At that she raised her clearest eyes. "I promise you:not as long as you hold out.Not as long as we can look straight at each other like this. "
He dropped into his chair.What her answer really said was:"If you lift a finger you'll drive me back:back to all the abominations you know of,and all the temptations you half guess." He understood it as clearly as if she had uttered the words,and the thought kept him anchored to his side of the table in a kind of moved and sacred submission.
"What a life for you!--" he groaned.
"Oh--as long as it's a part of yours."
"And mine a part of yours?"
She nodded.
"And that's to be all--for either of us?"
"Well; it _is_ all, isn't it?"
At that he sprang up,forgetting everything but the sweetness of her face.She rose too, not as if to meet him or to flee from him,but quietly, as though the worst of the task were done and she had only to wait; so quietly that, as he came close, her outstretched hands acted not as a check but as a guide to him. They fell into his, while her arms, extended but not rigid, kept him far enough off to let her surrendered face say the rest.
They may have stood in that way for a long time,or only for a few moments;but it was long enough for her silence to communicate all she had to say,and for him to feel that only one thing mattered.He must do nothing to make this meeting their last;he must leave their future in her care,asking only that she should keep fast hold of it.
"Don't--don't be unhappy," she said,with a break in her voice, as she drew her hands away;and he answered: "You won't go back--you won't go back?" as if it were the one possibility he could not bear.
"I won't go back," she said;and turning away she opened the door and led the way into the public dining-room.
The strident school-teachers were gathering up their possessions preparatory to a straggling flight to the wharf; across the beach lay the white steam-boat at the pier; and over the sunlit waters Boston loomed in a line of haze.
XXV.
Once more on the boat, and in the presence of others,Archer felt a tranquillity of spirit that surprised as much as it sustained him.
The day, according to any current valuation,had been a rather ridiculous failure;he had not so much as touched Madame Olenska's hand with his lips,or extracted one word from her that gave promise of farther opportunities.Nevertheless, for a man sick with unsatisfied love,and parting for an indefinite period from the object of his passion,he felt himself almost humiliatingly calm and comforted.It was the perfect balance she had held between their loyalty to others and their honesty to themselves that had so stirred and yet tranquillized him; a balance not artfully calculated, as her tears and her falterings showed, but resulting naturally from her unabashed sincerity. It filled him with a tender awe, now the danger was over, and made him thank the fates that no personal vanity, no sense of playing a part before sophisticated witnesses, had tempted him to tempt her. Even after they had clasped hands for good-bye at the Fall River station, and he had turned away alone, the conviction remained with him of having saved out of their meeting much more than he had sacrificed.
He wandered back to the club,and went and sat alone in the deserted library,turning and turning over in his thoughts every separate second of their hours together. It was clear to him, and it grew more clear under closer scrutiny, that if she should finally decide on returning to Europe--returning to her husband--it would not be because her old life tempted her, even on the new terms offered. No: she would go only if she felt herself becoming a temptation to Archer, a temptation to fall away from the standard they had both set up. Her choice would be to stay near him as long as he did not ask her to come nearer; and it depended on himself to keep her just there, safe but secluded.
In the train these thoughts were still with him.They enclosed him in a kind of golden haze,through which the faces about him looked remote and indistinct:he had a feeling that if he spoke to his fellow-travellers they would not understand what he was saying. In this state of abstraction he found himself, the following morning, waking to the reality of a stifling September day in New York. The heat-withered faces in the long train streamed past him, and he continued to stare at them through the same golden blur; but suddenly, as he left the station, one of the faces detached itself, came closer and forced itself upon his consciousness. It was, as he instantly recalled, the face of the young man he had seen, the day before, passing out of the Parker House, and had noted as not conforming to type, as not having an American hotel face.
The same thing struck him now;and again he became aware of a dim stir of former associations.The young man stood looking about him with the dazed air of the foreigner flung upon the harsh mercies of American travel; then he advanced toward Archer, lifted his hat, and said in English: "Surely, Monsieur, we met in London?"
"Ah, to be sure: in London!" Archer grasped his hand with curiosity and sympathy."So you _did_ get here, after all?" he exclaimed, casting a wondering eye on the astute and haggard little countenance of young Carfry's French tutor.
"Oh, I got here--yes," M.Rivière smiled with drawn lips. "But not for long;I return the day after tomorrow." He stood grasping his light valise in one neatly gloved hand,and gazing anxiously, perplexedly, almost appealingly, into Archer's face.
"I wonder, Monsieur,since I've had the good luck to run across you, if I might--"
"I was just going to suggest it: come to luncheon, won't you?Down town, I mean: if you'll look me up in my office I'll take you to a very decent restaurant in that quarter."
M. Rivière was visibly touched and surprised."You're too kind. But I was only going to ask if you would tell me how to reach some sort of conveyance. There are no porters, and no one here seems to listen--"
"I know: our American stations must surprise you.When you ask for a porter they give you chewing-gum.But if you'll come along I'll extricate you;and you must really lunch with me, you know."
The young man, after a just perceptible hesitation,replied, with profuse thanks,and in a tone that did not carry complete conviction,that he was already engaged;but when they had reached the comparative reassurance of the street he asked if he might call that afternoon.
Archer, at ease in the midsummer leisure of the office,fixed an hour and scribbled his address,which the Frenchman pocketed with reiterated thanks and a wide flourish of his hat. A horse-car received him, and Archer walked away.
Punctually at the hour M. Rivière appeared, shaved,smoothed-out, but still unmistakably drawn and serious.Archer was alone in his office, and the young man,before accepting the seat he proffered, began abruptly:"I believe I saw you, sir, yesterday in Boston."
The statement was insignificant enough,and Archer was about to frame an assent when his words were checked by something mysterious yet illuminating in his visitor's insistent gaze.
"It is extraordinary, very extraordinary," M.Rivière continued, "that we should have met in the circumstances in which I find myself."
"What circumstances?" Archer asked, wondering a little crudely if he needed money.
M. Rivière continued to study him with tentative eyes."I have come, not to look for employment,as I spoke of doing when we last met,but on a special mission--"
"Ah--!" Archer exclaimed. In a flash the two meetings had connected themselves in his mind. He paused to take in the situation thus suddenly lighted up for him, and M. Rivière also remained silent, as if aware that what he had said was enough.
"A special mission," Archer at length repeated.