Chapter 29
CHAPTER V. THE MARRIAGE OF DYNWHA. The union of these two affections, said Rassulas, would produce all that could be wished. Perhaps there's a time when marriage might unite them, a time neither too early for the father nor too late for the husband. RASSULAS.
CHAPTER XXIX. Oh, she exclaimed, as the door shut, and I thought no one. Raoul, as still as she had suddenly become, stood perfectly mute for a moment, Harvey Barrington's correspondence clutched in a tightening hand. Was he really going to have that five minutes after all?
And then the room began to swing warningly round him. Horrified at this tendency, he retreated a step or two till he could brace himself against the high back of the chair he had just quitted. Will you not sit down, Mademoiselle? he stammered out. She was lovelier than ever.
As always, when she flushed, he remembered it from one field days. To his infatuated eyes the very clothes she wore seemed cloth of gold, though it was not at them that he was gazing. Juliana likewise continued to look across the room at him. Oh, I think it is you who should sit down, Monsieur de Sabliart, she said gently, on
which, with a final effort to show that it was not such a poor thing after all, Monsieur de Sabliart moved towards her and speech was restored to him. How did you receive my letter? Did you understand? How did you, Mademoiselle?
I had to do it. It seems it was a mistake and Captain Barrington was not an immediate danger. But I thought he was. Yes, said Juliana, with the same gentleness. I perfectly understood.
Captain Barrington brought me your letter this morning. I honored you for feeling so and for acting as you did, and to your own disadvantage. The relief was so intense, her praise so intoxicating, that Gould's heart seemed to stop for a moment, and he was therefore guilty, for the first time in his life, of sitting down while a lady stood, for he drifted rather quickly to the window seat and sank upon it.
That is right, murmured Miss Forrest, and possibly with an idea of keeping him safely there, she also came and seated herself at the other corner. You do really pardon my seeming discourtesy and ingratitude, once more inquired the runaway anxiously, leaning a little towards her. The fresh air steadied him, but her proximity did not.
How I saw neither to pardon, Juliana assured him gravely. But what I do find difficult to forgive, Monsieur de Sabliac, is the small consideration you have displayed for your own state of health. For that I do think you should be blamed. And how did you, scarcely convalescent, contrive to get as far as this?
But I did not get so far, retorted Raoul. Miss Barrington captured me in a little wood and brought me here. I was not making for this house. You were surprised to find me here, I think, he ventured. Oh, indeed, I had no idea at all that I should see you, replied Miss Forrest rather hastily.
I must explain to you how I come to be here myself. The fact is that Miss Barrington is an old friend of my father's, and though it had not occurred to him that Captain Barrington could be her brother, for in those days, I gather, he did not know that she had one, and that brother being so much younger. Well, Miss Barrington came to call upon my father this morning at the inn at Stowe, and
in the end was so kind as to carry me off to dine with her. Without mentioning that I was here, supplemented Raoul in something that was between a question and a statement. I wonder. And there he stopped, suddenly realizing that a silence on Miss Barrington's part, otherwise
so inexplicable, could only be due to strategy, and a strategy directed—yes, to what end? The same conviction had evidently dawned on Miss Forrest also. She became very still for a moment, and then remarked in a detached tone. What extremely fine asters those are! I had not observed them, said Raoul, following the direction of her eyes.
The flowers, in question, he then saw, were in a bowl on the table in the centre of the room, but he was quite able to admire them from the window-seat, where Miss Forrest and he were sitting, and he was sorry that she should feel it necessary to rise, go to the bowl, and bend over them, as if to smell them. And he was aware that asters had no scent.
Yet he understood her need of a diversion, and followed her to the table, but slowly. My father was unable to accompany me here, today, as he is confined to his room, with gout, volunteered Miss Forrest, with her back to him, taking an aster from the bowl. Oh, I am extremely sorry to hear that, returned Raoul. I feel that I am the unworthy cause of it.
I am not a serious attack. Here she put back the aster with care, turned and faced him, and said, and somewhat to his surprise, This matter of your cartel, Monsieur de Sabliac, since we have met, we might as well discuss it.
You explained, in your letter, why you felt you could not claim it. But surely we could think of some plan which would enable you to do so without involving Captain Barrington. It leapt to Raoul's mind that Miss Barrington's scheme had probably been expounded to her in the pony chase, which made that astute lady's silence as to his whereabouts still
more remarkable. No wonder, then, that Miss Forrest did not wish to refer explicitly to the author of the plan. She went on, If we can do so satisfactorily, I still think that when my father is better you might accompany
us to London, as I proposed yesterday. One cannot, of course, tell how long his attack may last. As she spoke, Raoul was aware of a strange, rending vision of the truth about that journey to London. Yesterday, the prospect of accompanying her thither had seemed like heaven.
What delusion! It would not be heaven at all. It would be the fate of Tantalus. He must not let himself be beguiled into submitting to it. He looked down and beheld the kitten, running perseveringly after its own tail.
If you will excuse me, mademoiselle, I think that I would—I mean that I'd better go separately. Oh, but why? Evidently much surprised, Juliana faced him across the table and the flowers. Why, Monsieur de Sabliègue? I thought that, travelling with my father, you would, in a sense, be protected from inquiry
until your freedom was established. That was why I proposed it, and my father also thinks well of the plan. Raoul looked up for a moment from the gyrations of the kitten. Your all-kindness, mademoiselle. If I had a hundred lives, I could never repay what you have done for me.
Oh, then why have you changed your mind? Yesterday you approved of the plan, I thought. And to that he said nothing. What must be, I suppose, said Juliana slowly and in an altered voice, that you do not wish to have my society for a couple of days, and then evidently your forgiveness of the injury
I've done you is not so complete as you pretend. Oh, how could she be so unseeing and so cruel? Oh, Juliana, said Raoul under his breath, and with that throwing away discretion went on desperately. No, I cannot let you think that.
If you press me so, I must tell you the reason, though it would be more honourable to keep silence. There's only one journey in the world that I want to take with you, and since I can never take it, I will travel alone now. Indeed, I would rather say farewell to you here today, because I have less fortitude
than I thought. And now that I've said this, you will wish it too. But I hope you will forgive me, because you forced me to tell you the truth. She was, he knew, standing rigid on the other side of the table. He knew it, though he was not looking at her.
It broke his heart to end like this, and directly the words had burst out of him. He would have given almost anything to recall them. But the best that he could hope for now was that she would be merciful and let him go without withering him for his presumption and folly. He looked at her to see.
But Juliana, too, was standing with downcast eyes, and she was very pale, and twisting her fingers, not at all like a goddess about to launch thunderbolts. I did not know you felt thus, she murmured, almost inaudibly. I am very— Seeing her so clement, Raoul took courage.
Do not say that you're sorry for me, for I am not, except for my own weakness in telling you. Only say that you forgive me. I was not going to say that I was sorry, replied Juliana. She was now nervously stripping off her gloves, only that I was very much surprised.
And immediately she sat down on the chair by the table, put her elbows on the ladder, and covered her face with her hands. By this maneuver Raoul found himself extremely disconcerted, for it left him no prospect of her features by which to gauge her sentiments. Yet, perhaps, after all, they were going to be able to part good friends.
He began to have at least a hope of it. And with the hope came also to him the weak-minded idea of allowing himself a partial reprieve. It did not be almost necessary to call on her father in London, even if he journeyed thither separately. Oh, certainly it would be more courteous.
He was weighing the manner in which he should make this retrograde suggestion, when, from behind the shelter of her hands, Juliana Forrest uttered these amazing words. Oh, what did you mean about the journey you wished to take with me? How did you not really understand? Most beautiful, asked Raoul some twenty minutes later, when they sat side by side on Miss
Lavinia's sofa. He still held her hand, and both his own. Juliana turned her head away, and her reply was evasive and incoherent. You see, I was so astonished, she murmured. I never thought that you—
And then he was so modest, and so I had to be horribly bold. But I shall be called impudent, said Raoul, half to himself. Your father. Juliana looked round. I do not pretend that I can bring Papa to reason all at once.
It will take a little time, and we shall have to be patient. Laughter and remembrance came into her eyes. I fear he will not say, But in the end. Raoul loosed the hand.
He will call me an adventurer, a fortune hunter. I suppose that, unfortunately, you possess a fortune. Have I been guilty of a calum, of a pun? A fortune I have, and I have not. My money is not settled upon me.
Papa can cut me off with a shilling, if he likes. A la bonne heure, said her suitor with a sigh of relief. Perhaps, however, he will leave you a guinea. At any rate, he cannot so easily call me those names. But there's another embarrassment.
You perhaps succeed him. No. Why do you laugh, ma toute belle? I know that it does so happen sometimes, even in this ungallant country. How not have so ungallant a country as yours has always been, sir,
retorted Juliana. We have no salloc law against queens in England. No, as it happens, the title goes to my uncle, and since I had the bad luck not to be born a boy. How is that a disappointment, if you thought that you were going to marry a Paris in her own right? The bad luck not to be born a boy, exclaimed Raoul in tones of horror.
Oh, grand Dieu, who suppose you had been! What a terrible thought! As for the other question, I must own that I have a prejudice in favor of a wife who bears her husband's name. Now, ask me how a poor cavalry soldier is going to support a wife at all, and particularly one to whom he owes the prize of a sapphire necklace.
How did you not say sapphires? Oh, how are you going to support a wife, Mr. Raoul, asked Juliana obediently. Oh, in the first place, replied Mr. Raoul, airily, by my sword. But secondly, on the money that my rich uncle in Aucléan will leave me at his death, which will shortly occur, I think, money which I have sometimes intended to refuse,
because he is personally odious to me, but which I shall now make the sacrifice of accepting for your sake. You are very magnanimous and absurd, said Juliana, laughing. And as for me, you have no idea what a quantity of methods of needlework Letitia Bentley and I learned at school. So, if we have not enough to live upon. What is the matter?
For all at once the optimistic lover gave an exclamation and sprang to his feet. Oh, I fear I go too fast, he said dejectedly. Our countries are at war. I am your enemy, Juliana, and I am returning to fight while you are at war. I am your enemy, Juliana, and I am returning to fight once more against you over there.
If every other difficulty were gone, how could we marry each other in such conditions? For I would never consent to leave you behind in England when you were my wife, and I could not well take you to France even if you wished it. The gaiety of a moment ago was struck from him and the triumph. He looked tired and tragic.
Juliana got up and placed her hand on his arm. No war lasts forever, dear enemy, she said consolingly. Even this will end some day. We must wait, that is all. Raoul put his lips to the little hand.
I would wait till next century for you. But it needs two to wait, mon coeur. And while you wait for me. Ah, ciel, who am I that I should demand such a thing? You will meet so many other men, rich and of your own nation,
a thousand times better matches than I. Though hardly of a better family, he added, with a little lift of the head. And you will regret. I ought not to ask it. But what if it is I who ask it of you, returned Juliana in her soft tones?
You, who have gone to prison for my sake, and were ready to return to it in its worst form for Captain Barrington's. Surely you are too chivalrous to refuse me that. Oh, Raoul, she went on, shaking her head at him. Why did you fear that I would not understand
when you decided to throw your freedom behind you yesterday? Why, it is a habit with you. I'm used to it. You did it again at Norman Cross when you sacrificed yourself rather than fail your comrades. Yes, I've come these last months to see what you are.
Much better, I know, than you see it yourself. As if ashamed, Raoul had put a hand over his eyes. Mon Dieu, I do not know through what spectacles of rose-colour you look, he said indistinctly. And then suddenly he turned on her, his voice shaking slightly.
Are you sure that this is not all a dream, Juliana, that you wish really to take that journey with me? For if it is a dream, then do not let me go on dreaming. Make it end quickly. Juliana took his two hands and folded them for a moment in her own, as once in prison.
And looking gravely at each other, they both saw, perhaps, glimpses of the long road they should eventually travel together. Then gently his arms went round her, and the kiss of Norman Cross was repaid in full.
