CHAPTER XI
Even in the first flush and transport of her love-dream Pollie could not wholly divest herself of the dread that Bertram Devereux might in England have loved with all the depth of his nature some one who even now had claims upon him. In vain she asked herself why such a thought should have passed through her mind. She could not tell. But, to her deep unrest, it remained to arise and torment her at intervals, like an unquiet spirit. On the subject of his feminine correspondence she had noticed, as she thought, a departure from his usual calmness, a studied air of carelessness. What if her surmises should be true, that he was either engaged or had been the victim of one of those absorbing, soul-engrossing attachments which leave the heart of man a burnt-out volcano—barren, lifeless, dead to all succeeding influences? She would ask him. The torment of doubt on such a subject was too acute for endurance. Yet so far had she softened towards him, so far was her whole nature in a malleable state, that if he had but made frank confession she could have forgiven him.
And one day accident led up to the subject of previous attachment. Having disclaimed, on her part, the slightest tenderness in the past to living man, she looked her lover full in the face, as was her wont when aroused, and said—
'You have had my disclaimer, but tell me now, Bertram, if there lives any woman in the land you have left who is able to say, "That is my lover. This is the man whose vows, if kept, would bind him to me till death. He has broken faith and betrayed love in deserting me now." Answer me truly, on your soul's peril, and the subject shall be buried for evermore.'
As she realised in her own mind the slow torture, the melancholy days, the 'dead unhappy nights' to which a woman is doomed who waits in vain for him whom she loves, hoping against hope, refusing the sad truth, until all limit of credence be passed, so vehement an indignation fired her every feeling against the imaginary recreant that she looked like an inspired vestal denouncing the sins of a nation. 'Tell me truly, Bertram,' she said, 'that there is no hateful ghost of a dead love between you and my soul's devotion.'
A thrill passed through his inmost heart as he thought how nearly her random shaft had touched the dark secret of his life. Yet his eyes met hers fully and fairly. With men he had ever been exact and truthful, even to bluntness, but in the school of ethics in which he had been reared it was held no dishonour to lie frankly where a woman was concerned. So he bore himself accordingly.
'I scarcely think,' he said slowly, 'that a man is bound to lay bare the whole of his former life to the woman he is about to marry, nor is she wise to ask it. But,' and here he looked steadily into her innocent, trustful eyes, 'if it comforts you to think that you are the sole possessor of this invaluable heart of mine, I give you my word that no other woman has the shadow of a claim upon it.'
'I believe you,' she said; 'it removes my last lingering doubt as to our perfect happiness. In sickness, in health, in poverty or riches, by land or sea, never had man a truer mate than you will find in me.'
He drew her to his side in silence, even then repenting of his falsehood to this trusting, easily deceived creature. Still, what good would it do her to know? Why pain her sensitive heart? And was there any—the remotest—chance of his deceit being exposed? An ocean rolled between him and that passionate, headstrong woman whom he had loved with the unreflecting ardour of youth. Circumstances had certainly tended of late years to favour the idea that she would be free. In that event he had sworn a thousand times to make her his wife. But it was a contingency which might never arise. In the meantime was he to give up a career such as was now opening before him? A lovely, loving bride, who would be an envied possession wherever they went? A fortune which would enable him to satisfy all desires and tastes hitherto ungratified? Was all this to be sacrificed—for what? For a passion of which he had overrated the force and permanence in the days of inexperience? The price was too great to pay.