Meanwhile he, who so little knew or heeded how he occupied her heart,passed unnoticed through the movements of the military crowds, crossedthe breadth that parted the encampment from the marquees of the generalsand their guests, gave the countersign and approached unarrested, andso far unseen save by the sentinels, the tents of the Corona suite. TheMarshal and his male visitors were still over their banquet wines; shehad withdrawn early, on the plea of fatigue; there was no one tonotice his visit except the men on guard, who concluded that he went bycommand. In the dusky light, for the moon was very young, and the flareof the torches made the shadows black and uncertain, no one recognizedhim; the few soldiers stationed about saw one of their own troopers, andoffered him no opposition, made him no question. He knew the password;that was sufficient. The Levantine waiting near the entrance drew thetent-folds aside and signed to him to enter. Another moment, and hewas in the presence of her mistress, in that dim, amber light from thestanding candelabra, in that heavy, soft-scented air perfumed from thealoe-wood burning in a brazier, through which he saw, half blinded atfirst coming from the darkness without, that face which subdued anddazzled even the antagonism and the lawlessness of Cigarette.
He bowed low before her, preserving that distant ceremonial due from therank he ostensibly held to hers.
"Madame, this is very merciful! I know not how to thank you."
She motioned to him to take a seat near to her, while the Levantine, whoknew nothing of the English tongue, retired to the farther end of thetent.
"I only kept my word," she answered, "for we leave the camp to-morrow;Africa next week."
"So soon!"
She saw the blood forsake the bronzed fairness of his face, and leavethe dusky pallor there. It wounded her as if she suffered herself. Forthe first time she believed what the Little One had said--that this manloved her.
"I sent for you," she continued hurriedly, her graceful languor andtranquillity for the first time stirred and quickened by emotion, almostby embarrassment. "It was very strange, it was very painful, for me totrust that child with such a message. But you know us of old; you knowwe do not forsake our friends for considerations of self-interestor outward semblance. We act as we deem right; we do not heed untrueconstructions. There are many things I desire to say to you----"
She paused; he merely bent his head; he could not trust the calmness ofhis voice in answer.
"First," she continued, "I must entreat you to allow me to tell Philipwhat I know. You cannot conceive how intensely oppressive it becomes tome to have any secret from him. I never concealed so much as a thoughtfrom my brother in all my life, and to evade even a mute question fromhis brave, frank eyes makes me feel a traitress to him."
"Anything else," he muttered. "Ask me anything else. For God's sake, donot let him dream that I live!"
"But why? You still speak to me in enigmas. To-morrow, moreover, beforewe leave, he intends to seek you out as what he thinks you--a soldierof France. He is interested by all he hears of your career; he was firstinterested by what I told him of you when he saw the ivory carvings atmy villa. I asked the little vivandiere to tell you this, but, on secondthoughts it seemed best to see you myself once more, as I had promised."
There was a slow weariness in the utterance of the words. She had saidthat she could not reflect on leaving him to such a fate as this of hisin Africa without personal suffering, or without an effort to induce himto reconsider his decision to condemn himself to it for evermore.
"That French child," she went on rapidly, to cover both the pain thatshe felt and that she dealt, "forced her entrance here in a strangefashion; she wished to see me, I suppose, and to try my courage too.She is a little brigand, but she had a true and generous nature, and sheloves you very loyally."
"Cigarette?" he asked wearily; his thoughts could not stay for eitherthe pity or interest for her in this moment. "Oh, no! I trust not.I have done nothing to win her love, and she is a fierce littlecondottiera who disdains all such weakness. She forced her way in here?That was unpardonable; but she seems to bear a singular dislike to you."
"Singular, indeed! I never saw her until to-day."
He answered nothing; the conviction stole on him that Cigarette hatedher because he loved her.
"And yet she brought you my message?" pursued his companion. "Thatseems her nature--violent passions, yet thorough loyalty. But time isprecious. I must urge on you what I bade you come to hear. It is toimplore you to put your trust, your confidence in Philip. You haveacknowledged to me that you are guiltless--no one who knows what youonce were could ever doubt it for an instant--then let him hear this,let him be your judge as to what course is right and what wrong for youto pursue. It is impossible for me to return to Europe knowing you areliving thus and leaving you to such a fate. What motive you have tosentence yourself to such eternal banishment I am ignorant; but allI ask of you is, confide in him. Let him learn that you live; let himdecide whether or not this sacrifice of yourself be needed. His honor isan punctilious as that of any man on earth; his friendship you can neverdoubt. Why conceal anything from him?"
His eyes turned on her with that dumb agony which once before hadchilled her to the soul.
"Do you think, if I could speak in honor, I should not tell you all?"
A flush passed over her face, the first that the gaze of any man hadever brought there. She understood him.
"But," she said, gently and hurriedly, "may it not be that you overratethe obligations of honor? I know that many a noble-hearted man hasinexorably condemned himself to a severity of rule that a dispassionatejudge of his life might deem very exaggerated, very unnecessary. Itis so natural for an honorable man to so dread that he should do adishonorable thing through self-interest or self-pity, that he may verywell overestimate the sacrifice required of him through what he deemsjustice or generosity. May it not be so with you? I can conceiveno reason that can be strong enough to require of you such fearfulsurrender of every hope, such utter abandonment of your own existence."
Her voice failed slightly over the last words; she could not think withcalmness of the destiny that he accepted. Involuntarily some prescienceof pain that would forever pursue her own life unless his were rescuedlent an intense earnestness, almost entreaty, to her argument. She didnot bear him love as yet; she had seen too little of him, too latelyonly known him as her equal; but there were in her, stranger than sheknew, a pity, a tenderness, a regret, an honor for him that drew hertoward him with an indefinable attraction, and would sooner or laterwarm and deepen into love. Already it was sufficient, though she deemedit but compassion and friendship, to make her feel that an intolerableweight would be heavy on her future if his should remain condemnedto this awful isolation and oblivion while she alone of all the worldshould know and hold his secret.
He started from her side as he heard, and paced to and fro the narrowlimits of the tent like a caged animal. For the first time it grew abelief to him, in his thoughts, that were he free, were he owner of hisheritage, he could rouse her heart from its long repose and makeher love him with the soft and passionate warmth of his dead Arabmistress--a thing that had been so distant from her negligence andher pride as warmth from the diamond or the crystal. He felt as if thestruggle would kill him. He had but to betray his brother, and he wouldbe unchained from his torture; he had but to break his word, and hewould be at liberty. All the temptation that had before beset him paledand grew as naught beside this possibility of the possession of her lovewhich dawned upon him now.
She, knowing nothing of this which moved him, believed only that heweighed her words in hesitation, and strove to turn the balance.
"Hear me," she said softly. "I do not bid you decide; I only bid youconfide in Philip--in one who, as you must well remember, would soonercut off his own hand than counsel a base thing or do an unfaithfulact. You are guiltless of this charge under which you left England; youendure it rather than do what you deem dishonorable to clear yourself.That is noble--that is great. But it is possible
, as I say, that youmay exaggerate the abnegation required of you. Whoever was the criminalshould suffer. Yours is magnificent magnanimity; but it may surely bealso false justice alike to yourself and the world."
He turned on her almost fiercely in the suffering she dealt him.
"It is! It was a madness--a Quixotism--the wild, unconsidered act ofa fool. What you will! But it is done; it was done forever--so longago--when your young eyes looked on me in the pity of your innocentchildhood. I cannot redeem its folly now by adding to it baseness. Icannot change the choice of a madman by repenting of it with a coward'scaprice. Ah, God! you do not know what you do--how you tempt. For pity'ssake, urge me no more. Help me--strengthen me--to be true to my word. Donot bid me do evil that I may enter paradise through my sin!"
He threw himself down beside her as the incoherent words poured out, hisarms flung across the pile of cushions on which he had been seated, hisface hidden on them. His teeth clinched on his tongue till the bloodflowed; he felt that if the power of speech remained with him he shouldforswear every law that had bound him to silence, and tell her all,whatever the cost.
She looked at him, she heard him, moved to a greater agitation than everhad had sway over her; for the first time the storm winds that swept byher did not leave her passionless and calm; this man's whole future wasin her hands. She could bid him seek happiness dishonored; or cleave tohonor, and accept wretchedness forever.
It was a fearful choice to hold.
"Answer me! Choose for me!" he said vehemently. "Be my law, and be myGod!"
She gave a gesture almost of fear.
"Hush, hush! The woman does not live who should be that to any man."
"You shall be it to me! Choose for me!"
"I cannot! You leave so much in darkness and untold----"
"Nothing that you need know to decide your choice for me, save one thingonly--that I love you."
She shuddered.
"This is madness! What have you seen of me?"
"Enough to love you while my life shall last, and love no other woman.Ah! I was but an African trooper in your sight, but in my own I was yourequal. You only saw a man to whom your gracious alms and your gentlecharity were to be given, as a queen may stoop in mercy to a beggar; butI saw one who had the light of my old days in her smile, the sweetnessof my old joys in her eyes, the memories of my old world in her everygrace and gesture. You forget! I was nothing to you; but you were somuch to me. I loved you the first moment that your voice fell on my ear.It is madness! Oh, yes! I should have said so, too, in those old years.A madness I would have sworn never to feel. But I have lived a hard lifesince then, and no men ever love like those who suffer. Now you knowall; know the worst that tempts me. No famine, no humiliation, noobloquy, no loss I have known, ever drove me so cruelly to buy back myhappiness with the price of dishonor as the one desire--to stand in myrightful place before men, and be free to strive with you for what theyhave not won!"
As she heard, all the warmth, all the life, faded out of her face; itgrew as white as his own, and her lips parted slightly, as though todraw her breath was oppressive. The wild words overwhelmed her withtheir surprise not less than they shocked her with their despair.An intense truth vibrated through them, a truth that pierced her andreached her heart, as no other such supplication ever had done. Shehad no love for him yet, or she thought not; she was very proud, andresisted such passions; but in that moment the thought swept by her thatsuch love might be possible. It was the nearest submission to it shehad ever given. She heard him in unbroken silence; she kept silencelong after he had spoken. So far as her courage and her dignity could betouched with it, she felt something akin to terror at the magnitude ofthe choice left to her.
"You give me great pain, great surprise," she murmured. "All I can trustis that your love is of such sudden birth that it will die as rapidly--"
He interrupted her.
"You mean that, under no circumstances--not even were I to possessmy inheritance--could you give me any hope that I might wake yourtenderness?"
She looked at him full in the eyes with the old, fearless, haughtyinstinct of refusal to all such entreaty, which had made her soindifferent--and many said so pitiless--to all. At his gaze, however herown changed and softened, grew shadowed, and then wandered from him.
"I do not say that. I cannot tell----"
The words were very low; she was too truthful to conceal from him whathalf dawned on herself--the possibility that, more in his presence andunder different circumstances, she might feel her heart go to him with awarmer and a softer impulse than that of friendship. The heroism of hislife had moved her greatly.
His head dropped down again upon his arms.
"O God! It is possible, at least! I am blind--mad. Make my choice forme! I know not what to do."
The tears that had gathered in her eyes fell slowly down over hercolorless cheeks; she looked at him with a pity that made her heart achewith a sorrow only less than his own. The grief was for him chiefly; yetsomething of it for herself. Some sense of present bitterness thatfell on her from his fate, some foreboding of future regret that wouldinevitably and forever follow her when she left him to his lonelinessand his misery, smote on her with a weightier pang than any her caressedand cloudless existence had encountered. Love was dimly before her asthe possibility he called it; remote, unrealized, still unacknowledged,but possible under certain conditions, only known as such when it wasalso impossible through circumstances.
He had suffered silently; endured strongly; fought greatly; thesewere the only means through which any man could have ever reached hersympathy, her respect, her tenderness. Yet, though a very noble and avery generous woman, she was also a woman of the world. She knew thatit was not for her to say even thus much to a man who was in one sensewell-nigh a stranger, and who stood under the accusation of a crimewhose shadow he allowed to rest on him unmoved. She felt sick atheart; she longed unutterably, with a warmer longing than had moved herpreviously, to bid him, at all cost, lay bare his past, and throw offthe imputed shame that lay on him. Yet all the grand traditions of herrace forbade her to counsel the acceptance of an escape whose way ledthrough a forfeiture of honor.
"Choose for me, Venetia!" he muttered at last once more.
She rose with what was almost a gesture of despair, and thrust the goldhair off her temples.
"Heaven help me, I cannot--I dare not! And--I am no longer capable ofbeing just!"
There was an accent almost of passion in her voice; she felt that sogreatly did she desire his deliverance, his justification, his return toall which was his own--desired even his presence among them in her ownworld--that she could no longer give him calm and unbiased judgment. Heheard, and the burning tide of a new joy rushed on him, checked almostere it was known, by the dread lest for her sake she should ever givehim so much pity that such pity became love.
He started to his feet and looked down imploringly into her eyes--a lookunder which her own never quailed or drooped, but which they answeredwith that same regard which she had given him when she had declared herfaith in his innocence.
"If I thought it possible you could ever care----"
She moved slightly from him; her face was very white still, and hervoice, though serenely sustained, shook as it answered him.
"If I could--believe me, I am not a woman who would bid you forsake yourhonor to spare yourself or me. Let us speak no more of this. What can itavail, except to make you suffer greater things? Follow the counsels ofyour own conscience. You have been true to them hitherto; it is not forme, or through me, that you shall ever be turned aside from them."
A bitter sigh broke from him as he heard.
"They are noble words. And yet it is so easy to utter, so hard to followthem. If you had one thought of tenderness for me, you could not speakthem."
A flush passed over her face.
"Do not think me without feeling--without sympathy--pity--"
"These are not love."
She was silent;
they were, in a sense, nearer to love than any emotionshe had ever known.
"If you loved me," he pursued passionately--"ah, God! the very word fromme to you sounds insult; and yet there is not one thought in me thatdoes not honor you--if you loved me, could you stand there and bid medrag on this life forever; nameless, friendless, hopeless; having allthe bitterness, but none of the torpor of death; wearing out the doom ofa galley slave, though guiltless of all crime?"
"Why speak so? You are unreasoning. A moment ago you implored me not totempt you to the violation of what you hold your honor; because I bidyou be faithful to it, you deem me cruel!"
"Heaven help me! I scarce know what I say. I ask you, if you were awoman who loved me, could you decide thus?"
"These are wild questions," she murmured; "what can they serve? Ibelieve that I should--I am sure that I should. As it is--as yourfriend--"
"Ah, hush! Friendship is crueler than hate."
"Cruel?"
"Yes; the worst cruelty when we seek love--a stone proffered us when weask for bread in famine!"
There was desperation, almost ferocity, in the answer; she was movedand shaken by it--not to fear, for fear was not in her nature, but tosomething of awe, and something of the despairing hopelessness that wasin him.
"Lord Royallieu," she said slowly, as if the familiar name were some tiebetween them, some cause of excuse for these, the only love words shehad ever heard without disdain and rejection--"Lord Royallieu, it isunworthy of you to take this advantage of an interview which I sought,and sought for your own sake. You pain me, you wound me. I cannot tellhow to answer you. You speak strangely, and without warrant."
He stood mute and motionless before her, his head sunk on his chest.He knew that she rebuked him justly; he knew that he had broken throughevery law he had prescribed himself, and that he had sinned against thecode of chivalry which should have made her sacred from such words whilethey were those he could not utter, nor she hear, except in secrecy andshame. Unless he could stand justified in her sight and in that of allmen, he had no right to seek to wring out tenderness from her regret andfrom her pity. Yet all his heart went out to her in one irrepressibleentreaty.
"Forgive me, for pity's sake! After to-night I shall never look uponyour face again."
"I do forgive," she said gently, while her voice grew very sweet. "Youendure too much already for one needless pang to be added by me. All Iwish is that you had never met me, so that this last, worst thing hadnot come unto you!"
A long silence fell between them; where she leaned back among hercushions, her face was turned from him. He stood motionless in theshadow, his head still dropped upon his breast, his breathing loud andslow and hard. To speak of love to her was forbidden to him, yet theinsidious temptation wound close and closer round his strength. He hadonly to betray the man he had sworn to protect, and she would know hisinnocence, she would hear his passion; he would be free, and she--hegrew giddy as the thought rose before him--she might, with time, bebrought to give him other tenderness than that of friendship. He seemedto touch the very supremacy of joy; to reach it almost with his hand; tohave honors, and peace, and all the glory of her haughty loveliness,and all the sweetness of her subjugation, and all the soft delights ofpassions before him in their golden promise, and he was held back inbands of iron, he was driven out from them desolate and accursed.
Unlike Cain, he had suffered in his brother's stead, yet, like Cain,he was branded and could only wander out into the darkness and thewilderness.
She watched him many minutes, he unconscious of her gaze; and while shedid so, many conflicting emotions passed over the colorless delicacyof her features; her eyes were filled and shadowed with many alteringthoughts; her heart was waking from its rest, and the high, generous,unselfish nature in her strove with her pride of birth, her dignity ofhabit.
"Wait," she said softly, with the old imperial command of her voicesubdued, though not wholly banished. "I think you have mistaken mesomewhat. You wrong me if you think that I could be so callous, soindifferent, as to leave you here without heed as to your fate.Believe in your innocence you know that I do, as firmly as though yousubstantiated it with a thousand proofs; reverence your devotion to yourhonor you are certain that I must, or all better things were dead inme."
Her voice sank inaudible for the instant; she recovered her self-controlwith an effort.
"You reject my friendship--you term it cruel--but at least it will befaithful to you; too faithful for me to pass out of Africa and nevergive you one thought again. I believe in you. Do you not know that thatis the highest trust, to my thinking, that one human life can show inanother's? You decide that it is your duty not to free yourself fromthis bondage, not to expose the actual criminal, not to take up yourrights of birth. I dare not seek to alter that decision. But I cannotleave you to such a future without infinite pain, and there must--thereshall be--means through which you will let me hear of you--throughwhich, at least, I can know that you are living."
She stretched her hands toward him with that same gesture with which shehad first declared her faith in his guiltlessness; the tears trembledin her voice and swam in her eyes. As she had said, she suffered for himexceedingly. He, hearing those words which breathed the only pity thathad ever humiliated him, and the loyal trust which was but the truerbecause the sincerity of faith in lieu of the insanity of love dictatedit, made a blind, staggering, unconscious movement of passionate, dumbagony. He seized her hands in his and held them close against his breastone instant, against the loud, hard panting of his aching heart.
"God reward you! God keep you! If I stay, I shall tell you all. Let mego, and forget that we ever met! I am dead--let me be dead to you!"
With another instant he had left the tent and passed out into the redglow of the torchlit evening. And Venetia Corona dropped her proud headdown upon the silken cushions where his own had rested, and wept aswomen weep over their dead--in such a passion as had never come to herin all the course of her radiant, victorious, and imperious life.
It seemed to her as if she had seen him slain in cold blood, and hadnever lifted her hand or her voice against his murder.
His voice rang in her ear; his face was before her with its white,still, rigid anguish; the burning accents of his avowal of love seemedto search her very heart. If this man perished in any of the thousandperils of war she would forever feel herself his assassin. She had hissecret, she had his soul, she had his honor in her hands; and she coulddo nothing better for them both than to send him from her to eternalsilence, to eternal solitude!
Her thoughts grew unbearable; she rose impetuously from her couch andpaced to and fro in the narrow confines of her tent. Her tranquillitywas broken down; her pride was abandoned; her heart, at length, wasreached and sorely wounded. The only man she had ever found, whom itwould have been possible to her to have loved, was one already severedfrom her by a fate almost more hideous than death.
And yet, in her loneliness, the color flushed back into her face; hereyes gathered some of their old light; one dreaming, shapeless fancyfloated vaguely through her mind.
If, in the years to come, she knew him in all ways worthy, and learnedto give him back this love he bore her, it was in her to prove thatlove, no matter what cost to her pride and her lineage. If his perfectinnocence were made clear in her own sight, there was greatness andthere was unselfishness enough in her nature to make her capable ofregarding alone his martyrdom and his heroism, and disregarding theopinion of the world. If, hereafter, she grew to find his presence thenecessity of her life, and his sacrifice of that nobility and of thatpurity she now believed it, she--proud as she was with the twin pride oflineage and of nature--would be capable of incurring the odium and themarvel of all who knew her by uniting her fate to his own, by makingmanifest her honor and her tenderness for him, though men saw in himonly a soldier of the empire, only a base-born trooper, beneath her asRiom beneath the daughter of D'Orleans. She was of a brave nature, of agreat nature, of a daring courag
e, and of a superb generosity. Abhorringdishonor, full of glory in the stainless history of her race, andtenacious of the dignity and of the magnitude of her House, she yetwas too courageous and too haughty a woman not to be capable of bravingcalumny, if conscious of her own pure rectitude beneath it; not tobe capable of incurring false censure, if encountered in the path ofjustice and of magnanimity. It was possible, even on herself itdawned as possible, that so great might become her compassion and hertenderness for this man that she would, in some distant future, when themight of his love and the severity of his suffering should prevail withher, say to him:
"Keep your secret from the world as you will. Prove your innocence onlyto me; let me and the friend of your youth alone know your name and yourrights. And knowing all, knowing you myself to be hero and martyr inone, I shall not care what the world thinks of you, what the world saysof me. I will be your wife; I have lands, and riches, and honors, andgreatness enough to suffice for us both."
If ever she loved him exceedingly, she would become capable of thissacrifice from the strength, and the graciousness, and the fearlessnessof her nature, and such love was not so distant from her as she thought.