.
In the best chamber of the caravanserai Venetia Corona was sitting,listless in the heat, when her attendant entered. The grandes dames whowere her companions in their tour through the seat of war were gone totheir siesta. She was alone, with a scarlet burnous thrown about her,and upon her all the languor and idleness common to the noontide, whichwas still very warm, though, in the autumn, the nights were so icilycold on the exposed level of the plains. She was lost in thought,moreover. She had heard, the day before, a story that had touchedher--of a soldier who had been slain crossing the plains, and had beenbrought, through the hurricane and the sandstorm, at every risk, by hiscomrade, who had chosen to endure all peril and wretchedness rather thanleave the dead body to the vultures and the kites. It was a namelessstory to her--the story of two obscure troopers, who, for aught sheknew, might have been two of the riotous and savage brigands that werecommon in the Army of Africa. But the loyalty and the love shown init had moved her; and to the woman whose life had been cloudless andcradled in ease from her birth, there was that in the suffering and thesacrifice which the anecdote suggested, that had at once the fascinationof the unknown, and the pathos of a life so far removed from her, solittle dreamed of by her, that all its coarser cruelty was hidden, whileonly its unutterable sadness and courage remained before her sight.
Had she, could she, ever have seen it in its realities, watched and readand understood it, she would have been too intensely revolted to haveperceived the actual, latent nobility possible in such an existence. Asit was she heard but of it in such words as alone could meet the ear ofa great lady; she gazed at it only in pity from a far-distant height,and its terrible tragedy had solemnity and beauty for her.
When her servant approached her now with Cecil's message she hesitatedsome few moments in surprise. She had not known that he was in hervicinity. The story she had heard had been simply of two unnamedChasseurs d'Afrique, and he himself might have fallen on the field weeksbefore, for aught that she had heard of him. Some stray rumors of hisdefense of the encampment of Zaraila, and of the fine prowess shown inhis last charge, alone had drifted to her. He was but a trooper; and hefought in Africa. The world had no concern with him, save the miniatureworld of his own regiment.
She hesitated some moments; then gave the required permission. "He hasonce been a gentleman; it would be cruel to wound him," thought theimperial beauty, who would have refused a prince or neglected a dukewith chill indifference, but who was too generous to risk the semblanceof humiliation to the man who could never approach her save upon suchsufferance as was in itself mortification to one whose pride survivedhis fallen fortunes.
Moreover, the interest he had succeeded in awakening in her, themingling of pity and of respect that his words and his bearing hadaroused, was not extinct; had, indeed, only been strengthened by thevague stories that had of late floated to her of the day of Zaraila; ofthe day of smoke and steel and carnage, of war in its grandest yet itsmost frightful shape, of the darkness of death which the courageof human souls had power to illumine as the rays of the sun thetempest-cloud. Something more like quickened and pleasured expectationthan any one among her many lovers had ever had power to rouse, movedher as she heard of the presence of the man who, in that day, had savedthe honor of his Flag
. She came of a heroic race; she had heroic bloodin her; and heroism, physical and moral, won her regard as no otherquality could ever do. A man capable of daring greatly, and of sufferingsilently, was the only man who could ever hope to hold her thoughts.
The room was darkened from the piercing light without; and in its gloom,as he was ushered in, the scarlet of her cashmere and the gleam of herfair hair was all that, for the moment, he could see. He bowed very lowthat he might get his calmness back before he looked at her; and hervoice in its lingering music came on his ear.
"You have found my chain, I think? I lost it in riding yesterday. I amgreatly indebted to you for taking care of it."
She felt that she could only thank, as she would have thanked an equalwho should have done her this sort of slight service, the man who hadbrought to her the gold pieces with which his Colonel had insulted him.
"It is I, madame, who am the debtor of so happy an accident."
His words were very low, and his voice shook a little over them; he wasthinking not of the jeweled toy that he came here to restore, but of theinheritance that had passed away from him forever, and which, possessed,would have given him the title to seek what his own efforts could do towake a look of tenderness in those proud eyes which men ever called socold, but which he felt might still soften, and change, and grow darkwith the thoughts and the passions of love, if the soul that gazedthrough them were but once stirred from its repose.
"Your chain is here, madame, though broken, I regret to see," hecontinued, as he took the little box from his coat and handed it toher. She took it, and thanked him, without, for the moment, opening theenamel case as she motioned him to a seat at a little distance from herown.
"You have been in terrible scenes since I saw you last," she continued."The story of Zaraila reached us. Surely they cannot refuse you thereward of your service now?"
"It will make little difference, madame, whether they do or not."
"Little difference! How is that?"
"To my own fate, I meant. Whether I be captain or a corporal cannotalter----"
He paused; he dreaded lest the word should escape him which shouldreveal to her that which she would regard as such intolerable offense,such insolent indignity, when felt for her by a soldier in the grade heheld.
"No? Yet such recognition is usually the ambition of every militarylife."
A very weary smile passed over his face.
"I have no ambition, madame. Or, if I have, it is not a pair ofepaulettes that will content it."
She understood him; she comprehended the bitter mockery that the tawdry,meretricious rewards of regimental decoration seemed to the man who hadwaited to die at Zaraila as patiently and as grandly as the Old Guard atWaterloo.
"I understand! The rewards are pitifully disproportionate to theservices in the army. Yet how magnificently you and your men, as I havebeen told, held your ground all through that fearful day!"
"We did our duty--nothing more."
"Well! is not that the rarest thing among men?"
"Not among soldiers, madame."
"Then you think that every trooper in a regiment is actuated by thefinest and most impersonal sentiment that can actuate human beings!"
"I will not say that. Poor wretches! They are degraded enough, toooften. But I believe that more or less in every good soldier, even whenhe is utterly unconscious of it, is an impersonal love for the honor ofhis Flag, an uncalculating instinct to do his best for the reputation ofhis corps. We are called human machines; we are so, since we move by nowill of our own; but the lowest among us will at times be propelled byone single impulse--a desire to die greatly. It is all that is left tomost of us to do."
She looked at him with that old look which he had seen once or twicebefore in her, of pity, respect, sympathy, and wonder, all in one. Hespoke to her as he had never spoken to any living being. The grave,quiet, listless impassiveness that still was habitual with him--relic ofthe old habits of his former life--was very rarely broken, for hisreal nature or his real thoughts to be seen beneath it. But she, so farremoved from him by position and by circumstance, and distant with himas a great lady could not but be with a soldier of whose antecedents andwhose character she knew nothing, gave him sympathy, a sympathy thatwas sweet and rather felt than uttered; and it was like balm to a wound,like sweet melodies on a weary ear, to the man who had carried hissecret so silently and so long, without one to know his burden or tosoothe his pain.
"Yes," she said thoughtfully, while over the brilliancy of her facethere passed a shadow. "There must be infinite nobility among these men,who live without hope--live only to die. That soldier, a day or twoago, who brought his dead comrade through the hurricane, risking his owndeath rather than leave the body to the carrion-birds--you have heard ofhim? What tenderness, what greatness there must have been in that poorfellow's heart!"
"Oh, no! That was nothing."
"Nothing! They have told me he came every inch of the way in danger ofthe Arabs' shot and steel. He had suffered so much to bring the bodysafe across the plains, he fell down insensible on his entrance here."
"You set too much store on it. I owed him a debt far greater than anyact like that could ever repay."
"You! Was it you?"
"Yes, madame. He who perished had a thousandfold more of such nobilityas you have praised than I."
"Ah! Tell me of him," she said simply; but he saw that the lustrous eyesbent on him had a grave, sweet sadness in them that was more preciousand more pitiful than a million utterances of regret could ever havebeen.
Those belied her much who said that she was heartless; though grief hadnever touched her, she could feel keenly the grief of other lives. Heobeyed her bidding now, and told her, in brief words, the story, whichhad a profound pathos spoken there, where without, through the oval,unglazed casement in the distance, there was seen the tall, dark,leaning pine that overhung the grave of yesternight--the story overwhich his voice oftentimes fell with the hush of a cruel pain in it, andwhich he could have related to no other save herself. It had an intensemelancholy and a strange beauty in its brevity and its simplicity, toldin that gaunt, still, darkened chamber of the caravanserai, withthe gray gloom of its stone walls around, and the rays of the goldensunlight from without straying in to touch the glistening hair of theproud head that bent forward to listen to the recital. Her face grewpaler as she heard, and a mist was over the radiance of her azure eyes;that death in the loneliness of the plains moved her deeply with thegrand simplicity of its unconscious heroism. And, though he spoke littleof himself, she felt, with all the divination of a woman's sympathies,how he who told her this thing had suffered by it--suffered far morethan the comrade whom he had laid down in the grave where, far off inthe noonday warmth, the young goats were at rest on the sod. When heceased, there was a long silence; he had lost even the memory of her inthe memory of the death that he had painted to her; and she was movedwith that wondering pain, that emotion, half dread and half regret, withwhich the contemplation of calamities that have never touched, andthat can never touch them, will move women far more callous, far moreworld-chilled than herself.
In the silence her hands toyed listlessly with the enamel bonbonniere,whose silver had lost all its bright enameling, and was dinted anddulled till it looked no more than lead. The lid came off at her touchas she musingly moved it round and round; the chain and the ring fellinto her lap; the lid remained in her hand, its interior unspoiled andstudded in its center with a name in turquoise letters--"Venetia."
She started as the word caught her eye and broke her reverie; the colorcame warmer into her cheek; she looked closer and closer at the box;then, with a rapid movement, turned her head and gazed at her companion.
"How did you obtain this?"
"The chain, madame? It had fallen in the water."
"The chain! No! the box!"
He looked at her in surprise.
"It was given me very long ago."
"And by whom?"
"By
a young child, madame."
Her lips parted slightly, the flush on her cheeks deepened; thebeautiful face, which the Roman sculptor had said only wanted tendernessto make it perfect, changed, moved, was quickened with a thousandshadows of thought.
"The box is mine! I gave it! And you?"
He rose to his feet, and stood entranced before her, breathless andmute.
"And you?" she repeated.
He was silent still, gazing at her. He knew her now--how had he been soblind as never to guess the truth before, as never to know that thoseimperial eyes and that diadem of golden hair could belong alone but tothe women of one race?
"And you?" she cried once more, while she stretched her hand out to him."And you--you are Philip's friend? you are Bertie Cecil?"
Silently he bowed his head; not even for his brother's sake, or for thesake of his pledged word, could he have lied to her.
But her outstretched hands he would not see, he would not take. Theshadow of an imputed crime was stretched between them.
"Petite Reine!" he murmured. "Ah, God! how could I be so blind?"
She grew very pale as she sank back again upon the couch from which shehad risen. It seemed to her as though a thousand years had driftedby since she had stood beside this man under the summer leaves of theStephanien, and he had kissed her childish lips, and thanked her for herloving gift. And now--they had met thus!
He said nothing. He stood paralyzed, gazing at her. There had been noadded bitterness needed in the cup which he drank for his brother'ssake, yet this bitterness surpassed all other; it seemed beyond hisstrength to leave her in the belief that he was guilty. She in whom allfair and gracious things were met; she who was linked by her race tohis past and his youth; she whose clear eyes in her childhood had lookedupon him in that first hour of the agony that he had suffered then, andstill suffered on, in the cause of a coward and an ingrate.
She was pale still; and her eyes were fixed on him with a gaze thatrecalled to him the look with which "Petite Reine" had promised thatsummer day to keep his secret, and tell none of that misery of which shehad been witness.
"They thought that you were dead," she said at length, while her voicesank very low. "Why have you lived like this?"
He made no answer.
"It was cruel to Philip," she went on, while her voice still shook."Child though I was, I remember his passion of grief when the news camethat you had lost your life. He has never forgotten you. So often now hewill still speak of you! He is in your camp. We are traveling together.He will be here this evening. What delight it will give him to know hisdearest friend is living! But why--why--have kept him ignorant, if youwere lost to all the world beside?"
Still he answered her nothing. The truth he could not tell; the lie hewould not. She paused, waiting reply. Receiving none, she spoke oncemore, her words full of that exquisite softness which was far morebeautiful in her than in women less tranquil, less chill, and lessnegligent in ordinary moments.
"Mr. Cecil, I divined rightly! I knew that you were far higher than yourgrade in Africa; I felt that in all things, save in some accident ofposition, we were equals. But why have you condemned yourself to thismisery? Your life is brave, is noble, but it must be a constant tortureto such as you? I remember well what you were--so well, that I wonder wehave never recognized each other before now. The existence you lead inAlgeria must be very terrible to you, though it is greater, in truth,than your old years of indolence."
He sank down beside her on a low seat, and bowed his head on his handsfor some moments. He knew that he must leave this woman whom he loved,and who knew him now as one whom in her childhood she had seen caressedand welcomed by all her race, to hold him guilty of this wretched, mean,and fraudulent thing, under whose charge he had quitted her country.Great dews of intense pain gathered on his forehead; his whole mind, andheart, and soul revolted against this brand of a guilt not his own thatwas stamped on him; he could have cried out to her the truth in all theeloquence of a breaking heart.
But he knew that his lips had been sealed by his own choice forever; andthe old habits of his early life were strong upon him still. He liftedhis head and spoke gently, and very quietly, though she caught thetremor that shook through the words.
"Do not let us speak of myself. You see what my life is; there is nomore to be said. Tell me rather of your own story--you are no longer theLady Venetia? You have been wedded and widowed, they say?"
"The wife of an hour--yes! But it is of yourself that I would hear.Why have left the world, and, above all, why have left us, to think youdead? I was not so young when we last saw you, but that I remember wellhow all my people loved you."
Had she been kept in ignorance of the accusation beneath which hisflight had been made? He began to think so. It was possible. She hadbeen so young a child when he had left for Africa; then the story wasprobably withheld from reaching her; and now, what memory had the worldto give a man whose requiem it had said twelve long years before? In alllikelihood she had never heard his name, save from her brother's lips,that had been silent on the shame of his old comrade.
"Leave my life alone, for God's sake!" he said passionately. "Tell me ofyour own--tell me, above all, of his. He loved me, you say?--O Heaven!he did! Better than any creature that ever breathed; save the man whosegrave lies yonder."
"He does so still," she answered eagerly. "Philip's is not a heart thatforgets. It is a heart of gold, and the name of his earliest friend isgraven on it as deeply now as ever. He thinks you dead; to-night will bethe happiest hour he had ever known when he shall meet you here."
He rose hastily, and moved thrice to and fro the narrow floor whoserugged earth had been covered with furs and rugs lest it should strikea chill to her as she passed over it; the torture grew unsupportable tohim. And yet, it had so much of sweetness that he was powerless to endit--sweetness in the knowledge that she knew him now her equal, at leastby birth; in the change that it had made in her voice and her glance,while the first grew tender with olden memories, and the last had thesmile of friendship; in the closeness of the remembrances that seemed todraw and bind them together; in the swift sense that in an instant, bythe utterance of a name, the ex-barrier of caste which had been betweenthem had fallen now and forever.
She watched him with grave, musing eyes. She was moved, startled,softened to a profound pity for him, and filled with a wondering ofregret; yet a strong emotion of relief, of pleasure, rose above these.She had never forgotten the man to whom, in her childish innocence, shehad brought the gifts of her golden store; she was glad that he lived,though he lived thus, glad with a quicker, warmer, more vivid emotionthan any that had ever occupied her for any man living or dead excepther brother. The interest she had vaguely felt in a stranger's fortunes,and which she had driven contemptuously away as unworthy of herharboring, was justified for one whom her people had known and valuedwhile she had been in her infancy, and of whom she had never heardfrom her brother's lips aught except constant regret and imperishableattachment. For it was true, as Cecil divined, that the dark cloud underwhich his memory had passed to all in England had never been seen by hereyes, from which, in childhood, it had been screened, and, in womanhood,withheld, because his name had been absolutely forgotten by all save theSeraph, to whom it had been fraught with too much pain for its utteranceto be ever voluntary.
"What is it you fear from Philip?" she asked him, at last, when she hadwaited vainly for him to break the silence. "You can remember him butill if you think that there will be anything in his heart save joy whenhe shall know that you are living. You little dream how dear your memoryis to him--"
He paused before her abruptly.
"Hush, hush! or you will kill me! Why!--three nights ago I fled thecamp as men flee pestilence, because I saw his face in the light of thebivouac-fire and dreaded that he should so see mine!"
She gazed at him in troubled amaze; there was that in the passionateagitation of this man who had been serene through so much danger, andunmoved bene
ath so much disaster, that startled and bewildered her.
"You fled from Philip? Ah! how you must wrong him! What will it matterto him whether you be prince or trooper, wear a peer's robes or asoldier's uniform? His friendship never yet was given to externals.But--why?--that reminds me of your inheritance. Do you know that lordRoyallieu is dead? That your younger brother bears the title, thinkingyou perished at Marseilles? He was here with me yesterday; he has cometo Algeria for the autumn. Whatever your motive may have been to remainthus hidden from us all, you must claim your own rights now. You mustgo back to all that is so justly yours. Whatever your reason be tohave borne with all the suffering and the indignity that have been yourportion here, they will be ended now."
Her beauty had never struck him as intensely as at this moment, when, inurging him to the demand of his rights, she so unconsciously tempted himto betray his brother and to forsake his word. The indifference andthe careless coldness that had to so many seemed impenetrable andunalterable in her were broken and had changed to the warmth ofsympathy, of interest, of excitation. There was a world of feeling inher face, of eloquence in her eyes, as she stooped slightly forwardwith the rich glow of the cashmeres about her, and the sun-gleam fallingacross her brow. Pure, and proud, and noble in every thought, andpressing on him now what was the due of his birth and his heritage, sheyet unwittingly tempted him with as deadly a power as though she werethe vilest of her sex, seducing him downward to some infamous dishonor.
To do what she said would be but his actual right, and would open to hima future so fair that his heart grew sick with longing for it; and yetto yield, and to claim justice for himself, was forbidden him asutterly as though it were some murderous guilt. He had promised never tosacrifice his brother; the promise held him like the fetters of a galleyslave.
"Why do you not answer me?" she pursued, while she leaned nearer withwonder, and doubt, and a certain awakening dread shadowing the blueluster of her eyes that were bent so thoughtfully, so searchingly, uponhim. "Is it possible that you have heard of your inheritance, of yourtitle and estates, and that you voluntarily remain a soldier here? LordRoyallieu must yield them in the instant you prove your identity, and inthat there could be no difficulty. I remember you well now, and Philip,I am certain, will only need to see you once to--"
"Hush, for pity's sake! Have you never heard--have none ever toldyou----"
"What?"
Her face grew paler with a vague sense of fear; she knew that he hadbeen equable and resolute under the severest tests that could try thestrength and the patience of man, and she knew, therefore, that noslender thing could agitate and could unman him thus.
"What is it I should have heard?" she asked him, as he kept his silence.
He turned from her so that she could not see his face.
"That, when I became dead to the world, I died with the taint of crimeon me!"
"Of crime?"
An intense horror thrilled through the echo of the word; but she rose,and moved, and faced him with the fearless resolve of a woman whom nohalf-truth would blind, and no shadowy terror appall.
"Of crime? What crime?"
Then, and then only, he looked at her, a strange, fixed, hopeless, yetserene look, that she knew no criminal ever would or could have given.
"I was accused of having forged your brother's name."
A faint cry escaped her; her lips grew white, and her eyes darkened anddilated.
"Accused. But wrongfully?"
His breath came and went in quick, sharp spasms.
"I could not prove that."
"Not prove it? Why?"
"I could not."
"But he--Philip--never believed you guilty?"
"I cannot tell. He may; he must."
"But you are not!"
It was not an interrogation, but an affirmation that rang out in thesilver clearness of her voice. There was not a single intonation ofdoubt in it; there was rather a haughty authority that forbade evenhimself to say that one of his race and that one of his Order could havebeen capable of such ignoble and craven sin.
His mouth quivered, a bitter sigh broke from him; he turned his eyes onher with a look that pierced her to the heart.
"Think me guilty or guiltless, as you will; I cannot answer you."
His last words were suffocated with the supreme anguish of theirutterance. As she heard it, the generosity, the faith, the inherentjustice, and the intrinsic sweetness that were latent in her beneaththe negligence and the chillness of external semblance rose at once toreject the baser, to accept the nobler, belief offered to her choice.She had lived much in the world, but it had not corroded her; shehad acquired keen discernment from it, but she had preserved all thecourageous and the chivalrous instincts of her superb nature. She lookedat him now, and stretched her hands out toward him with a royal andgracious gesture of infinite eloquence.
"You are guiltless, whatever circumstance may have arrayed against you,whatever shadow of evil may have fallen falsely on you. Is it not so?"
He bowed his head low over her hands as he took them. In that momenthalf the bitterness of his doom passed from him; he had at least herfaith. But his face was bloodless as that of a corpse, and the loudbeatings of his heart were audible on the stillness. This faith mustlive on without one thing to show that he deserved it; if, in time tocome, it should waver and fall, and leave him in the darkness of thefoul suspicion under which he dwelt, what wonder would there be?
He lifted his head and looked her full in the eyes; her own closedinvoluntarily, and filled with tears. She felt that the despair and thepatience of that look would haunt her until her dying day.
"I was guiltless; but none could credit it then; none would do so now;nor can I seek to make them. Ask me no more; give me your belief, if youcan--God knows what precious mercy it is to me; but leave me to fulfillmy fate, and tell no living creature what I have told you now."
The great tears stood in her eyes, and blinded her as she heard. Even inthe amaze and the vagueness of this first knowledge of the cause of hisexile she felt instinctively, as the Little One also had done, that somegreat sacrifice, some great fortitude and generosity, lay within thissealed secret of his sufferance of wrong. She knew, too, that it wouldbe useless to seek to learn that which he had chosen to conceal; thatfor no slender cause could he have come out to lead this life of whosesufferings she could gauge the measure; that nothing save some absoluteand imperative reason could have driven him to accept such living deathas was his doom in Africa.
"Tell no one!" she echoed. "What! not Philip even? Not your oldestfriend. Ah! be sure, whatever the evidence might be against you, hisheart never condemned you for one instant."
"I believe it. Yet all you can do for me, all I implore you to do forme, is to keep silence forever on my name. To-day, accident has made mebreak a vow I never thought but to keep sacred. When you recognized me,I could not deny myself, I could not lie to you; but, for God's sake,tell none of what has passed between us!"
"But why?" she pursued--"why? You lie under this charge still--youcannot disprove it, you say; but why not come out before the world, andstate to all what you swear now to me, and claim your right to bear yourfather's honors? If you were falsely accused, there must have been someguilty in your stead; and if--"
"Cease, for pity's sake! Forget I ever told you I was guiltless! Blot mymemory out; think of me as dead, as I have been, till your eyescalled me back to life. Think that I am branded with the theft of yourbrother's name; think that I am vile, and shameless and fallen as thelowest wretch that pollutes this army; think of me as what you will, butnot as innocent!"
The words broke out in a torrent from him, bearing down with them allhis self-control, as the rush of waters bears away all barriers thathave long dammed their course. They were wild, passionate, incoherent;unlike any that had ever passed his lips, or been poured out in herpresence. He felt mad with the struggle that tore him asunder, thelonging to tell the truth to her, though he should never after look u
ponher face again, and the honor which bound silence on him for sake of theman whom he had sworn under no temptation to dispossess and to betray.
She heard him silently, with her grand, meditative eyes, in which theslow tears still floated, fixed upon him. Most women would have thoughtthat conscious guilt spoke in the violence of his self-accusation; shedid not. Her intuition was too fine, her sympathies too true. She feltthat he feared, not that she should unjustly think him guilty, but thatshe should justly think him guiltless. She knew that this, whatever itsroot might be, was the fear of the stainless, not of the criminal life.
"I hear you," she answered him gently; "but I do not believe you, evenagainst yourself. The man whom Philip loved and honored never sank tothe base fraud of a thief."
Her glorious eyes were still on him as she spoke, seeming to read hisvery soul. Under that glance all the manhood, all the race, all thepride, and the love, and the courage within him refused to bear in hersight the shame of an alien crime, and rose in revolt to fling off thebondage that forced him to stand as a criminal before the noble gaze ofthis woman. His eyes met hers full, and rested on them without wavering;his head was raised, and his carriage had a fearless dignity.
"No. I was innocent. But in honor I must bear the yoke that I took onme long ago; in honor I can never give you or any living soul the proofthat this crime was not mine. I thought that I should go to my gravewithout any ever hearing of the years that I have passed in Africa,without any ever learning the name I used to bear. As it is, all I canask is now--to be forgotten."
His voice fell before the last words, and faltered over them. It wasbitter to ask only for oblivion from the woman whom he loved with allthe strength of a sudden passion born in utter hopelessness; the womanwhose smile, whose beauty, whose love might even possibly have been wonas his own in the future, if he could have claimed his birthright. Sobitter that, rather than have spoken those words of resignation, hewould have been led out by a platoon of his own soldiery and shot in theautumn sunlight beside Rake's grave.
"You ask what will not be mine to give," she answered him, while agreat weariness stole through her own words, for she was bewildered, andpained, and oppressed with a new, strange sense of helplessness beforethis man's nameless suffering. "Remember--I knew you so well in myearliest years, and you are so dear to the one dearest to me. It willnot be possible to forget such a meeting as this. Silence, of course,you can command from me, if you insist on it; but--"
"I command nothing from you; but I implore it. It is the sole mercyyou can show. Never, for God's sake! speak of me to your brother or tomine."
"Do you so mistrust Philip's affection?"
"No. It is because I trust it too entirely."
"Too entirely to do what?"
"To deal it fruitless pain. As you love him--as you pity me--pray thathe and I never meet!"
"But why? If all this could be cleared----"
"It never can be."
The baffled sense of impotence against the granite wall of someimmovable calamity which she had felt before came on her. She had beenalways used to be obeyed, followed, and caressed; to see obstaclescrumble, difficulties disappear, before her wish; she had not been triedby any sorrow, save when, a mere child still, she felt the pain of herfather's death; she had been lapped in softest luxury, crowned witheasiest victory. The sense that here there was a tragedy whose meaningshe could not reach, that there was here a fate that she could notchange or soften, brought a strange, unfamiliar feeling of weaknessbefore a hopeless and cruel doom that was no more to be altered by herwill than the huge, bare rocks of Africa, out yonder in the glare ofnoon, were to be lifted by her hand. For she knew that this man, whomade so light of perils that would have chilled many to the soul interror, and who bore so quiet and serene a habit beneath the sharpeststings and hardest blows of his adversities, would not speak thuswithout full warrant; would not consign himself to this renunciation ofevery hope, unless he were compelled to it by a destiny from which therewas no escape.
She was silent some moments, her eyes resting on him with that grave andluminous regard which no man had ever changed to one more tender orless calmly contemplative. He had risen again, and paced to and fro thenarrow chamber; his head bent down, his chest rising and falling withthe labored, quickened breath. He had thought that the hour in whichhis brother's ingratitude had pierced his heart had been the greatestsuffering he had ever known, or ever could know; but a greater hadwaited on him here, in the fate to which the jeweled toy that he hadlifted from the water had accidentally led him, not dreaming to what hecame.
"Lord Royallieu," she said softly, at length, while she rose and movedtoward him, the scarlet of the trailing cashmeres gathering dark, rubylights in them as they caught sun and shadow; and at the old name,uttered in her voice, he started, and turned, and looked at her asthough he saw some ghost of his past life rise from its grave. "Why lookat me so?" she pursued ere he could speak. "Act how you will, you cannotchange the fact that you are the bearer of your father's title. So longas you live, your brother Berkeley can never take it legally. You maybe a Chasseur of the African Army, but none the less are you a Peer ofEngland."
"What means that?" he muttered. "Why tell me that? I have said I amdead. Leave me buried here, and let him enjoy what he may--what he can."
"But this is folly--madness----"
"No; it is neither. I have told you I should stand as a felon in theeyes of the English law; I should have no civil rights; the greatestmercy fate can show me is to let me remain forgotten here. It will notbe long, most likely, before I am thrust into the African sand, to rotlike that brave soul out yonder. Berkeley will be the lawful holder ofthe title then; leave him in peace and possession now."
He spoke the words out to the end--calmly, and with unfaltering resolve.But she saw the great dews gather on his temples, where silver threadswere just glistening among the bright richness of his hair and she heardthe short, low, convulsive breathing with which his chest heaved as hespoke. She stood close beside him, and gazed once more full in his eyes,while the sweet, imperious cadence of her voice answered him:
"There is more than I know of here. Either you are the greatest madman,or the most generous man that ever lived. You choose to guard yourown secret; I will not seek to persuade it from you. But tell me onething--why do you thus abjure your rights, permit a false charge to reston you, and consign yourself forever to this cruel agony?"
His lips shook under his beard as he answered her.
"Because I can do no less in honor. For God's sake, do not you temptme!"
"Forgive me," she said, after a long pause. "I will never ask you thatagain."
She could honor honor too well, and too well divine all that he sufferedfor its sake, ever to become his temptress in bidding him forsake it;yet, with a certain weariness, a certain dread, wholly unfamiliar toher, she realized that what he had chosen was the choice not of hispresent or of his future. It could have no concern for her,--save thatlong years ago he had been the best-loved friend of her best-lovedrelative,--whether or no he remained lost to all the world under theunknown name of a French Chasseur. And yet it smote her with a certaindull, unanalyzed pain; it gave her a certain emotion of powerlessnessand of hopelessness to realize that he would remain all his yearsthrough, until an Arab's shot should set him free, under this bondageof renunciation, beneath this yoke of service. She stood silent long,leaning against the oval of the casement, with the sun shed over theglowing cashmeres that swept round her. He stood apart in silence also.What could he say to her? His whole heart longed with an unutterablelonging to tell her the truth, and bid her be his judge between himand his duty; but his promise hung on him like a leaden weight. He mustremain speechless--and leave her, for doubt to assail her, and for scornto follow it in her thoughts of him, if so they would.
Heavy as had been the curse to him of that one hour in which honor hadforbade him to compromise a woman's reputation, and old tenderness hadforbade him to betray a brother's sin,
he had never paid so heavy aprice for his act as that which he paid now.
Through the yellow sunlight without, over the barren, dust-strewnplains, in the distance there approached three riders, accompanied bya small escort of Spahis, with their crimson burnous floating in theautumnal wind. She started, and turned to him.
"It is Philip! He is coming for me from your camp to-day."
His eyes strained through the sun-glare.
"Ah, God! I cannot meet him--I have not strength. You do not know----"
"I know how well he loved you."
"Not better than I him! But I cannot--I dare not. Unless I could meethim as we never shall meet upon earth, we must be apart forever. ForHeaven's sake promise me never to speak my name!"
"I promise until you release me."
"And you can believe me innocent still, in face of all?"
She stretched her hands to him once more. "I believe. For I know whatyou once were."
Great, burning tears fell from his eyes upon her hands as he bent overthem.
"God bless you! You were an angel of pity to me in your childhood; inyour womanhood you give me the only mercy I have known since the lastday you looked upon my face! We shall be far sundered forever. May Icome to you once more?"
She paused in hesitation and in thought a while, while for the firsttime in all her years a tremulous tenderness passed over her face; shefelt an unutterable pity for this man and for his doom. Then she drewher hands gently away from him.
"Yes, I will see you again."
So much concession to such a prayer Venetia Corona had never beforegiven. He could not command his voice to answer, but he bowed low beforeher as before an empress--another moment, and she was alone.
She stood looking out at the wide, level country beyond, with the glareof the white, strong light and the red burnous of the Franco-Arabsglowing against the blue, but cloudless sky; she thought that she mustbe dreaming some fantastic story born of these desert solitudes.
Yet her eyes were dim with tears, and her heart ached with another'swoe. Doubt of him never came to her; but there was a vague, terriblepathos in the mystery of his fate that oppressed her with a weight offuture evil, unknown, and unmeasured.
"Is he a madman?" she mused. "If not, he is a martyr; one of thegreatest that ever suffered unknown to other men."