THE Duchessa di Corleone was on her way back from Italy. She had said good-bye with a little pang to the gallery, and to the courtyard with its golden oranges and marble statues, but once on her way to England the thought of Paul completely obliterated any trace of sorrow. She was joyfully ready to give up everything—the Casa di Corleone, her house on the Embankment, and her thousands a year for the man who had taken her heart into his keeping.
Throughout the journey her heart sang little songs of happiness, which had as their refrain the one word, “Paul.” The express train rushing across the country bathed in the July sun could hardly carry her with sufficient swiftness. When, at last, Calais was reached and she was on board the boat she felt happier.
With the cliffs of Dover in sight her heart was singing a Te Deum. Till that moment she had felt that some accident might happen to prevent her getting to him. Now, in less than four hours she would be in his studio.
She had written to tell him not to meet her at the station. She wanted their first meeting to be alone, without the eyes of curious porters upon them.
“Just you and I together, my darling,” she wrote. “I can see the room in my mind, and you coming forward to meet me. There has not been a moment day and night when you have been absent from my thoughts. Our love transfigures everything for me. Life has become a magic book on every page of which your name is written....”
That letter had reached Paul in his studio the morning of the day Sara would arrive. And now, an hour before her arrival, he was sitting with it crumpled tightly in his hand, his eyes staring blankly before him.
The Fates had struck suddenly, dealing sorrow as they had dealt joy, silently and swiftly. That very morning he had heard of the complete failure of the Mexican bank in which his money was invested.
At first the news had stunned him. In the afternoon he had gone down to a friend in the city to make fuller enquiries. He found his worst fears realized. His income, which altogether had amounted to about fourteen hundred a year, had been suddenly reduced to less than half. In fact, to merely the six hundred or so he earned by his painting.
Paul went back to his studio and sat down trying to realize what it would mean. And because he was a man whose steady grey eyes had always looked facts clearly in the face, he even took pencil and paper and jotted down certain figures. But the sum total always remained the same—his marriage with Sara had become impossible.
He never for an instant did her the wrong of thinking that his loss of income would make any difference to her love for him. He believed in her love as implicitly as he believed in his own. That, however, did not alter the one fact that marriage was out of the question. Even if he reduced his mother’s allowance by a hundred a year—which, however, he had no intention of doing—the three hundred left him would not justify him taking any woman to wife, and assuredly not a woman like the Duchessa di Corleone. He knew the impossibility of transplanting a hot-house flower to the open air of a wintry garden. The thing could not be done. No amount of care could save it; it must die.
And with the irony of fate, this news had reached him by the very same post as her letter.
He took it again from his pocket and re-read it. A spasm of pain that was almost physical pierced him. His hand tightened on the paper till it was crumpled and twisted. And in less than an hour she would be in the studio with him.
“My God,” said Paul to himself, “the Fates are very cruel!”
And then because throughout the day his first thought had been of Sara he began to plan how best to break the news to her. He determined that for a few hours at least she should not know. She should have the complete joy of the meeting unmarred. They were going out to dine together. When they returned to the studio it would be time enough to tell her. With the decision all the old quiet endurance he had learnt through days and nights of hardship came back to Paul. He would hide the knowledge of their parting in his own heart. Till he bade her good-bye that evening she should never guess what the world would really mean to them both.
Something caught at his throat and a mist swam before his eyes. He got up and began to walk quickly up and down the room. Every now and then his hand, still holding the letter, clenched tightly.
Suddenly he realized what he held. He stopped in his walk and put the letter on the table. He smoothed it out tenderly, as if it had been some living thing he had injured. He folded it and put it in his pocket-book. And once more he began his walk.
The whole place seemed full of her presence. Everything reminded him of her, the chair in which she sat, the glass at which she had been wont to arrange her hat when she was sitting for him, the vases on a bookshelf, for which she insisted that he should buy flowers. There were flowers in them to-day, real crimson roses—General Jacqueminot, with its sweet old-fashioned scent. For the future they would remain empty. It would be useless to buy flowers if she was not to see them. It seemed to him as if his whole life he had been doing everything for her, and that now nothing would seem worth while. He caught at his underlip with his teeth, biting it hard. It seemed as if he were being asked to bear more than human strength could endure. Then all at once he stopped in his walk, for the hoot of a taxi near at hand struck on his ears.
A moment later he heard a light step crossing the courtyard. The door opened. She was in the doorway—radiant, living.
“Paul.”
“My beloved.”
She was in his arms. He was holding her as if he would never let her go.
Love, so say the chroniclers—and wrongly—is blind. It is keen-sighted as an eagle, which from afar discerns objects invisible to the sight of man.
When Paul at last held Sara away from him, she looked into his eyes, and though he had hidden his sorrow deep down in his heart she saw suddenly into the depths, and her own heart momentarily stood still. But also with her love and her quick woman’s instinct she saw that it was something he wished to keep hidden, and so she did not ask him then what it was he was hiding from her, but smiled at him, and in her turn hid what she had guessed.
So throughout the evening the two played a game of pretence, she knowing that they both were playing it, and he—man-like—believing that he was the sole performer.
They went to an hotel together and dined, and listened to a band which was making music, and they talked nonsensically about the food they were eating and the people they saw, and all the time her heart was crying to him to drop the terrible mask of gaiety and tell her his sorrow. But as she saw he meant to play the game she told him of her journey, and the portrait that was hanging in the gallery, and she said that she had kissed the fauns good-bye. And then quite suddenly she stopped, because she saw a look of such pain come into his eyes that for the moment she was dumb, and pretence seemed useless. But almost at once he laughed and made some little light speech; and she laughed too, and bravely, because she knew he wished it.
But when at last they were back in the studio she could play the terrible little game no longer. And he too knew that the moment had come for it to ce............