Love that keeps all the choir of lives in chime
Love that is blood within the veins of time.
—Swinburne.
You all know that funny little inn at St. Denis, on what was then the main road between Paris and Havre; it stands sheltered against north and east winds by a towering bouquet of mighty oaks, which were there, believe me—though mayhap not quite so gnarled and so battered by storms of wind and thunder as they are now—in the April of that year 1678.
The upper story gabled and raftered hung then as now quite askew above its lower companion, and the door even in those days was in perpetual warfare with its own arched lintel, and refused to meet it in a spirit of friendly propinquity. The Seine winds its turgid curves in the rear of the building with nothing between it and the outer walls only the tow path always ankle deep in mud.
The view out and across the winding river is only interesting to the lover of colour and of space, for there are no romantic hills, no rugged crags or fir-crowned plateaus to delight the eye. Only a few melancholy acacias sigh and crackle in the wind and tall poplars rear their majestic heads up to the vast expanse of sky.
Now elegant villas and well-trimmed gardens fill the space over which two hundred and forty years ago the eye wandered seeking in vain for signs of human habitation. Rank grass covered the earth, and close to the water's edge clumps of reeds gave shelter to water rats and birds.
[203] Through the small dormer window just beneath the gable, Michael Kestyon looked out upon the melancholy landscape and found it exquisitely fair.
The wind howled down the wide chimney and sighed drearily through the reeds, whereon the spring had not yet thrown her delicate tints of green; but Michael thought the sound divine, for it mingled in his ear with the tones of a fresh, young voice which had prattled gaily on throughout supper-time, of past and of future—not of the present, for that was sacred, too sacred even for her words.
She was a little tired at first, when he lifted her off the saddle, and the amiable hostess of the ramshackle inn took charge of her and saw to her comforts. But after a little rest in her room, she came and joined him in the stuffy parlour, the window of which gave on that far horizon, beyond which lay the sea, England and home.
She seemed a little scared when she found herself quite alone with him, without maman or papa to interrupt the tête-à-tête. She was so young, and oh! how tender and fragile she appeared to him, as she came forward a little timidly, with great, blue eyes opened wide, wherein her pure love fought with her timidity.
Her whole appearance, her expression of face as she yielded her hand to him, and allowed him to draw her closer ever closer to his heart, made appeal to all that was best, most humbly reverent within him.
Rose Marie was home to him, she was joy and she was peace, and he, the homeless, the joyless, the insubordinate wastrel, felt a wave of infinite tenderness, a tenderness which purified his love, and laid ardent passion to rest.
He led her to the window, and throwing it wide open, he knelt down beside her there in the embrasure. She sat on the narrow window seat, looking out on that vast ex[204]panse of sky and land whereon the shadows of evening had thrown a veil of exquisite sadness and peace. The bare branches of the acacias as yet only tipped with tiny flecks of green moaned softly beneath the kiss of the breezes. Banks of clouds lashed into activity by the wind hurried swiftly past, out towards the unseen ocean, now obscuring the moon, now revealing her magic beauty, more transcendent and glorious after those brief spells of mystery conquered and of darkness subdued. Michael said very little. There was so little that he could say, which was not now a lie. He could not speak to her of his home, for home to him had been a miserable garret under the grimy roof of a house of disrepute, shared with others as miserable, as homeless as himself. He could not speak to her of friends, for of these he had none, only the depraved companions of a dissolute past, nor could he speak of kindred, unless he told her that it was because his mother was dying of hunger in a wretched hovel that he had spoken the mighty lie and taken payment for speaking it.
I would not have you think that even now Michael felt any remorse for what he had done. He was not a man to act first and blush for his actions afterwards. He knew his action to be vile, but then he had known that ere he committed it, and knowing it had deliberately taken his course. Were it to be done all over again, he would do it; since she never could be his save by the great lie and the monstrous trick, then the lie must be spoken and the trick accomplished. For she meant love and purification; she meant the re-awakening of all that was holy in him and which the Creator infuses in every man be he cast into this world in a gutter or upon a throne.
And he would make her happy, for he had gained her love, and a woman such as she hath but one love to give.[205] She would never have loved Stowmaries, and not loving, she would have been unhappy. He had taken upon himself the outer shell of another man, and that was all; just another man's name, title and past history, nothing more. But it was his personality which had conquered her, his love which had roused hers. She loved—not an Earl of Stowmaries, the plighted husband of her babyhood. No! she loved him, Michael, the blackguard, the liar, the cheat an you will call him so; but she loved him, the man for all that.
Therefore he felt no remorse, when he knelt beside her and during that exquisite hour of evening, when shadows flew across the moon, and the acacias whispered fairy tales of love and of brave deeds, he listened to her innocent prattle with a clear mind and a determined conscience, and the while she spoke to him of her simple past life, of her books and of her music, his ambition went galloping on into the land of romance.
The title of Earl of Stowmaries which he had assumed, he could easily win now; the riches, the position, everything that could satisfy a woman's innocent vanity he would shower upon his snowdrop. She would have all that her parents wished for her, all and more, for she would have a husband who worshipped her, whose boundless love was built on the secure foundation of a great and lasting gratitude.
It was in this same boundless gratitude that he kissed her hands now; those little hands which had been the exquisite channels through which had flown to him the pure waters of love and of happiness.
How quaint she looked, with her fair hair almost wild round her little head. The dance first, then the ride through wind and space had loosened most of the puffs[206] and curls from their prearranged places. That tired look round the eyes, the ring of dark tone which set off the pearly whiteness of her skin, the beads of moisture on her forehead, these gave her a strangely-pathetic air of frailty, which most specially appealed to Michael's rugged strength.
Her white gown was torn here and there—Michael remembered catching his foot in it in the mazes of the dance—it was crumpled, too, and hung limply round her young figure, showing every delicate curve of the childlike form, every rounded outline of budding womanhood.
Think you it was an easy task for Michael to keep his tempestuous passion in check, he who throughout his life had known no control save that of cruel necessity? Think you he did not long to take her in his arms, to cover those sweet lips with kisses, to frighten her with the overwhelming strength ............