The Man and the Moment

Chapter 20

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 _tete-a-tete_ 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 dejeuner 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 Pere 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'Heronac.

"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'Heronac, the Pere 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 _presbytere_, and then to his church,

to see that all should be ready for _reveillon_ that night, and he was

returning to the chateau 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 Pere 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 Pre 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 Pere 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 Cure of Heronac 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 Pere 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 Pere 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 ashen-gray 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 Hronac,

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 Pre 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 Pere 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 chateau 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 Pere 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.