For two hours she gave full sway to her insurgent feelings; but at the last every mental struggle ended in her blaming Leonard. Leonard, for her sake, ought to have avoided such a degrading quarrel--Leonard ought to have faced it the first thing the following morning, instead of that he had trifled away the whole day in Nassau Street, and the next day at Annette’s, and now Annette felt that she had the right to call his courtesy cowardice.
“Well, then, it looks like cowardice!” she sobbed passionately, “and then Saturday he told me some story about his lawyer detaining him--never once did he name Gilson to me. It looks like---- _Oh, wee! oh, wee!_ my heart will break with the shame of it! Every one will pity me. Even if some make excuses for Leonard, I shall know it is only pity for me--only pity! I cannot bear it! I cannot think of it! Father and mother must take me away--no, no, I must face the shame, smile at it, what they call ‘live it down.’ Oh, what shall I say? What shall I do? And mother is too ill to trouble. And to father I cannot complain of Leonard. Oh, Leonard! Leonard! Leonard!”
And it was while tossed from wave to wave on this flood tide of anger and sorrow that she was told Leonard was waiting to see her. She rose up hastily. Had she taken a few moments to calm herself everything might have been different. But even her opening of the doors between herself and her lover betrayed the whirl and tumult of the feelings that distracted her. Nor was this mental storm soothed by Leonard’s presence. He came eagerly forward to meet her; a pleasant smile on his face and a white rose in his hand. She took the flower from him, and threw it down upon the table; and he regarded her with amazement. Her face, her attitude, the passion of her movements, arrested the words he was eager to utter; and in that fateful pause Sappha’s unguarded, unconsidered accusations fell like the voice of doom upon his senses.
“You are a byword among men! No nice girl will be seen with you! You will never again be asked to any respectable house! Annette says so! She will be even compelled to shut her door against you!”
“Sappha, Sappha! Do you know what you are saying?”
“Only too well I know it. Annette has just been here. She has told me all. You left her to tell me. Why did you not come yourself? Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, all these days I have been in suspense and misery.”
“Listen to me, Sappha, I----”
“It is too late now. Annette has told me. I have heard it all--my heart is broken--I shall die of shame. Every one will pity me. I cannot, I cannot bear it----”
“Stop one moment, Sappha. Do you believe Annette? Do you think she will be forced to shut her door against me?”
“She says so.”
“Then Judge Bloommaert may have the same obligation--and you also. If you can believe this, you can believe anything that is said against me, your promised husband. It is I who am heartbroken. It is I who must feel shame. It is I who must go all my life in the fiery shadow of wrong and injustice. Sappha, you have known me as no other person has known me,--in my inmost soul,--and yet you can believe I deserve such treatment?”
“How can I tell? If you had done anything to right yourself----”
“Oh, that is not the question. You should have trusted me through everything, and in spite of every one. You have failed me just when I needed most your love and confidence. If Annette tells you I ought to be shut out of your heart and house, you will believe her! What is your love worth? It is only a summer day’s idyll. The first chill wind of disapproval kills it. I will go before I am shut out. In future days it may be easier for you to remember that I closed the door on my own happiness. Oh, Sappha, Sappha! lighter than vapour is your love--and I had built my life upon it!”
His face expressed more indignation than distress. He lifted the rose she had flung down and looked at it with a moment’s pity; then he pushed it toward her.
“It is my last offering,” he said. “Take it. And as it fades, forget me. I shall never give you shame or trouble again.”
Then anger took entire possession of Sappha; and anger does everything wrong. She lifted the rose and cried out amid her passionate weeping:
“I will not wait for it to fade. No, I will forget you _now! now! now!_” and as she uttered the words she ruthlessly tore off the white petals, scattered them on the floor at his feet--and was gone.
Her tears, her shivering words, the utter passion of misery and tenderness that made the action almost like the slaying of a living creature, so stupefied and fascinated Leonard that for a moment he could neither move nor speak. When he recovered himself he ran to the foot of the stairs and called her. “Sappha! Sappha!” he cried. “Sappha, come back to me, I have something to tell you.” But she was gone. A slight flutter of her white gown as she turned the last angle was all he saw; and if she heard his appeal she did not answer it.
For a few minutes he waited, but the laughter of the negroes in the kitchen, coming faintly through the baize-lined doors, was the only sound he heard. Then he returned to the parlour and carefully gathered, one by one, the torn leaves. The last note Sappha had sent him was in his pocket book. He placed them between the sheets and, shutting them in the book, put it in his breast.
What was he so still for? What had he done? What had come to him? Blast, or blight, or fire, or fever? He picked up the torn rose leaves as if they were bits of his heart, and the door clashed behind him and seemed to shake the very foundations of his life. He knew that he was walking, but his heart hung heavy at his feet. All he loved was behind him--he was drifting, drifting into a darkness where love and joy would never again find him. Oh, it is only
“---- the Lord above, He only knows the strength of Love; He only knows, and He only can, The root of Love that is in a man.”
CHAPTER NINE
_The Reproof of the Sword_
Leonard’s suffering was very great, but Sappha’s was still greater. Wounded love, injustice, and disappointment can inflict mental distress that has no parallel in physical pain, but with Sappha’s misery was mingled the intolerable drop of remorse for her hasty passion. Now that all was over, now that Leonard had gone away forever, there came to her the clearest conviction that she had done him a great wrong. She remembered that she had not even given him an opportunity to explain circumstances--she had met him with passionate reproaches and flung his love gift, torn and mutilated, at his feet. After that shameful, piteous rejection what could Leonard do but go away? It was an act for which there could be no apology and no forgiveness. She cried out with the anguish this cruel, hopeless reflection caused her; and had Leonard been really present she would have fallen at his feet in an agony of love and repentance.
Prone upon her bed she lay, torturing herself by a thousand self-reproaches, and by a perpetual memory of that last look of pained amazement with which her lover had regarded her. She could not put it from her, it seemed to have exorcised every other memory of his face. With heartbroken sobs she sent after him one cry, “Forgive me! Oh, Leonard, forgive me!” But the void between them swallowed it up in silence. There was nothing to be done. The long, long days and years before her held only frustrate longings and despair. This reflection came to her as a finality, and she ceased weeping and protesting and lay dumb and passive like a child smitten by a power it can neither appease nor comprehend.
Her mother found her in this mood, and when Sappha said, “I cannot come to dinner to-day, I am in trouble. Annette told me things about Leonard, and I have sent him away forever!” the mother understood and was full of pity.
“Do not try to come down, dear,” she answered. “As soon as your father goes out, I will return to you.”
“Are you better, mother? Are you able to attend to father?”
“Yes, yes, I am well again. Ah, me, there is always sorrow at somebody’s heart!”
“It is my own fault, mother. Leonard is not to blame. I will tell you--after a little while.”
Then Mrs. Bloommaert went with a heavy heart to serve the dinner; for whether heads are aching or hearts breaking dinner is a fact that cannot be excused. She was full of anxious thought as she went about the table, placing sauces, condiments, and wines, and arranging the small details which always pleased her husband. He had been depressed and angry concerning Leonard Murray’s conduct for some days, and she wondered how the news of Sappha’s dismissal of the young man would affect him.
Contrary to all expectation he entered the house in high spirits. He was delighted to find his wife better, and able to give him her company and sympathy; and as soon as they were alone he began to talk to her about Leonard in a manner full of pride and satisfaction. Nor was he much dashed by the information that there had been a quarrel between the lovers, and a final separation.