The Chink in the Armour Part 44

"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.

"G.o.d 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 pa.s.sionately 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 friends.h.i.+p? 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 encompa.s.sed, 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 a.s.sertion 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."