The Greatest Works of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes
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am very tired to-night, and I do not feel as if I should be well enough to ride to-morrow.—Yours sincerely,
Sylvia Bailey.
That was all, but it was enough. Hitherto she had evidently been—hateful thought—what the matrons of Market Dalling called "coming on" in her manner to Count Paul; henceforth she would be cold and distant to him.
She put her note into an envelope, addressed it, and went downstairs again. It was very late, but M. Polperro was still up. The landlord never went to bed till each one of his clients was safe indoors.
"Will you kindly see that the Comte de Virieu gets this to-night?" she said briefly. And then, as the little man looked at her with some surprise, "It is to tell the Count that I cannot ride to-morrow morning. It is late, and I am very tired; sleepy, too, after the long motoring expedition I took this afternoon!" She tried to smile.
M. Polperro bowed.
"Certainly, Madame. The Count shall have this note the moment he returns from the Casino. He will not be long now."
But the promises of Southerners are pie-crust. Doubtless M. Polperro meant the Count to have the note that night, but he put it aside and forgot all about it.
Sylvia had a broken night, and she was still sleeping heavily when she was wakened by the now familiar sound of the horses being brought into the courtyard. She jumped out of bed and peeped through an opening in the closed curtains.
It was a beautiful morning. The waters of the lake dimpled in the sun. A door opened, and Sylvia heard voices. Then Count Paul was going riding after all, and by himself? Sylvia felt a pang of unreasoning anger and regret.
Paul de Virieu and M. Polperro were standing side by side; suddenly she saw the hotel-keeper hand the Count, with a gesture of excuse, the note she had written the night before. Count Paul read it through, then he put it back in its envelope, and placed it in the breast pocket of his coat.
He did not send the horses away, as Sylvia in her heart had rather hoped he would do, but he said a word to M. Polperro, who ran into the Villa and returned a moment later with something which he handed, with a deferential bow to the Count.
It was a cardcase, and Paul de Virieu scribbled something on a card and gave it to M. Polperro. A minute later he had ridden out of the gates.
Sylvia moved away from the window, but she was in no mood to go back to bed. She felt restless, excited, sorry that she had given up her ride.
When at last her tea was brought in, she saw the Count's card lying on the tray:
Madame—
I regret very much to hear that you are not well—so ran his pencilled words—but I trust you will be able to come down this morning, for I have a message to give you from my sister.
Believe me, Madame, of all your servants the most devoted.
Paul de Virieu.
They met in the garden—the garden which they had so often had to themselves during their short happy mornings; and, guided by an instinctive longing for solitude, and for being out of sight and out of mind of those about them, they made their way towards the arch in the wall which led to the potager.
It was just ten o'clock, and the gardeners were leaving off work for an hour; they had earned their rest, for their work begins each summer day at sunrise. It was therefore through a sweet-smelling, solitary wilderness that Count Paul guided his companion.
They walked along the narrow paths edged with fragrant herbs till they came to the extreme end of the kitchen-garden, and then—
"Shall we go into the orangery?" he asked abruptly.
Sylvia nodded. These were the first words he had uttered since his short "Good morning. I hope, Madame, you are feeling better?"
He stepped aside to allow her to go first into the large, finely-proportioned building, which was so charming a survival of eighteenth-century taste. The orangery was cool, fragrant, deserted; remote indeed from all that Lacville stands for in this ugly, utilitarian world.
"Won't you sit down?" he said slowly. And then, as if echoing his companion's thoughts, "It seems a long, long time since we were first in the orangery, Madame—"
"—When you asked me so earnestly to leave Lacville," said Sylvia, trying to speak lightly. She sat down on the circular stone seat, and, as he had done on that remembered morning when they were still strangers, he took his place at the other end of it.
"Well?" he said, looking at her fixedly. "Well, you see I came back after all!"
Sylvia made no answer.
"I ought not to have done so. It was weak of me." He did not look at her as he spoke; he was tracing imaginary patterns on the stone floor.
"I came back," he concluded, in a low, bitter tone, "because I could not stay any longer away from you."
And still Sylvia remained silent.
"Do you not believe that?" he asked, rather roughly.
And then at last she looked up and spoke.
"I think you imagine that to be the case," she said, "but I am sure that it is not I, alone, who brought you back to Lacville."
"And yet it is you—you alone!" he exclaimed and he jumped up and came and stood before her.
"God knows I do not wish to deceive you. Perhaps, if I had not come back here, I should in time—not at once, Madame,—have gone somewhere else, where I could enjoy the only thing in life which had come to be worth while living for. But it was you—you alone—that brought me back here, to Lacville!"
"Why did you go straight to the Casino?" she faltered. "And why?—oh, why did you risk all that money?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Because I am a fool!" he answered, bitterly—"a fool, and what the English rightly call 'a dog in the manger!' I ought to rejoice when I see you with that excellent fellow, Mr. Chester—and as your friend," he stopped short and then ended his sentence with the words, "I ought to be happy to know that you will have so excellent a husband!"
Sylvia also got up.
"You are quite mistaken," she said, coldly. "I shall never marry Mr. Chester."
"I regret to hear you say that," said Count Paul, seriously. "A woman should not live alone, especially a woman who is young and beautiful, and—and who has money."
Sylvia shook her head. She was angry—more hurt and angry than she had ever felt before in her life. She told herself passionately that the Comte de Virieu was refusing that which had not been offered to him.
"You are very kind," she answered, lightly. "But I have managed very well up to now, and I think I shall go on managing very well. You need not trouble yourself about the matter, Count Paul. Mr. Chester and I thoroughly understand one another—" She waited, and gently she added, "I wish I could understand you—"
"I wish I understood myself," he said sombrely. "But there is one thing that I believe myself incapable of doing. Whatever my feeling, nay, whatever my love, for a woman, I would never do so infamous a thing as to try and persuade her to join her life to mine. I know too well to what I should be exposing her—to what possible misery, nay, to what probable degradation! After all, a man is free to go to the devil alone—but he has no right to drag a woman there with him!"
His voice had sunk to a hoarse whisper, and he was gazing into Sylvia's pale face with an anguished look of questioning and of pleading pain.
"I think that is true, Count Paul." Sylvia heard herself uttering gently, composedly, the words which meant at once so much and so little to them both. "It is a pity that all men do not feel about this as you do," she concluded mechanically.
"I felt sure you would agree with me," he answered slowly.
"Ought we not to be going back to the villa? I am