"Miss Constance Greenwood, the new actress!" "Go and see Constance Greenwood on the 18th!" "Constance Greenwood as Lady Malkinshaw!" Such were the placards in enormous letters which glared upon Laurence Alsager from every dead wall and hoarding on his passage from the railway-station to his old rooms in Jermyn Street. Laurence could not forbear smiling as he glanced at them--could not forbear a laugh as, at the Club over his dinner, he read the advertisements of the forthcoming appearance of Miss Greenwood at the Theatre Royal, Hatton Garden, for which national establishment she had been secured by theimpresario, Mr. Wuff, at an expense hitherto unparalleled--at least so said the advertisements.
Yes; Mr. Wuff had done it at last! He had cut himself adrift from the moorings of mediocrity, as his nautical dramatist expressed it, and it was now sink or swim with him. He was "going in a perisher," he said himself; and having set his fortune on a die, he was just waiting to see whether it turned up six or ace.
When Mr. Wuff came into a sum of money on the death of a distant relative, and, forsaking the necessary but hardly popular calling of a sheriff's-officer, took the Theatre Royal, Hatton Garden, and opened it with a revival of the legitimate drama in general and of Shakespearian plays in particular, he made a very great hit. It was so long since any one had attempted to represent Shakespeare, that an entirely new generation had sprung up, which, egged on by its elders, went religiously to the first performance of all the celebrated plays, and tried very hard indeed to think they both understood and liked them. The newspaper press too was very noble on the subject. Mr. Wuff, so said the critics, was the great dramatic resuscitator of the age.
What! People had said that the taste for the legitimate was exploded! The answer to that was in the crowds that thronged to T. R., Hatton Garden. And then the critics went on to say that the scenery by Mr. Slapp, with wonderful moonlight effects such as had never previously been seen, was thoroughly appreciated; and that the mechanical arrangement for the appearance of Banquo's ghost amongst the unconscious Thanes was a marvel of theatrical deception. Was it Shakespeare or Slapp who drew? Buncle, a heavy, ignorant, ill-educated man, who had played fourth-rate parts with theDii majoresin those "palmy days" of which we read, and who now,faute de mieux, found himself pitch-forked into the leading characters, thought it was Shakespeare--and Buncle! The knowing ones thought it was the novelty of the reproduction and the excellence of Slapp's scenery which caused the success; and the knowing ones were right. Shakespeare, as interpreted by Buncle, Mrs. Buncle, and Stampede--whom Buncle always took about with him to play his seconds--drew for a certain length of time. Then the audience thinned gradually, and Wuff found it necessary to supplementKing Learwith theHarem Beauties--a ballet supported by the best band ofcoryphéesin Europe; and that was a really good stroke of policy. While Buncle was lying down and dying as Lear, the club-men came trooping into the house; and Buncle's apostrophes to his dead daughter Cordelia were nearly inaudible in the creaking of boots and the settling into seats. The pit cried "Hush!" and "Shame!" but the swells did not care about the pit, and the curtain fell on Buncle thirsting for aristocratic blood. The ballet at first attracted largely. As the time for its commencement approached, the military clubs were drained of their members, who went away in a procession of hansoms from Pall Mall to Hatton Garden; and you could have counted more peers within Wuff's walls at one time than were to be found, save on special occasions, at St. Stephen's.
But the ballet, after a time, ceased to draw; and Mr. Wuff could not supplement it by another, for thecoryphéeshad all returned to their allegiance to the manager of the Opera-house, whose season had just commenced. Mr. Wuff was in despair; he dared not shut the house, for he had to make up his rent, which was required with inexorable punctuality by the committee of gentlemen who owned the theatre. He must try something; but what was it to be? Wuff and his treasurer, Mr. Bond,--always known as Tommy Bond, an apple-faced, white-headed old gentleman, who had dropped into the theatrical world no one ever knew whence, and who had held a place of trust with all the great managers of the T. R., Hatton Garden, for thirty years,--were closeted together.
"What's it to be, Tommy?" repeated Mr. Wuff for the twentieth time. "They've had it all round, hot and strong; and what's the caper for 'em now, I don't know."
"What do you think of revivingJulius Caesar?The classic costume has not been seen on these boards for years."
"What! Billy'sJulius Caesar?No, thank you! I've had enough of Bill to last me some time--and that brute Buncle drawing fifteen pounds a week, and bellowing his lungs out to thirty people in the pit! No, no! Is there a good lion-and-camel lot about?"
Mr. Bond shuddered; he was frequently prompted to shudder in his conversation with Mr. Wuff. He was a great believer in the elevating tendencies of the drama; and when he thought of lions and camels on the same boards which he had seen trodden at different times by those great actors and rivals, Grumble and Green, he could not refrain from shuddering. But his business instincts made him turn to a file of theEraon the table, and he said, after consulting it:
"There's Roker's troupe at North Shields."
"How long since they've been in town?"
"Oh, two years; and then they were only at the Wells--you can scarcely call that town; and it didn't interfere a bit with our people, you know."
"Roker's are performing lions, ain't they?"
"Yes; they'll let him do anything to them, when they're in a proper state."
"All right! Write to him about terms at once; and send to Darn and tell him we want a piece to bring out this lot at once. Must be Eastern, because of the camel--long procession, slaves, caskets, and all that kind of thing, and a fight with the lion for Roker. That's all Roker's to do, mind; he can't act a bit."
Mr. Roker was driving such an excellent trade with the pitmen of the North, that he refused to come to London except on terms which Mr. Wuff would not give; and so that enterprising manager was again in a strait. Mr. Trapman had been called into council, had ransacked his books and his brain in search for novelty, but all to no purpose; and things were looking very serious for Mr. Wuff, when one morning Trapman rushed from his office and arrived breathless in the manager's sanctum.
"What is it?" asked Wuff, who was sitting vacantly looking at Bond, poring over files of old paybills.
"We've got it at last, I think!" said Trapman, pointing to an open letter in his hand "You've heard of Constance Greenwood?"
"Yes, yes!" struck in Mr. Bond eagerly. "Milman was here last week, just arrived from New York,--and he says that for the leading-lady business--modern time, I mean--he'd never seen anything like her."
"Yankee, ain't she?" asked Wuff coldly.
"Not a bit of it," replied Trapman. "She's English bred and born; only been out there three months; never played anywhere before, and made a most tre-mendous hit. I saw the New York papers about her first night. They'd got up a report that she was the daughter of an English nobleman, and had run away because her father was cruel to her; and this crammed the house. The girl's acting did the rest. Every one says she's very clever, and she was making no end of dollars a-night."
"Well?" said Wuff, who was working up into excitement.
"Oh, I thought you did not care about it," said Trapman. "I've a letter from her here in my hand, saying she's taken a sudden desire to England, and wants me to get her an engagement in a first-class theatre. I've got newspapers by the same mail, describing her farewell benefit, and speculating, in the way those chaps do over there, about what can have made her want to go to England so suddenly. But there's no doubt she's a clipper, and I came at once to offer her to you."
"I'll have her!" shouted Wuff, jumping up. "First-class theatre she wants, eh? This is the shop. Let's have a look at her letter?"
"Can't do that,--it's a private letter," said Trapman; "but I'll tell you her terms: ten pound a-night settled, and a share after a hundred."
"That'll do. Now, Tommy Bond, just sit down and write a stunnin' advertisement, and put that story about her being a nobleman's daughter into shape,--only make her run away because she was in love, and wanted to earn money for the support of her lover, who was blind.--Eh, Trapman, that ought to wake 'em up?--And send the story to little Shiffon, who does that column of lies, and ask him to stick it in next week.--What's her line, Trapman?"
"Genteel comedy and interesting business of the highest class,--lady of the present day, you know."
"All right; then I shan't want Buncle."
"Not a bit; get rid of him at once. But I'll tell you what; Pontifex has quarrelled with the Parthenium people--he was with me yesterday--and I'd pick him up to support her."
Mr. Wuff agreed to this, and told Mr. Trapman to take the necessary steps; and that gentleman then took his departure.
"Wasn't going to let Wuff look at her letter," said he, as he walked away; "wouldn't do at all. What a doosed clever gal! What does she say?" and he pulled the letter from his pocket: "'Not a word to any one until after my appearance. After that I shan't care.' All right, my dear; you may depend upon me."
Mr. Wuff went to work with a will, and spared no expense in his bills and advertisements. The nobleman's daughter's story was duly filtered through the newspapers, and popular curiosity was excited. Miss Constance Greenwood arrived from America by the next mail, bringing with her an American play, founded on a French subject, full of interest, and what we should in the present day call sensation, but wretchedly written. This play was given to the accomplished Spofforth; and under his manipulation it became a very capital acting drama, with a splendid character for Miss Greenwood, and very good chances for Pontifex. Wuff, Bond, Spofforth, and Oldboy, the critic of theStatesman, had a little dinner at Wuff's house before the evening dress-rehearsal, which Miss Greenwood had requested before the production of the piece; and they were all delighted with what they saw. Oldboy was especially pleased. "I thought," said he, "that ladylike women left the stage with Miss Fortescue; but this girl restores my hopes." And Wuff winked at Spofforth, and they both knew that meant a column and a half the morning after the performance.
Sir Laurence Alsager drove straight from the railway-station to the Maecenas Club, where his servant was waiting for him with his dressing-things. As he pushed through the streets, the placards on the walls announcing the theatrical novelty for the evening recalled to his mind the night of his return from the East. Then he drove to the Club, then he had returned to be present at the first representation of a theatrical novelty; but ah, how different was his state of mind then from what it was now! Then the iron had passed over the slight scratch which he at that time imagined was a wound, and had completely cicatrized it; now a real wound was gaping and bare. Kismet! kismet! the old story. That night he saw Georgie Mitford for the first time; and ever since then what had he not suffered on her account! Ah, what had she herself not suffered, poor child! His absence from London and his manner of life down at Knockholt had precluded him from hearing any recent news of her; and he wondered whether the lapse of time had had any effect on Sir Charles Mitford's mad infatuation, or whether it still continued. More than anything else, Laurence wanted to know whether Lady Mitford's domestic misery was known to the world at large, or confined to the few acquaintances who had such splendid opportunities of inspecting in the quiet of Redmoor. He knew that her first appearance in society had excited a great deal of notice, a great deal of admiration, and, consequently, a great deal of envy; and he was too much a man of the world not to feel certain that anything to her disadvantage would be sought out with the greatest perseverance, and spread abroad with the greatest alacrity. And it was to her disadvantage in the eyes of society, that her home was unhappy; there were people in numbers who would declare that the result was her fault; that she was prim, puritanical, bad-tempered; that her jealousy was perfectly ridiculous; that her missy ways and affectation rendered it impossible for any man to live with her. There were numbers of people who would take an opposite view of the question, and who would pity her--not indeed with that pity which is akin to love, but from a feeling springing from a very different source,--a pity which consists in loudly denouncing the cause for compassion, and wondering how the person to be compassionated can endure what has to be gone through. There would be people who could not understand how anything otherwise could have been expected: a young person from thebourgeoisieintroduced into thenous-autresclass must expect that the silly fancy which had captivated her husband would not last, and must be prepared to take the consequences of her vaulting ambition. The Clanronald and Tappington set would infallibly regard it from this last-mentioned point of view, accordingly.
How Laurence Alsager's blood boiled within him as all these thoughts passed through his mind! During the quietude of his life at Knockholt, he had had sufficient opportunities so thoroughly to catechise himself, so perfectly to dissect the feelings of his breast, as to leave no doubt in his own mind that he loved Lady Mitford deeply and passionately. The notion of the guardian angel, the protecting genius, which he had so encouraged at first, had now entirely faded out, and he had not scrupled to show to himself the actual state of his feelings towards her. Not that they would ever be known; he had made up his mind to keep them rigidly locked in his own bosom. But still it was worse than horrible to think that the woman in whose service he would willingly have perilled his life, was in all probability dragging on a miserable existence, exposed to the perverse misunderstandings or degrading pity of the world! On these latter points he should soon be assured. They discussed everybody at the Maecenas; and if there had been anything sufficiently noticeable in the Mitfordménageto call for comment, it was sure to receive the freest and most outspoken discussion in the tabak-parliament of the Club.
Meanwhile, the mere notion of being back in London conduced in no small degree to raise Laurence's spirits. His time at Knockholt had been, he felt, far from unprofitably spent; he had had opportunities not merely of examining his own heart, but of making himself acquainted with the hopes and fears, the wishes and prospects, of some of those with whose lives he was to a certain extent concerned. He had had opportunities of carrying out certain pet projects of the good old man, whose last days he had been permitted to console; and he had been enabled to take up that position in his county which was required of him, not merely by the hollow ordinances of "gentility," but by the great binding rivets of society. He hoped in all honesty and humility to be able "to do his duty in that state of life unto which God had called him;" but he felt all the delight of a schoolboy out of bounds in laying-by the county magnate, the landed proprietor, the many-acred wealthy baronet, for a time, and making a very small unit in the grand population of London. The crowded streets, the gas-lamps, the dull rumble of the passing vehicles,--all were delightful to him; and as he drew up at the club-door he felt happier than he had done for many a long day.
He dressed himself and went down into the coffee-room, which he found thronged. Mr. Wuff's advertisements and bills had been so far fruitful, that two-thirds of the diners at the Maecenas seemed from their talk to be going to the Hatton-Garden Theatre. Laurence was welcomed with great cordiality by all who knew him, and had numerous offers of "joining tables;" but he expected George Bertram, and when he found that that pillar of the state did not arrive, he preferred dining by himself. The solitary life he had been leading, the event which had led to that life, the reflections which had engrossed him since he had led it,--all concurred to prevent him from suddenly plunging into the light gossip of a club-room. After dinner, finding that the piece in which Miss Constance Greenwood was to appear did not commence until half-past eight, he went into the smoking-room, where most of the diners had assembled, and in addition to them, Lord Dollamore. He looked up and saw Alsager's entrance; then stretched out his hand, and pointed to a vacant seat on the couch beside him.
"My dear Alsager, delighted to see you,--honestly and truly delighted! How are you? What a hermit you have become! though of course I understand,--family-business and all that; and what has brought you up at last--not this new play?"
"Well, I can scarcely say that; but I wanted a something to come up for--a something, I mean, beyond law-business--and perhaps this wondrous advertisement of Wuff's turned the scale."
"They tell me the gal's deuced good. Spofforth, who saw her last night, was here this morning, and says she's really wonderful. This is the second time you've done this sort of thing,--coming back on the first night of a great theatrical event. It's not half a bad idea, because you see a lot of people you know, and get rid of 'how-d'ye-do's' in one large parcel."
"There are some who were present on the last occasion whom I shall not see to-night, I suppose," said Laurence. "I was thinking," he added, as he saw Dollamore whispering to his stick, "of George Bertram."
"No!" said Dollamore, "the Blab has been missing for the last fortnight. It's rumoured that he has gone as a mute into the service of the Pasha of Egypt. I thought you were alluding to our friends in Devonshire: a nice business that."
"Indeed! I, as you know, have been absent from town for months, and have heard nothing."
"Well, you won't listen to me, I suppose, because you'll imagine I am prejudiced, recollecting all I said to you on the subject in this very room after Spofforth's play. But you won't deny that, so far as you had opportunities of judging while we were down at Redmoor, I was right?"
"Right so far as your estimation of the man went, certainly--"
"Oh, as for the lady, there is no one can entertain a higher opinion of Lady Mitford than myself. The degradation that that brute is bringing upon her--"
"Degradation! Do you mean to say that Mitford's infidelities are known--about--generally?"
"My dear Alsager, you think I colour and exaggerate. Let us pump that well of candour, Cis Hetherington. If there is an honest opinion about, it will be procurable from that son of Anak.--Well, Cis, going to the play?"
"Course I am," responded that scion of the aristocracy, lazily lifting his head from the ottoman; "everybody's going, seems to me. What's the woman like? Yankee, ain't she? Don't like Yankees,--all speak through their noses, and say 'I guess;' at, least, all that I've ever seen do, and that's only on the stage."
"She's not Yankee; she's an Englishwoman, they tell me; though of course that story of the nobleman's daughter is all bosh. However, Wuff has worked the oracle splendidly. Everybody's going. Here's Alsager come up to town on purpose."
"Is that Alsager sitting next to you?" asked Cis Hetherington, raising himself on his elbow and looking full at Laurence. "I thought it looked like him, and I wondered he didn't speak to me. But I suppose he's grown proud since he's become a Bart."
"You old idiot! I shook hands with you in the hall as I came in," said Laurence, laughing. "What's the news, Cis? how are all your people?"
"First-rate, old boy! Westonhanger's gone abroad--to America, I mean; Sioux Indians, and that sort of thing. Wanted you awfully to go with him, but thought you were doing monseigneur on yourterre. Asked about you no end, give you my word! And the Duke's really tremendous! 'pon my soul, some fellow ought to put him in a book! Ever since the row about the repeal of the Corn Laws has been coming to a head, he's been like a lunatic. He thinks it's all up with everything, and is sure we shall have a revolution, and that he'll have his head cut off by the mob and stuck on a pike, and all that kind of thing."
"And Algy Forrester?" asked Dollamore.
"Algy Forrester was here to-day," said Hetherington; "came to me about a devilish unpleasant thing. That fellow Mitford, whom you both know" ("Now, then, listen!" said Dollamore),--"that fellow Mitford has asked him--Algy, I mean--to put him up here. And Algy came to ask if I'd second him, and I told him I'd see Mitford d--d first. And so I would. I ain't a strait-laced party, and don't go in for being particularly virtuous myself; but I'm a bachelor, and am on my own hook. But the way that fellow Mitford treats that nice wife of his is neither more nor less than blackguardly, I think; and so I wouldn't mind telling him, if I'd the chance."
"Hallo, Cis!" said Markham Bowers, who was sitting near; "shut your stupid old mouth. You'll get into a mess if you give tongue like that,--get cut off in the flower of your youth; and then what weeping and wailing there'll be among the ten tribes, and among those unfortunate Christians who have been speculating on your autograph. Not that you're wrong in what you say about Mitford; for if ever a cad walked this earth, that's the man."
"Ah! and isn't she a nice woman?" said Hetherington. "When she first showed in town last season, she took everybody's fancy; even Runnymede admired her, and the Duchess asked to be introduced, and they were quite thick. Wonderful! wasn't it? And to think of that snob Mitford treating her as he does, completely neglecting her, while he's--Well, I don't know; I suppose it's all right; but there ain't many things that would please me better than dropping on to that party--heavy."
"You're always dropping on to parties, Cis," said Bowers; "but you had better keep quiet in this case, please. You would have to make your own chance of getting into a row, for of course the lady's name must not appear--"
"Oh, don't you be afraid of me, Marky; I'm all right!" said Cis, rising and stretching himself. "You won't mind my stamping on Mitford's feet,--accidentally, of course,--if we find him in the stalls." And the two Guardsmen started away together.
"Well," said Lord Dollamore, leaning forward towards his companion, "was I right or wrong?"
"Right! terribly right!" said Alsager, with a set rigid face.
"You would not have accepted my testimony, thinking perhaps that I had motives for exaggeration, or was prompted by anarrière pensée, in which, on my word of honour, you're wrong. But those fellows are merely types of society; and their opinion, somewhat differently expressed, is society's opinion."
"Has not Mitford's madness cooled down at all?"
"It is worse, far and away,--worse than ever--"
"And that woman?"
"Ah," said Lord Dollamore, "she's been very quiet lately, owing to her husband's death. Poor old boy! poor old Percy Hammond! But she's up in town, I understand, now; and I don't think--" and here Dollamore's crutch-handled stick was evidently whispering confidences into his master's ear,--"I don't think Master Mitford will find it all straight sailing in that quarter just now."
"How do you mean? What would induce her to change to him?"
"Well, you see, she's a widow now, with a comparatively small income; for I suspect poor old Percy knew more than he ever let on, and instructed Trivett to prepare his will accordingly. So that, besides wanting a husband, she'll want him rich; for she's one of the best hands at getting through money in England. With a husbandin posse, Mitford's attentions would not do at all."
"Ah, I see; but is not her character too well known?"
"Not a bit of it; her powers of attraction are enormous still. Why, if I'm rightly informed, a Russian whom you know, I think,--Tchernigow by name,-is making the running there already."
"I know him; he was madly in love with her, I heard, the season before last; followed her to Baden and about."
"That's the man! Well, he'srevenu-- not to hispremier, which was probably some Cossack peasant-girl--but to one of hisamours, and is desperate."
"He's enormously wealthy. If she accepted him, there might yet be a chance of happiness for Georgie,--Lady Mitford, I mean."
"Don't you believe that for an instant, Alsager!" said Dollamore, looking keenly at him; "you're not posted up in that family history. Matters have gone too far now; there is only one way in which Sir Charles Mitford could really be of service to his wife, and that is by dying. But I'm afraid she would not think so, poor girl!" Then seeing his companion looking very grave, he said, "Come, it's no use brooding over these matters; let us go to the theatre."
The theatre was crammed, as Mr. Wuff had anticipated. The audience was composed of pretty much the same class of people as those present on the first night of Mr. Spofforth's play at the Parthenium; with the exception of those who were most strongly remembered by Alsager. He had known that the Mitfords and Mrs. Hammond could not be there, and there was little to interest him among the audience. The curtain rose on the piece of the evening, and everybody's attention concentrated on the stage. Shortly afterwards came the appearance of the new actress, who was hailed with shouts of encouragement and applause by Mr. Wuff's supporters in boxes, pit, and gallery. She seemed not in the least overcome by her reception, but bowed gracefully, and entered immediately on the business of the piece. The character she played was that of a highbred wealthy girl, beloved by a young yeoman-farmer of the neighbourhood, who proposes to her, but she mocks at hisgaucheries, and rejects him with scorn. He accepts his defeat, and goes away to travel on the Continent with his brother. It is not until he is gone that she finds how deeply she had really loved him; but he is gone never to return, and so she accepts the attention of, and is engaged to, a silly peer. Then comes the Nemesis. The girl's father is ruined, the peer jilts her, and she is left in wretchedness, when the yeoman-farmer comes back a polished gentleman. There is an admirable scene of intensity between them, and, of course, all ends happily. The character of the heroine seemed excellently suited for Miss Greenwood, who, gradually winning the confidence of the audience, worked them to a pitch of enthusiasm in the last scene, and brought down the curtain with a universal verdict of her combining thorough knowledge of the usages of society and ladylike manners with great dramatic power.
Of course she was recalled before the curtain; and then as she swept across the stage, clasping her bouquet to her bosom, and occasionally bowing low, her eyes lit full on those of Laurence Alsager. And then for the first time Laurence Alsager, who had been puzzling his brain about her ever since she appeared on the scene, recollected who she was, and said half aloud, "The woman who wrote me the note!--Miss Gillespie, without a doubt!"
Lady Mitford was alone on the afternoon of the following day, when Sir Laurence Alsager was announced. She was often alone now; for the world falls readily and easily away, not only from the forsaken, but from the preoccupied--from those to whom its gaieties are childish follies and its interests weariness. She had fallen out of the ranks, as much through inclination as in compliance with the etiquette of mourning; and it came to pass often that the afternoon hours found her, as on this occasion, sitting alone in her splendid, vapid, faultless, soulless home. The softened light which reached her stately figure and irradiated her thoughtful lace showed the grace and loveliness which distinguished her untouched, undimmed. Under the discipline of sorrow, under the teaching of disappointment, her face had gained in expression and dignity,--every line and curve had strength added to its former sweetness; the pure steadfast eyes shone with deeper, more translucent lustre, and the rich lips met each other with firmer purpose and more precision. The perfecting, the refinement of her beauty, were sensibly felt by Alsager as he advanced towards the end of the room where she was seated in the recess between a large window and a glittering fireplace. She sat in a deep low chair of purple velvet; and as she leaned slightly forward and looked at him coming rapidly towards her, his eye noted every detail of the picture. He saw the glossy hair in its smooth classic bandeaux, the steadfast eyes, the gracious, somewhat grave, smile, the graceful figure in its soft robe of thick mourning silk, and its rich jet trimmings; he saw the small white hands, gentle but not weak,--one extended towards him in welcome, the other loosely holding an open book. In a minute he was by her side and speaking to her; but that minute had a deathless memory,--that picture he was to see again and again, in many a place, at many a time and it was never to be less beautiful, less divine for him. He loved her--ay, he loved her--this injured woman, this neglected, outraged wife, this woman who was a victim, crushed under the wheels of the triumphal car which had maimed him once on a time, though only slightly, and by a hurt soon healed by the balsam of contempt. Was she crushed, though? There was sorrow in that grand face--indeed, to that look of sorrow it owed its grandeur,--but there was no pining; there was sad experience, but no weak vain retrospection. All the pain of her lot was written upon her face; but none could read there a trace of what would have been its mortification, its bitter humiliation to commoner and coarser minds. It mattered nothing to her that her husband's infatuation and their mutual estrangement were topics for comment to be treated in the style current in society, and she herself an object of that kind of compassion which is so hard to brook: these were small things, too small for her range of vision; she did not see them--did not feel them. She saw the facts, she felt their weight and significance; but for the rest! If Lady Mitford had progressed rapidly in knowledge of the great world since she had been of it, she had also graduated in other sciences which placed her above and beyond it.
"I am fortunate in finding you at home, Lady Mitford," said Alsager.
She answered by a smile They had got beyond the talking of commonplaces to each other, these two, in general; but there was a sense of oppression over them both to-day, and each was conscious that it weighed upon the other. The remembrance of the talk to which he had listened at the Club, of the light discussion of Sir Charles's conduct, of the flippant censure of the woman who had won him from his wife, was very strong upon Alsager; while she,--of what was she thinking? Who could undertake to tell that? who could categorize the medley which must occupy the mind of a woman so situated? Was she suffering the sharp pangs of outraged love? or was she enduring the hardly less keen torture of discovering that that which she had believed to be love, had cherished in her breast as the true deity, had given, in that belief, to her husband, was not love, but only a skilful (and innocent) counterfeit, only a mock jewel which she had offered in good faith for the flawless pearl of price? Who can tell? She could hardly have answered such a question truly, if she had put it to herself at the close of the interview which began after so commonplace a fashion.
"I have not seen you since your father's death," said Lady Mitford, gently; and in a tone which lent the simple words all the effect of a formal condolence. "You have not been long in town, I'm sure?"
"No, indeed," he said; "I have but just returned. There is so much to be done on these occasions; there are so many forms to be gone through; there is so much immediate business to be transacted, in the interests of the living, that--that,"--he hesitated; for he had neared that precipice so dreaded by all now-a-days, the exhibition of natural emotion.
"That one has to wait for leisure to mourn for the dead," said Lady Mitford. "Ah, yes, I understand that. But you remain in town now, do you not?"
There was a tone of anxiety in the question which struck on Alsager's ear with a sound of music. She had missed him, then,--she would miss him if he went away again! He loved her well, ay, and worthily, contradictory though that may seem; but his heart was stirred with a joy which he dared not analyze, but could not deny, at the thought. He answered hurriedly, "Yes, I remain here now." And then he changed his tone, and said eagerly,
"Tell me something of yourself. How has it been with you since we met last?"
"Of myself!" she replied sadly; and her colour flushed and faded as she spoke, and her restless fingers trifled with the ornaments of her dress. "Myself is an unprofitable subject, and one I am weary of. I have nothing new to tell,--nothing you would care to hear."
He dissented by an eager gesture; but she appeared not to perceive it, and went on, with attempted gaiety:
"We have missed you dreadfully, of course. I need not tell you what a void your absence must necessarily make. We all know you are beyond spoiling."
She looked at him, and something in his face warned her not to pursue this tone. She felt vaguely that the position was unreal, and must be changed. He knew, as she supposed, what she was thinking of; she knew, as he fancied, what he was thinking of; and though, as it happened, each was wrong, it was manifestly absurd to carry on false pretences any longer. Woman-like, she was the first to brave the difficulty of the situation.
"You have come to me," she said steadily, and looking at him with the clear upheld gaze peculiar to her, "because you have heard something which concerns me nearly, and because, man of the world,--of this heartless world around us,--as you are, and accustomed to such things, still you feel for me; because you would have prevented this thing if you could; because you tried to prevent it, and failed; because you knew--yes, Sir Laurence Alsager, because you knew the extent and the power of the danger that menaced me, and my helplessness: say, am I right?--for these reasons you are here to-day."
The composure of her voice was gone, but not its sweetness; her colour had faded to a marble paleness; and her hands were firmly clasped together. Alsager had risen as she spoke, and was standing now, leaning against the low velvet-covered mantelpiece. He answered hurriedly, and with scant composure:
"Yes, Lady Mitford, for these reasons, and for others."
"For what others?"
This almost in a whisper.
"Never mind them now," he said impetuously; and then the superficial restraint which he had imposed upon himself gave way, broke down before that strongest and most terrible of temptations, the sight of the sorrow and the silent confidence of the woman one loves, granted at the moment when a hope, a guilty hope, that that love may not be vain, begins to stir, like life, at one's heart. She shrank a little back in the chair, but she looked at him as earnestly as before.
"It's all true, then," he said,--and there was a tone of deep and bitter hatred in his voice,--"all true. The prophecy I heard among those fellows the first time I ever heard your name--the coarse language, the cynical foresight,--all true. That heartless demon has caught his shallow nature in her shallow lure, and worked the woe of an angel!"
His voice rang with a passionate tremor, his eyes deepened and darkened with the passionate fervour which glowed in them. His impetuous feeling mastered her. She had no power to arrest him by a conventional phrase, though he had overstepped more than conventionality by invading the sacred secrecy of her domestic grief.
"Yes, Lady Mitford," he went on; "I have returned to find that all I feared,--more than I feared,--has befallen you. It was an unequal contest; you had only innocence and purity, an old-fashioned belief in the stability of human relations and the sanctity of plighted faith; and what weapons were these in such a fight? No wonder you are vanquished. No wonder she is triumphant--shameless as she is heartless. I wound you," he said, for she cowered and trembled at his words; "but I cannot keep silence. I have seen shameful things,--I am no stranger to the dark passages of life; but this is worse than all. Good God! to think that a man like Mitford should have had such a chance and have thrown it away! To think that--"
"Hush, Sir Laurence!" she said, and stretched her hand appealingly towards him; "I must not hear you. I cannot, I will not affect to misunderstand you; but there must be no more of this. I am an unhappy woman--a most wretched wife; all the world--all the little world we think so great, and suffer to torment us so cruelly--knows that. Pretence between us would be idle; but confidence is impossible. I cannot discuss Sir Charles Mitford's conduct with any one, least of all with you." She seemed to have spoken the last words unawares, or at least involuntarily, for a painful blush, rose on her face and throat.
"And why," he eagerly asked,--"why least of all with me? I have been honoured by your friendship,--I have not forfeited it, have I? I know that conventionality, which is a systematic liar and a transparent hypocrite, would condemn in theory a woman to keep her garments folded decorously over such mortal heart-wounds; I know that poets snivel rhymes which tell us how grand and great, how high and mighty, it is 'to suffer and be strong.' I know how easy some people find it to see others suffer, and be perfectly strong in the process; but such rubbish is not for you nor for me. I cannot return to London and hear all that I have heard; I cannot come here and look upon you--" his voice faltered, but he forced it into the same hurried composure with which he had been speaking. "I cannot see you as I see you now, and talk to you as an ordinary morning visitor might talk, or even as we have talked together, when these things were coming indeed, but had not yet come."
She was leaning forward now, her face turned towards him, but hidden in her hands. He gazed at her with a kindling glance, and strode fiercely backward and forward across the wide space which lay before the window.
"I am not a good man," he went on, "according to your standard of goodness, Lady Mitford; but I am not a bad man according to my own. I have had rough tussles with life, and some heavy falls; but I swear there is a dastardly, cold, heartless ingratitude in this business which I cannot bear; and in the sight of you there is something terrible to me. Men know this man's history; we know from what degradation you raised him; we are not so blind and coarse that we cannot guess with what fidelity and patience you loved him when it was at its deepest. And now, to see him return to it; to see him, without any excuse of poverty or struggle, in the enjoyment of all that fate and fortune have blindly given him; to see him play the part of a liar and a villain to you--to you--to see you left unprotected, openly neglected and betrayed, to run the gauntlet of society such as ours! I cannot see all this, Lady Mitford, and pretend that I do not see it; and what is more, you do not wish that I could. You are too true, too womanly to form such a wish; and you are too honest to express it, in obedience to any laws of cant."
He went near to her; he bent down, he lowered his voice, he gently drew away the hands that hid her face from him; they dropped into her lap, nerveless and idle; the first tears he had ever seen in her eyes dimmed them now.
"You mean kindly, as you have always meant to me, Sir Laurence," she said; "but we cannot discuss this matter,--indeed we cannot. I am weaker than I ought to be,--I should not listen to this; but oh, God help me, I have no friends; I am all alone, all alone!"
If she had been beautiful in the pride and dignity of her sorrowful composure, if his strong heart had quailed and his firm nerve had shrunk at the sight of her pale and placid grief, how far more beautiful was she now, when the restraint had fallen from her, when the eyes looked at him from the shadow of wet lashes, and the perfect lips trembled with irrepressible emotion.
"No!" he said vehemently; and as he spoke he stood close before her, and stretched his hands towards her, but without taking hers; the gesture was one of mingled denial and appeal, and had no touch of boldness in it; "no, you are not alone; yes, you have friends,--at least you have one friend. Listen to me,--do not fear to hear me; let us at least venture to tell and listen to the truth. This man, to whom you were given as a guardian angel, is quite unworthy of you. You know it; your keen intellect accepts a fact and all its consequences, however terrible to your woman's heart, and does not palter with the truth. Are you to be always miserable because you have been once mistaken? If you had known, if you had been able to comprehend the real nature of this man, would you, could you ever have loved him?"
She put up her hand with a faint gesture of protest; but he impetuously waved it away, and went on, once more striding up and down.
"No, no; I must speak! There can be more reticence now. You would not, you could not have loved him, this heartless, ungrateful profligate, as tasteless and low as he is faithless and vicious,--this scoundrel, who, holding good in his grasp, has deliberately chosen evil. Ay, I will say it, Lady Mitford! Youcouldnot have loved him, and you know it well; you have admitted it to yourself before now, when you little dreamed that anyone--that I--would ever dare to put your thought in form and shape before you. What did you love? A girl's fancy,--a shadow, a dream! It was no reality, it had no foundation, and it has vanished. Your imagination drew a picture of an injured victim of circumstances,--a weak being, to be pitied and admired, to be restored and loved! The truth was a selfish scoundrel, who has returned in wealth with fresh zest to the miserable pleasures for which he lived in poverty; a mean-hearted wretch, who could care for your beauty while it was new to him indeed, but to whose perception you, your heart and soul, your intellect and motives, were mysteries as high and as far off as heaven. Are you breaking your heart, Lady Mitford, under the kindly scrutiny of the world, because the thistle has not borne figs and the thorn has not given you purple grapes? Are you sitting down in solitary grief because the animal has done according to its kind, because effect has resulted from cause, because the wisdom of the world, wise in the ways of such men, has verified itself? Do you love this man now? Are you suffering the pangs of jealousy, of despair? No, you do not love him; you are suffering no such pangs. You are truth itself,--the truest and the bravest, as you are the most beautiful of women; and you cannot, you dare not tell me that you love this man still, knowing him as you know him now." He stopped close beside her, and looked at her with an eager, almost a fierce glance.
"Why do you ask me?" she gasped out faintly. There was a sudden avoidance of him in her expression, a shadow of fear. "Why do you speak to me thus? Oh, Sir Laurence, this--this is the worst of all." She was not conscious of the effect of the tone in which these words were spoken, of the pathos, the helplessness, the pleading tenderness it implied. But he heard them, and they were enough. They were faint as the murmur of a brook in summer, but mighty as an Alpine storm; and the barriers of conventional restriction, the scruples of conscience, the timidity of a real love, were swept away like straws before their power.
"Why?" he repeated, "because I love you!"
She uttered a faint exclamation; she half rose from her chair, but he caught her hands and stopped her.
"Hush!" he said; "I implore you not to speak till you have heard me! Do not wrong me by supposing that I have come here to urge on your unwilling ear a tale of passion, to take advantage of your husband's crime, your husband's cowardice, to extenuate crime and cowardice in myself. Before God, I have no such meaning! But I love you--I love you as I never even fancied I loved any woman before; though I am no stranger to the reality or the mockery of passion, though I have received deep and smarting wounds in my time. I wish to make myself no better in your eyes than I am. And I love you--love you so much better than myself; that I would fain see you happy with this man, even withhim, if it could be. But it cannot, and you know it. You know in your true heart, that if he came back to his allegiance to you now--poor bond of custom as it is--you could not love him, any more than you could return to the toys of your childhood. I read you aright; I know you with the intuitive knowledge which love, and love only, lends to a man, when he would learn the mystery of a woman's nature. You are too noble, too true, to be bound by the petty rules, to be governed by the small scruples, which dominate nine-tenths of the women who win the suffrages of society. You have the courage of your truthfulness."
He stood before her, looking steadfastly down upon her, his arms tightly folded across his chest, his breath coming quickly in hurried gasps. She had shrunken into the recesses of her velvet chair, and she looked up at him with parted lips and wild eyes, her hands holding the cushions tightly, the fingers hidden in the purple fringes. Was it that she could not speak, or that she would not? However that may have been, she did not, and he went on.
"Yes, yes, I love you. I think you knew it before?" She made no reply. "I think I have loved you from the first,--from the moment when, callous andblaséas I had come to believe myself--as, God knows, I had good right to be, if human nature may ever claim such a right--I could not bear to see the way your fate was drifting, or to hear the chances for and against you calculated, as men calculate such odds. I think I loved you from the moment I perceived how completely you had mistaken your own heart, and how beautifully, how innocently loyal you were to the error. While your delusion lasted, Lady Mitford, you were safe with me and from me, for in that delusion there was security. While you loved Mitford, and believed that he returned your love, you would never have perceived that any other man loved you. But you are a woman who cannot be partially deceived or undeceived; therefore I tell you now, when your delusion is wholly at an end, when it can come no more to blind your eyes, and rend your heart with the removal of the bandage, that I love you,--devotedly, changelessly, eternally. You must take this fact into account when you meditate upon your future; you must number this among the component parts of your life. Hush! not yet. I am not speaking thus through reckless audacity, availing itself of your position; you know I am not, and you must hear me to the end."
She had made a movement as if about to speak, but he had again checked her; and they maintained their relative positions, he looking down at her, she looking up at him.
"We are facing facts, Lady Mitford. I love you, not as the man who left you, in your first year of marriage, for the worthless woman who forsook me for a richer lover, and would have wronged the fool who bought her without a scruple, could she have got me into her power again--not as he loved you, even when he came nearest to the truth of love. That woman, your enemy, yourrival,"--he spoke the word with a stringent scorn which would have been the keenest punishment in human power to have inflicted on the woman it designated,--"she knows I love you, and she has struck at me through you; struck at me, poor fool--for she is fool as well as fiend--a blow which has recoiled upon herself. She has taught me how much, how well, how devotedly I love you, and learned the lesson herself thereby, for the intuition of hate is no less keen than that of love. But why do I speak of her? Only to make you understand that I am a portion of your fate,--only to lay the whole truth before you; only to make it clear to you that mine is no chance contact, no mere intrusion. I am not a presumptuous fool, who has dared to use a generously-granted friendship as a cover for an illicit passion. Have patience with me a little longer. Let me tell you all the truth. You cannot dismiss me from your presence as you might another who had dared to love you, and dared to tell you so; you cannot do this."
"Why?" she asked faintly, but with an angry sparkle in her eyes. For the second time she said that one word.
"Because I have injured you, Lady Mitford,--injured you unconsciously, unintentionally; and that is a plea which cannot fail, addressed to such as you. Had I never crossed your path, the woman for whom your husband has wronged you would never have crossed it either. I am the object, you are the victim, of the hatred of a she-devil. You don't suppose she cares for Mitford, do you?"
"Not if she ever loved you," was the reply.
Alsager passed it over, but a sudden light flashed into his face.
"Of course she does not. She has played her ruthless game skilfully according to her lights, and your happiness has been staked and lost. Indirectly, I am the cause of this. Was the feeling which came over me the first time I saw you a presentiment, I wonder? Well, no matter; you see now that I am a portion of your fate. You see now that a hidden tie binds us together, and the folly, the delusion of my youth, and the mistaken love of your girlhood, have borne mysterious common fruit."
She sat like one enthralled, entranced, and listened to him; she bent her head for a moment as he took an instant's breath, but she did not attempt to speak. His manner changed, grew softer, and his voice fell to almost a whisper:
"May not this mysterious tie of misfortune mean more to us?" he said. "May not the consolation come, as the curse has come, and all the designs of our enemies be disconcerted? I do not say my love is worthy of your acceptance,--I am too much travel-stained in my wanderings in the world's ways to make any such pretension; but it is yours, such as it is--faulty, imperfect, but loyal and eternal. I love you, Lady Mitford, and I ask nothing of you but permission to love you freely and fully; I ask your leave to give you all the devotion of my heart, all the loyalty of my life. I know how the world would hold such a demand; but I care nothing for the world, and I fancy you know it too well to care much for it now. You cherished a delusion long and sacredly; it was at least a noble one, but it is gone, and the world can neither satisfy you for its loss nor substitute another. Dearest--" he paused; she shivered, but she said not a word,--"dearest, what remains? Inexpressible tenderness was in his voice, in his bending figure, in his moistened eyes. There was a moment's silence, and then she spoke, replying to his last words:
"Duty, Sir Laurence,--duty, the only thing which is not a delusion; that remains."
He drew back a little, looking at her. She raised herself in her chair, and pointed to a seat at a little distance from her own. She was deadly pale, but she did not tremble, and her voice was firm and low as she said:
"Sit down, and listen to me."
He obeyed, silent and wondering. Perhaps he had not told himself exactly what he had expected,--perhaps no one ever does, when the emotions of the heart are called into evidence; but he knew that it was not this. Had he more to learn of this woman whom he had so closely studied; had her nature heights which he had not seen, and depths which he had not comprehended? Breathless he waited for her words. In an agony of suspense he looked at her averted face, which appeared to address itself to something in the distance,--which had settled into a wondrous composure at the command of the strong will. He had not estimated that strength of will aright; he had made the common mistake of overlooking a quality because he had not seen it in active employment. There was neither confusion nor weakness in the manner of the woman to whom he had just spoken such words as no woman could hear unmoved; and there mingled strangely with his love something of wonder and of awe.
After a little interval, which seemed endless to him, she turned her face towards him again, laid her hand heavily upon her breast, and spoke:
"You have been cruel to me, Sir Laurence, in all that you have said; but men, I believe, are always cruel to women if they love them, or have loved them. I acquit you of intentional cruelty, and I accept all you say of the necessity for the truth being spoken between us in the new phase of our relation which you have brought about to-day."
The intensity of her face deepened, and the pressure of her hand grew heavier. He muttered a few words of protest, but she went on as if she had not heard him.
"You have spoken words to me, Sir Laurence, which I should not have heard; but they have been spoken, and the wrong cannot be undone. It may be atoned for, and it must. Neither these words nor any other must be spoken between us henceforth--"
He started up.
"You cannot mean this," he said; "it is impossible; I do not believe it.--I will not bear it."
"Be still and hear me," she replied; "I kept silence at your desire,--you will not, I am sure, do less at mine. I too must speak to you, uninterrupted, in the spirit of that truth of which you have spoken so eloquently and with such sophistry--yes, with such sophistry."
Once more she paused and sighed.
"Speak to me, then," he said; and there was true, real anguish in his tone. "Say what you will, but do not be too hard on me. I am only a mortal man; if I have offended you, it is because you are an angel."
"You have not offended me," she said very slowly: "perhaps I ought to be offended, but I am not. I think you judge me aright when you say that truth holds the foremost place in and for me: therefore I tell you truth. You have grieved me; you have added a heavy burden to a load which is not very easy to bear, though the world, which you exhort me to despise and to deny, cannot lay a feather's weight upon it. Your friendship was very dear to me,--very precious; I did not know how dear, I think, until to-day."
How eagerly he listened to the thrilling voice! how ardently he gazed into the dreamy beautiful eyes! how breathlessly he kept the silence so hard to maintain!
"If I could use any further disguise with myself, Sir Laurence, if self-deception could have any further power over me, I might terminate this interview here, and tell you, and tell myself, that it should be forgotten. But I have done with self-deception."
"For God's sake, don't speak in that bitter tone!" Alsager said entreatingly; "spare me, if you will not spare yourself."
"No," she replied; "I will spare neither you nor myself. Why should I? The world has spared neither of us--will spare neither of us; only it will tell lies, and I will tell truths,--that's all."
Her colour was heightened, and her eyes were flashing now; but the pressure of her hand upon her bosom was steady.
"You have read my story aright: I know not by what art or science--but you have read it. If, as you say, you have an involuntary share, an unconscious responsibility in my heavy trial, it is a misfortune, which I put away from my thoughts; I hold you in no way accountable. My sorrow is my own; my delusion is over; my duty remains."
"Do you speak of duty to Sir Charles Mitford?" asked Alsager with a sneer.
"Yes," she said gently; "I do. Your tone is unworthy of you, Sir Laurence; but I pass it by; for it is the tone of a man of the world, to whom inclination is a law. Can my husband's faithlessness absolve me from fidelity? Is his sin any excuse for my defection from my duty? You say truly, I cannot love him now as I loved him when I did not know him as he is; but I can do my duty to him still--a hard duty, but imperative. The time will come when this woman will weary of him, of her vain and futile vengeance; and then--"
"Well, Lady Mitford, and then--?" asked Alsager in a cold hard voice.
She looked at him with eyes in which a holy calm had succeeded to her transient passion, and replied:
"Then he will return to me, and I must be ready to meet him without a shade upon my conscience, without a blush upon my cheek."
He started up angrily, and exclaimed:
"You pass all comprehension! What! You are no longer in error about this man; the glamour has passed. You know him for the cold cynical profligate he is; and you talk of welcoming him like a repentant prodigal; only yourself it is you are prepared to kill--your own pride, your own delicacy, your own heart! Good God! what are good women made of, that they set such monstrous codes up for themselves, and adhere to them so mercilessly!"
"He is my husband," she faltered out; and for a moment her courage seemed to fail. The next she rose, and standing by the mantelpiece, where he had stood before, she went on, with hurry and agitation in her voice: "Don't mistake me. Love is dead and gone for me. But this world is not the be-all and the end-all; there is an inheritance beyond it, reserved for those who have 'overcome.' Duty is hard, but it is never intolerable to a steadfast will, and a mind, fixed on the truth. Time is long, and the round of wrong is tedious; but the day wears through best to those who subdue impatience, and wrong loses half its bitterness when self is conquered. I have learned my lesson, Sir Laurence, and chosen my part."
"And what is to be mine?" he said with angry impatience,--"what is to be mine? You moralize charmingly, Lady Mitford; and your system is perfect, with one little exception--and what is that? A mere nothing, a trifle--only a man's heart, only a love that is true! You are all alike, I believe, bad or good, in this,--you will pine after, you will endure anything for, a man who is false to you, and you will tread upon the heart of one who is true. What do you care? We do not square with the moral code of the good among you, nor with the caprice and devilment of the bad; and so away with us! I am 'cruel' to you, forsooth, because I tell you that you no longer love a worthless profligate, who sports with your peace and your honour at the bidding of a wanton! I am 'cruel' because I tell you that I, who have innocently wronged you, love you with every pulse of my heart and every impulse of my will! Is there any cruelty on your side, do you think, when you talk, not puling sentiment--I could more easily pardon that; it would be mere conventional silliness--but these chilly, chilling moralities, which are fine in copy-books, but which men and women abandon with their writing-lessons?"
"Do they?" she said with imperturbable gentleness; "I think not. You are angry and unjust, Sir Laurence,--angry withme, unjust tome!"
The keen pathos of her tone, its innocent pleading, utterly overcame him.
"Yes," he cried; "Iamunjust, and you are an angel of goodness; but--I love you,--ah, how I love you!--and you reject me, utterly, utterly. You reject me, and for him! You givehera double triumph; you lay my life waste once more."
He stopped in his hurried walk close to her. She laid her hand upon his arm, and they looked at one another in silence for a little. She broke it first.
"And if I did not reject you, as you say--if I accepted this love, this compensating truth and loyalty, which you offer me, what should I be, Laurence Alsager, but her compeer? Have you thought of that? Have you remembered that there is a law in marriage apart from and above all feeling? Have you considered what she who breaks that law is, in the sight of God, in the unquenchable light of her own conscience, though her conduct were as pure from stain as the ermine of a royal robe? I am speaking, not chilly, chilling moralities, but immortal, immutable truth. In the time to come you will remember it, and believe it; and then there will be no bitterness in your heart when you recollect how I bade you farewell!"
The lustrous eyes looked into his with a gaze as pure as an infant's, as earnest as a sibyl's, and the gentle hand lay motionless upon his arm.
"How you bade me farewell!" he repeated in a hoarse voice. "What do you mean? Are you sending me from you?"
"Yes," she answered; "I am sending you from me. We have met once too often, and we must meet no more. You say you love me;" she shrunk and shivered again,--"and--and I believe you. Therefore you will obey me."
"No," he said resolutely; "I will not obey you! I will see you,--I must. What is there in my love to frighten or to harm you? I ask for nothing which even your scrupulous conscience might hesitate to give; I seek no change in the relation that has subsisted between us for some time now."
"Dreams, dreams," she said, sadly; "unworthy of your sense,--unworthy of your knowledge of the world. Nothing can ever replace us on our old footing. The words you have spoken to me can never be unsaid. They are words I never ought to have heard--and--" In a moment her firmness deserted her, her voice failed; she sank into a chair, and burst into passionate tears.
"You would not have them unsaid!" he cried; "tell me that you would not! Tell me that the coldness and the calm which those streaming tears deny are not true, are not real! Tell me that I am something in your life,--that I might have been more! Dearest, I reverence as much as I love you; but give me that one gleam of comfort. It cannot make your heavenly rectitude and purity poorer, while to me it will be boundless riches. Tell me that you could love me if you would; tell me that the sacred barrier of your conscience is the only one between us! I swear I will submit to that! I will not try to shake or to remove it. Nay, more, I will leave you,--if indeed you persist in commanding my absence,--if only you will tell me that under other circumstances you would have loved me. Tell me this! I ask a great, a priceless boon; but I do ask it. Dearest, will you not answer me?" Her agitation, her tears, had reassured him, had broken the spell which her calmness had imposed. The hope that had come to him once or twice during their interview came again now, and stayed.
There was no sound for a while but that of her low rapid sobs. The clocks upon the mantelpieces in the suite of rooms ticked loudly, and their irritating metallic voices mingled strangely with the rushing pulses of Alsager's frame, as he leant over her,--one arm round the back of her chair, the other hand upon its velvet arm. His face was bent above her drooping head; his thick moustache almost touched the waved ridges of her scented hair. He implored her to speak to him; he poured out protestation and entreaty with all the ardour of his strong and fiery nature, with all the eloquence which slumbered in him, unsuspected even by himself. Little by little she ceased to weep, and at length she allowed him to see her face. Again he renewed his entreaties, and she answered him.
"You try me too far, and I am weak. Yes, I would love you, if I might!"
"Then youdolove me!" he exclaimed. "You and I are no dreaming boy and girl, no Knight and Dame of old romance, but man and woman; and we know that these shades of difference are merest imagination. We love each other, and we know it. We love each other, and the acknowledgment makes the truth no truer. I am ungenerous, you would say; I am breaking the promise I have just made. Yes, I am; but I love you--and you love me!" He had dropped on one knee beside her chair now, and as he spoke he caught her hand in his. Without any sign of anger or prudery, she withdrew her hand quietly, but resolutely, and signed to him to rise and be seated. He obeyed her; but exultation shone out from every line and feature of his face.
"Youareungenerous," she said,--"very ungenerous, and very cruel; but I will not the less be true in these the last words I shall say to you. If I have dreamed of a life other than mine, of love well bestowed and faithfully returned, it was only in the most passing, transient visions. My lot is cast; my mind is made up; my heart is fixed. I linger here for a few moments longer because they are the last I shall ever pass alone with you. Do not interrupt me, or I terminate this interview on the instant. This subject must never be renewed,--indeed it never can be; for you know my resolution, and I know you will respect it. The past remains with us; but the future has no common history for you and me. When I have ceased speaking, and that door has closed behind you, you must remember me, if you do not see me, and regard me if you do, as a woman wholly devoted to her wifely duty, of whom to think otherwise is to do a deadly wrong."
He stood before her as pale as she had been; something wrathful and something reverential contended in his expression. She waved her hand with a slight gesture, and went on "Now I have done with myself; there is no more question of me. But of you, Sir Laurence, there is much and serious question. Your life is aimless and unreal. Give it an object and an aim; invest it with truth, occupy it with duty. I am speaking with you face to face for the last time, and I go back to the old relation which you have destroyed for a few minutes. In that relation I speak to you of your father's death-bed request. Fulfil it; and by doing so, end this vain and sinful strife,--quell this demon which deludes you."
"You mean that I should marry my father's ex-ward, I presume?" said Alsager, coldly.
"I do."
"Thank you, Lady Mitford. Your proposition is full of wisdom, however it may lack feeling. But there are sundry objections to my carrying it into effect. The lady does not love me, nor do I love the lady."
"You hardly know her," Lady Mitford said with a timid smile; "you have not given yourself any opportunity of testing your power of obedience to your father's dying wish. You cannot judge of how she would be disposed towards you." Once more she smiled timidly and sadly. "You would have little cause to fear ill-success, I should think."
"Except that in this case, Lady Mitford, the lady's affections are preëngaged, and she is doubtless a miracle of constancy."
"You speak bitterly, Sir Laurence, but your bitterness will pass, and your better nature will assert itself."
"Is this all you intend to say to me, Lady Mitford?"
"This is all. My words will supplement themselves in silence and reflection, and you will acknowledge that I have spoken the truth--that I am as true as you believe me."
"And are we to part thus?" he asked in a slightly softened tone.
A quick spasm crossed her face, but she answered him at once, and looked at him as she spoke, "Yes!"
He bowed profoundly. She held out her hand, On the third finger was a heavy-looking seal-ring, which she constantly were. As he coldly took the hand in his, his eyes fell upon this ring. She marked the look, and when he released her hand, she drew off the ring and offered it to him.
"You are angry with me now," she said; "but your anger will pass away. When no shade of it remains, wear this for my sake, and make its motto, which is mine, yours."
He took the ring, and without looking at it, dropped it into his waistcoat-pocket. Then he stood quite still as she passed him with her usual graceful step, and watched the sweep of her soft black robe as she walked down the long room, and disappeared through a door which opened into her boudoir.
Late that night Alsager, angry still, dark and wrathful, tossed the ring with a contemptuous frown into a jewel-case; but he first took an impression of it in wax, and read, the motto thus: "Fortiter--Fideliter--Feliciter."