The Beautiful Miss Brooke Part 6

"Announcing his engagement and asking you to congratulate him," said Paul, with bitterness.

"Yes. I think you may take that for granted. It is what they all do. Is it any use my telling you more? I'm beginning to think the recital is getting monotonous. And then there are some coming along and I can't remember the exact order, which came before which."

She seemed to hurry over her last words as though impatient to be done, and wearied and bored by the memory of all these dallyings with sentiment. The mocking merriment appeared also to have died out of her face and voice. She gazed idly at the dancers who, in the restricted s.p.a.ce, almost constantly brushed up against them as they stood pressed close to the wall. Paul wondered if he were looking haggard. The air of careless merriment he had at first forced himself to a.s.sume had given way, as he listened, to a sort of nervous apathy. The one great pa.s.sion of hers she had confided to him had drawn him closer to her by its intrinsic dignity. It had appealed to his finer nature, stirring it to its very depths. But these later revelations of hers revolted him by their very pettiness. What had her parents been at that such a girl had been allowed to run wild in that fas.h.i.+on? It was monstrous she had not been supervised and prevented from stooping to these foolish and frivolous relations with foolish and frivolous men--men she had allowed to kiss her lips!

The pang that tore him at the image revealed to him how powerless he was. He glanced at her again as she stood at his side. There was a half-sad expression now on her face, which had resumed all its babyishness again. The lock of hair near her ear lay about in a dainty twist. Her lips showed innocent and red. To kiss them _he_ would lay down his life!

He was shaken; he wanted to sob aloud. But he was at a festive gathering. Round, round, up and down the room went the dancers, shuffling forward with their rapid glide, the men bending their long, supple bodies, the flowing curves of the women's dresses imparting a greater grace to the movement. The whole scene was dreamy to him. His inner thought was the only reality.

Why had she told him, why had she told him? he moaned within himself.

Then as he saw a new softness appear in her face, a gleam of comfort came to him. Perhaps it had been from motives of conscience and she really repented all; perhaps, too, she had thought it right to tell him everything before allowing him to ask her to be his.

He would overlook all those episodes if only she would be his. If even they had been more serious, if even she had been a dishonoured woman, he knew now he would have had no strength not to condone. If any one had told him a year ago that he--Paul--would one day be both willing and eager to make such concessions as regards the past of a woman he contemplated making his wife, he would have denied the statement indignantly as a libel on himself.

She turned suddenly, and their looks met. Her face lighted up with a smile. "Come, Paul, it's your turn now?"

"My turn!" he echoed, her words for the moment startlingly sounding like an invitation to take his place in the procession of her lovers.

"Yes," she said. "Who was your sweetheart after the gardener's daughter?"

He denied any further love, though hating to tell the lie. But Miss Brooke persisted, entreating, provoking, urging, coaxing, pouting; subtly transforming herself into the child with its lovable moods and movements; enslaving him, rendering him powerless at her will, with this one strange exception--he could be strong enough to withhold from her the episode he was ashamed of.

"Paul, Paul," she said sternly. "Tell the truth. Are you not in love now?"

He scarcely dared look at her. He was conscious of that lock again and of another on her forehead.

"Silence betrays. Did you come to Paris for the sake of your architecture or to be near me?"

"To be near you, Lisa," he breathed.

CHAPTER VII.

ALTHOUGH the thought of Lisa's old flirtations obtruded and p.r.i.c.ked occasionally, Paul went about the next morning in a state of subdued happiness. A wonderful calm had come over him, disturbed only at the moments when he had to thrust from him those images of other men kissing Lisa's lips. Those meaningless loves had been long dead, he argued, and, since she had made the confession voluntarily at the risk of estranging his love, it would be unfair to her for him to dwell upon them now.

At the same time he could never have conceived the possibility of such a line of argument on his part in the days before he had met Miss Brooke.

Love had, indeed, set at naught all the principles he had thought to abide by--had made him yield his demand for that absolute soul-virginity he had deemed the very basis of his choice.

But away with all that now! Her love for him was, of a surety, the first that had come into her life since her great sorrow. As for Pemberton, there had never been the slightest sentiment between her and him. No doubt the fellow would now take a suitable place in the background of their life, and they would welcome him as an acquaintance. Why should he bear the man animosity?

He could not do any work that morning, but strolled hither and thither, getting joyous impressions from the sun-lit city. Lisa had not only promised to dine in the evening at the Cafe Pousset and afterwards to go with him to see a melodrama at the Ambigu, most of the other theatres having closed their doors, but she had given him permission to take his holiday at Perros-Guirec during the whole two months of her stay there, so that he would be virtually one of the party. The immediate outlook was, therefore, very agreeable.

He returned to the _maison meublee_ where his quarters were, immediately after his mid-day meal, and pa.s.sed the afternoon packing away his luggage, which occupation gave him the pleasurable feeling that his preparations for the happy time to come were in full swing. He sang and whistled as he worked, his overflowing vigour manifesting itself in the bold ornamental letters with which he made out the labels for his trunks: "Middleton, Paris a Perros-Guirec." At half-past five he began to think of taking a stroll before dinner, and was on the point of doing so when the _concierge_ brought him up a letter with the characteristic explanation that it had come in the morning, shortly after monsieur had gone out, and that he had forgotten about it as monsieur pa.s.sed by before.

Paul recognised his mother's writing, and stayed to read it. At first it did not seem to contain anything of special importance, covering much the same ground as many of its predecessors, and dealing with one or two business matters. On the third page came a reproach that he had allowed three weeks go by without writing.

"I can understand," continued his mother, "that all those hours of engrossing work every day must leave you quite fatigued, my poor child.

But surely I am very reasonable in my demands, and one letter a week is not such a very heavy tax on you. Are you sure you are not overworking yourself, dear Paul? You were always a delicate child, and you are certainly not strong enough to go on living in a French hotel, with only strangers to look after you. Don't you think you ought to take a long holiday now? I am going to take Celia to Dieppe--it has all been decided and arranged to-day. The poor child has been worried and fretting and poorly for a long time past, and sadly needs this entire change of scene. Now suppose, dear Paul, you come and join us at Dieppe.

You will be near to me, and I can look after you again, if only for a couple of months. We shall be starting the day after to-morrow, and we shall be staying at the Hotel de Paris. Write to me, dear Paul, direct there, or, better still, come down and surprise us. Celia, I am sure, will be _delighted_ to see you. I never understood what happened between you two exactly. You said 'good-bye' so stiffly that I made sure you had quarrelled, though Celia a.s.sures me that was not so. She is a dear, good girl, and I love her as if she were my own daughter."

Of course he couldn't go. What a bother to have to refuse! Why had they just fixed on Dieppe when they might have gone to Norway or taken a jaunt up to Scotland! And then, too, confound it! they might even make a descent upon him at Perros-Guirec, for he would have to tell his mother that was the place where he had already arranged to spend his holiday with friends. He must discuss the matter with Lisa before replying to her or telling her of his intended marriage.

But he had scarcely time to digest the letter before the man brought him up another which the postman had just left. This time the writing was Lisa's. What could she have to write to him about if it were not to postpone the evening's engagement? His nervous fingers tore at the envelope.

"DEAR PAUL.--Please don't come for me this evening, and, indeed, you must never come for me again. In writing this I am acting the part of a very good friend to you, and it is as a very good friend I should like you to remember me, as I shall always remember you.--Yours sincerely,

"ELIZABETH BROOKE."

So all was over! Behind the simplicity of the words he perceived a terrible inexorableness. If only she had signed "Lisa," it would not have crushed him so much; but the "Elizabeth Brooke" was paralyzing.

When his hand was steady enough, he wrote:--

"DEAR LISA:--Need I say your note has quite stunned me? Won't you give me a word of explanation? PAUL."

The concierge's boy delivered this at Miss Brooke's _pension_.

He scarcely knew how he got through the night. Every now and again he woke up and tossed about; and when he did lose consciousness, he had a sense of a grey infinity in which there was a great chasm. He wanted to rush to it to close it up, but was held back by some strange power.

The morning's post brought him Miss Brooke's reply.

"DEAR PAUL.--I am glad your letter is so sensible and to the point. Of course I owe you an explanation, but I want you not to insist on it, because I fear it will hurt you too much. The pain it would give me I deserve.--Yours, LISA."

He found this note infinitely softer than the first and was encouraged to write again.

"DEAR LISA.--I am not strong enough to face the punishment unless I know my sin. The pain of listening to you can be nothing to the pain of this horrible gap in my mind. Won't you let me see you--for the last time? Remember it is only a day since you told me you loved me. Don't refuse.

PAUL."

To which came the reply by his own messenger.

"DEAR PAUL.--Come this evening at eight and you will find me alone.--Yours,

"LISA."

All day long he nerved himself for the interview. He would rehea.r.s.e nothing, antic.i.p.ate nothing. When the time came, he would speak straight from his heart. Perhaps he might yet move her.

CHAPTER VIII.

MISS BROOKE received him with the same cheery frankness as of yore, gave him a quick hand-shake, and installed him in his old place on the k.n.o.bby-springed ottoman beneath the hanging book-shelves. The little table was laid, as usual, for after-dinner coffee, and the small copper kettle was boiling over a spirit-lamp. She was the first to speak.

"You were right, Paul. I have been thinking a good deal, and I have come to agree with you that we ought to have a last talk together. I am sensible that I am a thoroughly unscrupulous person--please don't contradict me, I mean it in sober earnest--but I am not without my redeeming moments, and so it happens I feel I ought to make my apology to you before we part. Apology! That is a very weak word to use after my immoral behaviour towards you. I mean to talk to you very openly, in fact, I am going to confess the whole extent of my misconduct. Only I want you to believe that to do so will hurt me if possible even more than you. I really do want your sympathy very badly, Paul, although I know I don't deserve it."