The conversation was uneasy and common-place. Marmaduke's manner was calm and composed, but his voice was low. Violet sat with her eyes upon the carpet, deadly pale, and with colourless lips. Blanche, who did not quite understand the relation between them, but who knew that Violet loved him, was anxious on her account. Vyner alone was glib and easy. He talked of parliament, and remarked, that the best thing he knew of it was, that the members always quoted Horace.
As the interview proceeded, Marmaduke's grave, cold manner became slightly tinged with irony and bitterness; and when Vyner said to him, "Apropos, what—if the question be permissible—what induces you to leave us? are you to be away long?"
He replied, with a marked emphasis, "Very long."
"Is Brazil, then, so very attractive?"
"England ceases to be attractive. I want breathing space. There I can, as Tennyson sings,—
'Burst all the links of habit—there to wander far away,On from island unto island, at the gateways of the day.'"
Blanche, mildly interposing, said,—
"But what does he also sing, and in the same poem?
'Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.'"
Violet's eyes were fixed upon the ground.
"And, after all—poetry aside—what are you going to do with yourself in that hot climate?"
"To marry, perhaps," he said, carelessly, and with a forced laugh.
Violet shook all over; but she did not raise her eyes.
"An heiress?" asked Vyner.
"No,—to continue Tennyson,—
'I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.'"
There was singular bitterness, as he added,—
"In those climates, the passions are not cramped by the swaddling clothes of civilisation; their franker natures better suit my own impulsiveness; when they love they love—they do not stultify their hearts with intricate sophisms."
Violet now raised her large eyes, and, with mournful steadiness, reproached him by a look, for the words he had just uttered. He met her look with one as steady, but flashing with scorn.
"Well, for my part," said Vyner, tapping his snuff-box, "Brazil would have little attraction for me, especially if the women are violent. I can't bear violent women."
Marmaduke had expected some remark from Violet in answer to his speech; but that one look was her only answer, and she was now as intently examining the carpet as before. He noticed her paleness, and the concentrated calmness of her manner, and it irritated him the more.
Blanche, with true feminine sagacity, saw it was desirable, in every case, that Violet should have an opportunity of speaking with him alone, so walked out of the room, and in a few minutes sent the servant with a message to Vyner that he was wanted for an instant down stairs.
The lovers were now alone, and horribly embarrassed. They wanted to break the uneasy silence, but neither of them could utter a word.
At last Violet, feeling that it was imperative on her to say something, murmured, without looking at him,—
"And when do you start?"
"On Monday."
Another pause ensued; perhaps worse this time than before, because of the unsuccessful attempt.
"I wonder whether it still rains?" he said, after a few moments' silence, and walked to the window to look out.
Left thus sitting by herself—an emblem of the far more terrible desertion which was to follow—Violet looked in upon her desolate heart, and felt appalled at the prospect. The imperious cry of passion sounded within her, and would not be gagged: the pent-up tide burst away the barriers, and rushed precipitately onwards, carrying before it all scruples like straws upon a stream.
"Marmaduke!" she exclaimed.
He turned from the window; she had half-risen from her seat; he walked up to her.
She flung herself into his arms.
"Is this true, Violet? Speak—are you mine—mine?"
She pressed him closer to her. It is only men who find words in such moments; and Marmaduke was as eloquent as love and rapture could make him.
When she did speak, it was in a low fluttering tone, her pale face suffused with blushes, as she told him, that to live apart from him wasimpossible;—either he must stay, or take her with him.
Meanwhile, Vyner had been prettily rated by Blanche for his dulness in not perceiving that the lovers wanted to be alone.
"But are you certain, Blanche, that they are lovers? For my part, I wish it were so; but although Violet certainly has a regard for him, I have reason to believe, that he has none for her."
Blanche sighed and said,—
"Then let us go back, for in that case, they will only be uncomfortable together."
* * * * * *
N.B.—The journey to Brazil was indefinitely postponed.
1845.
"Je l'aurais supprimée si j'écrivais un roman; je sais que l'héroine ne doit avoir qu'un goùt; qu'il doit être pour quelqu'un de parfait et ne jamais finir; mais le vrai est comme il peut, et n'a de mérite que d'être ce qu'il est."
MADAME DE STAAL DE LAUNAY.
The moon was serenely shining one soft July night, exactly ten years from the date of the prologue to this long drama, when a young woman crept stealthily from the door of an old and picturesque-looking house, at the extremity of the town of Angoulême, and with many agitated glances thrown back, as one who feared pursuit, ran, rather than walked, on to the high road.
The moonbeams falling on that pale, wan, terror-stricken face, revealed the scarcely recognisable features of the gay, daring, fascinating girl, whom ten years before we saw upon the sands, behind Mrs. Henley's house, parting, in such hysterical grief, from the lover whom she then thought never could be absent from her heart, and whom a few months afterwards she jilted for twelve thousand a year. Yes, that pale, wan woman was Mrs. Meredith Vyner; and she fled from the man for whom she had sacrificed her name!
Her face was a pathetic commentary upon her life. No longer were those tiger eyes lighted up with the fire of daring triumph, no longer were those thin lips curled with a smiling cruel coquetry, no longer drooped those golden ringlets with a fairy grace. The eyes were dull with grief; the lips were drawn down with constant fretfulness; the whole face sharpened with constant fear and eagerness. Her beauty had vanished—her health was broken—her gaiety was gone. Crushed in spirit, she was a houseless fugitive, escaping from the most hateful of tyrants.
Retribution, swift and terrible, had fallen upon her head. From the moment when, in obedience to that wild impulse, she had fled from her husband with her saturnine lover, her life had been one protracted torture. Better, oh! better far, would it have been for her to have refused him, and to have died by his hand, than to have followed him to such misery as she had endured!
It would take me long to recount in detail the sad experience of the last two years. She found herself linked to a man, whose diabolical temper made her shudder when he frowned, and whose mad, unreasonable, minute jealousy kept her in constant terror. She dared not look at another man. She was never allowed to quit his sight for an instant. If she sighed, it made him angry; if she wept, it drew down reproaches upon her, and insinuations that she repented of the step she had taken, and wished to leave him. A day's peace or happiness with such a man was impossible. He had none of the amiable qualities which might have made her forget her guilty position. Dark, passionate, suspicious, ungenerous, and exacting, he was always brooding over the difference between the claims he made upon her admiration and love, and the mode in which she responded to those claims. His tyrannous vanity, could only have been propitiated by the most abject and exorbitant adulation—adulation in word, look, and act. She had sacrificed herself, but that was only one act, and he demanded a continued sacrifice. No woman had ever loved him before, yet nothing less than idolatry, or the simulation of it, would content him. He could not understand how she should have any other thought than that of ministering to his exacting vanity.
Now, of all women, Mrs. Vyner was the last to be capable of such a passion; and certainly, under such circumstances, no woman could have given way to the passion, had she felt it. In constant terror and perpetual remorse, what time had she for the subtleties of love? She dreaded and despised him. She saw that her fate was inextricably inwoven with his; and—what a humiliation!—she saw that he did not love her!
No, Maxwell did not love her. She had not been with him a month before he became aware of the fact himself. It is a remark I have often made, that men thwarted in their desires confound their own wilfulness with depth of passion. With fierce energy, they will move heaven and earth to gain what, when gained, they disregard. This is usually considered as a proof of the strength of their love; it only shows the strength of their self-love.
It was Maxwell's irritated vanity which made him so persisting in his pursuit of Mrs. Vyner. It was his wounded vanity which made him capable of murdering her; not his love: for love, even when wounded, is still a generous feeling;—it is sympathy, and admits no hate.
What, then, was Maxwell's object in living with Mrs. Vyner after the discovery that he did not really love her? Why did he not quit her, or at least allow her to quit him?
His vanity! precisely that: the same exacting vanity which prompted all his former actions, prompted this. He felt that she did not idolize him; he knew she would be glad to quit him;—and there was torture in the thought. Had she really loved him with passionate self-oblivion, he would have deserted her. As it was, the same motive which had roused his desire for her possession, which had made him force her to sacrifice everything for his sake, was as active now as then. If she left him, he was still, except for the one act of her elopement, as far from his goal as before.
It may seem strange that, not loving her, he should prize so highly the demonstrations of affection from her; but those who have probed the dark and intricate windings of the heart, know the persistency of an unsatisfied desire, and, above all, know the tyrannous nature of vanity. To this must be added the peculiar condition of Maxwell: the condition of a man intensely vain, who had never before been loved, and who had, as it were, staked his existence on subduing this one woman's heart.
What a life was theirs! A life of ceaseless suspicion, and of ceaseless dread—of bitter exasperation, and of keen remorse—of unsatisfied demands, and of baffled hope.
It lasted nearly two years. Then Maxwell, at the conclusion of some brutal quarrel, burst another bloodvessel, and his life was despaired of. Mary was his nurse; he would have no other. She had to sit up with him; to attend upon him; to submit to his petty irritability, made worse by illness; to watch him in his restless slumbers, hoping that each time he closed his eyes would be the last.
One night—it was the very night on which this chapter opened—she sat by his side absorbed in gloomy thought. The candle was flaring in the socket. Everything was still. The dying man slept peacefully. With her hands drooping upon her lap, she sat allowing her thoughts to wander; and they wandered into the dim future, when, released from her tyrant, she was once more a happy woman. Long did she indulge in that sweet reverie, and when it ceased, she turned her head mechanically to look upon the sleeper. He was wide awake: his dull eyes were fixed intently upon her; and a shiver ran all over her body as she met that gaze!
"I am not dead yet!" he said, as if he had interpreted her thoughts.
She trembled slightly. With a sneer, he closed his eyes again.
Silently she sat by his side, communing with her own dark thoughts. He slept again; slept soundly. She rose, and moved about the room; it did not awaken him. She took courage:—crept down stairs, unfastened the door—and fled.
Fled, and left her tyrant dying;—fled, and left him without a human being to attend upon him—left him to die there like a dog; or to recover, if it should chance so. She cared not; her only thought was flight; and, winged with terror, she flew from the accursed home of guilt and wretchedness; and felt her heart beat distractedly, as, a homeless, penniless wanderer, she urged her steps along that dusty road under the quiet shining moon.
Ten days afterwards, Meredith Vyner received a long letter from his wife, detailing the misery of her penniless condition, and imploring pecuniary aid. The poor, old man wept bitterly over the letter, and again reproached himself with having been the cause of her ruin. He could not forget that he had loved her—had been happy with her. He forgave her for not having loved one so old as himself; and wrote to her the following reply:—
WYTTON HALL, 2nd August, 1845.
"MY DEAR WIFE,
"We have both need of forgiveness—you have mine. I know I am not young enough to be loved by you:
Durum! sed levius fit patientiaQuidquid corrigere est nefas,
as our favourite says—not that the quotation is very good. But if you can have patience, as I can have; if you can forget all 'incompatibilities,' and live quietly and not unhappily with me, come back again, and all shall be forgotten. I will do my best to make you happy, I promise that nothing of what has passed shall ever be recurred to. You shall again be mistress of my house and fortune.
"But I do not wish toforceyou even to this. If, on deliberate reflection, you think you cannot live comfortably with me, I have given instructions to Messrs. Barton and Hadley to remit you, wherever you may choose to reside, eight hundred pounds a year. Upon this you can live in all comfort in France. With every wish for your happiness,
"Believe me, my dear Wife,"Yours affectionately,"H. S. MEREDITH VYNER."
This letter never reached Mrs. Vyner. Believing that her application had been treated with the silent scorn it deserved, she left the town, and toiled her way to a neighbouring town, where a young woman, formerly one of her maids, kept a smallmagazin de modes, and offered a temporary asylum. There she endeavoured to earn a subsistence by teaching English; and at first, success crowned her efforts; but having been recognised by an English traveller spending a few days there, the fact of her having eloped from her husband became bruited about, and all her pupils left her.
She was forced to quit the place, and to seek refuge and oblivion in Paris. What bitter humiliations, and what severe trials, she had there to undergo may be readily conceived. A mystery hangs over her fate; she was seen once on theBoulevard du Temple, miserably dressed, and so aged by suffering, that every trace of beauty had disappeared; but nothing has since been heard of her.
Concerning the other persons of this tale, I have few particulars to add.
Mrs. Langley Turner has married Lord ——, and now gives as many parties as before, only they are fearfully dull: perhaps because so much more "select;" for it is a very serious truth, that your high people are anything but entertaining.
Frank Forrester has seen many ups and downs; but the last time I saw him, his cab splashed me with mud as I lounged down St. James's-street.
Rose has two chubby children, who promise to have the spirit of the mother; they keep the nursery in a constant uproar!
Violet has one large, dark-eyed, solemn boy, who, though not a twelvemonth old, looks at you with such thoughtful seriousness, that you are puzzled what to say to him; and I refrained tickling him under the chin, lest he should consider it as unseemly trifling; and as to talking to him about his tootsy-pootsies being vezzy pitty—that never could enter the mind even of the most ignorant nurse.
Marmaduke continues his political career with dignity and success; Violet cheering him on, and loving him with all her large heart, so that Rose declares, except herself and Julius, she knows of nobody so happy as these two;—Violet disputes the exception.
And Captain Heath? The narration of his happiness is abonne boucheI have reserved for the last.
The whole family were at Wytton Hall, and though so happy in themselves, frequent were their inquiries as to when the captain was to come down—only one person never asked that question, and that person was Blanche; the reason of her silence I leave to be guessed.
He came at last; came not to see the mild, affectionate greeting of a sister from his much loved Blanche, but the delight, embarrassment, and pain of one who loved and dared not avow it. He had been absent three months. During that absence, she discovered her love. At first, she merely felt a certain weariness; next, succeeded melancholy; next, impatience to see him; and finally, the yearning of her heart proclaimed she loved him.
Yes: such is the imperfection of poor human nature, that it cannot reach the circulating library standard; with our best efforts to be forlorn and disconsolate, wewillaccept of society and consolation; with the strongest idea of the virtue of constancy, a loving heart cannot but love!
Blanche was embarrassed when she saw her lover again! and he, poor fellow! was too modest to understand her embarrassment. In vain did they ramble about the grounds together, not a syllable did he breathe of his love. Blanche began to be almost fretful.
One morning they were playing with Rose Blanche together, and the little toddler having climbed upon his knee, declared she intended to "mazzy Captain Heath some day;" upon which her mama said aleetlepettishly: "No, my darling, Captain Heath is not amarrying man. He is to be an old bachelor."
Captain Heath made no reply, for he could not tell her why he was condemned to be an old bachelor.
Yet, that very afternoon, as they were strolling through the wood together, and the conversation turned upon her child, he was moved by some mysterious impulse, to take her hand in his, and with a faltering voice, to say,—
"Blanche ... dearest Blanche ... forgive me for what I am now going to say ... refuse the offer if you will, but do not be offended with me for making it ... Your child, Blanche, is growing up ... She will soon need a better protector than even your love ... she ... I hope you will not misunderstand me ... I know you cannot love me ... though I have loved you so many years ... but I am grown used to that ... I have loved you, Blanche, for years, scarcely ever with the hope of a return, and latterly, with the certainty, that my love was hopeless ... But when I offer myself as a husband ... as a protector to you, and to your child ... I do that which, if it would not pain you, I feel to be right ... I want to have a husband's authority for devoting my life to you. I do not ask your love...!"
Her head was turned away, and her eyes were filling with tears—tears of exquisite pain, of inexpressible delight; as these words, "I do not ask your love," thrilled through her, she suddenly turned and looked him full in the face.
Was it her blushing tremor, was it her undisguised tenderness which spoke so clearly to the yearning heart of her lover? I know not. Love has a language of its own, untranslatable by any words of ours, and that language in its mystic, yet unequivocal voice, told Captain Heath, that he was loved.
Printed by STEWART and MURRAY, Old Bailey.