As the dawn loves the sunlight, I love thee.
—SWINBURNE.
Papa Legros at first had been too dazed to protest. Truly his loving heart had been for hours on the rack at thought of the awful task which lay before him—the opening of his child's eyes to the monstrous trick played upon her by the man to whom her innocent heart had turned in perfect love and in perfect trust. He, the father, who worshipped this dainty, delicately-nurtured daughter, who had spent the past twenty years of an arduous life in trying to smooth away every unevenness from the child's pathway of life, now suddenly saw himself like unto the scarlet-clad executioner, rope and branding irons in hand, forced to bind his beloved one on the rack, and himself to apply the searing torture of sorrow and of shame to her soul.
The child's calm words as she stood confronting the miscreant had almost brought relief. Why indeed should not the villain accomplish his own unmasking? Papa Legros hating the man who had done him and his child an infinite wrong, had a sufficiency of perception in him to realise, with that subtle cruelty of which the meek are alone capable, that he could not inflict more exquisite torture on his enemy than by forcing him to stand self-convicted before the child.
Just for the moment—and truly he may be forgiven for it—all that was good and kind in the gentle nature of the tailor had been ousted by his wrath as a father and as a man. He had found himself unable to strike the liar just now; but he longed for the power to torture his very soul, to bring him to the dust in sorrow and humiliation, to see the proud head down in the mud of abject shame. Great God! did you not know that Papa Legros had learned to love this man like he would his own son, and that the grief which he felt was in part for Rose Marie and in part for the miscreant who had twined himself around his heartstrings, and whom he cherished the while he longed to chastise him with infinite cruelty?
"Father dear," said Rose Marie after a slight pause, "will you not allow me to speak with milor alone?"
"I would not trust thee one second in his keeping, child, now I know him for what he is."
"You need have no fear, dear," she rejoined calmly, "and 'twere best methinks for us all if milor were to tell me himself all that I ought to know."
The candle flickered low, and Michael stood back amidst the shadow; thus the good tailor failed to see if his own shaft had gone home—if it had pierced that armour of stolid English indifference which the descendant of Gallic forebears found so difficult to comprehend.
Certain it is that Michael raised no protest, and that not even a sigh escaped him as this final insult was hurled at him with the utmost refinement of vengeful cruelty.
Rose Marie went up to her father and placed her small cool hands on his. Then with gentle persuasion she drew him up. He yielded to her, for vaguely at the bottom of his heart, he knew that he could trust the man whom he loved and hated, yet even now could not wholly despise. For one moment as father and daughter stood side by side, he took her in his arms and kissed her forehead. She rested against him cold and placid, and when he released her from his embrace she took his rough toil-worn hand and kissed it tenderly. Then with supreme yet irresistible gentleness she led him out of the room.
As he passed close to Michael he held out the fateful letter to him.
"You will show her that," he almost commanded.
"An you wish it," replied the other, as he took the letter from him.
A curious instinct prompted Michael to blow out the flickering light, just as Rose Marie, having closed the door behind her father, turned back into the room. He went up to her, but she retreated a step or two at his approach, and of her own accord went to the window seat, there where a brief hour ago she had sat with him in perfect communion and perfect happiness.
The casement was still open, and the moon which had been so fitful throughout the evening poured her cold radiance straight on the dainty silhouette of the girl, just as she had done awhile ago, ere the gates of paradise were closed and the angels had ceased to sing their glad hosannas! Outside, the sighing of the reeds and the moaning of the wind in the young acacias made a sound as of innumerable feet of restless spirits stirring the dead leaves of an unforgettable past.
"That letter, milor," said Rose Marie, "will you give it me—since my father hath so commanded."
Without a word he handed the paper to her, and when he saw that she could not read it—for the room was dark and the rays of the moon not sufficiently bright—he took out his tinder-box and relighted the guttering candle. Then as the wind blew the feeble flame hither and thither he shielded it with his hand, and held the candle so that she might read and yet not move from that window seat.
She read the letter through to the end, and while she read he could see the top of her head bent down to the paper, and the wealth of those fair curls which he would never again be allowed to kiss.
When she had finished reading, she looked up and he threw the candle far away out through the window.
"Then you had lied to me," was all that she said; and she said it so calmly, so quietly, like the true snow maiden which she had once more become, now that he who alone had the power to turn the snow to living fire, was proved to be treacherous and false. Then she folded up the letter and slipped it under her kerchief.
Stately and tall as the water lilies on the pond which he had once described to her—she drew up her slender figure and held her little head erect. She did not look in his direction but rose slowly and turned to go out of the room.
"Rose Marie," he called out to her in an involuntary moan of agony.
Instinctively his hand went out to her as she passed, and clutched the crumpled wedding dress which seemed to wrap her in, now like a shroud. She tried to disengage her gown, but as he held it tight she desisted, standing there cold and impassive, a woman turned to ice.
"Rose Marie!" he whispered, "my own little snowdrop, will you be so unyielding now? Awhile ago do you remember, you yielded to the sweetness of a first kiss?"
"And yet you lied to me," she said slowly, tonelessly, the while her eyes sought the distant horizon far away, where astride on the cold grey mists unreached by the tender light of the moon, her dreams of happiness were fleeting quickly away.
He drew himself up and caught her to him with a masterful gesture of possession. He felt her body rigid and impassive at his touch, stiffening in a backward motion away from him behind that massive stone wall of awful finality which had so mercilessly risen between her and him. He felt that he was losing her, that she was slipping away from him—slipping—up, up to some cold and unresponsive heaven, peopled with stern angels, whose great white wings would soon enclose her and hide her from him forever. He felt that he was losing her, not with that same bitter-sweet sense of sadness as he did just now when the savour of her exquisite lips still clung to his own, and she retreated out of his sight like a perfect vision of beauty.
Now an almost savage longing was in him not to let her go, to keep her to him at any cost, any sacrifice, even that of his own self-control. There was enough power in his own ardent love for her so to bind her to him that she could never, never leave him.
"My beautiful crimson rose," he murmured, drawing her closer, closer, even while he felt that with her whole gentle strength she opposed an icy calm to the warm glow of his passion, "turn your dear eyes to me, just for one brief moment. Oh! think, think of the past few days when first our hearts, our souls, our entire beings met in perfect accord. Look at me, my dear, sweet soul, am I not the man to whom you have listened so oft, sitting at your harpsichord, the while he whispered to you the first words of love? Look, look, my dear, mine eyes, are they not the same?—my lips have they not met yours in one sublime, unforgettable kiss? You were a child, ere your soul met mine—now you are a woman, 'tis I who applied the magic fire to your heart, 'tis I who kindled the flame of your pure love; you are no longer a child now, Rose Marie, you are an exquisitely beautiful woman, and I love you with every fibre of my body, with every aspiration of my soul—"
"And yet you lied to me."
"And would lie again, would sin again a thousand times, since my sin gave you to me. Sweetheart, if I have sinned, yet have I expiated already—one cold look from your dear eyes hath caused me more acute agony than the damned can ever suffer in Hell. My love—my love—do you understand what you mean to me? Have you realised the exquisite gift—your perfect womanhood—which you would snatch from me? I was a wastrel, a thief, a miserable degraded wretch—awhile ago when I held you in my arms I was king of all the world. By my sin I won you! Great God, then is not my sin the greatest, grandest and most glorious deed ever accomplished by man—in order to gain a heaven?"
But with all his ardour, all his savage strength of will and of purpose, Michael was but bruising his heart against a solid stone wall. Perhaps if Rose Marie had been a little older, a little more sophisticated, a little more wearied in the ways of men, she might have yielded to the love of the man, and closed her eyes to the deeds of the sinner. Whatever else he had done, she would easily have forgiven—nay! she would never have judged—but it was the betrayal of her trust which turned her heart to stone. Of course she had not had time as yet to think. In the letter which he had given her she had read the awful account of that transaction wherein she appeared as a mere chattel tossed from one hand to another, paid for with money like a bale of goods.
Oh! the shame of it! And he, to whom she had given her entire heart and soul, to whom she was ready to yield herself absolutely and completely had bought her at a price. Love? She no longer believed in it. If he had lied to her, then neither love nor purity nor manhood existed on God's earth—and this was no vale of tears but one of infinite shame.
She looked down on him with just such a cold look in her eyes as he had compared to the infliction of the tortures of the damned. She knew that physically she would be too weak to resist him, and she would scorn to call out to her father. This she tried to convey to him by that cold look and by the perfect placidity of her demeanour.
For one moment he was conscious of the wild desire to snatch his happiness from out the burning brand even now, and to take her in his arms and ride away with her into the land of forgetfulness. The wind in the trees seemed to call out to him not to let her go, and the reeds murmured as they bent their heavy heads that she would forgive everything after another kiss.
"Rose Marie!"
Something of what was passing in his mind must have reached her inner consciousness. She was quite woman enough to know that here was no ephemeral passion, no flame of desire extinguished as soon as born. He loved her and she loved him, that was as true, as incontestable as that—in her understanding—the treacherous act which he had committed now stood irremediably between them, whilst to his wild and rugged sense of the overwhelming grandeur of love, nothing could or should ever part him from her.
In her eyes the betrayal was greater than the love which—in his—had by its very existence atoned for everything. But throughout her deeply resentful feeling of wrong done to her and hers there was mayhap an unconscious sense of weakness, a desire to bring forth a greater array of will power and set it up against the insinuating persuasion of his voice, the insidious magic of his touch. Certain it is that she felt suddenly compelled to break the rigid silence which throughout his impassioned pleading she had so deliberately imposed upon herself.
Held in his nervy grip, she could not altogether withdraw from him, but her eyes, cold and calm sought his in the gloom.
"My lord," she said quietly and firmly, "since I know you by no other name, therefore still my lord to me, I would have you recall the day when sitting in my father's house, you whiled away an idle afternoon by telling a foolish maid the pretty allegory of water lilies growing on the weedy pond at Cluny, and of the slime which oozes from unclean things and pollutes the white petals of the flowers. 'Twas a pretty tale and no doubt it afforded you much amusement to see the look of puzzledom in the eyes of an ignorant tailor's wench. Well, my lord! the wench is no longer ignorant now—she understands the rude imagery, her eyes have seen such pollution, such miserable corruption as will forever leave them tainted with the villainy which they have seen. Whoever you are, sir, I know not—what other deeds of evil and disgrace you may have committed I care not—I only pray God that we may never meet again. You no doubt will find pleasures elsewhere, some other flower to pollute with your touch, some other heart to break. That you brought shame upon me, mayhap God will one day forgive you, I could perchance have forgiven you that had your sin rested there, but you tried to bring dishonour on my father's house. You did succeed in bringing sorrow and shame into it. My father and mother, who loved you almost as a son, will never again hold their heads high among their kind; a dishonoured daughter—for I am that now, for my true husband will cast me off as a woman unfit to be his mate—a dishonoured daughter is a lasting curse upon a house. That is your work, stranger, whoever you are; and this deed like unto the treachery which by a kiss brought the beloved Master to death upon the Cross, cries out to heaven for punishment; it is writ on the very front page in the book of the recording angel, and all the tears which you may shed, all the blood and all the atonement could not now wipe that front page clean. All this I do know, and yet one thing more: and that is that you do err when you speak of my love for you. To you who have lied, who with soft words and false pretences did enter my father's house and stole that which is most precious to us humble folk, our honour and the integrity of our name, to such as that, I gave no love. 'Tis true that I did love a man once—for one brief hour he lived in my heart but nowhere else. He was true and loyal, too proud to lie, too noble to steal. He has vanished like the mist, leaving no trace of his passage, for my heart wherein he dwelt is broken, and even his memory hath faded from my ken—"
Her voice died away like a long-drawn-out sigh, mingling with the murmur of the reeds and the moaning as of lost souls gliding through the branches of the acacias in their restless wandering through infinite space.
The next moment she was gone, leaving in Michael's trembling hands a scrap of torn lace, a tiny shred of her gown.
All that was left of her—and the savour of a bitter memory—rosemary for remembrance!