CHAPTER XIV
THE FLAME OF LOVE
Diana's gaze wandered idly over the blue stretch of water, as it lay beneath the blazing August sun, while the sea-gulls, like streaks of white light, wheeled through the shimmering haze of the atmosphere. Her hands were loosely clasped around her knees, and a little evanescent smile played about her lips. Behind her, the great red cliffs of Culver Point reared up against the sapphire of the sky, and she was thinking dreamily of that day, nearly eighteen months ago, when she had been sitting in the self-same place, leaning against the self-same rock, whilst a grey waste of water crept hungrily up to her very feet, threatening to claim her as its prey. And then Errington had come, and straightway all the danger was passed.
Looking back, it seemed as though that had always been the way of things. Some menace had arisen, either by land or sea—or even, as at her recital, out of the very intensity of feeling which her singing had inspired—and immediately Max had intervened and the danger had been averted.
She laid her hand caressingly on the sun-warmed surface of the rock. How many things had happened since she had last leaned against its uncomfortable excrescences! She felt quite affectionately towards it, as one who has journeyed far may feel towards some old landmark of his youth which he finds unaltered on his return, from wandering in strange lands. The immutability of things, as compared with the constant fluctuation of life and circumstance, struck her poignantly. Here was this rock—cast up from the bowels of the earth thousands of years ago and washed by the waves of a million tides—still unchanged and changeless, while, for her, the face of the whole world had altered in little more than a year!
From a young girl-student, one insignificant person among scores of others similarly insignificant, she had become a prominent personality, some one in whom even the great, busy, hurrying world paused to take an interest, and of whom the newspapers wrote eulogistic notices, heralding her as the coming English prima donna. She felt rather like a mole which has been working quietly in the dark, tunnelling a passage for itself, unseen and unsuspected, and which has suddenly emerged above the surface of the earth, much to its own—and every one else's—astonishment!
Then, too, how utterly changed were her relations with Max Errington! At the beginning of their acquaintance he had held himself deliberately aloof, but since that evening at Adrienne de Gervais' house, when they had formed a compact of friendship, he had, apparently, completely blotted out from his mind the remembrance of the obstacle, whatever it might be, which he had contended must render any friendship between them out of the question.
And during these last few months Diana had gradually come to know the lofty strain of idealism which ran through the man's whole nature. Passionate, obstinate, unyielding—he could be each and all in turn, but, side by side with these exterior characteristics, there ran a streak of almost feminine delicacy of perception and ideality of purpose. Diana had once told him, laughingly, that he was of the stuff of which martyrs were made in the old days of persecution, and in this she had haphazard lit upon the fundamental force that shaped his actions. The burden which fate, or his own deeds, might lay upon his shoulders, that he would bear, be it what it might.
"Everything's got to be paid for," he had said one day. "It's inevitable. So what's the use of jibing at the price?"
Diana wondered whether the price of that mysterious something which lay in his past, and which not even intimate friendship had revealed to her, would mean that this comradeship must always remain only that—and never anything more?
A warm flush mounted to her face as the unbidden thought crept into her mind. Errington had been down at Crailing most of the summer, staying at Red Gables, and during the long, lazy days they had spent together, motoring, or sailing, or tramping over Dartmoor with the keen moorland air, like sparkling wine, in their nostrils, it seemed as though a deeper note had sounded than merely that of friendship.
And yet he had said nothing, although his eyes had spoken—those vivid blue eyes which sometimes blazed with a white heat of smouldering passion that set her heart racing madly within her.
She flinched shyly away from her own thoughts, pulling restlessly at the dried weed which clung about the surface of the rock. A little brown crab ran out from a crevice, and, terrified by the big human hand which he espied meddling with the clump of weed and threatening to interfere with the liberty of the subject, skedaddled sideways into the safety of another cranny.
The hurried rush of the little live thing roused Diana from her day-dreams, and looking up, she saw Max coming to her across the sands.
She watched the proud, free gait of the tall figure with appreciation in her eyes. There was something very individual and characteristic about Max's walk—a suggestion as of immense vitality held in check, together with a certain air of haughty resolution and command.
"I thought I might find you here," he said, when they had shaken hands.
"Did you want me?"
He looked at her with a curious expression in his eyes.
"I always want you, I think," he said simply.
"Well, you seem to have a faculty for always turning up when I want you," she replied. "I was just thinking how often you had appeared in the very nick of time. Seriously"—her voice took on a graver note—"I feel I can't ever repay you.—you've come to my help so often."
"There is a way," he said, very low, and then fell silent.
"Tell me," she urged him, smilingly. "I like to pay my debts."
He made no answer, and Diana, suddenly nervous and puzzled, continued a little breathlessly:—
"Have I—have I offended you? I—I thought"—her lips quivered—"we had agreed to be friends."
Max was silent a moment. Then he said slowly:—
"I can't keep that compact."
Diana's heart contracted with a sudden fear.
"Can't keep it?" she repeated dully. She could not picture her life—no—robbed of this friendship!
"No." His hands hung clenched at his sides, and he stood staring at her from beneath bent brows, his mouth set in a straight line. It was as though he were holding himself under a rigid restraint, against which something within him battled, striving for release.
All at once his control snapped.
"I love you! . . . God in heaven! Haven't you guessed it?"
The words broke from him like a bitter cry—the cry of a heart torn in twain by love and thwarted longing. Diana felt the urgency of its demand thrill through her whole being.
"Max . . ."
It was the merest whisper, reaching his ears like the touch of a butterfly's wing—hesitantly shy, and honey-sweet with the promise of summer.
The next instant his arms were round her and he was holding her as though he would never let her go, passionately kissing the soft mouth, so close beneath his own. He lifted her off her feet, crushing her to him, and Diana, the woman in her definitely, vividly aroused at last, clung to him yielding, but half-terrified by the tempest of emotion she had waked.
"My beloved! . . . My soul!"
His voice was vehement with the love and passion at length unleashed from bondage; his kisses hurt her. There was something torrential, overwhelming, in his imperious wooing. He held her with the fierce, possessive grip of primitive man claiming the chosen woman as his mate.
She struggled faintly against him.
"Ah! Max—Max . . . . Let me go. You're frightening me."
She heard him draw his breath hard, and then slowly, reluctantly, as though by a sheer effort of will, he set her down. He was white to the lips, and his eyes glowed like blue flame in their pallid setting.
"Frighten you!" he repeated hoarsely. "You don't know what love means—you English."
Diana stared at him.
"'You English!' What—what are you saying? Max, aren't you English after all?"
He threw back his head with a laugh.
"Oh, yes, I'm English. But I'm something else as well. . . . There's warmer blood in my veins, and I can't love like an Englishman. Oh, Diana, heart's beloved, let me teach you what love is!"
Impetuously he caught her in his arms again, and once more she felt the storm of his passion sweep over her as he rained fierce kisses on eyes and throat and lips. For a space it seemed as if the whole world were blotted out and there were only they two alone together—shaken to the very foundations of their being by the tremendous force of the whirlwind of love which had engulfed them.
When at length he released her, all her reserves were down.
"Max . . . Max . . . I love you!"
The confession fell from her lips with a timid, exquisite abandon. He was her mate and she recognised it. He had conquered her.
Presently he put her from him, very gently, but decisively.
"Diana, heart's dearest, there is something more—something I have not told you yet."
She looked at him with sudden apprehension in her eyes.
"Max! . . . Nothing—nothing that need come between us?"
Memories of the past, of all the incomprehensible episodes of their acquaintance—his refusal to recognise her, his reluctance to accept her friendship—came crowding in upon her, threatening the destruction of her new-found happiness.
"Not if you can be strong—not if you'll trust me." He looked at her searchingly.
"Trust you? But I do trust you. Should I have . . . Oh, Max!" the warm colour dyed her face from chin to brow—"Could I love you if I didn't trust you?"
There was a tender, almost compassionate expression in his eyes as he answered, rather sadly:—
"Ah, my dear, we don't know what 'trust' really means until we are called upon to give it. . . . And I want so much from you!"
Diana slipped her hand confidently into his.
"Tell me," she said, smiling at him. "I don't think I shall fail you."
He was silent for a while, wondering if the next words he spoke would set them as far apart as though the previous hour had never been. At last he spoke.
"Do you believe that husbands and wives should have no secrets from one another?" he asked abruptly.
Diana had never really given the matter consideration—never formulated such a question in her mind. But now, in the light of love's awakening; she instinctively knew the answer to it. Her opinion leaped into life fully formed; she was aware, without the shadow of a doubt, of her own feelings on the subject.
"Certainly they shouldn't," she answered promptly. "Why, Max, that would be breaking the very link that binds them together—their oneness each with the other. You think that, too, don't you? Why—why did you ask me?" A premonition of evil assailed her, and her voice trembled a little.
"I asked you because—because if you marry me you will have to face the fact that there is a secret in my life which I cannot share with you—something I can't tell you about." Then, as he saw the blank look on her face, he went on rapidly: "It will be the only thing, beloved. There shall be nothing else in life that will not be 'ours,' between us, shared by us both. I swear it! . . . Diana, I must make you understand. It was because of this—this secret—that I kept away from you. You couldn't understand—oh! I saw it in your face sometimes. You were hurt by what I did and said, and it tortured me to hurt you—to see your lip quiver, your eyes suddenly grow misty, and to know it was I who had wounded you, I, who would give the last drop of blood in my body to save you pain."
There was a curious stricken expression on the face Diana turned towards him.
"So that was it!"
"Yes, that was it. I tried to put you out of my life, for I'd no right to ask you into it. And I've failed! I can't do without you"—his voice gathered intensity—"I want you—body and soul I want you. And yet—a secret between husband and wife is a burden no man should ask a woman to bear."
When next Diana spoke it was in a curiously cold, collected voice. She felt stunned. A great wall seemed to be rising up betwixt herself and Max; all her golden visions for the future were falling about her in ruins.
"You are right," she said slowly. "No man should ask—that—of his wife."
Errington's face twisted with pain.
"I never meant to let you know I cared," he answered. "I fought down my love for you just because of that. And then—it grew too strong for me. . . . My God! If you knew what it's been like—to be near you, with you, constantly, and yet to feel that you were as far removed from me as the sun itself. Diana—beloved—can't you trust me over this one thing? Isn't your love strong enough for that?"
She turned on him passionately.
"Oh, you are unfair to me—cruelly unfair! You ask me to trust you!
And your very asking implies that you cannot trust me!"
There was bitter anger in her voice.
"I know it looks like that," he said wearily. "And I can't explain. I can only ask you to believe in me and trust me. I thought . . . perhaps . . . you loved me enough to do it." His mouth twitched with a little smile, half sad, half ironical. "My usual presumption, I suppose."
She made no answer, but after a moment asked abruptly:—
"Does this—this secret concern only you?"
"That I cannot tell you. I can't answer any questions. If—if you come to me, it must be in absolute blind trust." He paused, his eyes entreating her. "Is it . . . too much to ask?"
Diana was silent, looking away from him across the water. The sun slipped behind a cloud, and a grey shadow spread like a blight over the summer sea. It lay leaden and dull, tufted with little white crests of foam.
The man and woman stood side by side, motionless, unresponsive. It was as though a sword had suddenly descended, cleaving them asunder.
Presently she heard him mutter in a low tone of anguish:—
"So this—this, too—must be added to the price!"
The pain in his voice pulled at her heart. She stretched out her hands towards him.
"Max! Give me time!"
He wheeled round, and the tense look of misery in his face hurt her almost physically.
"What do you mean?" he asked hoarsely.
"I must have time to think. Husband and wife ought to be one.
What—what happiness can there be if . . . if we marry . . . like this?"
He bent his head.
"None—unless you can have faith. There can be no happiness for us without that."
He took a sudden step towards her.
"Oh, my dear, my dear! I love you so!"
Diana began to cry softly—helpless, pathetic, weeping, like a child's.
"And—and I thought we were so happy," she sobbed. "Now it's all spoiled and broken. And you've spoilt it!"
"Don't!" he said unsteadily. "Don't cry like that. I can't stand it."
He made an instinctive movement to take her in his arms, but she slipped aside, turning on him in sudden, passionate reproach.
"Why did you try and make me love you when you knew . . . all this? I was quite happy before you came—oh, so happy!"—with a sudden yearning recollection of the days of unawakened girlhood. "If—if you had let me alone, I should have been happy still."
The unthinking selfishness of youth rang in her voice, asserting its infinite demand for the joy and pleasure of life.
"And I?" he said, very low. "Does my unhappiness count for nothing?
I'm paying too. God knows, I wish we had never met."
Never to have met! Not to have known all that those months of friendship and a single hour of love had held! The words brought a sudden awakening to Diana—a new, wonderful knowledge that, cost what they might in bitterness and future pain, she would rather bear the cost than know her life emptied of those memories.
She had ceased crying. After a few moments she spoke with a gentle, wistful composure.
"I was wrong, Max. You're not to blame—you couldn't help it any more than I could."
"I might have gone away—kept away from you," he said tonelessly.
A faint, wintry little smile curved her lips.
"I'm glad you didn't."
"Diana!" He sprang forward impetuously. "Do you mean that?"
She nodded slowly.
"Yes. Even if—if we can't ever marry, we've had . . . to-day."
A smouldering fire lit itself in the man's blue eyes. He had spoken but the bare truth when he had said that warmer blood ran in his veins than that of the cold northern peoples.
"Yes," he said, his voice tense. "We've had to-day."
Diana trembled a little. The memory of that fierce, wild love-making of his rushed over her once more, and the primitive woman in her longed to yield to its mastery. But the cooler characteristics of her nature bade her pause and weigh the full significance of marrying a man whose life was tinged with mystery, and who frankly acknowledged that he bore a secret which must remain hidden, even from his wife.
It would be taking a leap in the dark, and Diana shrank from it.
"I must have time to think," she repeated. "I can't decide to-day."
"No," he said, "you're right. I've known that all the time, only—only"—his voice shook—"the touch of you, the nearness of you, blinded me." He paused. "Don't keep me waiting for your answer longer than you can help, Diana," he added, with a quiet intensity.
"You'll go away from Crailing?" she asked nervously.
He smiled a little sadly.
"Yes, I'll go away. I'll leave you quite free to make your decision," he replied.
She breathed a sigh of relief. She knew that if he were to remain at Crailing, if they were to continue seeing each other almost daily, there could be but one end to the matter—her conviction that no happiness could result from such a marriage would go by the board. It could not stand against the breathless impetuosity of Max's love-making—not when her own heart was eager and aching to respond.
"Thank you, Max," she said simply, extending her hand.
He put it aside, drawing her into his embrace.
"Beloved," he said, and now there was no passion, no fierceness of desire in his voice, only unutterable tenderness. "Beloved, please God you will find it in your heart to be good to me. All my thoughts are yours, but for that one thing over which I need your faith. . . . I think no man ever loved a woman so utterly as I love you. And oh! little white English rose of my heart, I'd never ask more than you could give. Love isn't all passion. It's tenderness and shielding and service, dear, as well as fire and flame. A man loves his wife in all the little ways of daily life as well as in the big ways of eternity."
He stooped his head, and a shaft of sunlight flickered across his bright hair. Diana watched it with a curious sense of detachment. Very gently he laid her hands against his lips, and the next moment he was swinging away from her across the stretch of yellow sand, leaving her alone once more with the sea and the sky and the wheeling gulls.