By Wit of Woman, Arthur W. Marchmont [best books to read in your 20s .TXT] 📗

then; and you have to think, not of yourself, not of any mere personal desire, any smaller end, but of your country."

"'Mere personal desire,'" he repeated. "Is that how you read it?"

"It is what your countrymen would call it—your countrymen, who will look to you to do your duty. They must not look in vain."

He made no reply but sat smoking, his brow gathered in deep furrows of thought.

"There are two Count Karls," I continued. "The one who years ago lived a life which made men proud of him, and filled them with trust and confidence in his power and vigour. The real Karl; the man who at the call of patriotism and the counsel of a friend, was even strong enough to let himself be condemned in the eyes of the girl he cared for as cowardly, selfish, and false. That was the real Karl. The other was but an ignoble man; a purposeless parody of the real and true; and he, I thank God, exists no longer. But the noble Karl has to face again to-day the same hard problem he solved so roughly and crudely years ago. With this difference however—the girl knows all now and will help him."

The trouble in his face deepened and he shook his head slowly. "No, no. I cannot."

"Yes, you must. We must, Karl. We don't make our lives; we do but live them."

"I cannot," he repeated, heaving a great sigh.

"We have no choice. I have seen this throughout. If I have helped you—as I love to think I have—to tear aside the coils that were binding you fast to the wheels of ruin, I have done it in full knowledge of all this; of what must be; of what neither you nor I nor we two together, if we were true to ourselves, could possibly prevent. You must not, you shall not be false to your duty and your country."

"No, no. It is too much to ask."

"In so far as I have helped you, I have a right to ask you. I press that right with all my power."

His face changed and with a glance of resistance, he answered, quickly:

"It may be easy since you do not care——"

"Karl!" The cry stopped him. His look changed again, and he tossed up his hands and drooped his head.

"I am ashamed," he murmured. "Heaven knows, I have not your strength."

"Don't make that mistake. This is as hard for me as it can be for you. Harder perhaps, for to a woman her heart thoughts must be always more than to a man. Our lives are so much emptier. We need have no concealment now. When I first met you here, I thought—so little does a woman know her heart—that the old feeling was dead; that the long-nurtured resentment of the past had killed it. I was hot against you when you did not recognize me, and burned with indignation. But I did not know."

"Nor yesterday, when we spoke together?" he broke in, eagerly.

"Ah, yes, I began to know then, and to be glad. Not glad with the joy of expected happiness; but so glad that I had been wrong in the years between. But when, to-night, I found this"—and I took out the little ribbon favour—"then indeed I knew all."

He held out his hand. "Give it me."

"Better not, far better not. We must be strong; and this can only be a source of weakness. We will face together that which must be faced and destroy it."

"No," he cried, earnestly. "No. It is mine. I will keep it. Give it me."

"Of what use is it? A mere piece of tawdry faded ribbon when I have given you all my heart."

"Christabel!" His outstretched hand fell as he spoke.

I crossed to his chair and stood by him and laid my hand on his shoulder, looking down into his face. "You will be strong, Karl. I trust you to destroy it;" and I held it out to him.

Instead of taking it he seized my hand and pressed his lips upon it. "If I lose you, I shall go back to what I was," he said, holding my hand and looking up.

I shook my head and smiled. "I have not so little faith in you as that. I, like your countrymen, appeal to the real Karl, and I know we shall not appeal in vain. You have a noble part to play in life, and you will play it nobly as becomes you—and I shall watch you play it, proud to think that I have helped you to be worthy of it and of yourself."

"My God, I cannot give you up," he cried, desperately. "I cannot go back to the lonesomeness of those years. You don't know what they have been to me—desolate, empty, mournful, purposeless. If you bring them back to me after this, I—Christabel, you must not."

"Is that weakness worthy of you or of me?"

"You don't understand. It was bad enough and black enough when my only thought was that I had had your love and had wantonly killed it; that was purgatory. But now, meaning to do well, what have you done but ill? You have shown me happiness, only to shut the gates upon me and drive me out into the black misery again. If you love me, you will never do that—you could not."

I went back to my seat. "You make this very hard for me—for us both. So much harder than it need be. You had better go now, and leave this where it is. Yet I had hoped."

"Hoped what?"

"That I could help you to be strong enough to do the only right thing. And you kill my hope by thinking only of yourself. I would have had you act from the higher motive; but if you will not, the fault is not mine. You force me to say what must be said. Decide as you will, it can make no difference. I can never be to you what you wish: and what, were things other than they are, I would wish with my whole heart. But I could have been your friend—and that you make impossible."

"Christabel!"

"I mean it. I could never be the friend of a man who would set a woman above his duty and his honour, even though that woman were myself. I thought so much better of you."

"You are hard and unjust to me," he cried.

"No no. I am hard to myself, but only just to you. But let it be as you will."

He rose and began to pace the room.

"You had better go. I have failed with you; and failing, must lose all I had wished to win—my own purpose and all. I shall not see you again. You have made it impossible. I shall leave Pesth to-morrow—with all my efforts failed."

"No," he burst out almost violently, stopping close and facing me. "If you go, you know how it will be with me."

I looked at him firmly, and after a pause said in a deliberate tone: "If you cannot rise to the higher life, what matters to your country if you fall to the lower. And as with your country, so with me."

The words cut him till he winced as in pain, and dropped again into a seat.

"Can you say that—to me?"

My heart was wrung at the sight of his anguish, but I would not let him see it. "You had better go—please," I said; for the silence became intolerable.

He paid no heed to my words, but sat on and on in this attitude of dejected despair; and when after the long silence he looked up his face was grey with the struggle, so that I dared not look into his eyes for fear my resolve would be broken and I should yield. For firm as my words had been, my heart was all aching and pleading to do what he wished.

"You need not turn your eyes from me, Christabel," he said, a little unsteady in tone. "You have beaten me. It shall be as you say; although I would rather die than go back to the desert. Pray God the victory will cost you less than it costs me to yield."

I think he could read in my eyes what the cost was likely to be to me: I am sure my heart was speaking through them in the moment while my tongue could find no words.

"I knew you would be true to yourself," I said at length.

"No, anything but that. No credit to me. I only yield because to resist means your abandonment of what you hold so dear. That must not be in any case."

"Whatever the reason, your decision is right. Your country——"

"No, that has nothing to do with it. Less than nothing, indeed. You and I must at least see the truth clearly. I have no sympathy with the Patriot movement. I have never had. That has always been the cause of dispute with my family. I hold it all to be a huge mistake and folly. I am doing this for you—and you only. Now, more than ever, I shall hate the cause; for it has helped to rob me of—you."

I had no answer to that—indeed, what answer could I have made except to pour out some of the feelings that filled my heart, and thus have made things harder for us both.

He sat a moment, as if waiting for me to speak, then sighed wearily and rose. "I had better go now, as you said. I suppose now you will let me see you again."

"Of course. To-morrow. Meanwhile, until I do see you, I wish you to go somewhere and not show yourself."

"All places are alike to me—again," he replied, with dreary indifference.

"I wish you to go and stay with Colonel Katona, and stay in his house until I send to you."

"Colonel Katona! Is he here? Why?"

"His daughter is my friend. It was he who came to the window to-night, seeking news of her."

"Has he a daughter? I didn't know. But why look for her here of all places in the world?"

"I will tell you the story another time. It is mixed up now with mine. But I do not wish you to speak of her to her father."

"She is nothing to me; I can promise that easily enough."

I touched the bell, and told James Perry to have the carriage brought at once to the door.

"When shall I see you? To-morrow, really? You know the danger."

"That danger is past," I said, firmly.

"You have more confidence in me than I have."

"After to-night I shall never falter in that confidence."

"I thank you for that, Christabel, I shall try;" and he smiled. As he withdrew his eyes they fell upon the wisp of ribbon lying on the table. He picked it up, gazed at it, then raised it to his lips and laid it again on the table. "You still wish this to be destroyed?" he asked, keeping his gaze averted.

Simple as were the words and the act, I could not find an answer on the instant. "It is best so," I murmured at length.

"Very well," and he turned away. "You are always right. Of course, it's only—folly and—and weakness."

We heard the carriage drive to the door then. He started and held out his hand; then as if with a sudden thought, he said; "I had forgotten about you. I am so self-wrapped, you see. What are you going to do?"

"I shall stay here to-night."

"Is it safe, do you think?"

"I have my servants here."

"Besides, you are so fearless yourself. Good-night. It is all so strange. I feel as if I should never see you again. And I suppose in a way that's true. As things are to be in the future, it won't be you, in one sense. You said there were two Karls—and now there are to be two Christabels. That sounds like a bad joke, but it feels much more like a sorry tragedy;" and he sighed heavily.

He went out then to the carriage,