THE SONG OF THE CIGALE.
Mr. Tremain, on leaving Mrs. Newbold's boudoir, made his way, without encountering any one, to the lower hall, turning instinctively from the billiard-room, from whence the sound of the cues against the balls, and an occasional exclamation proclaimed the occupation of the men.
In his present state of mind he felt no inclination to join them, or take part in the employment of the hour. His conversation with Esther had reawakened all the unrest and bitterness of his heart against Patricia. Looked at in any light, her conduct could not but appear heartless and unwomanly, and the remembrance of it—of her scornful eyes and smiling, mocking lips—rankled in his mind and added the one touch of vindictiveness that is so closely allied to revenge, as to be a difference in name only.
Mr. Tremain would have scouted any such paltry feeling as a desire for retaliation, and yet deep down in his heart there lay the half-developed germ. Could any vendetta strike her heart more surely than such an action on his part, as should prove to her how brittle were the bands she had woven, how impotent her power to hold captive the man she had scorned?
There remained yet an hour before the time of his departure, and Philip, more by instinct than design, turned towards the library, and, pushing back the noiseless portières, entered. The room was empty, and lay in the half-shadow of the quick coming evening. A touch of gold from the setting sun still lingered on the painted windows, touching to a deeper tone the blues and purples in the classic folds of Clio's drapery. One casement stood open, and the evening air floated in, fragrant with a thousand odours from Nature's laboratory; strong and subtle and all-powerful arose the keen scent of the musk plant, overcoming all lesser perfumes, and asserting with overwhelming insistence its supremacy. One long low ray of sunlight fell across the picture on the easel, lighting up with magic radiance the passionate languor of Io's face, and marking with stronger emphasis Jupiter's stern acceptation of her allurements.
Still following his instincts Mr. Tremain crossed the long room, and drawing back the curtains that separated the music-parlour from the library, stood for a moment uncertain as to his further action. The room was unlighted save for the same level rays of dying sunlight, and the piano that stood at the far end was thus lost in the quivering darkness.
Philip, even as he stood upon the threshold, and before his eyes became accustomed to the dim light, was conscious of the presence of some one within the room beside himself, and gradually as the obscurity became penetrable he made out a dark figure sitting before the silent instrument, with bowed head, about whose throat and face hung heavy, clinging folds of black lace. Simultaneously with his discernment of this presence, he recognised its personality, and as he did so felt alarmed and electrified by the sudden rush and tumult which took possession of his being. The blood leapt to his face, he felt it throb in his temples and pulse in his veins, as he realised without further assurance, and before the bowed head was lifted and the pale, cold face gleamed out of the sombre surroundings, that it was Adèle Lamien who sat there, and that he was unreasonably glad and sorry, repentant and rejoicing, that he should thus have one more interview with her before he should vanish out of her life, as Patricia had already passed from out of his.
He advanced slowly and stood before her. As he approached, she dropped her protecting hands and sat silent, immovable, her pale face—pale with the pallor of mental conflict—looking strange and unearthly amidst its setting of falling black draperies, the dark bruise upon her cheek growing livid in the half lights. Suddenly, she threw back her head and smiled upon him.
It was but the second time he had ever seen her smile, and as the radiance and glory broke over her face and flooded it for one brief moment, with a brightness and transient loveliness, he started, for something in that smile and face, some strange, subtle, illusive likeness to some one whom he knew, and yet whom he could not name, grew into existence with the fleeting radiance, and faded with it before he could grasp at the reality. It was but a mere shadow of a resemblance, gone as soon as discovered, without substance, without reason, and yet perceptible, even when most baffling.
So sudden had been her transformation, and so rapid the return to the old habitual quietude and repression of her countenance, Philip found himself wondering if, after all, he was not under a delusion, or that his eyes, dulled by the dim obscurity of the room, had not mistaken the temporary flashing and paling of a sunbeam for that evanescent light on cheek and brow.
He had remained standing and silent, during the brief moment that elapsed between his entrance and her recognition; he bent over her now, and speaking quietly, said:
"I am fortunate, Mdlle. Lamien, in finding you—and alone."
"You are very kind," she answered, in a low, repressed voice, a voice that had through all its repression a throb of passion. "Surely Mr. Tremain can find pleasanter and more amusing companions than I."
"None who can interest me so deeply, believe me," replied Philip, gravely. "You have returned, mademoiselle, the better, I trust, for your absence?"
"My absence?" she queried, a little surprised; then more quickly, "Ah, yes, my absence; it was but an affair of hours, a necessity, not a pleasure. All the same, I thank you. I am better for the change."
Philip had waited for some sign of invitation to remain, but as none came, he grew bolder, interpreting her silence as best pleased him, and drawing up a low arm-chair, took his place beside her, at such an angle as enabled him to watch her face without effort.
"You have been missed, mademoiselle, by more than one," he said, slowly; "your name has been often mentioned, even by those unknown to you."
"Indeed," she replied, more quickly than usual; "who has done me that honour?"
"I shall answer your question by another," said Philip; "Mdlle. Lamien, where and when have you known Count Vladimir Mellikoff? Who and what is he, that he should express his surprise and displeasure at your movements?"
She drew a long sigh, and turned her head away from him, as she answered slowly and in a low voice:
"Where and when have I known Count Vladimir Mellikoff? Who and what is he? My reply can be brief enough, Mr. Tremain, to both questions: I have never known Count Vladimir at any time, I have no idea who or what he is."
Her words were concise and to the point, but they failed to convince Philip of their absolute sincerity. He said nothing for a few moments, but the silence that fell between them was alive with suggestion; and Philip, as he watched her, felt the old inconsequent irrational influence of her personality creep over him, wrapping him about in a half-magnetic, half-willing subjection; and which, while recognising its power, he was unable to throw off.
It was she who broke the silence with an upward gesture of disdain, as she said:
"Why should we speak upon so worn out a theme as my existence, Mr. Tremain? There are none concerned in my past who would care to recognise me now." Then suddenly, and with a quick movement towards the piano: "Shall I play for you, Mr. Tremain?"
She did not wait for his reply, but struck at once a few low notes, a minor chord or two that swept across the dim half-lights, and seemed but an outcome of the twilight, and of the last faint golden rays fading moment by moment in the far western sky. Then a headlong rush and tumult of melody caught up the passion, and despair, and longing of a soul in bondage struggling to be free, beating against the bars, crying out in anguish, then sinking back into despondency, and with a final moan striking downwards to despair.
Mr. Tremain, as he listened, felt himself caught up in the rush and movement, and borne along with it, following her will and pleasure even as her white fingers flew over the ivory keys, striking them now with fiery impetuosity, now with caressing softness, and again with lingering tenderness. Her slight figure in its black dress was alive and sinuous, responding to each emotion; her pale face grew illumined beneath its weight of white hair and drooping laces that fell about it. She was the living incarnation of the music; and Philip, half spell-bound, half realising the potency of the spell, found himself repeating mentally, "the charm of woven paces and of waving hands." Was she a Vivien as well?
She ceased playing as he came and stood beside her, and in the hush that fell between them, the echo of light laughter floated to them from the rooms above. It was a discord, a false note in the intensity of the theme.
Philip bent towards her, almost touching the white hair with his lips; it was a moment of exquisite uncertainty. Then she struck the notes again, and a plaintive prelude stole out, while in a low voice, monotonous yet musical, that seemed but the continuation of the melody, she said rather than sang:
"I am a woman,
Therefore I may not
Fly to him, cry to him,
Bid him delay not.
What though he part from me,
Tearing my heart from me,
Hurt without cure!"
Her voice faltered, sank into silence, her hands fell from the keys and lay motionless upon her lap. Philip, to whom the first line of her song had come not as a surprise, but as an expected climax, bent forward eagerly. Once again he heard the mocking voice of his vision, once again the faint sweet perfume of violets stole upward, robbing him of the reality of the present, restoring to him the past with all its unfulfilled promise and its hope.
It was the passion of surprise, not of arrangement or premeditation, that held him, and that swaying him against his better self, made him speak from the emotion of the moment.
"Adèle," he said, his voice low and restrained. "Adèle, you have doubtless heard my story; you know that I have been the sport, the plaything of one woman's vanity for all the better years of my life; and yet I dare to offer you the heart she has scorned. Adèle, will you accept it? Will you restore my faith and belief in womanhood; that faith and trust which another woman has so nearly destroyed? Hush, wait one moment before you speak. Yes, I know I am almost a stranger to you, I have seen you but half-a-dozen times; you know but little of me, and that little is not of the best. And, I too, what do I know of you? Nothing, save what Esther was pleased to tell us all concerning you. I realise that your past is seared and crossed by sorrow and grief, but always, Adèle, always since first I saw you, you have haunted me, you have possessed me, you have laid me under a spell. Break that spell now by saying you will listen to me; by telling me that at last, however late in life, my faith, my belief, my trust shall not be given in vain."
He stopped, and she looking up quickly saw the flush of earnestness upon his face, the light of eagerness in his eyes. She let fall her glance, and a little smile—was it of triumph or of pity?—crept out about the mouth, that died ere he could catch its curves. She had listened to him apparently without surprise, and without betraying emotion of any kind; her voice fell dull and cold when she spoke.
"You proffer a strange request, Mr. Tremain, and one not easy of reply. Is it possible you can be in earnest? Have you not heard my story? Has not the whole of Madame Newbold's world become cognisant of its details? Do you not know that Adèle Lamien is a woman on whom rests the blight of suspicion, if not of guilt? A woman whose life has been one of no common misery. Do you realise what it means to be suspected of crime, branded as a fugitive, an outcast? Can you gauge the depths of misery contained in the words ruined and repudiated? Do you not know that one spot upon a woman's reputation, though incurred through no fault of her own, stamps her for ever in the eyes of your world. Can you, knowing all this, realising it, yet ask me to listen to your words of vehemence? You, Philip Tremain! Ah, do you not know I would give my very heart's happiness if I might so listen? No, no; that is not what I mean. You are mad, Mr. Tremain, mad with the desire born of a moment's passion."
"I am not mad, Adèle," he urged. "I ask you again to listen to me, and I tell you again that I neither care nor wish to know more of your past than you desire to tell me. Cannot we forget that, cannot I make for you a future that shall outlive your past? Nay, wait one moment, there is something more I must say. You know I have no fresh first devotion to offer you, I have not even a heart swept and garnished for your acceptancy. I did not wish to love you, I am not sure I love you even now; all I know is that you draw me to you with invisible chains; that you take from me all resistance, all desire to resist."
"Ah," she exclaimed, with infinite bitterness, "you speak as a man. We women do not so easily break the bonds that have held us for so long. Suppose I were to take you at your word, suppose I were to listen to you, to your own undoing? What would be the outcome of it? I, a woman, Adèle Lamien, who perchance has looked shame in the face, who may have swept the by-ways of wickedness with her skirts, I to demand of you this sacrifice, and for what? That you may hear my name spoken in whispers and with bated breath; that you may see me pointed at in scorn and derision; that never may you look at me, never see my face, without the bitter memory of my buried past rising up between us. No, this may not be; you have loved before, it is not love you feel now, it is resentment, disappointment, anger. Put by your fancy of the hour, Mr. Tremain, and let Adèle Lamien fade out of your life even as she has come into it, an accident only. Do you not remember the fable and fate of the poor Cigale?
'The grasshopper so blithe and gay,
Sang the summer time away;
Pinched and poor the spendthrift grew,
When the keen north-easter blew.'
I am that poor Cigale. I have had my summer time, and now it is winter; and you would fain make me believe that one can conjure up a second summer from out the ruins of autumn's blasts; nay, that is impossible alike for you as for me. Believe me, no good has ever come from a passion so suddenly developed, as this you plead now. You will live to thank me for my words, even if now, at this very moment, you are not confessing their justice."
She rose as she finished, and moved somewhat away from him. The darkness of the early May evening had crept up and about them unnoticed; she had become indistinct and unreal, a part of the shadows that surrounded her; and Mr. Tremain, as he listened to the low, even notes of her voice, felt the unreality of his position grow more and more defined.
He had been mad—mad with a moment's passion; and yet—and yet, what was this impalpable, intangible influence that drew him to her with invisible cords, even while he realised the wisdom of her words, and rejoiced in the freedom she forced back upon him?
The silence and the darkness increased; she became but a dim outline against the deeper tones of shadow, her pale face alone showing in the gloom.
"You scarcely give me a choice, Adèle," he said; "and yet how is it possible for me to accept your decision?"
His words were followed by a light laugh; a chord struck sharply, and then from out the obscurity came her voice again. But what was this change in it? What was this undertone of mocking raillery that sounded so familiar and yet so incongruous?
"Said I not truly, Mr. Tremain, you are mad to ask me to listen to you; and yet—ah, Philip—perhaps it would be wiser for us both could I but yield."
"Then listen, I entreat, Adèle," he cried, impetuously, "do not make your decision a final one; leave it open as a possibility for future consideration. Do not let me ask in vain; only say that you will think twice before you refuse me definitely. Do I ask too much?"
"Too much!" she echoed, and her voice sank to a whisper. "Is it too much to put the cup of water to the parched lips of a dying man, and bid him drink? Will he refuse, think you? Do you know how greatly you tempt me? Shall not you and I come to repent with bitterness this parleying with the inevitable? Well, then, since you will have it so, and since my will is weak—ah, so very weak—and fate is strong, it shall be as you wish. I will make no final decision. I will wait. Surely this should be triumph enough, even for me, to know that I have won you from the remembrance—nay, from the very presence of—Patricia Hildreth!"
At Patty's name thrust thus sharply and unexpectedly upon him, Philip started forward, impelled by the same unknown, unreasoning force that had held and controlled him throughout their interview, but he was too late. He was conscious of a light silken rustle, a low laugh, a hand laid for a moment on his, and then he was alone.
As Mdlle. Lamien drew the portières behind her, two figures crept back into the obscurity of the room beyond, and as she passed swiftly on and out into the hall, a whisper in a woman's voice echoed across the shadows:
"Are you satisfied—convinced? There is no mistake?"
"I am absolutely convinced, mademoiselle, there can be no mistake," answered a second, carefully modulated voice.
A moment later Miss James stole quietly out of the now dark library, followed by the sombre, gliding figure of Vladimir Mellikoff.