Chapter XXIII When Love Is Done
“The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one—
Yet the light of the whole life dies
When love is done.”
—Old Song.
“I love—but I believe in love no more.”
—Shelley.
Lunn recognized him almost immediately and stood quite still, looking into his face with a curious deliberation and intentness.
“One would almost think you had expected me,” said Amherst, involuntarily. One seldom says what is uppermost in one’s mind on these occasions.
“I think I did,” said Lynn with equal quietness. “When I awoke this morning something told me that this would happen.”
“There is a cab-stand a few blocks away,” he continued, courteously. “May I take you there and see you into one?”
“I shall be—grateful for the attention,” said Lynn, dully: then she laughed.
They walked in silence for a block or two.
“Have you anything to say to me, Lynn?” said Amherst at last.
“I—nothing!”
“You prefer to say nothing?”
Lynn was silent for a moment; then she spoke very distinctly.
“On the night that you asked me to marry you, I said all that I was at liberty to say.”
“Ricossia is rather exacting, isn’t he?”
The sneer escaped Gerald, wrung from him by his pain. Lynn started slightly but made no answer.
“I should ask your pardon,” Amherst went on, presently. “I had no right to say that. I do not even know that it is Ricossia on whom you paid this late call. Possibly you have other friends in the Chatham.”
“I have not.”
“It—it is Ricossia?”
She threw back her head and laughed.
“Exactly—it is Ricossia. And, by the way, Mr. Amherst, although I know that when one does an unconventional thing, ’gentlemen’ are quite justified in insulting one; yet, as there is a policeman on the next corner, and as even a homeless cur isn’t obliged to stand still while some one throws a rock at it—will you leave me?”
“No. Lynn, forgive me. I’m crazy; I don’t know what I’m saying. If it were anyone else—if it were any other man—anyone, anyone but that villainous little blackguard”——
“Stop!”
Lynn turned on him like a tigress, her eyes blazing with fury.
“How dare you call him that?” she cried. “A genius! a god of beauty! and dying at that! What sort of man do you call yourself to insult first the woman who was to have been your wife and then a dying man.”
Amherst gasped and caught his breath in painful amazement.
“Oh, my God!” he groaned like a hurt animal, “how you must love him, Lynn!”
They had passed the cab-stand now and had turned toward home, but neither noticed this. Amherst’s face was ghastly and his steps unsteady; but Lynn walked erect and stately like a sable figure of doom.
When some blocks had been traversed in silence Amherst spoke, slowly and humbly.
“Lynn, I should not have spoken as I did. We’re all human and I’m not your judge. If I didn’t love you—if I hadn’t believed that you loved me—I should not have been so harsh. Will you let me walk home with you? We probably shan’t see one another again very soon and there is so much I want to say.”
“No.”
“You won’t let me? You compel me to—very well, I’ll go to Ricossia, then; I’ll make him listen to reason and, and if he won’t, I’ll”——
“Gerald!”
Lynn’s voice was alive with a sudden, horrible fear.
“Gerald,” she said swiftly, clasping his arm with her hands, “you loved me once, didn’t you? For the sake of that, because of that, will you do me a favour? Deal with me, alone. I’m strong, I can stand anything. Say what you please to me, do as you think best—but let him alone. He’s so young, he—he’s so weak—and he’s dying, Gerald, dying. He may be dead, to-morrow. While he lives, let him alone. Oh, Gerald, promise me!”
Amherst could not speak for a moment. When he did his voice had altered.
“Lynn,” said he, gently, “why did you promise to marry me?”
“Because I loved you, Gerald.”
“You still say that—now?”
“Yes. My love for him was quite another thing. I can’t explain, and I don’t expect you to understand.”
“I see—I think I see. The other was a—well, a sort of obsession.”
“Exactly. You could hit on no better word.”
“Yet you believed that you loved me. You think that you could care for two men at once?”
She moistened her dry lips and spoke, feebly.
“If I had not been so alone in the world, Gerald, I might have loved several. There are so many different loves, you know; differing in kind and in degree. The love for a father, for a son, for a brother”—her face lightened with sudden hope,—“that was really what I felt for him, Gerald; the love that a mother has for a son, the love that a sister has for a brother—don’t you, oh, can’t you, understand? I loved you in quite another way—it’s so different—and, if I tried to explain any more, I should break a solemn oath—I should bring a curse on my head”——
Amherst’s face lit with a sudden, heated gleam. He turned and spoke fiercely.
“Lynn! Don’t insult my intelligence by telling me stuff of that sort, but listen! Promise that you’ll never see him again, and that you’ll do your best to forget him! Promise that he’ll be nothing to you in the future! and I’ll forgive all the rest. Come to me! I want you. I won’t ask you a question, not a question. Marry me to-morrow and I’ll kill the first man—or woman—who breathes a word against you. Lynn!”
She held her breath and looked at him as though fascinated.
“Lynn! Promise!”
She spoke, slowly and with difficulty.
“Until he dies, Gerald—my life is his.”
“Then”——
Amherst’s face flushed, a dark, purplish flush, ugly to see.
“You prefer him then to reputation, honour, common sense and decency.” His breath came heavily. “You prefer him—to me!”
As slowly and deliberately as before she answered him.
“I love you—as a woman loves the man she means to marry. I love L—Ricossia—as I love no other being on God’s earth—as I do not believe any other man was ever loved from the beginning of time. You say rightly. I prefer him—and the oath at which you sneer—to reputation—honour—common sense—decency—and you! Good-bye, Gerald; try to forget me.”