CHAPTER XXIII.
“It does not matter in the least, mother. I am glad Sweetheart destroyed the infamous thing. I only wish she could blot it out from my mind, too,” Norman said, impatiently.
He rose, shook himself—for he had been sitting still until he was cramped and weary—and continued:
“I will not write to her, mother. I will ask you to deliver a message to her. Say that I accept her terms—separation instead of divorce. It will amount to the same thing in the end,” curtly. “For the rest, she has her choice—to live at Verelands or rent it out. You and I will be gone away—that is”—bitterly—“if you elect to follow the fortunes of your erring son.”
“I shall go with you, dear. You are all I have, and I can not part with you. I will carry your message to Camille; yet, poor soul, I pity her, and I fear you are making a great mistake, my son,” she ventured.
But he went without a word.
When she saw Camille’s tears—when she heard her passionate protestations of innocence, her wild prayers for her husband’s pardon—Mrs. de Vere could not help but pity the passionate, undisciplined creature. She spoke only the kindest words to her; she promised her that in time she would win her husband’s heart back to her, if it had not turned to ice.
“Only be prudent and good, Camille. Shun all other men and live only for your husband, and all will come right,” she advised, in her ignorance of Norman’s true reasons.
Camille clung to her, protesting passionate gratitude. Indeed, she was eager to enlist her mother-in-law’s influence on her side.
“You will let me settle some money on you? I will be so glad to do something to show my gratitude!” she pleaded; but Mrs. de Vere gently declined the offer, and went back presently with the news that Camille would leave Verelands in a few hours.
Norman received the news with icy calmness—calmness that filled his mother with wonder. She knew how deeply he had loved his beautiful bride, how patiently he had borne with her caprices and reproaches. Had love failed at last underher ceaseless exactions, or was this the calm of a terrible despair—
“Despair that spurns atonement’s power?”
“Despair that spurns atonement’s power?”
“Despair that spurns atonement’s power?”
“Despair that spurns atonement’s power?”
He made no comment on the news she brought.
“I shall stay at the Hotel Française to-night,” he said. “In the morning I will come back to Verelands, and if you can get ready to go with me we will go to Virginia and leave Sweetheart with the Hintons. Then,” half bitterly, “the world will be all before us where to choose. But I think I shall go to New York, for I must find work now. I shall no longer be that ignoble thing—a man dependent on a rich wife.”
The bitterness of the closing words gave her a passing glimpse into the pangs his pride had suffered in his marriage. She sighed, but did not reply. She had the bitter memory always with her that she had helped to forge his chains. Ah, if she only had it all to go over again, how changed all would be! But the glitter of gold had blinded her to all she should have known.
She went about her duties in a dazed, miserable fashion, unable to see any light fringing the dark cloud that hung over Verelands. When Camille, deathly pale and wretched-looking, came to bid her farewell, she could not restrain her tears at the breaking up of their domestic life.
“I am going abroad,” said Camille. “Finette goes with me. I had to take her back because she is devoted to my interests, and is the truest friend I have now. I will write to you, dear Mrs. de Vere, and you shall always know where I am, so that if Norman relents, he will always know where to find me.”
Mrs. de Vere was sorry for the desolate creature, in spite of her glaring faults. She tried to impart some consolation to her, and if Camille knew how vain her hopes were, she made no sign. She kept up a faint pretense of clinging to hope.
“And as for the child, my dear, I believe you were all wrong about that. Norman is going to send her away. There was another man saved from the wreck who wanted Sweetheart very much, and she will be sent to him,” said the elder lady, believing that this news would comfort Camille very much.
It did, for she saw in it a concession to her prejudices, made by Norman even while he pretended to defy her. She had rendered it impossible for him to keep the child. She listened with silent exultation.
“I have triumphed although driven away in disgrace, and I will yet return to his heart and home. He has no real proof of my guilt, and time will make his impressions fainter until they seem mere illusions,” she muttered, as she turned away from the beautiful home in which she had made such cruel havoc of Norman de Vere’s happiness.
Night fell darkly over the fairy-like home, and a strange, heavy silence seemed to settle down about it. Toward ten o’clock the silence was broken by a startling ring at the door-bell. When the door was opened a group of men came in, bearing among them the unconscious form of the master of the house.
Shrinking sensitively from scandal as he did, Norman de Vere could not forego the chastisement of Lord Stuart. It must be done to lend color to the cause of his parting from his wife.
Armed with a small whip, he had proceeded to the Hotel Française and publicly lashed Lord Stuart, alleging his flirtation with Mrs. de Vere as the cause. Lord Stuart drew a pistol and deliberately shot his assailant.
Then he fled.
Norman de Vere’s wound was in his breast, narrowly missing the heart. He was borne home to his anguished mother, and long weeks elapsed ere he was well again. Meanwhile, Lord Stuart had never been apprehended. Popular rumor declared that he had gone abroad and joined the false wife of the man he had wronged.
It was spring before Norman’s physician agreed that he should quit Jacksonville for the colder climate of New York, so much had his wound and the long fever it caused enfeebled his frame. Heaven only knew what the young man had suffered physically and mentally in that time. His pain could only be measured by the depth of the love he had felt for the woman who had proved so unworthy.
“I lived, if that may be called lifeFrom which each charm of life has fled,Happiness gone, with hope and love—In all but breath already dead.”
“I lived, if that may be called lifeFrom which each charm of life has fled,Happiness gone, with hope and love—In all but breath already dead.”
“I lived, if that may be called lifeFrom which each charm of life has fled,Happiness gone, with hope and love—In all but breath already dead.”
“I lived, if that may be called life
From which each charm of life has fled,
Happiness gone, with hope and love—
In all but breath already dead.”
While he lay suffering, an odd little letter had come to him from Paris, from Lord Stuart:
“My dear fellow, I hope you will forgive me for the suffering I caused you. My aim was bad. I only meant to give you a slight flesh wound in the shoulder, but I learn from American papers that you came near losing your life. Ihope you will live. Camille was not worth the sacrifice of your strong young life. She is not with me, as I see it rumored in the papers. I have got over my fancy for her. I hear she is in London, but I do not know. I hope you will never make up your quarrel with her, for you are too good for such a woman.”
“My dear fellow, I hope you will forgive me for the suffering I caused you. My aim was bad. I only meant to give you a slight flesh wound in the shoulder, but I learn from American papers that you came near losing your life. Ihope you will live. Camille was not worth the sacrifice of your strong young life. She is not with me, as I see it rumored in the papers. I have got over my fancy for her. I hear she is in London, but I do not know. I hope you will never make up your quarrel with her, for you are too good for such a woman.”
Camille had written, too, from London, begging to be allowed to return and nurse her husband. Mrs. de Vere was compelled to write that her son refused the offer.