THE LOVERS
In a London quarter near the Thames, little frequented by day and almost deserted by night, there is a house with a small garden facing an extensive park from whose centre majestically rise groups of trees that have stood for a century or more, those trees of the old English soil which constant moisture nourishes and develops into colossal proportions. The memories attaching to this modest structure would be well worth exploitation by the historian, but Clio has chosen to avert her face from this, the scene of the most dismal historical drama whose narration was ever stifled into silence.
The tragedy which for a while was bounded by the walls of that pygmy house will forever remain in shadow, for such has been the decree of Destiny,—rather, such has been the will of certain powerful men in high places.
On the evening when this narrative opens, the prolonged spring twilight had lost every trace of the sunset afterglow when an aristocratic, stalwart young man enveloped in a gray cloak which did not conceal the symmetry of his form, approached the grating at the rear of the house and knocked on the iron bars with his cane four times at regular intervals. A moment later a white skirt gleamed amid the shrubbery and the face of its young possessor shone back of the grating. A dainty hand glided through the bars and the visitor clasped it ardently. Affectionate greetings followed and anxious questionings, too, for these plighted hearts could but claim Love's arrears after their long separation.
"Did you arrive today?"
"I have but just come, not even taking time to change my clothes. The letter which I sent preceded me but half an hour."
"Do they know you are here?"
"No. They think I am hunting on my Picmort estate."
A brief silence followed. The woman—the girl, rather, for she was scarcely more than sixteen—contracted the arch of her perfect brow.
"I do not understand the reason for the deception, René. Why should you be ashamed of loving me?"
He seemed at a loss for an answer and then with an effort, said:
"Amélie, my own, I have taken this journey for the sole purpose of giving you the reason. It is eight months since we were separated, and during that time I have written you seldom because you warned me that letters directed to your family either arrive unsealed or else fail to arrive. Besides, Amélie, there is something I ought to say to you, but I—give me both your adored hands, for only so can I speak. Courage, courage, Amélie. Trust me; I shall be constant. Oh, my love," he suddenly broke off, "do not ask me to speak, but believe that whatever I should now attempt toward the realization of our union would fail utterly—"
"Would fail utterly," she repeated scornfully. "You, a man, speak such words! What, then, did your vows signify?"
Her beautiful face gleamed like a cameo against the darkness.
"In God's name, Amélie, listen and be not so harsh. I came from France to ask you to believe in me and not force me to speak. May I not be silent for the present?"
"No. I demand the truth, be that what it may."
René's attitude revealed the struggle through which he was passing, and when his words came, it was as if they were hammered out of him.
"Amélie, since we were together at the mill of Adhemar, I have thought only of you. I had been a madcap; I became serious and high-minded. I had cared only for Parisian follies and wild hunts in the forests; these I renounced, for they ceased to charm me. My mother had arranged for me a brilliant marriage. You know of Germaine de Marigny whose lineage includes crusader knights. Well, I broke the troth, regardless of consequences. I asked you not whence you came nor whither you went. You had said that your father was a mechanic in London and that your life had been passed almost in indigence. When I thought of my rank and estates, 'twas to reflect with pride that I should surround my wife with every luxury. I knew that my mother would execrate and my uncle disinherit me. Nevertheless, I was determined to overleap all barriers and disregard almost everything that claimed my allegiance."
"But having had time for reflection," Amélie remarked coldly, "you have concluded that you had almost committed a signal folly. I admit that you have decided wisely, and bid you now consider yourself free."
She half turned from the grating, but he seized one of her hands, then her soft white wrist and passionately kissed it.
"No, no! You are unjust, Amélie. You force me now to say what I would withhold. Listen. When my mother vehemently declared that a de Brezé should never give his name to a woman of humble origin, I replied that the most illustrious ladies of France could not outrival you, and that beauty and goodness are entitled to the very highest social distinction."
"But your mother has at length convinced you that you uttered but the enthusiastic hyperboles of a too ardent lover."
She felt him tremble as he grasped her hands tightly and continued:
"I know not what deity established the code of honor. We hold honor to be even more sacredly binding than religion. A gentleman may sin a hundred times daily, but not once does he violate the obligations bequeathed him by his fathers. Life and happiness are worth much less than honor, Amélie."
"Well?" she asked, trying to speak calmly, but in vain.
"O my Love," cried the man, "forgive me, forgive me, for I am about to wound you cruelly. My mother, who had of late refrained from opposing my attachment to you, called me to her yesterday and shut the door upon us. Then she said: 'René, after vainly striving for months to change your purpose, I withdrew my opposition, fearing that I was unduly imposing my maternal authority. You were free, in possession of your patrimony and twenty-seven years of age. So I resigned myself to the mésalliance and began to interest myself in the antecedents of your idol. I wrote to Spandau, the sometime residence of her people, with the result—"
He could not continue, but Amélie haughtily commanded:
"Go on!"
Hurriedly, almost despairingly, he concluded: "With the result that I have received the information, corroborated by these documents, that the girl's father has served a twenty months' sentence at hard labor in Alstadt, Silesia, having been convicted as a counterfeiter and incendiary."
"What more?" demanded the girl.
"O Amélie, is not that enough?"
"Enough, indeed," she answered, wrenching away her hands. "Farewell, Monsieur Marquis de Brezé. We have exchanged our last words." And she sped into the house before he could detain her.