Kitabı oku: «Woman and Artist», sayfa 9

"Well, well, you may be right," said Sabaroff; "but listen to my story. For months, for years, I could not bear to think of all that I had lost in losing you. Was it any wonder that I went half mad and ran into all kind of excesses? The light of your pure eyes was turned away from me. I tossed about like a rudderless ship, and only my ambition saved me from wreckage of body and soul."

"Does it not seem to you a little cowardly," said Dora, glad to recover the thread of her little sermon, "for a man to lay the blame for such a life at a woman's door, because he would not exercise the self-control that thousands of women have to exercise almost all their lives? Do you think it is only men who feel? Ah, believe me, there are few women who have not had, at some period of their lives, to suffer and be silent, to hold a bursting heart, and go about the daily task, with its cruel, half-mechanical routine, which leaves the mind free to dwell on all the misery that stirring scenes might help it to forget. Those who give way to their despair, society mocks at; those who abandon themselves to their passions, society puts outside the pale."

Dora began to feel that she was putting too much heat into her reply. With an attempt at a tone of indifference, she went on —

"But tell me more about that saving grace of ambition, General. It has made you a great and powerful man."

"Great, no; powerful, yes," replied Sabaroff, and he laid an insinuating stress on the word yes, which did not escape Dora's notice. "But, of all the satisfaction which my present position of confidence with my imperial master has brought me, nothing is so sweet as the power of doing what I am going to do for you."

"I am so proud you approve of the shell – then you will have it taken up by the Russian Government?

"Yes," said Sabaroff, "I have the paper here ready to sign, and am only waiting for a telegram from St. Petersburg, which I have ordered to be brought to me here if it should happen to arrive before ten o'clock" …

"My husband will be so glad!"

"Ah, 'my husband will be glad,'" repeated Sabaroff, in a half-mocking tone; "Mrs. Grantham, will you be glad? – Dora," said he, warming as he proceeded, "do you not realise that what I am going to do is for your sake, and not for the man who has won the only woman I ever loved?"

On hearing herself called by her Christian name, Dora was indignant.

"General, once more I beg of you, I'm afraid you forget yourself."

At this moment a servant entered the room.

"A telegram for his Excellency," said he. Then he handed the telegram to the General, and retired after receiving Dora's order to bring tea.

Sabaroff read the despatch to Dora: "Approved by Council of War. Final decision left to you. If you yourself approve, offer five hundred thousand roubles."

Dora was standing at the fireplace, with one foot on the fender. Sabaroff, with the telegram in his hand, gave her a look which seemed to say: "When I said powerful, you see I was right."

The servant brought the tea, which he placed on a table near Dora, and retired.

Dora poured out two cups.

"No milk, I think – a little rum and some lemon, à la Russe?"

"Thank you," said Sabaroff.

He cut himself a slice of lemon, helped himself to rum, and began to sip his tea.

There was an unbroken silence for a couple of minutes.

"You are not offended with me?" he resumed. "Ah, forgive me if I have called you by your beautiful first name, your sweet name of Dora, it is the only one I ever give you in my thoughts. Here is a pansy," he said, opening his pocket-book, "a flower that you dropped at Monte Carlo. There is no Mrs. Grantham for me; there is Dora, the name I cannot forget."

"This man really loved me, then," said Dora to herself, "and loves me still perhaps." The thought displeased her, but it was not insulting. She thought of the pansies which had come regularly, year after year, on the anniversary of her marriage. Then, if he loved her still, she had everything to fear in this solitary tête-à-tête. She resolved to be more than ever on her guard.

"But it is precisely my other name, General, that I would have you remember always," she said, with a calm smile.

"If I thought of that one, I should not be here now; I should never come to this house," said Sabaroff. "I should not be now preparing to sign this paper, which is to enrich still further the man to whom you gave yourself, the man who already possesses the only thing I ever really craved. Shall I sign? Why should I?" said he, drawing from his pocket an envelope containing a blank contract. "What will be my thanks? What is to be my reward?"

"Oh, General," said Dora, nervous but still smiling, "you are too good a patriot to need any incentive but the love of your country."

"No, Mrs. Grantham, that is not enough. I love my country, but I do not love your husband. For you alone I sign. To you I turn for my reward. Ah, let me hear from those lovely lips that you have only kind, pitying thoughts for the man who still worships you and loves you as you are worthy to be loved."

Sabaroff's eyes were lit with a strange fire, and threw burning glances upon Dora. She began to tremble. This man frightened her.

"Of course, General, I am grateful, I" … She felt incapable of finishing the phrase. "Must I go through with this?" she thought. "Oh that I could get rid of this man!"

Sabaroff did not take his eyes off her face. He was striving to read her inmost thoughts.

"I have no resentment," she continued; "I have long ago forgotten what passed between us, and if you will do the same, here is my hand."

Sabaroff unfolded the paper which he had taken from the envelope, placed it on the table and signed it. Dora was still holding out her hand to him. Sabaroff seized it and drew her close to him.

"Dora," he exclaimed, "my Dora!"

"You forget, once more you forget," she said, freeing herself. "If my husband were here" …

"If your husband were here!" cried Sabaroff, with a sneer. "Once for all, is it possible that you do not see the rôle that your husband is playing? Are you indeed so blind? Tell me, does a man encourage a former lover of his wife about his house constantly, a lover who was on the point of becoming her fiancé, and who perhaps loves her still? Does he miss the train when he knows that his wife will be alone with that man for a whole evening? No, my dear Mrs. Grantham, a man misses everything you like to name, but he does not miss such a train as that. Ah, let us have no more of these pretences. You know perfectly well what he is, that husband of yours who missed his train. You know that you have no love left for him, that you only feel the most profound contempt for that man who, to put a fortune in his purse, does not hesitate to play the mari complaisant."

"No, it's impossible, it is not true," cried Dora, suffocating with indignation; "spare me your suppositions."

"You shall not make me believe that you do not despise him. I have watched you both carefully from the first day that I have visited your house. Do not deceive me, do not attempt to deceive yourself. You do not love your husband. I have seen how your noble heart has shrunk from contact with so sordid a nature, as his has proved to be in the past few months. He may have loved you once in his cool, jellyfish fashion; perhaps you have loved him yourself, but since his new craze for wealth has ousted you from his consideration, except when you are useful to him as a bait, you have hated him – ah, worse than that, you have despised him. You know that he is not worthy of you, who have the soul as well as the body of an angel. No, you are not blind; you are not a child, to sit down tamely under his treatment of you. Be a woman, take a woman's revenge. Only give me a tithe of the love he has held so lightly and I will be your slave, your adoring slave to my dying day. Dora, I love you," he cried as he advanced towards her.

"I can listen to no more of this. You have tried my patience too far already. I thank you, in my husband's name, General, for having signed this paper; but I don't feel well, – have pity on me. You have before you a woman full of gratitude for what you have done; it would not be generous to take advantage of it to press your company upon me in my present state. Leave me now, please."

"Leave you! leave you! Ah, ah! And this is my reward? Now that you have obtained all you want, you dismiss me. Dora, take care. You are too intelligent, too much of a woman, not to see that my love for you has come back to me redoubled, that it blinds me, makes me mad, and that your resistance only adds fuel to the fire."

"Go, I beseech you, at once," exclaimed Dora, now thoroughly alarmed; "go, I command you. Nothing will force me to listen to you any longer – I tell you I am suffering tortures; you say that you love me, then, spare me and go."

"So, then," said he reproachfully, "you let me see you, let me come here almost day after day until I cannot live away from you, and then, when you have done your despicable husband's work, you dismiss me with a many thanks, good-bye. No, Dora," he added, raising his voice, "I will not be dismissed so. Look at me well," he said, seizing her arm; "do I look like a man who can be so lightly played with?"

"Let me go; you hurt me," cried Dora, distracted with indignation; "how dare you treat me so?"

"How dare I?" said Sabaroff. "You wonder how I dare? Ah, wonder rather that I kept silent so long with your beautiful face before me, your voice and eyes bewitching me, your lips so near, all your loveliness making mad riot in my pulses! What do you think I am made of? Does one take a starving wretch to see a banquet spread, and, when he has just begun to eat, then cast him out, because he dares to say he is hungry still? Does one offer rich wine to a weary traveller, and, when he has taken but one sip from the cup, dash it from his lips and bid him begone? In your presence, Dora, I am craving for your love."

"Philip, where are you?" cried the poor woman wildly, and feeling more dead than alive.

She made towards the door, but Sabaroff intercepted her passage.

"Dora," said he, "why keep up this farce any longer? Be honest. Unmask yourself, for I am convinced you are wearing a mask. Why do you call your husband? You know that he is not here, and you must know only too well why he is not here. Your husband has kept away to-night, that you may be alone with me. You cannot but despise him, a creature who, when he had won it, knew not how to value the prize I crave in vain. And now that I have found you suffering tortures at his callousness, you will not let me tell you how I love you – passionately, madly! Ah, since it is he who throws you into my arms, come and make your home there; you shall never repent the step – I swear it!"

"Ah, enough, enough, spare me any more indignities," cried Dora, with head proudly uplifted. "General Sabaroff! leave, leave this house instantly."

So saying, she made a movement towards the bell.

"Dora!" cried Sabaroff, seizing her in his strong arms.

She struggled, and finished by freeing herself from his grasp.

"Go this moment, I tell you. You have treated me as you would not dare treat a servant-girl in a low lodging-house, you have treated me as if you took me for a Mimi Latouche – you are a coward!"

Dora was nearly at the end of her strength. She was wild, at bay, without power to cry for help. A coquette would have known how to defend herself. Knowing to what she exposes herself, the coquette always prepares a line of retreat before engaging in the battle; but a woman as pure as Dora is almost defenceless in the presence of a man who has burned his ships and who intends to stop at nothing: she has no weapons for such a contest. Dora was paralysed with fright and indignation. She made a last and supreme effort to reach the bell; but Sabaroff stopped her, and seizing her more firmly than he had done before, he cried —

"My reward! I claim my reward for so much patience!"

She was in his arms, panting, almost unconscious. He strained her to his heart, and kissed her passionately on the eyes, on the lips again and again. Exhausted by the struggle, Dora yet made a supreme effort, and succeeded in once more freeing herself from Sabaroff's hold; but he caught her by the arm, which he kissed devouringly. Dora sank fainting on the sofa.

At this moment the door opened, and Gabrielle, with agony depicted on her face, rushed into the room. She had come to fetch her sister, to take her to Eva's bedside, for the child had grown rapidly worse. Seeing Sabaroff on his knees gazing at Dora, she drew back, stifling a cry, and, wringing her hands in despair, she disappeared.

Sabaroff heard the cry, but did not move. After a moment, turning round and seeing no one, he rang the bell, hurriedly impressed a further kiss on the forehead of the unconscious woman, and left without waiting for the arrival of a servant.

When the servant entered, Dora had regained consciousness.

"Did you ring, ma'am?"

"No," she said; "what is it?"

She looked around her, passing her hand over her eyes and forehead. She realised that she was alone. Her eyes were haggard. She looked wild, half mad.

"Where is he?" she said; "gone?"

Then she fixed her eyes on the servant, who seemed to have a message to deliver.

"Well, what is it?" she repeated.

"Miss Gabrielle," replied the man, "told me to say that she had sent for the doctor, and that he is now with Miss Eva. Will you, please, go up at once, ma'am?"

Dora gazed fixedly at the man. She had not heard, or, rather, she had not taken in a single word of the servant's message. She signed to him to go, and he left.

Taking her head in both hands, she tried to remember what had been happening.

"My body burns," she murmured; "I feel as if I had been bitten by a reptile." Her eyes fell on her arm, where Sabaroff's kiss had left a mark that was still red. A cry of disgust and horror escaped her. She gazed again at her arm, leapt to her feet, and paced the room almost foaming with rage. To wipe out that mark was her one thought. With her handkerchief she rubbed the burning spot, and, with a movement of fury, sucked it and spat as if she had been sucking poison from the bite of a snake. She was unrecognisable, transformed into a tigress ready to spring upon any who might come near. Suddenly an idea lit up her face, as she passed the fireplace in her furious pacings. She seized the poker and thrust it in among the live coals.

"Yes, yes, I will, I'll do it," she muttered.

Suddenly she heard a cab stop outside, and the street door open and close noisily. Philip, for it was he, bounded upstairs and rushed into the drawing-room. It was half-past eleven.

Dora had the poker in her hand. She put it back into the fire.

"Ah, my dear Dora," said Philip, quite out of breath, "I can't tell you how sorry I am to have been delayed all these hours. I missed the nine o'clock train, as I explained in my wire; but I must tell you all about that by and by. It's a long story. I left Paris at noon, as you know, but the train broke down between Canterbury and Chatham, and got in three hours late. But for that, I should have been here at eight. The General is gone, of course?" he added.

Dora stood motionless, speechless. She merely nodded her head affirmatively.

"How shall I ever be able to excuse myself to him? I wish now that I had followed your suggestion and put off this dinner, so as not to run such a risk. When you travel, you start, but you don't know what may happen before you reach home again."

He caught sight of the paper, which Sabaroff had signed, lying on the table. He seized it eagerly and began to read.

"What is this?" he exclaimed, overcome with joy. "Why, it is the purchase of my shell by the Russian Government! The General ought to have stayed. You should have kept him … I should have been so happy to thank him myself … but, I understand; the proprieties, I suppose; he did not like to stay on during my absence… Five hundred thousand roubles! here it is, all set down and signed… Ah, my Dora, my darling!"

Dora did not move. She was pale as death. She looked at him with eyes that appeared to see nothing.

Philip made as if he would seize her in his arms. She recoiled affrighted.

"Don't touch me! Don't come near me!" she cried in a voice that gurgled.

"Dora, what has happened? Heavens, you frighten me. What is the matter? Why, you are trembling, you can scarcely stand. Speak, speak, what is it?"

"Where have you been and where have you come from?"

"But I have just told you what happened to me. I missed the nine o'clock train and there was an accident … but what is the use of trying to explain anything to you in your present state? You evidently do not understand. I ask you again. What has been happening here to put you in such a state?"

"Ah, ah, he asks me what has happened!" she hissed, snatching the paper from Philip's hands. "This has happened. Your ambition is satisfied now. Here is the signature that gives you half a million of roubles, the gold for which you did not hesitate to make me submit to the society of a betrayer of women, a protector of Mimi Latouche, a man against whom my whole womanhood revolted. Stung by your heartless indifference to my pleadings, stung by your taunts that I no longer helped you, I have goaded myself to endure his presence constantly. And now, I think my task is ended; I have paid the price; so take the paper – it is yours. It is signed. The gold will be handed to you."

"Dora, for God's sake, tell me, what does it mean? You never spoke to me like this before," gasped Philip, in a voice choking with anger and excitement.

"Hush!" continued Dora, "your ambition is realised. Your fortune is more than doubled; but when you are counting it up, think of me, your wife, in the arms of that man, every fibre of my powerless body revolting at the kisses of his polluted lips. Yes, the lips of that libertine have soiled mine; on my face, on my arms, he pressed his burning kisses. Look, look at this arm. See for yourself the mark that will not go. I am stained, contaminated. Oh! am I mad? No, I have drunk the bitter draught, I have gone through the mire of degradation; and now, is the nightmare ended? Are you satisfied, or shall I call him back to offer him the rest?"

"I will kill him!" cried Philip.

"Ah, rather kill me; that would be more generous," exclaimed Dora. "Take your money, and now let me go – unless," she added, with a sneer, "you have some other War Minister that you wish to take your invention; think, I am here to pay the price they may exact for their approval."

"Dora, this is madness – you are out of your mind."

"I soon should be if I stayed here."

Dora broke off suddenly. The coming of the servant flashed across her mind. He had brought a message. What was it?

"Yes, yes, of course, I remember. Gabrielle sent for me a few moments ago – she had called the doctor to Eva – Eva! Ah, let me go to my child," she cried, waving Philip aside as he was going to speak again.

But before she reached the door, Gabrielle had opened it.

"Are you coming?" said the poor girl, with tears in her voice.

"Eva?"

"Yes, she is worse; it is diphtheria."

Dora realised now the full import of the former message. With one horror-struck look at the distressed white face before her, she rushed from the room uttering a broken cry —

"Eva!"

Gabrielle followed after her, and Philip was left crushed, stunned, incapable yet of understanding clearly the terrible scene which he had just witnessed, or the new terror with which he was brought face to face.

XIV
EVA

Philip dropped into an armchair. His forehead was bathed in perspiration. He was seized with a convulsive trembling, caused by the rage that he felt at not being able to avenge there and then the outrageous conduct of General Sabaroff towards his wife. If he had known at that moment where to find the Russian, he would have gone straightway and had it out with him. He went through a torment of impotent fury and disappointment at thinking that his arrival had been but a few moments too late.

"Fool that I was!" he cried, "what have I done? Then Dora thinks" – he dared not utter his thought – "and, if so, I am guilty in her mind of the vilest, the most despicable act that a man can commit – it is a frightful idea! And yet my indifference, my insistence that Dora should receive that man, when she implored me not to oblige her to submit to his company – Sabaroff loves her still then? Or does he, too, believe that he was encouraged by me? Oh, but the thought is horrible! The idea of it is maddening. Fool that I have been!"

For the first time he saw the enormity of his conduct. He called himself coward and criminal. In that dreadful hour he awoke from his dream and became himself again. The veil fell from his eyes, the transformation was complete. To do him justice there was no more inventor, no more blindly ambitious seeker after wealth, but the Philip of former days with no thought but for Dora. He would have given, that night, his last farthing for a smile from her!

Philip rose suddenly from his seat. He must take a resolution on the spot. He was face to face with a vital crisis on which all his future life depended. His first impulse was to go to Dora and throw himself at her feet to implore her pardon. "No," he said to himself, "as long as that contract exists, there is nothing to be done." He held it in his hands, that paper which had cost Dora so much. It burned to the touch. He looked at it twice, and he read it through. His mind was at once made up – tear up the thing, and fling it in the face of Sabaroff!

During this time there was much movement, much sound of coming and going on the staircase and in the hall. Suddenly Philip recognised the voice of Dr. Templeton saying, "It is the only way to save her, at least the only hope." Upon this a servant came rapidly downstairs, and Philip stopped him in the hall to ask —

"Where are you going?"

"To St. George's Hospital," was the reply.

"For Miss Eva? Is she worse?"

"Yes, sir; it appears that they are going to perform tracheotomy," said the man, who had heard the word and repeated it correctly.

Philip flew upstairs. When he reached the door of Eva's room, saw the child half choking and unconscious, and saw Dora kneeling by the bedside, he dared not enter, but stood in the doorway – heart-broken, pale, and immobile as death. That which crowned his misery and despair was the fact that Dora had not thought of sending down for him in such a moment as this. With difficulty he repressed the sob that rose from his heart. He realised then all the depth of the abyss that separated him now from his wife and child, an abyss of his own digging. No, he, adoring Eva as he did, dared not penetrate into the room where she lay.

Almost immediately a surgeon and two students arrived from the hospital. Philip let them pass, and then took up his post of observation again; but when he saw them open the case that contained the shining steel instruments and little sponges, the needles and all the apparatus for their operation; when he saw the surgeon sign to Dora to rise and, by a touch firm and gentle, direct her to leave the bedroom, Philip could bear up no longer, all his courage forsook him. He fled to the library, and there let his choking tears have way. Wretched and forsaken, he broke down utterly.

"O God!" he cried, "it is too much; I have not deserved such punishment."

Gabrielle was a great help to the doctors, and prompt and reliable in her movements – a nurse of the first order. She watched with a calm, clear vision the work of the bistoury on the little throat, and knew exactly when to hand the implements necessary, as the work proceeded, and earned the compliment of the surgeon thereupon; but it was not merely her nurse's intelligence that was at work, it was her love for the child she ached to save.

The preparation being completed, the surgeon with a hand at once deft and rapid, introduced the tube into the trachea. Eva opened her eyes almost immediately. A flush of living colour returned to her face, and she breathed freely again. The tube was then bandaged into place, and a long silk hankerchief tied firmly round the throat. Soon the child's face lost its aspect of deathly struggle, and put on a smiling look of profound relief and happy peace. Her countenance lit up with a seraphic light; it was as though the child's soul had just been wafted back to its dwelling-place from a visit to paradise.

When all was done, Dora was fetched and shown the success of the operation.

"Then she is saved!" she cried, clasping her hands and lifting to heaven a glance of thanksgiving.

"Not yet," said the doctor; "there remains the morbid action to cure; but there is hope, every hope. Only you must watch the child with extreme attention; she must not be left for a moment. She must not be allowed to move for some time. If the tube got displaced, or if the heart, which is very feeble, should receive the least shock, everything would be over in a moment. But," added he, "I confide your child to this lady's care," indicating Gabrielle; "I have seldom met with a nurse so gifted. Rely in all security upon her; I have given her my instructions, and she knows to the full the importance of them."

The surgeon bowed to Dora, and departed.

Dora returned to the bedside on tiptoe, and, placing her finger on her lips, made signs to Eva that she was to keep perfectly quiet; then, throwing her a kiss and a smile of a guardian angel, she sat down beside the child. Her face betrayed no sign of weakness, expressed neither grief nor despair; it was scarcely sad. She had the look of a man who throws himself into the sea, to try and save some beloved friend in deadly peril of drowning.

Philip did not go to bed. He begged Gabrielle to come two or three times during the night to tell him how the child fared, and he remained in the library. Dora watched all night by Eva's bed. She was valiant, and inspired others with her own brave spirit. She had thrown aside the thought of all that had happened in the drawing-room a few hours before; far, indeed, from her thoughts was the man who had insulted her, and who no longer existed in her thoughts – the distracted mother had swamped the indignant woman. It was with death that she had to fight now, and she fought with a sang-froid and a courage that were the astonishment and admiration of all who surrounded her.

The morning and the afternoon passed without new disquieting symptoms arising, and at night the doctor left his patient going on satisfactorily.

The following morning, about seven o'clock, Dora, worn out with excitement, had fallen into a dose.

Gabrielle went to tell Philip that Eva also was sleeping, and that such sleep was a very good sign. Their hopes rose considerably. Philip could not resist the longing he had to go and look upon his wife and child, both sleeping calmly at last, unconscious of pain and anxiety. He crept stealthily upstairs, opened very softly the door of the dear child's room, and with loving eyes looked towards the bed. Unhappily, Eva had just woke up. She saw in the doorway her father whom she loved, and had not seen for several days; she raised herself eagerly and tried to call, "Daddy." The little form fell back heavily upon the pillow.

When Gabrielle came into the room again, Dora was still sleeping. Eva slept too, but it was the sleep from which none waken.