Cecilia Part 42

"It cannot give you pleasure to see me suffer," he said. "Please go away."

"How can I leave you like this?"

There was despair in her voice, and the sound of tears that would never come to her eyes. He did not answer. She would not go away without trying to appease him, and she made a strong effort to collect her thoughts.

"You are angry with me, of course," she began. "You despise me for not having known my own mind, but you cannot say anything that I have not said to myself. I ought to have known long ago. All I can say in self-defence now is that it is better to have told you the truth before we were married than to have been obliged to confess it afterwards, or else to have lied to you all my life if I could not find courage to speak. It is better, is it not? Oh, say that it is better!"

"It would have been much better if neither of us had ever been born,"

Guido answered.

"I only ask you to say that you would rather be suffering now than have had me tell you in a year that I was an unfaithful wife at heart. That is all. Will you not say it? It is all I ask."

"Why should you ask anything of me, even that? The only kindness you can show me now is to go away."

He would not look at her. His throat was parched, and he put out his hand to take the tumbler from the little table on the other side of his long chair. Instantly she rose and tried to help him, but he would not let her.

"I am not so weak as that," he said coldly. "My hand is steady enough, thank you."

She sighed and drew back. Perhaps it would be better to leave him, as he wished that she should, but his words recalled Lamberti's warning; his hand was steady, he said, and that meant that it was steady enough to take the pistol from the drawer in the little table and use it. He believed in nothing, in no future, in no retribution, in no G.o.d, and he was ill, lonely, and in despair through her fault. His friend knew him, and the danger was real. The conviction flashed through her brain that if she left him alone he would probably kill himself, and she fancied him lying there dead, on the red tiles. She fancied, too, Lamberti's face, when he should come to tell her what had happened, for he would surely come, and to the end of her life and his he would never forgive her.

She stood still, wavering and unstrung by her thoughts, looking steadily down at Guido's head.

"Since you will not go away," he said at last, "answer me one question.

Tell me the name of the man who has come between us."

Cecilia bit her lip and turned her face from the light.

"Then it is true," Guido said, after a silence. "There is a man whom you really love, a man whom you would really marry and to whom you could really be faithful."

"Yes. It is true. Everything I wrote you is true."

"Who is he?"

She was silent again.

"Do you hope that I shall ever forgive you for what you have done to me?"

"Yes. I pray heaven that you may!"

"Leave heaven out of the question. You have turned my life into something like what you call h.e.l.l. Do I know the man you love?"

"Yes," Cecilia answered, after a moment's hesitation.

"Do I often meet him? Have I met him often since you have loved him?"

She said nothing, but stood still with bent head and clasped hands.

"Why do you not answer me?" he asked sternly.

"You must never know his name," she said, in a low voice.

"Have I no right to know who has ruined my life?"

"I have. Blame me. Visit it on me."

He laughed, not harshly now, but gently and sarcastically.

"You women are fond of offering yourselves as expiatory victims for your own sins, for you know very well that we shall not hurt you! After all, you cannot help yourself if you have fallen in love with some one else.

I suppose I ought to be sorry for you. I probably shall be, when I know who he is!"

He laughed again, already despising the man she had preferred in his stead. His words had cut her, but she said nothing, for she was in dread lest the slightest word should betray the truth.

"You say that I know him," Guido continued, his cheeks beginning to flush feverishly, "and you would not answer me when I asked you if I had often met him since you have loved him. That means that I have, of course. You were too honest to lie, and too much frightened to tell the truth. I meet him often. Then he is one of a score of men whom I know better than all the others. There are not many men whom I meet often. It cannot be very hard to find out which of them it is."

Cecilia turned her face away, resting one hand on the back of the chair, and a deep blush rose in her cheeks. But she spoke steadily.

"You can never find out," she said. "He does not love me. He does not guess that I love him. But I will not answer any more questions, for you must not know who he is."

"Why not? Do you think I shall quarrel with him and make him fight a duel with me?"

"Perhaps."

"That is absurd," Guido answered quietly. "I do not value my life much, I believe, but I have not the least inclination to risk it in such a ridiculous way. The man has injured me without knowing it. You have taken from me the one thing I treasured and you are keeping it for him; but he does not want it, he does not even know that it is his, he is not responsible for your caprices."

"Not caprice, Guido! Do not call it that!"

"I do. Forgive me for being frank. Say that I am ill, if you please, as an excuse for me. I call such things by their right name, caprices. If you are going to be subject to them all your life, you had better go into a convent before you throw away your good name."

"I have not deserved that!"

She turned upon him now, with flas.h.i.+ng eyes. He had raised himself upon one elbow and was looking at her with cool contempt.

"You have deserved that and more," he answered, "and if you insist upon staying here you must hear what I choose to say. I advised you to go away, but you would not. I have no apology to make for telling you the truth, but you are free to go. Lamberti is in the hall and will see you to your carriage."

There was something royal in his anger and in his look now, which she could not help respecting, in spite of his words. She had thought that he would behave very differently; she had looked for some pa.s.sionate outburst, perhaps for some unmanly weakness, excusable since he was so ill, and more in accordance with his outwardly gentle character. She had thought that because he had made his friend speak to her for him he lacked energy to speak for himself. But now that the moment had come, he showed himself as manly and determined as ever Lamberti could be, and she could not help respecting him for it. Doubtless Lamberti had always known what was in his friend's nature, below the indolent surface.

Perhaps he was like his father, the old king. But Cecilia was proud, too.

"If I have stayed too long," she said, facing him, "it was because I came here at some risk to confess my fault, and hoped for your forgiveness. I shall always hope for it, as long as we both live, but I shall not ask for it again. I had thought that you would accept my devoted friends.h.i.+p instead of what I cannot give you and never gave you, though I believed that I did. But you will not take what I offer. We had better part on that rather than risk being enemies. You have already said one thing which you will regret and which I shall always remember.

Good-bye."

She held out her hand frankly, and he took it and kept it a moment, while their eyes met, and he spoke more gently.

"I said too much. I am sorry. I shall forgive you when I do not love you any more. Good-bye."

He let her hand fall and looked away.

"Thank you," she said.