CHAPTER XXIII
As Sylvia went slowly and wearily up to her room a sudden horror of Lacville swept over her excited brain.
For the first time since she had been in the Villa du Lac, she locked the door of her bed-room and sat down in the darkness.
She was overwhelmed with feelings of humiliation and pain. She told herself with bitter self-scorn that Paul de Virieu cared nothing for her. If he had cared ever so little he surely would never have done what he had done to-night?
But such thoughts were futile, and soon she rose and turned on the electric light. Then she sat down at a little writing-table which had been thoughtfully provided for her by M. Polperro, and hurriedly, with feverish eagerness, wrote a note.
Dear Count de Virieu—
I am very tired to-night, and I do not feel as if I should be well enough to ride to-morrow.—Yours sincerely,
That was all, but it was enough. Hitherto she had evidently been—hateful thought—what the matrons of Market Dalling called "coming on" in her manner to Count Paul; henceforth she would be cold and distant to him.
She put her note into an envelope, addressed it, and went downstairs again. It was very late, but M. Polperro was still up. The landlord never went to bed till each one of his clients was safe indoors.
"Will you kindly see that the Comte de Virieu gets this to-night?" she said briefly. And then, as the little man looked at her with some surprise, "It is to tell the Count that I cannot ride to-morrow morning. It is late, and I am very tired; sleepy, too, after the long motoring expedition I took this afternoon!" She tried to smile.
M. Polperro bowed.
"Certainly, Madame. The Count shall have this note the moment he returns from the Casino. He will not be long now."
But the promises of Southerners are pie-crust. Doubtless M. Polperro meant the Count to have the note that night, but he put it aside and forgot all about it.
Sylvia had a broken night, and she was still sleeping heavily when she was wakened by the now familiar sound of the horses being brought into the courtyard. She jumped out of bed and peeped through an opening in the closed curtains.
It was a beautiful morning. The waters of the lake dimpled in the sun. A door opened, and Sylvia heard voices. Then Count Paul was going riding after all, and by himself? Sylvia felt a pang of unreasoning anger and regret.
Paul de Virieu and M. Polperro were standing side by side; suddenly she saw the hotel-keeper hand the Count, with a gesture of excuse, the note she had written the night before. Count Paul read it through, then he put it back in its envelope, and placed it in the breast pocket of his coat.
He did not send the horses away, as Sylvia in her heart had rather hoped he would do, but he said a word to M. Polperro, who ran into the Villa and returned a moment later with something which he handed, with a deferential bow to the Count.
It was a cardcase, and Paul de Virieu scribbled something on a card and gave it to M. Polperro. A minute later he had ridden out of the gates.
Sylvia moved away from the window, but she was in no mood to go back to bed. She felt restless, excited, sorry that she had given up her ride.
When at last her tea was brought in, she saw the Count's card lying on the tray:
Madame—
I regret very much to hear that you are not well—so ran his pencilled words—but I trust you will be able to come down this morning, for I have a message to give you from my sister.
Believe me, Madame, of all your servants the most devoted.
They met in the garden—the garden which they had so often had to themselves during their short happy mornings; and, guided by an instinctive longing for solitude, and for being out of sight and out of mind of those about them, they made their way towards the arch in the wall which led to the potager.
It was just ten o'clock, and the gardeners were leaving off work for an hour; they had earned their rest, for their work begins each summer day at sunrise. It was therefore through a sweet-smelling, solitary wilderness that Count Paul guided his companion.
They walked along the narrow paths edged with fragrant herbs till they came to the extreme end of the kitchen-garden, and then
"Shall we go into the orangery?" he asked abruptly.
Sylvia nodded. These were the first words he had uttered since his short "Good morning. I hope, Madame, you are feeling better?"
He stepped aside to allow her to go first into the large, finely-proportioned building, which was so charming a survival of eighteenth-century taste. The orangery was cool, fragrant, deserted; remote indeed from all that Lacville stands for in this ugly, utilitarian world.
"Won't you sit down?" he said slowly. And then, as if echoing his companion's thoughts, "It seems a long, long time since we were first in the orangery, Madame"
"When you asked me so earnestly to leave Lacville," said Sylvia, trying to speak lightly. She sat down on the circular stone seat, and, as he had done on that remembered morning when they were still strangers, he took his place at the other end of it.
"Well?" he said, looking at her fixedly. "Well, you see I came back after all!"
Sylvia made no answer.
"I ought not to have done so. It was weak of me." He did not look at her as he spoke; he was tracing imaginary patterns on the stone floor.
"I came back," he concluded, in a low, bitter tone, "because I could not stay any longer away from you."
And still Sylvia remained silent.
"Do you not believe that?" he asked, rather roughly.
And then at last she looked up and spoke.
"I think you imagine that to be the case," she said, "but I am sure that it is not I, alone, who brought you back to Lacville."
"And yet it is you—you alone!" he exclaimed and he jumped up and came and stood before her.
"God knows I do not wish to deceive you. Perhaps, if I had not come back here, I should in time—not at once, Madame,—have gone somewhere else, where I could enjoy the only thing in life which had come to be worth while living for. But it was you—you alone—that brought me back here, to Lacville!"
"Why did you go straight to the Casino?" she faltered. "And why?—oh, why did you risk all that money?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Because I am a fool!" he answered, bitterly—"a fool, and what the English rightly call 'a dog in the manger!' I ought to rejoice when I see you with that excellent fellow, Mr. Chester—and as your friend," he stopped short and then ended his sentence with the words, "I ought to be happy to know that you will have so excellent a husband!"
Sylvia also got up.
"You are quite mistaken," she said, coldly. "I shall never marry Mr. Chester."
"I regret to hear you say that," said Count Paul, seriously. "A woman should not live alone, especially a woman who is young and beautiful, and—and who has money."
Sylvia shook her head. She was angry — more hurt and angry than she had ever felt before in her life. She told herself passionately that the Comte de Virieu was refusing that which had not been offered to him.
"You are very kind," she answered, lightly. "But I have managed very well up to now, and I think I shall go on managing very well. You need not trouble yourself about the matter, Count Paul. Mr. Chester and I thoroughly understand one another —" She waited, and gently she added, "I wish I could understand you"
"I wish I understood myself," he said sombrely. "But there is one thing that I believe myself incapable of doing. Whatever my feeling, nay, whatever my love, for a woman, I would never do so infamous a thing as to try and persuade her to join her life to mine. I know too well to what I should be exposing her — to what possible misery, nay, to what probable degradation! After all, a man is free to go to the devil alone — but he has no right to drag a woman there with him!"
His voice had sunk to a hoarse whisper, and he was gazing into Sylvia's pale face with an anguished look of questioning and of pleading pain.
"I think that is true, Count Paul." Sylvia heard herself uttering gently, composedly, the words which meant at once so much and so little to them both. "It is a pity that all men do not feel about this as you do," she concluded mechanically.
"I felt sure you would agree with me," he answered slowly.
"Ought we not to be going back to the villa? I am expecting Mr. Chester to lunch, and though I know it is quite early, he has got into the way, these last few days, of coming early."
Her words stung him in his turn.
"Stop!" he said roughly. "Do not go yet, Mrs. Bailey." He muttered between his teeth, "Mr. Chester's turn will come!" And then aloud, "Is this to be the end of everything—the end of our—our friendship? I shall leave Lacville to-night for I do not care to stay on here after you have taunted me with having come back to see you!"
Sylvia gave a little cry of protest.
"How unkind you are, Count Paul!" She still tried to speak lightly, but the tears were now rolling down her cheeks—and then in a moment she found herself in Paul de Virieu's arms. She felt his heart beating against her breast.
"Oh, my darling!" he whispered brokenly, in French, "my darling, how I love you!"
"But if you love me," she said piteously, "what does anything else matter?"
Her hand had sought his hand. He grasped it for a moment and then let it go.
"It is because I love you—because I love you more than I love myself that I give you up," he said, but, being human, he did not give her up there and then. Instead, he drew her closer to him, and his lips sought and found her sweet, tremulous mouth.
And Chester? Chester that morning for the first time in his well-balanced life felt not only ill but horribly depressed. He had come back to the Pension Malfait the night before feeling quite well, and as cheerful as his disapproval of Sylvia Bailey's proceedings at the Casino allowed him to be. And while thoroughly disapproving, he had yet—such being human nature—been glad that Sylvia had won and not lost!
The Wachners had offered to drive him back to his pension, and he had accepted, for it was very late, and Madame Wachner, in spite of her Fritz's losses, had insisted on taking a carriage home.
And then, though he had begun by going to sleep, Chester had waked at the end of an hour to feel himself encompassed, environed, oppressed by the perception—it was far more than a sensation—that he was no longer alone.
He sat up in bed and struck a match, at once longing and fearing to see a form,—the semblance of a human being—rise out of the darkness.
But all he saw, when he had lighted the candle which stood on the table by his bed, was the barely furnished room which, even in this poor and wavering light, had so cheerful and commonplace an appearance.
Owing no doubt to his excellent physical condition, as well as to his good conscience, Chester was a fearless man. A week ago he would have laughed to scorn the notion that the dead ever revisit the earth, as so many of us believe they do, but the four nights he had spent at the Pension Malfait, had shaken his conviction that "dead men rise up never."
Most reluctantly he had come to the conclusion that the Pension Malfait was haunted.
And the feeling of unease did not vanish even after he had taken his bath in the queer bath-room, of which the Malfaits were so proud, or later, when he had eaten the excellent breakfast provided for him. On the contrary, the thought of going up to his bed-room, even in broad daylight, filled him with a kind of shrinking fear.
He told himself angrily that this kind of thing could not go on. The sleepless nights made him ill—he who never was ill; also he was losing precious days of his short holiday, while doing no good to himself and no good to Sylvia.
Sending for the hotel-keeper, he curtly told him that he meant to leave Lacville that evening.
M. Malfait expressed much sorrow and regret. Was M'sieur not comfortable? Was there anything he could do to prolong his English guest's stay?
No, M'sieur had every reason to be satisfied, but—but had M. Malfait ever had any complaints of noises in the bed-room occupied by his English guest?
The Frenchman's surprise and discomfiture seemed quite sincere; but Chester, looking into his face, suspected that the wondering protests, the assertion that this particular bed-room was the quietest in the house, were not sincere. In this, however he wronged poor M. Malfait.
Chester went upstairs and packed. There seemed to be a kind of finality in the act. If she knew he was ready to start that night, Sylvia would not be able to persuade him to stay on, as she probably would try to do.
At the Villa du Lac he was greeted with, "Madame Bailey is in the garden with the Comte de Virieu"—and he thought he saw a twinkle in merry little M. Polperro's eyes.
Poor Sylvia! Poor, foolish, wilful Sylvia! Was it conceivable that after what she had seen the night before she still liked, she still respected, that mad French gambler?
He looked over the wide lawn; no, there was no sign of Sylvia and the Count. Then, all at once, coming through a door which gave access, as he knew, to the big kitchen-garden of the villa, he saw Mrs. Bailey's graceful figure; a few steps behind her walked Count Paul.
Chester hurried towards them. How odd they both looked—and how ill at ease! The Comte de Virieu looked wretched, preoccupied, and gloomy—as well he might do, considering the large sum of money he had lost last night. As for Sylvia—yes, there could be no doubt about it—she had been crying! When she saw Chester coming towards her, she instinctively tilted her garden hat over her face to hide her reddened eyelids. He felt at once sorry for, and angry with, her.
"I came early in order to tell you," he said abruptly, "that I find I must leave Lacville to-day! The man whom I am expecting to join me in Switzerland is getting impatient, so I've given notice to the Pension Malfait—in fact, I've already packed."
Sylvia gave him a listless glance, and made no comment on his news.
Chester felt rather nettled. "You, I suppose, will be staying on here for some time?" he said.
"I don't know," she answered in a low voice. "I haven't made up my mind how long I shall stay here."
"I also am leaving Lacville," said the Comte de Virieu.
And then, as he saw, or fancied he saw, a satirical expression pass over the Englishman's face, he added rather haughtily:
"Strange to say, my luck turned last night—I admit I did not deserve it—and I left off with a good deal to the good. However, I feel I have played enough for a while, and, as I have been telling Mrs. Bailey, I think it would do me good to go away. In fact"—and then Count Paul gave an odd little laugh—"I also am going to Switzerland! In old days I was a member of our Alpine Club."
Chester made a sudden resolve, and, what was rare in one so constitutionally prudent, acted on it at once.
"If you are really going to Switzerland," he said quietly, "then why should we not travel together? I meant to go to-night, but if you prefer to wait till to-morrow, Count, I can alter my arrangements."
The Comte de Virieu remained silent for what seemed to the two waiting for his answer a very long time.
"This evening will suit me just as well as to-morrow," he said at last.
He did not look at Sylvia. He had not looked her way since Chester had joined them. With a hand that shook a little he took his cigarette-case out of his pocket, and held it out to the other man.
The die was cast. So be it. Chester, prig though he might be, was right in his wish to remove Sylvia from his, Paul de Virieu's, company. The Englishman was more right than he would ever know.
How amazed Chester would have been had he been able to see straight into Paul de Virieu's heart! Had he divined the other's almost unendurable temptation to take Sylvia Bailey at her word, to impose on her pathetic ignorance of life, to allow her to become a gambler's wife.
Had the woman he loved been penniless, the Comte de Virieu would probably have yielded to the temptation which now came in the subtle garb of jealousy—keen, poisoned-fanged jealousy of this fine looking young Englishman who stood before them both.
Would Sylvia ever cling to this man as she had clung to him—would she ever allow Chester to kiss her as she had allowed Paul to kiss her, and that after he had released the hand she had laid in his?
But alas! there are kisses and kisses—clingings and clingings. Chester, so the Frenchman with his wide disillusioned knowledge of life felt only too sure, would win Sylvia in time.
"Shall we go in and find out the time of the Swiss express?" he asked the other man, "or perhaps you have already decided on a train?"
"No, I haven't looked one out yet."
They strolled off together towards the house, and Sylvia walked blindly on to the grass and sat down on one of the rocking-chairs of which M. Polperro was so proud.
She looked after the two men with a sense of oppressed bewilderment. Then they were both going away—both going to leave her?
After to-day—how strange, how utterly unnatural the parting seemed—she would probably never see Paul de Virieu again.
The day went like a dream—a fantastic, unreal dream.
Sylvia did not see Count Paul again alone. She and Chester went a drive in the afternoon—the expedition had been arranged the day before with the Wachners, and there seemed no valid reason why it should be put off.
And then Madame Wachner with her usual impulsive good nature, on hearing that both Chester and the Comte de Virieu were going away, warmly invited Sylvia to supper at the Châlet des Muguets for that same night, and Sylvia listlessly accepted. She did not care what she did or where she went.
At last came the moment of parting.
"I'll go and see you off at the station," she said, and Chester, rather surprised, raised one or two objections. "I'm determined to come," she cried angrily. "What a pity it is, Bill, that you always try and manage other people's business for them!"
And she did go to the station—only to be sorry for it afterwards.
Paul de Virieu, holding her hand tightly clasped in his for the last time, had become frightfully pale, and as she made her way back to the Casino, where the Wachners were actually waiting for her, Sylvia was haunted by his reproachful, despairing eyes.