She clung closer to his arm, and he kissed her. She pushed back her straw bonnet, so that it dangled from her neck by its ribands, and laid her little head against his shoulder. For a while he forgot his treachery to her, thinking only of his love and her love. Suddenly she said to him, “Will you try not to be angry with me, if I tell you something? It is something that will seem dreadful to you.”

  “Pauvrette,” he answered, “you cannot have anything very dreadful to tell.”

  “I am very poor,” she said, “and every night I dance in a theatre. It is the only thing I can do to earn my bread. Do you despise me because I dance?” She looked up shyly at him and saw that his face was full of love for her and not angry.

  “Do you like dancing?” he asked.

  “I hate it,” she answered, quickly. “I hate it indeed. Yet—to-night, alas! I must dance again in the theatre.”

  “You need never dance again,” said her lover. “I am rich and I will pay them to release you. You shall dance only for me. Sweetheart, it cannot be much more than noon. Let us go into the town, while there is time, and you shall be made my bride, and I your bridegroom, this very day. Why should you and I be lonely?”

  “I do not know,” she said.

  So they walked back through the wood, taking a narrow path which Jenny said would lead them quickest to the village. And, as they went, they came to a tiny cottage, with a garden that was full of flowers. The old woodman was leaning over its paling, and he nodded to them as they passed.

  “I often used to envy the woodman,” said Jenny, “living in that dear little cottage.”

  “Let us live there, then,” said Lord George. And he went back and asked the old man if he were not unhappy, living there alone.

  “’Tis a poor life here for me,” the old man answered. “No folk come to the wood, except little children, now and again, to play, or lovers like you. But they seldom notice me. And in winter I am alone with Jack Frost! Old men love merrier company than that. Oh! I shall die in the snow with my faggots on my back. A poor life here!”

  “I will give you gold for your cottage and whatever is in it, and then you can go and live happily in the town,” Lord George said. And he took from his coat a note for two hundred guineas, and held it across the palings.

  “Lovers are poor foolish derry-docks,” the old man muttered. “But I thank you kindly, Sir. This little sum will keep me cosy, as long as I last. Come into the cottage as soon as can be. It’s a lonely place and does my heart good to depart from it.”

  “We are going to be married this afternoon, in the town,” said Lord George. “We will come straight back to our home.”

  “May you be happy!” replied the woodman. “You’ll find me gone when you come.”

  And the lovers thanked him and went their way.

  “Are you very rich?” Jenny asked. “Ought you to have bought the cottage for that great price?”

  “Would you love me as much if I were quite poor, little Jenny?” he asked her after a pause.

  “I did not know you were rich when I saw you across the stream,” she said.

  And in his heart Lord George made a good resolve. He would put away from him all his worldly possessions. All the money that he had won at the clubs, fairly or foully, all that hideous accretion of gold guineas, he would distribute among the comrades he had impoverished. As he walked, with the sweet and trustful girl at his side, the vague record of his infamy assailed him, and a look of pain shot behind his smooth mask. He would atone. He would shun no sacrifice that might cleanse his soul. All his fortune he would put from him. Follard Chase he would give back to Sir Follard. He would sell his house in St. James’s Square. He would keep some little part of his patrimony, enough for him in the wood with Jenny, but no more.

  “I shall be quite poor, Jenny!” he said.

  And they talked of the things that lovers love to talk of, how happy they would be together and how economical. As they were passing Herbert’s pastry shop, which as my little readers know, still stands in Kensington, Jenny looked up rather wistfully into her lover’s ascetic face.

  “Should you think me greedy,” she asked him, “if I wanted a bun? They have beautiful buns here!”

  Buns! The simple word started latent memories of his childhood. Jenny was only a child after all. Buns! He had forgotten what they were like. And as they looked at the piles of variegated cakes in the window, he said to her, “Which are buns, Jenny? I should like to have one, too.”

  “I am almost afraid of you,” she said. “You must despise me so. Are you so good that you deny yourself all the vanity and pleasure that most people love? It is wonderful not to know what buns are! The round, brown, shiny cakes, with little raisins in them, are buns.”

  So he bought two beautiful buns, and they sat together in the shop, eating them. Jenny bit hers rather diffidently, but was reassured when he said that they must have buns very often in the cottage. Yes! he, the famous toper and gourmet of St. James’s, relished this homely fare, as it passed through the insensible lips of his mask to the palate. He seemed to rise, from the consumption of his bun, a better man.

  But there was no time to lose now. It was already past two o’clock. So he got a chaise from the inn opposite the pastry-shop, and they were swiftly driven to Doctors’ Commons. There he purchased a special licence. When the clerk asked him to write his name upon it, he hesitated. What name should he assume? Under a mask he had wooed this girl, under an unreal name he must make her his bride. He loathed himself for a trickster. He had vilely stolen from her the love she would not give him. Even now, should he not confess himself the man whose face had frightened her, and go his way? And yet, surely, it was not just that he, whose soul was transfigured, should bear his old name. Surely George Hell was dead, and his name had died with him. So he dipped a pen in the ink and wrote “George Heaven,” for want of a better name. And Jenny wrote “Jenny Mere” beneath it.

  An hour later they were married according to the simple rites of a dear little registry-office in Covent Garden.

  And in the cool evening they went home.

  IV

  In the cottage that had been the woodman’s they had a wonderful honeymoon. No king and queen in any palace of gold were happier than they. For them their tiny cottage was a palace, and the flowers that filled the garden were their courtiers. Long and careless and full of kisses were the days of their reign.

  Sometimes, indeed, strange dreams troubled Lord George’s sleep. Once he dreamed that he stood knocking and knocking at the great door of a castle. It was a bitter night. The frost enveloped him. No one came. Presently he heard a footstep in the hall beyond, and a pair of frightened eyes peered at him through the grill. Jenny was scanning his face. She would not open to him. With tears and wild words he besought her, but she would not open to him. Then, very stealthily he crept round the castle and found a small casement in the wall. It was open. He climbed swiftly, quietly, through it. In the darkness of the room some one ran to him and kissed him gladly. It was Jenny. With a cry of joy and shame he awoke. By his side lay Jenny, sleeping like a little child.

  After all, what was a dream to him? It could not mar the reality of his daily happiness. He cherished his true penitence for the evil he had done in the past. The past! That was indeed the only unreal thing that lingered in his life. Every day its substance dwindled, grew fainter yet, as he lived his rustic honeymoon. Had he not utterly put it from him? Had he not, a few hours after his marriage, written to his lawyer, declaring solemnly that he, Lord George Hell, had forsworn the world, that he was where no man would find him, that he desired all his worldly goods to be distributed, thus and thus, among these and those of his companions? By this testament he had verily atoned for the wrong he had done, had made himself dead indeed to the world.

  No address had he written upon this document. Though its injunctions were final and binding, it could betray no clue of his hiding-place. For the rest, no one would care to seek him out. He, who had done no good to human creature, would pass unmourned out of memory. The clubs, doubtless, would laugh and puzzle over his strange recantations, envious of whomever he had enriched. They would say ‘twas a good riddance of a rogue, and soon forget him.[4] But she, whose prime patron he had been, who had loved him in her vile fashion, La Gambogi, would she forget him easily, like the rest? As the sweet days went by, her spectre, also, grew fainter and less formidable. She knew his mask indeed, but how should she find him in the cottage near Kensington? Devia dulcedo latebrarum! He was safe-hidden with his bride. As for the Italian, she might search and search—or had forgotten him, in the arms of another lover.

  Yes! Few and faint became the blemishes of his honeymoon. At first he had felt that his waxen mask, though it had been the means of his happiness, was rather a barrier ‘twixt him and his bride. Though it was sweet to kiss her through it, to look at her through it with loving eyes, yet there were times when it incommoded him with its mockery. Could he put it from him! Yet that, of course, could not be. He must wear it all his life. And so, as days went by, he grew reconciled to his mask. No longer did he feel it jarring on his face. It seemed to become a very part of him, and, for all its rigid material, it did forsooth express the one emotion that filled him, true love. The face for whose sake Jenny gave him her heart could not but be dear to this George Heaven, also.

  Every day chastened him with its joy. They lived a very simple life, he and Jenny. They rose betimes, like the birds, for whose goodness they both had so sincere a love. Bread and honey and little strawberries were their morning fare, and in the evening they had seed-cake and dewberry wine. Jenny herself made the wine, and her husband drank it, in strict moderation, never more than two glasses. He thought it tasted far better than the Regent’s cherry brandy, or the Tokay at Brooks’s. Of these treasured topes he had indeed, nearly forgotten the taste. The wine made from wild berries by his little bride was august enough for his palate. Sometimes, after they had dined thus, he would play the flute to her upon the moonlit lawn, or tell her of the great daisy-chain he was going to make for her on the morrow, or sit silently by her side, listening to the nightingale, till bedtime. So admirably simple were their days.

  V

  One morning, as he was helping Jenny to water the flowers, he said to her suddenly, “Sweetheart, we had forgotten!”

  “What was there we should forget?” asked Jenny, looking up from her task.

  “’Tis the mensiversary of our wedding,” her husband answered gravely. “We must not let it pass without some celebration.”

  “No indeed,” she said, “we must not. What shall we do?”

  Between them they decided upon an unusual feast. They would go into the village and buy a bag of beautiful buns and eat them in the afternoon. So soon, then, as all the flowers were watered, they set forth to Herbert’s shop, bought the buns and returned home in very high spirits, George bearing a paper bag that held no less than twelve of the wholesome delicacies. Under the plane-tree on the lawn Jenny sat her down, and George stretched himself at her feet. They were loth to enjoy their feast too soon. They dallied in childish anticipation. On the little rustic table Jenny built up the buns, one above another, till they looked like a tall pagoda. When, very gingerly, she had crowned the structure with the twelfth bun, her husband looking on with admiration, she clapped her hands and danced about it. She laughed so loudly (for, though she was only sixteen years old, she had a great sense of humour) that the table shook, and alas! the pagoda tottered and fell to the lawn. Swift as a kitten, Jenny chased the buns, as they rolled, hither and thither, over the grass, catching them deftly with her hand. Then she came back, flushed and merry under her tumbled hair, with her arm full of buns. She began to put them back in the paper bag.

  “Dear husband,” she said, looking down to him, “Why do not you too smile at my folly? Your grave face rebukes me. Smile, or I shall think I vex you. Please smile a little.”

  But the mask could not smile, of course. It was made for a mirror of true love, and it was grave and immobile. “I am very much amused, dear,” he said, “at the fall of the buns, but my lips will not curve to a smile. Love of you has bound them in spell.”

  “But I can laugh, though I love you. I do not understand.” And she wondered. He took her hand in his and stroked it gently, wishing it were possible to smile. Some day, perhaps, she would tire of this monotonous gravity, this rigid sweetness. It was not strange that she should long for a little facial expression. They sat silently.

  “Jenny, what is it?” he whispered suddenly. For Jenny, with wide-open eyes, was gazing over his head, across the lawn. “Why do you look frightened?”

  “There is a strange woman smiling at me across the palings,” she said. “I do not know her.”

  Her husband’s heart sank. Somehow, he dared not turn his head to the intruder.

  “She is nodding to me,” said Jenny. “I think she is foreign, for she has an evil face.”

  “Do not notice her,” he whispered. “Does she look evil?”

  “Very evil and very dark. She has a pink parasol. Her teeth are like ivory.”

  “Do not notice her. Think! It is the mensiversary of our wedding, dear!”

  “I wish she would not smile at me. Her eyes are like bright blots of ink.”

  “Let us eat our beautiful buns!”

  “Oh, she is coming in!” George heard the latch of the gate jar. “Forbid her to come in!” whispered Jenny, “I am afraid!” He heard the jar of heels on the gravel path. Yet he dared not turn. Only he clasped Jenny’s hand more tightly, as he waited for the voice. It was La Gambogi’s.

  “Pray, pray, pardon me! I could not mistake the back of so old a friend.”

  With the courage of despair, George turned and faced the woman.

  “Even,” she smiled, “though his face has changed marvellously.”

  “Madam,” he said, rising to his full height and stepping between her and his bride, “begone, I command you, from this garden. I do not see what good is to be served by the renewal of our acquaintance.”

  “Acquaintance!” murmured La Gambogi, with an arch of her beetle-brows. “Surely we were friends, rather, nor is my esteem for you so dead that I would crave estrangement.”

  “Madam,” rejoined Lord George, with a tremor in his voice, “you see me happy, living very peacefully with my bride——”

  “To whom, I beseech you, old friend, present me.”

  “I would not,” he said hotly, “desecrate her sweet name by speaking it with so infamous a name as yours.”

  “Your choler hurts me, old friend,” said La Gambogi, sinking composedly upon the garden-seat and smoothing the silk of her skirts.

  “Jenny,” said George, “then do you retire, pending this lady’s departure, to the cottage.” But Jenny clung to his arm. “I were less frightened at your side,” she whispered. “Do not send me away!”

  “Suffer her pretty presence,” said La Gambogi. “Indeed I am come this long way from the heart of the town, that I may see her, no less than you, George. My wish is only to befriend her. Why should she not set you a mannerly example, giving me welcome? Come and sit by me, little bride, for I have things to tell you. Though you reject my friendship, give me, at least, the slight courtesy of audience. I will not detain you overlong, will be gone very soon. Are you expecting guests, George? On dirait une masque champêtre!” She eyed the couple critically. “Your wife’s mask,” she said, “is even better than yours.”

  “What does she mean?” whispered Jenny. “Oh, send her away!”

  “Serpent,” was all George could say, “crawl from our Eden, ere you poison with your venom its fairest denizen.”

  La Gambogi rose. “Even my pride,” she cried passionately, “knows certain bounds. I have been forbearing, but even in my zeal for friendship I will not be called ‘serpent.’ I will indeed be gone from this rude place. Yet, ere I go, there is a boon I will deign to beg. Show me, oh, show me but once again, the dear face I have so often caressed, the lips that were dear to me!”

  George started back.

  “What does she mean?” whispered Jenny.

  “In memory of our old friendship,” continued La Gambogi, “grant me this piteous favour. Show me your own face but for one instant, and I vow that I will never again remind you that I live. Intercede for me, little bride. Bid him unmask for me. You have more authority over him than I. Doff his mask with your own uxorious fingers.”

  “What does she mean?” was the refrain of poor Jenny.

  “If,” said George, gazing sternly at his traitress, “you do not go now, of your own will, I must drive you, man though I am, violently from the garden.”

  “Doff your mask and I am gone.”

  George made a step of menace towards her.

  “False saint!” she shrieked, “then I will unmask you.”

  Like a panther she sprang upon him and clawed at his waxen cheeks. Jenny fell back, mute with terror. Vainly did George try to free himself from his assailant, who writhed round and round him, clawing, clawing at what Jenny fancied to be his face. With a wild cry, Jenny fell upon the furious creature and tried, with all her childish strength, to release her dear one. The combatives swayed to and fro, a revulsive trinity. There was a loud pop, as though some great cork had been withdrawn, and La Gambogi recoiled. She had torn away the mask. It lay before her upon the lawn, upturned to the sky.

  George stood motionless. La Gambogi stared up into his face, and her dark flush died swiftly away. For there, staring back at her, was the man she had unmasked, but lo! his face was even as his mask had been. Line for line, feature for feature, it was the same. ‘Twas a saint’s face.

  “Madam,” he said, in the calm voice of despair, “your cheek may well blanch, when you regard the ruin you have brought upon me. Nevertheless do I pardon you. The gods have avenged, through you, the imposture I wrought upon one who was dear to me. For that unpardonable sin I am punished. As for my poor bride, whose love I stole by the means of that waxen semblance, of her I cannot ask pardon. Ah, Jenny, Jenny, do not look at me. Turn your eyes from the foul reality that I dissembled.” He shuddered and hid his face in his hands. “Do not look at me. I will go from the garden. Nor will I ever curse you with the odious spectacle of my face. Forget me, forget me.”

 

1 2 3 4