Читать книгу A Woman of Samaria - Rita - Страница 6

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Days drifted by. Preparations for the wedding were in full swing. A large order had gone up to a famous London house celebrated for trousseaux, and Miss Tatton was busy on sundry gowns that were to be built on styles popularised by ladies' fashion papers. Cynthia was in a chronic state of excitement.

The honeymoon was to be spent in Paris and Italy, and a promise of a visit to Worth filled her with rapture, duly dashed by misgivings that the great Sartorial King has no enthusiasm for figures of the pocket Venus type. And during these days, flooded with sunshine, perfumed with Spring, joyous with bird's songs, breaking leafage, budding flowers, Dolores moved about the house pale, listless, heavy-eyed.

Her thoughts swept to and fro, a restless sea with but one refrain. She lived in a fevered dream from which Hope gradually withdrew all promise. Suspense was fastening on her heart, and sapping her life, and she knew she must soon face a dilemma from which no one could extricate her.

At last the letter came. It was at breakfast time, and as her father opened the post-bag and handed out the various missives, a wave of crimson swept the pallor from her cheek. It had come: she held it in her hand. Her eyes devoured the familiar writing. Oh! why had she doubted? It was wrong, it was unworthy.

She would not read her letter at the table. She put it in her pocket until she should be alone. She could not eat. Food seemed to choke her, but she drank her tea thirstily and with haste. How long the others were. It seemed as if they would never finish. Then came prayers, and at last the moment of escape.

Turning an indifferent ear to the suggestion of household duties, she escaped into the garden and from thence to the little ivy-coloured tumble-down summer house which had been the trysting-place of her young lover and herself. Here there would be no fear of interruption. She drew out the precious missive, and with trembling fingers tore open the envelope. It was a long letter. Her eyes swept the first page, taking in the meaning more than the actual words. As she read her pulses seemed to grow still. A chill as of death struck her heart and swept slowly downwards through her limbs. She could not move or rise. She hardly breathed.

She read on by some mechanical instinct, losing consciousness almost of her own identity, and seeing nothing before her but a wounded, stricken creature, who presently must rise and face life despoiled of hope, who would stagger along the road of a long and shameful journey with a knife-thrust in her heart.

What she read was the precious reasoning of a selfish passion wearied of its conquest. "Your fears are fanciful and absurd," he wrote. "It is impossible for me to acknowledge our marriage at present. I should wreck my whole career at its outset. I must start free and untrammelled. Your letter is simply a morbid and hysterical outburst, the outcome of girlish ignorance. When you grow calmer you will be ashamed of what you have said, and the foolish accusations you have made. I am not inconstant, and I love you very dearly. I am also prepared to carry out my promise to you in proper time, but at my own discretion. But as matters are at present it would be madness. I can't wreck all my future to satisfy a whim of yours. Perhaps in two years' time——"

She gave a gasp. The letter fell from her hand. Two years—two years! Could he not understand what she had written?

The shock stupefied her for a moment. Thought reeled and surged, her senses seemed escaping.

Had he ceased to love her? Was she no longer the one dear and desirable thing in life, as he had called her that night on the moorland? That night! How long ago was it? Years? Centuries? Surely never a few months back, an autumn holiday dating a first meeting, a new relationship?

All youth and ardour died out of her heart. She felt old and chill, and the bare cold prose of life stared her in the face. He was far away. The ocean rolled between them. It would be a month before another letter could reach him, and another month ere reply could come. Months—when weeks were now winged with terror. Even her ignorance told her that.

She looked at the scattered sheets. "He doesn't love me, he doesn't want me," she moaned, and again reason whirled itself into a chaos of suffering.

To be unloved, undesired, at such a crisis in her life. The shame and humiliation of the thought stung her to fury. She seized the letter and tore it into fragments, never remembering that it contained the address at Shanghai, where she was to write. But in her then mood all thought of further plea or petition was banished.

To be of any use, of any help in her present dilemma, she must have heard that he would send for her at once. Instead of that he refused to acknowledge their marriage, and spoke of "a year or two" further waiting.

She laughed harshly, strangely. The sound of it startled and recalled her to her senses. Her face was like marble, so stern and cold and colourless had it grown in this brief time. She raised her clasped hands heavenwards.

"I promised to keep our secret," she said, whisperingly. "I will keep it. But as God hears me, Cyril Grey, I will never forgive you these cruel words!"

With her heel she stamped the torn scraps of paper into the damp ground, and with one look of despair around that place of many memories she turned and left it—for ever.