CHRISTMAS Eve was particularly frosty and bright. The sun poured through Sabine's windows high up when she woke, but her heart was heavy as lead. She had not had a single word alone with Henry the night before, and knew the dreaded tête-à-tête must come. She did not set herself to tell him who her husband was on this particular morning—about that she must be guided by events—but she could not make barriers between them, and must allow him to come to her sitting-room. He did, about half-past ten o'clock, his face full of radiance and love. She had always steadfastly refused to take any presents from him, but he had had the most beautiful flowers sent from Paris for her, and they had just arrived. She was taking them out of their box herself. This made a pretext for her to express delighted thanks, and for a little she played her part so well that all Henry's doubts were set at rest, and he told himself that he had been imaginative and foolish to think that anything was changed in her.
He helped her to put all the lovely blooms into vases, so happy to think they should give her pleasure. And all the while he talked to her lovingly and soothingly, until Sabine could have screamed aloud, so full of remorse and constraint she felt. If he would only be disagreeable or unkind!
At last, among the giant violets, they came upon one bunch of white ones. These she took and separated, and, making them into two, she stuck one into her belt and gave Henry the other to put into his coat.
"Won't you fasten them in for me, dearest?" he said, his whole countenance full of passionate love.
She came nearer, and with hasty fingers put the flowers into his buttonhole.
The temptation was too great for Henry. He put his arm round her and drew her to his side, while he bent and kissed her sweet red mouth.
She did not resist him or start away, but she grew white as death, and he was conscious that, as he clasped her close, a repressed shudder ran through her whole frame.
With a little cry of anguish he put her from him, and searched with miserable eyes for some message in her face. But her lids were lowered and her lips were quivering with some pain.
"My darling, what is it? Sabine, you shrank from me! What does it mean?"
"It means—nothing, Henry." And the poor child tried to smile. "Only that I am very foolish and silly, and I do not believe I like caresses—much." And then, to make things sound more light, she went on: "You see, I have had so few of them in my life. You must be patient with me until I learn to—understand."
Of course he would be patient, he assured her, and asked her to forgive him if he had been brusque, his refined voice full of adoring contrition. He caught at any gossamer thread to stifle the obvious thought that if she loved him even ever so little he would not have to accustom her to caresses; she would long ago have been willing to learn all of their meanings in his arms!—and this was only the second time during their acquaintance that she had even let him kiss her!
But of her own free will she now came and leaned her head against his shoulder.
"Henry," she pleaded, "I am not really as I know you think I am—a gentle and loving woman. There are all sorts of fierce sides in my character which you have not an idea of, and I am only beginning to guess at them myself. I do not know that I shall ever be able to make you happy. I am sure I shall not unless you will be contented with very little."
"The smallest tip of your finger is more precious to me than all the world, darling!" he protested with heat. "I will be patient. I will be anything you wish. I will not even touch you again until you give me leave. Oh! I adore you so—Sabine, I will bear anything if only you do not mean that you want to send me away."
The anguish and fond worship in his face wrung her heart. She started from him and then, returning, held out her arms, while she cried with a pitiful gasp, almost as of a sob in her throat:
"Yes—take me and kiss me—kiss me until I don't feel!—I mean until I feel—Henry, you said you would make me forget!"
He encircled her with his arm and led her to a sofa, murmuring every vow of passionate love; and here he sat by her and kissed her and caressed her to his heart's content, while she remained apparently passive, but still as white as the violets in her dress, and inwardly she could hardly keep from screaming, the torture of it was so great. At last she could bear no more, but disengaging herself from his arms she slipped on to the floor, and there sat upon a low footstool, with her back to the fire, shivering as though with icy cold.
Lord Fordyce's instincts were too fine not to realize something of the meaning of this scene. Although not greatly learned in the ways of women, he had kissed them often before in his life, and none had received his caresses like that. But since she did not repulse him, he must not despair. She perhaps was, as she said, unused to fond dalliance, and he must be more controlled, and wait. So with an inward sense of pain and chill in his heart, he set himself to divert her otherwise, talking of the books which they both loved, and so at last, when Nicholas announced that déjeuner was ready, some color and animation had come back to her face.
But when she was alone in her room she looked out of the high window and passionately threw up her arms.
"I cannot bear it again!" she wailed fiercely. "I feel an utterly degraded wretch."
At breakfast the Père Anselme watched her intently while he kept his aloof air. He felt that something extra had disturbed her. He was to stay in the house with them on Christmas night, because it was so cold for him to return to his home after dinner, and Sabine could not possibly spare him; she assured him he must be with them at every meal. His wit was so apt, and with Madame Imogen's aid he kept the ball rolling as merrily as he could. But he, no less than Henry, was conscious that all was not well.
And afterwards, as he went towards the village, he communed with himself, his kind heart torn with the deep-seated look of resignation in the eyes of his Dame d'Héronac.
"She is too young to be made to suffer it," he said, half aloud. "The good God cannot ask so much, as a price for wilfulness; and if this man has grown as distasteful to her as her face seems to suggest, nothing but misery could come from their dual life." It was all very cruel to the Englishman, no doubt, but where was the wisdom of letting two people suffer? Surely it was better to let only one pay the stakes, and if this thing went on, both would have equal unhappiness, and be tied together as two animals in a menagerie cage.
No gentleman should accept such a sacrifice. If the Lord Fordyce did not realize for himself that something had changed things, it must be that he, Gaston d'Héronac, the Père Anselme, must intervene. It might be very fine and noble to stick to one's word, but it became quixotic if to do so could only bring misery to oneself and one's mate!
The good priest stalked on to his presbytère, and then to his church, to see that all should be ready for réveillon that night, and he was returning to the château to tea when he met Henry taking a walk.
After lunch Sabine had gone off with Moravia to Girolamo's nurseries, and Lord Fordyce had felt he must go out and get some air. Mr. Cloudwater had started with Madame Imogen in the motor on a commission to their little town directly they had all left the dining-room. Thus Henry was alone.
He greeted the Père Anselme gladly. The old priest's cultivated mind was to him always a source of delight.
So he turned back and walked with him into the garden and along by the sea wall, instead of across the causeway and to the house. This was the doing of the Père Anselme, for he felt now might be his time.
Henry had been growing more and more troubled while he had been out by himself. He could not disguise the fact that there was some great change in Sabine, and now his anxious mood craved sympathy and counsel from this her great friend. "Madame Howard does not look quite well, Father," he remarked, after they had pulled some modern philosophies to pieces, and there had been a pause. "She is so nervous— what is the cause of it, do you know? Perhaps this place does not suit her in the winter. It is so very cold."
"Yes, it is cold—but that is not the reason." And the Père Anselme drew closer his old black cloak. "There are other and stronger causes for the state in which we find the Dame Sabine."
Henry peered into his face anxiously in the gray light—it was four o'clock, the day would soon be gone. He knew that these words contained ominous meaning, and his voice was rather unsteady as he asked:
"What are the reasons, Father? Please tell me if you are at liberty to do so. To me the welfare of this dear lady is all that matters in life."
The Curé of Héronac cleared his throat, and then he said gently:
"I spoke once before to you about the cinders and as to whether or no they were still red. That is what causes her to be restless—she has found that they are yet alight."
Lord Fordyce was a brave man, but he grew very pale. It seemed that suddenly all the fears which his heart had sheltered, though would not own as facts, were rising before him like giant skeletons, concrete and distinct.
"But the divorce is going well!" he exclaimed a little passionately, his hurt was so great. "She told me so last night; she will be free some time in January, and will then be my wife."
His happiness should not be torn from him without a desperate fight.
The priest's voice was very sad as he answered:
"That is so. She will, no doubt, be ready to marry you whenever you ask it is for you to demand of yourself whether you will accept her sacrifice."
"Sacrifice! I would never dream of any sacrifice. It is unthinkable, Father!"
Anguish now distraught Henry's soul; he stopped in his walk and looked full at the priest, his fine, distinguished face working with suffering. The Père Anselme thought to himself that he would have done very well for the model of a martyr of old. It distressed him deeply to see his pain and to know that there would be more to come.
"Her happiness is all that I care for—surely you know this—but what has caused this change? Has she seen her husband again?—I——" Here Henry stopped, a sense of stupefaction set in. What could it all mean?
"We have never spoken upon the matter," the priest answered him. "I cannot say, but I think—yes, she has certainly come under his influence again. Have you never searched in your mind, Monsieur, to ask yourself who this husband could be?"
"No—! How should I have done so? I have never been in America in my life." And then Henry's haggard eyes caught a look in the old priest's face. "My God!" he cried, agony in his voice, "you would suggest that it is some one I may know!"
"I suggest nothing, Monsieur. I make my own deductions from events. Will you not do the same?"
Henry covered his eyes with his hands. It seemed as though reason were slipping from him; and then, like a flash of lightning which cleared his brain, the reality struck him.
"It is Michael Arranstoun," he said with a moan.
"We know nothing for certain," proclaimed the Père Anselme. "But the alteration began from this young man's visit. That is why I warned you to well ascertain the truth of her feelings before going further. I would have saved you pain."
Henry staggered to the wall of the summer-house and leant there. His face was ashengray in the afternoon's dying light.
"Oh, how hopelessly blind I have been!"
The priest unclasped his tightly-locked hands; his old eyes were full of pity as he answered:
"We may both have made mistakes. You are more aware of the circumstances than I am. The Seigneur of Arranstoun is the only man she has seen here besides yourself. You perhaps know whom she met in England, or Paris?"
"It is Michael Arranstoun," Henry said in a voice strangled and altered with suffering. "I see every link in the chain—but, O God! why have they deceived me? What can it mean? What hideous, fiendish cruelty! And Michael was my old friend."
A wild rage and resentment convulsed him. He only felt that he wished to kill both these traitors, who had tricked him and destroyed his beliefs and his happiness. Ghastly thoughts that there might be further disclosures of more shameful deceptions to come shook him. He was trembling with passion—and then the priest said something in his grave, quiet voice which almost stunned him.
"Has it been done in cruelty, my son? You must examine well the facts before you assert that. You must not forget that whoever the husband may be, he has consented to divorce her, and she is now going to give herself to you. Is that cruelty, my son? Or is it a fine keeping to a given word? It looks to me more like a noble sacrifice, unless the Seigneur of Arranstoun was aware before he ever came here that Madame Howard was his wife."
Lord Fordyce controlled himself. This thing must be thought out.
"No, Michael could not have known it," after a moment or two he averred. "He even laughed over the name when I told it to him, and said he had a scapegrace cousin out in Arizona and wondered if the husband could be the same——"
Then further recollections came with a frightful stab of anguish, crushing all passion and anger and leaving only a sensation of pain, for he remembered that his friend had given him his word of honor that he would not interfere with him in his love-making—and, indeed, would help him in every way he could, even to lending him Arranstoun for the honeymoon! That letter of his, too, when he had gone from Héronac, saying in it casually he hoped that he, Henry, thought that he had played the game!—Yes, it was all perfectly plain. Michael had come there in all innocence, and could not be blamed. He remembered numbers of things unnoticed at the time—his own talk with Sabine when he had discussed Michael's marriage—and this brought him up suddenly to her side of the question. Why, in heaven's name, had she not told him the truth at once? Why had she pretended not to recognize Michael? For, however Michael might have started, since he, Henry, was not looking at him, Sabine, whose face he had been gazing into all the while, had shown no faintest recognition of him. What a superb actress she must be!—or perhaps, having only seen him those two times in her life, for those short moments, she really did not recognize him then. The whole thing was so staggering in its hideous tragedy his brain almost refused to think; but he said this last thought aloud, and the priest's strange sudden silence struck even his numbed sense.
"She had only seen him for such a little while—they parted immediately after the wedding; it was merely an empty ceremony, you know. Why, then, should she have had any haunting memories of him?"
The Père Anselme avoided answering this question by asking another.
"You knew that the Seigneur of Arranstoun was wedded, it would seem. How was that?"
Then Henry told him the outline of Michael's story, and the cruel irony of fate in having made him himself leave the house before seeing Sabine struck them both.
"What can her reasons have been for not telling me all this time, Father?" the unhappy man asked at last, in a hopeless voice. "Can you in any way guess?"
The Père Anselme mused for a moment.
"I have my own thoughts upon the matter, my son. We who live lonely lives very close to Nature get into the way of studying things. I have, as I told you, made some deductions, but, if you will permit me to give you some counsel, I would tell you to go back to the château now, with no parti pris, and seek her immediately, and get her to tell you the whole truth yourself. Of what good for you and me to speculate, since we neither of us know all the facts?—or even, if our suppositions are correct——" Then, as Lord Fordyce hesitated, he continued: "The time has passed for reticence. There should be no more avoiding of feared subjects. Go, go, my son, and discover the entire truth."
"And what then!" The cry came from Henry's agonized heart. But the priest answered gravely:
"That is in the hand of God. My duty is done."
And so they returned in silence, the Père Anselme praying fervently to himself. And when they reached the house, Lord Fordyce stumbled up the stone stairs heavily and knocked at the door of Sabine's sitting-room. He had seen Moravia at her window in the inner building, and knew that this woman who held his life in her hand would be alone.
Then, in response to a gentle "Entrez" he opened the door and went in.
Sabine had been sitting at her writing-table, an open blue despatch-box at her side. She was at the far end of the great apartment, so that Henry had some way to go toward her in the gloom, as, but for the large lamp near her and the blazing wood fire at each end, there was no light in the vast room. She rose to meet him, a gentle smile upon her face, and then, when he came close to her, she realized that something had happened, and suddenly put her hand out to steady herself upon the back of a chair.
"Henry—what is it?" she said, in a very low voice. "Come, let us go over there and sit down," and she drew him to the same sofa where that very morning they had sat when she had let him kiss her. This thought was extra pain.
He was so very quiet he frightened her, and his gray eyes looked into hers with such a world of despair, but no reproach.
"Sabine," he commanded in a voice out of which had vanished all life and hope, "tell me the whole story, my dear love."
She clasped her hands convulsively—so the dreaded moment had come! There would be no use in making any excuses or protestations, her duty now was to master herself and collect her words to tell him the truth. The utter misery in his noble face wrung her heart, so that her voice trembled too much to speak at first; then she controlled it and began.
So all was told at last. Then Henry took her two cold hands again and drew her up with him as he rose.
"Sabine," he said with deep emotion, his heart at breaking point, but all thought of himself put aside in the supreme unselfishness of his worship; "Sabine, to-morrow I will prove to you what true love means. But now, my dearest, I will say good-night. I think I must go to my room for a little; this has been a tremendous shock."
He bent and kissed her forehead with reverence and blessing, as her father might have done, and, hiding all further emotion, he walked steadily from the room.