Resentment—fierce, vengeful, absorbing—took possession of Carey Grey. That he should have been disgraced, dishonoured, robbed for a time of his reason and his memory, his friends made to suffer, his life put in jeopardy, and all without the slightest provocation, was an outrage so heinous that he considered no punishment too great for its perpetrators. The fact that the one who was apparently mainly responsible for the inspiration and the execution had been summoned to a spiritual tribunal to answer for his misdeeds tempered not a whit the victim’s bitter animosity. Indeed, he felt that death had cheated him of what he craved as a meagre compensation for his wrongs—the opportunity to visit personally upon the arch-offender his own retribution. But if Herr Schlippenbach had been snatched from his hands by a too kindly Providence there162 were others remaining who should feel the weight of his relentless vengeance.
In this mood, wakeful and dreamful by turns, a cold compress on his bruised head, Grey worried through the early hours of the morning. With the first sign of the blue dawn, however, he became more composed. His meditations took on a more gentle guise; his brow, which had been wrinkled with frowns, smoothed; into his eyes came a tenderness that routed spleen, and his mouth softened its tensity of line. The day held for him a joy the anticipation of which was a benison.
After all, heaven was not wholly unkind. He had been made to suffer cruelly and undeservedly, but there was at least one compensation—the woman he loved was here, near him, in the same city; in a few hours he would meet her, talk with her, feel the warmth of her hand in his, experience the benignant sympathy of her eyes and the caressing graciousness of her voice. With the dawn had come confidence, and he smiled as he recalled his doubts of the previous afternoon. Her love was steadfast, enduring, immutable. Of this he felt assured. And her faith and loyalty were163 like her love. He lay for hours in blissful contemplation of the character, disposition, mind, manner and person of the woman he adored.
He recalled their first meeting at a barn dance at Newport, when she was in her débutante year; and then, an event of the following day came back to him vividly as in a picture. The scene was the polo field at Point Judith. He had just made a goal by dint of hard riding and unerring strokes, and a hurricane of applause had followed, led, it seemed to him, by a tall young woman in white, with great, shining brown eyes and flushed cheeks, who was standing up in her place atop a coach, clapping her hands in frantic delight. And this picture was followed by others—a panorama in which the same girl figured again and again—always beautiful, always smart, always gracious.
He attired himself, this fine Sunday morning, with more than usual care, despite the absence of his valet, and set forth early for the rendezvous he had chosen. Already the boulevards were alive. Many of the chairs in front of the cafés were occupied by sippers of absinthe and drinkers of black164 bitters. From the gratings in the sidewalks arose the appetising aroma of the Parisian déjeuner à la fourchette. He crossed the Avenue de l’Opéra and, turning into the rue de la Paix, was presently passing the entrance of the hotel that sheltered her who filled his thoughts—her whom he had come out to meet. A fiacre was at the curb, and, fancying that it might be awaiting her, he hastened his steps so that he should not encounter her in so public a place. From the summit of the Vend?me Column the imperial-robed Napoleon cast an abbreviated shadow across his path as he cut across the place into the rue de Castiglione. A man he did not remember bowed graciously as he passed him at the corner of the rue de Rivoli, and a little further on a somewhat showily gowned woman in an enormous picture hat, probably on her way to the Madeleine, leaned from her carriage to smile upon him. And she, likewise, was without his recollection.
At the corner of the rue Cambon he made a diagonal cut to the garden side of the street, and a minute later reached the broad and imposing Place de la Concorde in all its bravery of bronzed165 iron and granite fountains, sculptured stone figures, rostral columns and majestic Obelisk.
As he turned into the gardens of the Tuileries, Grey glanced at his watch to discover that the time still lacked five minutes of eleven. He looked back in expectation of seeing a cab approaching, but, though there were many crossing the place at various angles, there was none headed in his direction. He strolled off between the flower-beds into the little grove at his right. Just ahead of him he descried a figure in pink, and his heart bounded; but he overtook it only to meet disappointment. He lighted a cigarette, sat down on a bench, and dug in the gravel with his walking-stick; his eyes, though, ever on the alert, looking now one way, now another. He took out his watch again. The minute hand was still a single space short of twelve. He got up and retraced his steps towards the entrance with the object of meeting her as she came in. Again he gazed across the wide, sun-washed area of the place, but without reward, and then a dour melancholy threatened him. He was assailed by forebodings. She would not come. He had offended her beyond166 reparation. The day suddenly grew dull. A cloud hid the sun. The gaiety of those who passed him became offensive. The sight of a youth with his sweetheart hanging on his arm filled him with rancour. He walked back and forth irritably. He was depressed, heavy-hearted, apprehensive.
Another five minutes dragged by, with a corresponding increase in the young man’s dejection. His imagination was now active. It was quite possible she had left Paris. His messenger, perhaps, had failed to deliver his note. He wondered if by any chance she might be ill.
He was standing, pensive, by the fountain, undecided whether to wait longer or to go on to the Ritz in search of her, when the rustle of skirts behind him caused him to turn.
“Ah—h!” exclaimed a laughing voice, “it is then you after all. I was not sure. I looked and I looked, but you are so changed, Mr. Grey!”
It was Marcelle, Miss Van Tuyl’s maid, and at the sound of her peculiar accent Grey recognised her instantly. He realised, too, that it was she whom he had seen on the moment of his coming—the figure in the pink frock.
167 “Miss Van Tuyl sent this note, Mr. Grey,” she went on, handing him an envelope which he noticed was unaddressed.
His spirits rose a trifle. She had not left Paris, then, and she had received his message.
“Miss Van Tuyl is not ill, I hope?” he questioned, anxiously.
“Oh, no, Mr. Grey,” and Marcelle shrugged her plump shoulders and raised her black eyebrows, “but—” and she hesitated just the shade of a second “she is—oh, I fear she is most unhappy.”
“Thank you very much, Marcelle,” he said, ignoring her comment, though the words were as a sword-thrust, and handing her a louis. “Is there an answer?”
“I do not know, monsieur; but I think not.”
Grey tore open the envelope and glanced over the inclosure.
“No,” he announced, his face very set and suddenly pale. “Give my compliments to Miss Van Tuyl,” he added, “that is all.”
When the girl had gone he turned again into the little grove and once more found the seat under168 the trees where a few minutes before he had impatiently dug the gravel with his walking-stick. He sat now with his forearms resting on his thighs, the note crushed in his hand, his eyes bent, thoughtful but unseeing, on the grass across the walk.
She had refused to come to him. It was probably better, she had written, that they should not meet again. She could imagine nothing in the way of explanation that would form an adequate excuse for his action of the afternoon before. And that was all. Only five lines in a large hand.
The self-chastisement of the man was pitiless; his contrition pathetic. He was willing now to make any sacrifice, to suffer any abasement, to risk any punishment, to sustain any loss if by so doing he could gain forgiveness, achieve reinstatement in favour—aye, even attain the privilege of pleading his cause. He had been so sure of her; it had not seemed possible that she could ever be other than love and devotion and loyalty personified. Her smile was the one sun he thought would never set and never be clouded. And now she had taken this light from his life forever. With that gone,169 he asked himself, what else in all the world mattered? What were honour, position, credit, fortune, if she were not to share them?
He smoothed out the crumpled sheet and read it again, slowly, carefully, weighing each word, measuring each phrase, considering each sentence. And then the utter hopelessness of his expression changed. “It is probably better,” he repeated, quoting from the note, and the “probably” seemed larger and more prominent than any other eight letters on the page. There was nothing absolutely final about that. It was an assertion, to be sure, but there was a lot of qualification in that “probably.” And further on, she had not said: “There is nothing in the way of explanation you can offer,” but “I can imagine nothing.” He thanked God for that “I can imagine.” Oh, yes, indeed, there was a very large loophole there; and so he took heart of grace, and even smiled, and got up swinging his stick jauntily. All he wanted was a fighting chance. He had won ............