Sons of fire, Vol. III.

ROMAN AND SABINE.

Geoffrey was not to be baulked of his purpose. He sat till long after midnight in the music-room with his mother--sat or roamed about in the ample spaces of that fine apartment, talking in his own wild way, with that restless, fitful romanticism which had marked him from childhood, from the dim hours, so vaguely remembered and so sadly sweet in his memory, when he had sat on the floor with his head leaning against the soft silken folds of her gown, and had been moved to tears by her playing. There were simple turns of melody, almost automatic phrases of Mozart's, which recalled the vague heartache of those childish hours; an idea of music so interwoven with that other idea of summer twilight in a spacious, shadowy room, that it startled him to hear one of those familiar movements in the broad glare of day, as if daylight and that music were irreconcilable.

No arguments of his mother's could shake his purpose.

"I will see her and talk with her. She alone shall be the judge of what is right. Perhaps when I am sure of her I may be able to teach myself patience. But I must be sure of her love."

He was at Bournemouth by the first train that would carry him there, and it was still early when he went roaming out towards Branksome and the borderland of Dorset. To walk suited better with his impatience than to be driven by a possibly stupid flyman, and to have the fly pulled up every five minutes for the stupid flyman to interrogate a--probably--more stupid pedestrian, who would inevitably prove "a stranger in those parts," as if the inhabitants never walked abroad.

No, he would find Rosenkrantz, Mrs. Tolmash's villa, for himself. He had been told it was near Branksome Chine.

Swift of foot and keen of apprehension, he succeeded in less time than any flyman would have done. Yes, this was the villa--red-brick, gabled, curtained with virginia creeper from chimneys downwards; virginia creeper not yet touched by autumn's ruddy fingers; and with roses enough climbing over the verandah and surrounding the windows to justify the name which fancy had given. He opened the light iron gate and went into the garden; a somewhat spacious garden. She was there, perhaps. At any rate, he would explore before confronting servant, drawing-room, and unknown lady of the house. The garden was so pretty, and the morning was so fine, that, if within the precincts, surely she would be in the garden.

He went boldly round the house by a shrubberied walk, and saw a fine lawn on a breezy height above the Chine, facing the sunlit sea and the wooded dip that went down to golden sands. The standard rose-trees were blown about in the morning air, dropping a rain of pink and yellow on the smooth short turf. He saw the sea westward--sapphire blue--through an arch of reddest roses, and beyond that archway, close to the edge of the cliff, as it seemed in the perspective, there was a bench with a red and white awning, and sitting under that awning a figure in a white frock, a slender waist, a graceful throat, a small dark head, which he would have known from a thousand girlish heads and throats and waists--for him the girl of girls.

He knew that restless foot, lightly tapping the grass as she looked seaward. Was there not weariness of life, rebellion against fate, in that quick movement of the slender foot? Was she not waiting for happiness and for him?

He ran to her, sat down by her side, had taken both her hands in his, before she could utter so much as a cry of surprise.

"My darling, my darling!" he murmured; "now and for ever my own!"

She snatched her hands away and started to her feet indignantly. Anger flashed in the dark eyes and flushed the pale olive cheeks. And then her frown changed to an ironical smile, and she stood looking at him almost contemptuously.

"I think you forget, Mr. Wornock, that it is a long time since the Romans ran away with the Sabines."

"You mean that I am too impetuous."

"I mean that you are too absurd."

"Is it absurd to love the sweetest woman in the world--the prettiest, the most enchanting? Suzette, I tore back from the Hartz Mountains because I was told you were free--free to marry the man who loves you with all the passion of his soul. When I told you of my love months ago, you were bound to another man, you were obstinately bent upon keeping your promise to him. I had no option but to withdraw, to fight my battle, and try to live without you. I did try, Suzette. I left the ground clear for my rival. I was self-banished from my own home."

"You need not have been banished. I could have kept away from Discombe."

"That would have distressed my mother, whose happiness depends on your society, Suzette. You know how she loves you. To see you my wife will make her very happy. She has taken you to her heart as a daughter."

"Not so much as she has taken Allan Carew to her heart. It was for his sake she liked me. I could see when we parted that it was of Allan she thought; it was for him she was sorry. I don't think she will ever forgive me for making Allan unhappy."

"Not if her only son's happiness is bought with that price? Suzette, why do you keep me at arm's length--now, when there is nothing to part us; now, while I know that you love me?"

"You have no right to say that. If you know it, you know more than I know myself."

"Suzette, Suzette, do you deny your love?"

She was crying, with her hands over her averted face. He tried to draw those hands away, eager to look into her eyes. He would not believe mere words. Only in her eyes could he read the truth.

"I deny your right to question me now, while my heart is aching for Allan--Allan whom I like and respect more than any man living. He is the best friend I have in the world, after my father. He will always be my cherished and trusted friend. If in some great unhappiness I needed any other friend than my father--badly, wickedly as I have behaved to him--it is to Allan I would go for help."

"What, not to me?"

"To you! No more than I would appeal to a whirlwind."

"You think me so unreasonable a creature?"

"Yes, unreasonable! It is unreasonable in you to come here to-day. You must know that I am sorry for having behaved so badly--deeply sorry for Allan's disappointment."

"I begin to think it a pity you disappointed him, if nobody is to profit by your release. Oh, forgive me, forgive me! I should have killed myself if you had persisted. At least you have saved a life. I hope you are glad of that."

"I cannot talk to you while you are so foolish."

"Is it foolish to tell you the truth? I bare my heart to you--to the woman I want for my wife. I am a creature full of faults; but for you I could become anything. I would be as wax, and you might mould me into whatever shape you chose. Oh, Suzette, is not love enough? Is it not enough for any woman to be loved as I love you?"

"You cannot love me better than Allan did, though he never talked as wildly as you."

"Allan! It is not in his nature to love or to suffer as I do. He was not born under the same burning star. All the forces of nature were at war when I was born, Suzette. My Swiss nurse told me of the tempest that was roaring over the wilderness of peaks and crags when I came into the world, with something of that storm in my heart and brain. Be my good genius, Suzette. Save me from my darker, stormier self. Make and mould me into an amiable, order-loving English gentleman. I am your slave. You have but to command me, and I shall submit as meekly as the trained dog who lies down at his mistress's feet and shams the stillness of death. Tell me to fetch and carry; tell me to die. I will do your bidding like that dog."

She gave a troubled sigh and looked at him, pale and perplexed, in deep distress. His pleading moved her as no words of Allan's had ever done, and yet there was more of fear than of love in the emotion that he awakened.

"I have only one thing in the world to ask of you," she said, in a low, agitated voice. "I ask you to leave me to myself. I came here, almost among strangers, in order that I might be calm and quiet, and away from the associations of the past year. You must forgive me, Mr. Wornock, if I say that it was cruel of you to follow me to this refuge."

"Cruel for passionate love to follow the beloved! 'Mr. Wornock,' too! How formal! Suzette, if you do not love me, if I am nothing to you, why did you jilt Carew?"

"I asked him to release me because I felt I did not love him well enough to be his wife."

"Only that?"

"Only that. As time went on, I felt more and more acutely that I could not give him love for love."

"And you cared for no one else?--there was no other reason?" he insisted, trying to take her hand.