HELENA did not meet her guests at dinner that night, nor did she trouble to send word that she was ill. She rang for the Chinese butler, gave him an order, then locked her doors and sat motionless in her boudoir for hours. She pictured until her brain ached and her ears rang what her life with Clive could have been, and what his would be with Mary Gordon.
But despair was not in her as yet, for he was still under the same roof, and she had not played her last card. It was a card that she had half-consciously considered from the beginning, and during the last few days had looked full upon. To-night for the first time she realized that it was a hateful card, unworthy of her, but reminded herself that she was a woman who would, if necessary, walk straight to her purpose over cracking and spouting earth.
At twelve o’clock she sat before her dressing-table regarding herself attentively in the mirror. She wore a negligé of white crêpe and lace, which half revealed her neck and bust. Her unbound hair clung to her body like melted copper, which had just begun to stiffen into rings, and waves, and spirals. She had never looked more beautiful.
There was a knock at her door.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Allee gentlemens go to bled,” announced Ah Sing cautiously.
“Very well.”
She rose hurriedly, almost over-turning her chair. Her hands shook. She caught sight of a terrified face in the mirror.
“This won’t do!” she thought angrily. She rang. Ah Sing returned.
“Bring me a glass of champagne,” she said.
“Allight.”
She closed the door upon him, then opened it quickly. “Ah Sing!” she called.
“Light a lamp in the drawing-room and ask Mr. Clive to go there.”
“Allight.”
She stood leaning against the door, her hand pressed hard against her chin, her eyes staring angrily at her reflection in a long Psyche mirror.
Ah Sing tapped and handed in the champagne. She pushed it aside with a gesture of disgust.
“Take it away. Did you do as I told you?”
“Yes, missee, Mr. Clive in dlawing-loom now.”
He went out, and still Helena stared at herself in the mirror with angry terrified eyes. After all, she was but a girl with a woman’s theories. What she was determined upon had seemed very easy and picturesque at long range. She had even rehearsed it mentally during the past two days; but now that she was to enact the rôle it appalled her. She recalled several scenes of the sort as presented by the makers of fiction (the canny and imaginative Frenchmen for the most part), but failed to find spiritual stamina in the retrospect.
“What a fool! What a fool!” she thought. “I, who have prided myself that I have a will of iron. If his first duty is to me he will stay, and two people will be happy instead of miserable. As for Mary Gordon she will marry the curate inside of five years.”
She retreated suddenly to her wardrobe, and wrapped a broad scarf about her shoulders and bust, then brought her foot down and went resolutely out into the corridor.
The fog was banked in the court. The palms looked like the dissolving eidola of themselves. The invisible fountain splashed heavily, as if oppressed.
“I needed the shawl, after all,” she thought grimly. “A sneeze might be fatal.”
She walked rapidly down the corridor to the drawing-room, and without giving herself an instant for vacillation, turned the knob and went in. Then she cowered against the door and would have exchanged every hope she possessed for the privilege of retreat. But Clive had seen her.
He was standing by the mantel. He looked his best, as he always did in evening dress. Even as Helena wondered if the earth were quaking beneath Casa Norte, she was conscious of his remarkable physical beauty. He had his pipe in his hand. It dropped suddenly to the mantel-shelf. But he did not go forward to meet her.
“There is something I want to say,” she gasped, searching wildly for inspiration. “It has occurred to me that perhaps the reason you hesitated was my money. I will give it all away—to charity or my aunt. I will only keep a little, so as not to be a burden to you. You may think this a silly, Quixotic idea—made on the impulse of the moment—but indeed I would.”
“I am sure that you would. I had not thought of the money. I did not get that far.”
Helena pressed her hands against the door behind her. She felt an impulse to laugh hysterically. For the life of her she could not remember a detail that she had rehearsed. She felt as if on the edge of a farce-comedy. But she would not give up the game.
“I am so tired,” she said plaintively. “I have eaten nothing since I saw you, and I have thought and thought and thought until I am all worn out.”
He placed a chair at once.
“You poor little thing,” he said. “Let me go to the larder and see if I can’t find you something——”
“No; I don’t want anything.”
She sat down, holding the shawl closely about her. Clive returned to the mantel.
“My head ached so I had to take my hair down,” she said.
“I wonder what is going on in your head at the present moment.”
“Don’t you know?”
“No. Why are you such a reckless child? You could have seen me in the morning.”
“I came here to make it impossible for you to marry Mary Gordon. I can’t do it, and I feel like a fool.”
He turned away his head.
“I told you before that the rôle of Delilah did not suit you. And if it did, couldn’t you see that I had made up my mind? What sort of a weakling——”
“You didn’t let me finish,” she interrupted him, blushing furiously. “I meant—of course I meant—that I want you to leave with me for Europe to-morrow—we can marry in San Francisco—I must look like a Delilah! Why do the novelists and dramatists arrange these matters so much better than we do?—Oh, what an idiot I am, anyhow!”
“Go back to your room—please do.”
“You won’t marry me to-morrow, then?—good heavens! that I should propose to a man!”
He made no reply.
“I don’t believe you love me a bit.”
“Of course you don’t. A woman never gives a man credit for any decency of motive: her theory is that he follows along the line of least resistance. Well, I suppose he does.”
She dropped her face into her hands.
“Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?” she said passionately.
Clive brought his hand close above his own eyes. “Will it not help you to know that I love you unalterably?”
“Can a man remember a woman like that?”
“There is one woman in every man’s life that he never forgets; and that woman, worse luck, is rarely his wife.”
“It would mean everything to me. And I could be true to you. But it doesn’t satisfy me.” She dropped her hands and stared at him. “I want you—you. How am I to drag out my life? I can’t believe that after to-night I shall never see you again. I can’t! I can’t!” She stood up and leaned against the opposite end of the mantel. “Do you know one thing that keeps on hurting me through everything?” she asked after a few moments. “It is that you suffer more than I do, than I am capable of suffering, and that I cannot sympathize with you as I want to do. Is that the reason that you don’t love me well enough to give up everything else for me—that I am not strong enough to hold you?”
“Of course it is not the reason. If you really love me—and I believe you do—you will suffer enough before you get through.”
For a while neither spoke again, nor moved. The ocean sounded as if it were under the window.
“There is another thing,” she said, finally. “I may as well say it. I know that if I had succeeded to-night I should have been horribly disappointed in you. It wouldn’t be you any longer. For what I love in you is your strength—a strength I don’t possess. I’m glad I came to-night, although I’ve made myself ridiculous; I know both you and myself better. I can be true to you now; I don’t think I could have been before, and I might have done reckless things. And perhaps after you have gone and the novelty and excitement have worn off, I shall understand you still better. That is what I shall live for. Promise me that you will believe that, and that spiritually I shall never be far from you, and that I am growing better instead of worse.”
“I don’t need to promise.” His left hand was still above his eyes. Helena saw his right clench. She went toward the door.
He went forward to open it for her. As he reached out his hand for the knob she struck it down and flung her arms about him.
“I can’t go like this,” she said passionately. “You must kiss me once more.”
He caught her to him. She saw his eyes blaze as he bent his head, and thought, as far as she was capable of thinking, that her generalities had been correct. Even in the rapture of the moment a pang shot through her. Then she found herself on the other side of the door and heard the key turn in the lock.
She remembered only that she was hungry and tired. She went to the larder, and sat on a box and ate a plate of cold chicken and bread, then went to bed and slept soundly.