Bye-Ways Part 21

"Is he?" Bellairs answered. He sat down beside her and tried to take her hand. But she would not let him.

"No," she said. "No, it's no use. I have made a ghastly mistake, but I will not make another. Oh, forgive me, do forgive me!"

"How can I? If you will not try to love me my life is ruined."

"Don't say that. It's no use to try to love. You know that. We must just let ourselves alone. Love comes, or hate, just as G.o.d wills it. We can only accept our fate."

"As G.o.d wills," Bellairs said pa.s.sionately; "why do you say that, when you know it is not true?"

"Not true--Mr Bellairs!"

"Yes. If you echoed the will of G.o.d how could I blame you? We must all do that--at least, when we are good. And those of us who are wicked I suppose echo the Devil. But you--what do you echo?"

"I--I echo no one. I don't understand you."

"But you shall, before it is too late. Betty, be yourself. Emanc.i.p.ate your soul. You are the echo of that woman, of Clarice. Don't you see it?

Don't you know it? You are her echo--and she hates me!"

Betty drew back from him--she was evidently alarmed.

"Are you mad?" she said. "Why do you say such things to me? Clarice and I love each other, it is true, but our real natures are totally different. She does not hate you, nor do I. She has never said one word against you to me. She has always told me how much she liked you. What are you saying?"

"The truth!"

"I--her echo! Why, then--then if that were the case she must have loved you, or thought she loved you. Do you dare to tell me that?"

"I do not say that," Bellairs answered hopelessly.

"Of course not. The idea is so absurd. Clarice--oh! how can you talk like this? And if I am only an echo, as you call it, how can you say you care for me, care for another woman's shadow? You do not love me."

"I do--with all my heart."

"And yet you say I am nothing, that I have not even a heart of my own, that I love or hate at the will of another."

"Forgive me, forgive me! I don't know what I say. I only know I love you."

Her face softened.

"And you deserve to be loved," she said; "but I--it is so horrible--I cannot!"

Suddenly Bellairs caught her in his arms.

"You shall," he exclaimed, "you shall. I will make you." But she pushed him back with a strange strength, and her face hardened till he scarcely recognised it.

"Don't do that--don't touch me--or you'll make me hate you," she said vehemently.

Bellairs let her go. At that moment there was a step on the deck.

Clarice appeared. She did not seem to notice that anything was wrong.

She smiled.

"Isn't it sad, Mr Bellairs," she said, "we sail to-morrow. I love Luxor.

I can't bear to leave it."

Bellairs suddenly turned and hurried away. He could no longer trust himself. There was blood before his eyes.

It was dawn. The Nile was smooth as a river of oil. Light mists rolled upwards gently, discovering the rosy flanks of the Libyan mountains to the sun. The sky began to glimmer with a dancing golden heat. On the brown bank where the boats lie in the shadow a man stood alone. His hands were tightly clenched. His lips worked silently. His eyes were fixed in a stare. And away in the distance up river, a tiny trail of smoke floated towards Luxor. It came from a steam tug that drew a following dahabeeyah.

The _Queen Hatasoo_ was on her voyage to a.s.souan.

THE FACE OF THE MONK

I

"No, it will not hurt him to see you," the doctor said to me; "and I have no doubt he will recognise you. He is the quietest patient I have ever had under my care--gentle, kind, agreeable, perfect in conduct, and yet quite mad. You know him well?"

"He was my dearest friend," I said. "Before I went out to America three years ago we were inseparable. Doctor, I cannot believe that he is mad, he--Hubert Blair--one of the cleverest young writers in London, so brilliant, so acute! Wild, if you like, a libertine perhaps, a strange mixture of the intellectual and the sensual--but mad! I can't believe it!"

"Not when I tell you that he was brought to me suffering from acute religious mania?"

"Religious! Hubert Blair!"

"Yes. He tried to destroy himself, declaring that he was unfit to live, that he was a curse to some person unknown. He protested that each deed of his affected this unknown person, that his sins were counted as the sins of another, and that this other had haunted him--would haunt him for ever."

The doctor's words troubled me.

"Take me to him," I said at last. "Leave us together."

It was a strange, sad moment when I entered the room in which Hubert was sitting. I was painfully agitated. He knew me, and greeted me warmly. I sat down opposite to him.

There was a long silence. Hubert looked away into the fire. He saw, I think, traced in scarlet flames, the scenes he was going to describe to me; and I, gazing at him, wondered of what nature the change in my friend might be. That he had changed since we were together three years ago was evident, yet he did not look mad. His dark, clean-shaven young face was still pa.s.sionate. The brown eyes were still lit with a certain devouring eagerness. The mouth had not lost its mingled sweetness and sensuality. But Hubert was curiously transformed. There was a dignity, almost an elevation, in his manner. His former gaiety had vanished. I knew, without words, that my friend was another man--very far away from me now. Yet once we had lived together as chums, and had no secrets the one from the other.

At last Hubert looked up and spoke.

"I see you are wondering about me," he said.

"Yes."

"I have altered, of course--completely altered."

"Yes," I said, awkwardly enough. "Why is that?"