“How shall I be silent, when at last kind heaven is about to grant the fondest desire of my heart? When, all afire with love, I am kneeling at your feet?”
Valgrand dropped to his knees. Lady Beltham drew herself up, listening. In the distance a clock struck four.
“Oh, I can bear it no longer!” she cried stammeringly. “I can bear no more! Listen; four o’clock! No, no! It is too much, too much for me!” The woman seemed absolutely frantic. She paced up and down the room like a caged animal. Then she came close to Valgrand, and looked at him with an immense pity in her eyes. “Go, sir; if you believe in God, go away! Go as quickly as you can!”
Valgrand struggled to his feet. His head was heavy, and he had an irresistible desire to hold his tongue and just stay where he was. Partly from gallantry and partly from his desire not to move, he murmured, not without a certain aptness: “I believe only in the god of love, madame, and he bids me remain!”
In vain did Lady Beltham make every effort to rouse the actor and induce him to go away; in vain were all her frantic appeals to him to fly.
“I will stay,” was all he said, and he dropped heavily on the sofa by Lady Beltham’s side, and mechanically tried to put his arm round her.
“Listen!” she began, freeing herself from him: “in heavens name you must—And yet, I cannot tell you! Oh, it is horrible! I am going mad! How am I to choose! What am I to do! Which—? Oh, go—go—go! There is not a minute to lose!”
“I will stay!” said Valgrand again; this amazing drowsiness was gaining on him so fast that he had but one desire left—for sleep! Surely a strange assignation, this, and a poor kind of lover, too!
Lady Beltham stopped her torrent of appeal, and looked at the actor crumpled up beside her. Suddenly she started and listened: a slight noise became audible, coming from the staircase. Lady Beltham stood erect and rigid: then dropped to her knees upon the floor.
“Oh! It is all over!” she sobbed.
In spite of his overwhelming longing for sleep, Valgrand suddenly started. Two heavy hands fell on his shoulder, and then his arms were pulled behind him and his wrists rapidly bound together.
“Good God!” he cried, in stupefied surprise, turning quickly round. Two men stood before him, old soldiers by the look of them, in dark uniforms relieved only by the gleam of metal buttons. He was going to say more, but one of the men laid his hand over his lips.
“Hush!” he said peremptorily.
Valgrand made frantic efforts to prevent himself from falling.
“What does this mean? Let me go! What right—”
The two men began to drag him gently away.
“Come along,” said one of them in his ear. “Time’s up. Don’t be obstinate.”
“Besides, you know it’s quite useless to resist, Gurn,” the other added, not unkindly. “Nothing in the world could—”
“I don’t understand,” Valgrand protested feebly. “Who are you? And why do you call me Gurn?”
“Let me finish,” growled one of the men irritably. “You know we are running an awful risk in getting you out of the prison and bringing you here when you are supposed to be with the chaplain; you swore you would behave squarely with us and go back when you were told. Now you’ve got to keep your promise.”
“The lady paid us well to give you an hour with her,” the other man put in, “but you’ve had more than an hour and a half, and we’ve got our characters and our situations to look after. So now, come along, Gurn, and don’t let us have any nonsense.”
Valgrand, fighting hard against his overpowering sleepiness, began to have some vague comprehension of what was happening. He recognised the uniforms, and guessed that the men were prison warders.
“Good God!” he exclaimed thickly, “the fools think I am Gurn! But I am not Gurn! Ask—” He cast a despairing eye at Lady Beltham who throughout the awful scene remained on her knees in a corner of the room, dumb with anguish, apparently deaf and turned to stone. “Tell them, madame,” he implored her. “Oh, God save me!” but still the warders dragged him towards the door. By an herculean effort he swayed them back with him into the middle of the room. “I am not Gurn, I tell you,” he shouted. “I am Valgrand, Valgrand the actor. Everybody in the world knows me. You know it too, but—Search me, I tell you,” and he made a sign with his head towards his left side. “Look in my pocketbook; my name’s inside; and you’ll find a letter too; proof of the trap I’ve been led into: the letter from that woman over there!”
“Better look and see, Nibet,” one warder said to the other, and to Valgrand he added: “Not so much noise, man! Do you mean to get us all caught?”
Nibet passed a quick hand through Valgrand’s pockets; there was no notebook there. He shrugged his shoulders.
“Besides, what about it?” he growled. “We brought Gurn here, didn’t we? Well, we’ve got to take Gurn back again. That’s all I know. Come on!”
Beaten down by the drowsiness that was quite irresistible, and worn out by his violent but futile efforts to resist the warders, Valgrand was half dragged, half carried out by the two men, his head drooping on his chest, his consciousness failing. But still as they were getting him down the stairs his voice could be heard in the half-dark room above, bleating more weakly and at longer intervals:
“I am not Gurn! I am not Gurn!”
Once more silence reigned in the room. After the three men had gone, Lady Beltham rose to her feet, tottered to the window, and stood there listening. She heard their footsteps crossing the street
