CHAPTER XIII"I have loved," she said,"Man is weak—God is dread."The child can just run alone now, and lisp his mother's name in that sweet baby language which is earth's exquisite music to a mother's ears. He is a lovely little fellow, with big starry eyes, and soft gold hair and winning coaxing ways, which did as they would with all womankind, who had anything to do with him.Lauraine kneels there for a moment under the great oak trees, and, holds him clasped to her heart."We will take him home, nurse," she says, looking up at the stately personage who is his guardian, and who adores him with all her soul."You can't carry him, my lady, and it is too far for him to walk," she says."Oh yes. Lady Etwynde and I will carry him between us," answers Lauraine. "Darling—how strong and big he gets! There, take mother's hand. Isn't he delighted, Lady Etwynde, to come with us?""He seems so," smiles her friend. "Farewell to philosophy now, Lauraine. King Baby puts everything else into the background.""It is wonderful, is it not?" says Lauraine, with something of the old bright smile. "I wonder how I could ever have lived without him. He seems to hold all my heart in these two wee hands of his.""I have often wondered," says Lady Etwynde, dreamily, "it seems an odd thing to say, perhaps, but I have often wondered at women who are mothers 'going wrong' as people express it. I could understand a wife, bad as it is; but to forsake your children your own flesh and blood for the sake of a man's love—well it must be a sort of delirious frenzy, I suppose. And do you know it is not always flighty women—careless women—who astonish us by adaux pas. It is sometimes the quietest and most unlikely.""Yes," answers Lauraine very quietly; "these cases are so totally different to the lookers-on. They only see the result, not what leads up to it.""It is difficult to know what to think," says Lady Etwynde. "I have known people marry for love, for money, for rank, for convenience, for obedience's sake, for duty's sake, and yet I don't know of one singlereallyhappy marriage. The lovers have got sick of each other in a year, the moneyed pair are miserable, the other indifferent, unfaithful, erratic, as the case may be. Is it any wonder, Lauraine, that I gave the business a wide berth?""You are fortunate to be able to please yourself," says Lauraine; "it is not every woman who can do that.""No, I suppose not," says her friend. "And then it's a case of 'what can't be cured, must be endured.' Is baby too heavy for you? Let me carry him now!""I wonder what makes him shiver so?" says Lauraine, anxiously. "I don't think nurse ought to have brought him out such a cold afternoon.""And we haven't a shawl or wrap of any description," says Lady Etwynde. "Yes he does look cold. There, I'll turn his face away from the wind. We shall soon be home. Why, how troubled you look, my dear. When you have a nursery full of little plagues, you won't fidget about one so much."But, despite her cheery words, she hurries on as fast as her feet can carry her. The little fellow shivers constantly during that passage through the avenue, and glad indeed is she when the ruddy blaze of lights and fire gleams from the great dark old mansion."He will soon be warm now," she says, cheerfully when they reach the house. Lauraine and herself take off his hat and coat, and sit down with him before the great blazing fire in the hall, and chafe his little cold hands and feet until he crows and laughs, and seems to have quite recovered himself again.The two women sit there and have tea brought to them, and administer some to baby, who appreciates it immensely. They play games with him, and sing nursery rhymes, and in fact, have an hour of the simplest, and perhaps also the purest enjoyment that women can have. Then nurse comes, and he is carried off to bed, flushed, rosy, boisterous, his pretty laughter echoing down the wide oak staircase, his eyes beaming star-like down on his mother's face so long as ever she remains in sight. When he is fairly gone the two friends ensconce themselves comfortably before the great fireplace.A footman enters with the post-bag, and hands it to his mistress. Lauraine unlocks it, and takes out its contents. She hands two or three letters to Lady Etwynde, and glances carelessly at her own. One, she sees, is from her husband, the other—a sudden wave of colour crimsons her face. Only too well she knows those bold, clear characters. "Why does he write to me?" she thinks, passionately. "Can't he even try and let me forget?"Lady Etwynde is absorbed in her own correspondence. Lauraine hastily tears open the envelope and takes out two sheets closely covered. The letter begins without any preamble, or formal mode of address:"Perhaps I ought not to write to you. You gave me no permission to do so before you left town; but, all the same, I feel I must. It is only a week since you went away. How long a week can be! I can't make up my mind where to go. I have heaps of invitations, but don't care to accept any of them. Mrs. Woollffe and her niece are at Scarborough, they go to Trouville afterwards. I may join them. Despite eccentricities, they suit me better than English people. How is the 'Ladye'? Is she pursuing culture amidst the gloomy grandeur of Northumbrian shores, and does she bore or entertain you? Perhaps it is no use to ask questions, for you have never promised to write. Would you do so, I wonder, if I told you what a great,greatpleasure it would be to me; and I think you know something of the emptiness of my life. Do not fancy I am complaining, or that I wish to excite your pity. I only leave it to yourself and your own kind-heartedness, I won't even plead the old 'boy and girl' claim now. With you, Lauraine, I have always felt more as if speaking to myself in a way—you have so much comprehension, so much sympathy. You know there are few people to whom we ever open up ourrealselves and most of us go through life really strangers to those who think they know us best. But with you and me this will never be. We have stood heart to heart in our childish days, and known to the full each other's faults, weaknesses, capabilities. How often you used to lecture me on my selfishness, my headstrong will, my impulsiveness. Ah me! how often that sweet little child face of yours looks back at me from the mists of the past. I have only to close my eyes and I see you, oh, so plainly, in your simple cotton frock, and with your great eyes upraised to mine. I can even feel the touch of your little hand on my arm; and your voice—will ever a woman's voice on the face of God's earth thrill my soul and calm my wild heart as yours has done, and does? Oh! the pity of it all; the pity of it...."My pen is running away with me, my thoughts are no longer under my control. As I sit alone here, I hear a band in the street below playing a sad waltz air, an air that we danced to once, this season that is over. How it brings you back to me. I can see the colour of the dress you wore. I feel the scents of the flowers in your breast; you are floating by my side and your heart beats close to mine. Ah! the music ceases; you are gone? I am looking out on the evening sky; purple and gold and amethyst, the clouds bordered with a fringe of fire as the sun just sinks away. Perhaps you are looking at the same sky; perhaps your thoughts——. But no, I will not dare to say that. It is so hard. Lorry, oh, so hard, to think that we are not now as we were. Do you think I have grown sentimental? I, who was always so rough and wild and impetuous, and laughed to scorn the milk-and-water of poetry? No. I think you will know what it is that is in me, and with me, and why I feel like this; as the thoughts flow into my mind, my hand traces them just as in those past happy days. I can put into words for you, and you alone, the strange feelings and wild imaginings that no other human being ever suspects me of possessing. This is a long letter. Perhaps you will smile at it. I should not wonder; but, in any case, don't visit its folly on the writer, who is now and always—Yours only,"KEITH."In the reddened glow of the fire-blaze Lauraine reads these words. Her eyes grow dark and misty; a strange, soft trouble takes possession of her heart."He is quite right," she thinks. "We two stand to each other in quite a different light to what we do to any one else. It was so natural once to speak to each other like this; but, though I thought I knew Keith, I am afraid I did not. I never gave him credit for such depth of feeling. I thought, after that day, he would forget me. And, after all——" A heavy sigh breaks from her lips.She folds the letter together, and puts it in her pocket. Her husband's lies on the table, unopened."Sir Francis is a good correspondent," remarks Lady Etwynde. "Is he enjoying his cruise?""Sir Francis!" murmurs Lauraine, vaguely. "I—I have not read his letter yet.""I beg your pardon!" exclaims Lady Etwynde, hastily, and colouring with embarrassment. It has not occurred to her that that long, bold, manly scrawl could be from any one but Sir Francis. Lauraine takes up the other letter now. No closely covered sheets here. Rather a different missive:"DEAR LAURAINE,"Weather beastly; every one out of sorts. Awfully slow, if it wasn't for Lady Jean. Hope you and the boy are all right. Ask some people for next month. The Salomans will come back with me.—Yours,"FRANCIS VAVASOUR"PS.—Will write and say what date to expect us.""Husbands don't trouble to write long letters," remarks Lauraine, folding up this curt epistle. "Sir Francis is going to bring the Salomans here next month. I wonder what on earth Lady Jean will do with herself.""She will organize all sorts of entertainments, and turn the place upside down," answers Lady Etwynde. "Are you going to have a large party?""I suppose so. I am sorry for it. I hoped to have a long spell of rest and quiet.""You will ask your mother, I suppose?""My mother?" Lauraine starts and looks uncomfortable. "I—I don't know. I haven't thought about it.""I wonder what is in the background," thinks Lady Etwynde to herself. "She and her mother don't get on; and there is Keith Athelstone. Did she make Lauraine marry Sir Francis? I should have thought the girl had sufficient strength of mind to hold her own against persuasion. Still one never knows."Alone in her dressing-room before dinner Lauraine reads again that letter of Keith Athelstone's."I wonder what I ought to do," she thinks. "Is it dangerous to go on with this? The case looks so different to just 'us two' to what it would, to an outsider. And though I might send him away now, we should be sure to meet again at some period or another. The world is never wide enough to part those whooughtto be parted. And the poor fellow is so unhappy. No one understands him as I do. I know in books whenever there is anything of this sort, any danger, the two people always go into heroics, and part nobly, and have fearful sufferings to endure; but then in the third volume everything is sure to come right. If I thought, if I knew there would be a third volume inourlives... Ah, dear me, when do things ever come right in real life? Never, never, never." With a weary sigh that ends these thoughts she locks the letter away.Far enough is she from guessing then what will soon put it and the writer out of her thoughts.Meanwhile the Lady Etwynde is seriously disturbed and perplexed. She is too genuinely fond of Lauraine not to perceive that she has some inward trouble weighing on her mind, and yet she does not ask its nature, or even appear to notice it. She knows the girl is pure-minded, loyal, self-controlled; but so have been other women, who, beneath a sudden tempting—a fierce, wild, incomprehensible passion—have fallen from their high estate. And there is that in and about Lauraine that betrays that she could love very deeply, very passionately, with that absorption of herself into what she loves that is so dangerous a trait in any woman's character. To the weak, the placid, the prosaic, the cold, such a nature as this is quite incomprehensible. To the untempted it is so easy to be strong; to the cold, so easy to be virtuous. The conquest of self seems so possible when you have not to count the cost. To yourself? ah, no, not toyourself, but to one other who is all the world to you, and whose pain and sorrow intensify your own till the agony grows too much for human strength to bear.Lady Etwynde had no personal experience to guide her through this maze of conclusions; but she had an immense amount of sympathy, and an infinite tenderness of nature. It pleased her to veil and deny this to the world at large, but it made her all the more beloved by the chosen few whom she neither could nor would deceive.For Lauraine she had conceived a strong liking, not the mere pretty, gushing fancy that stands in lieu of friendship with so many women of the world; but an earnest and appreciative affection that would serve and stand by her all her life. She had a shrewd suspicion that all was not right with her; some care, some secret trouble, was preying on her mind, she felt assured."Perhaps, in time, she will tell me," she thinks to herself. "I hope she may. I might help her. Brooding over these things with one's self always makes them worse. What a woman can't talk of is bad for her. It eats into her heart and life, and absorbs all that is best in both. There is a disdain, a weariness about Lauraine unnatural in one so young. She loves her child, that one can see; but apart and aside from him she seems to have no life, no interest. Apathy, indifference, despair; those are not things that should be about her yet; but I know they are. And why?"The dinner-bell sounds, and puts an end to her reflections, and she goes down the great oak staircase in her floating, artistic draperies, and, despite her beauty and her picturesqueness, actually has the bad taste to murmur"What a comfort there are no men here!"
"I have loved," she said,"Man is weak—God is dread."
The child can just run alone now, and lisp his mother's name in that sweet baby language which is earth's exquisite music to a mother's ears. He is a lovely little fellow, with big starry eyes, and soft gold hair and winning coaxing ways, which did as they would with all womankind, who had anything to do with him.
Lauraine kneels there for a moment under the great oak trees, and, holds him clasped to her heart.
"We will take him home, nurse," she says, looking up at the stately personage who is his guardian, and who adores him with all her soul.
"You can't carry him, my lady, and it is too far for him to walk," she says.
"Oh yes. Lady Etwynde and I will carry him between us," answers Lauraine. "Darling—how strong and big he gets! There, take mother's hand. Isn't he delighted, Lady Etwynde, to come with us?"
"He seems so," smiles her friend. "Farewell to philosophy now, Lauraine. King Baby puts everything else into the background."
"It is wonderful, is it not?" says Lauraine, with something of the old bright smile. "I wonder how I could ever have lived without him. He seems to hold all my heart in these two wee hands of his."
"I have often wondered," says Lady Etwynde, dreamily, "it seems an odd thing to say, perhaps, but I have often wondered at women who are mothers 'going wrong' as people express it. I could understand a wife, bad as it is; but to forsake your children your own flesh and blood for the sake of a man's love—well it must be a sort of delirious frenzy, I suppose. And do you know it is not always flighty women—careless women—who astonish us by adaux pas. It is sometimes the quietest and most unlikely."
"Yes," answers Lauraine very quietly; "these cases are so totally different to the lookers-on. They only see the result, not what leads up to it."
"It is difficult to know what to think," says Lady Etwynde. "I have known people marry for love, for money, for rank, for convenience, for obedience's sake, for duty's sake, and yet I don't know of one singlereallyhappy marriage. The lovers have got sick of each other in a year, the moneyed pair are miserable, the other indifferent, unfaithful, erratic, as the case may be. Is it any wonder, Lauraine, that I gave the business a wide berth?"
"You are fortunate to be able to please yourself," says Lauraine; "it is not every woman who can do that."
"No, I suppose not," says her friend. "And then it's a case of 'what can't be cured, must be endured.' Is baby too heavy for you? Let me carry him now!"
"I wonder what makes him shiver so?" says Lauraine, anxiously. "I don't think nurse ought to have brought him out such a cold afternoon."
"And we haven't a shawl or wrap of any description," says Lady Etwynde. "Yes he does look cold. There, I'll turn his face away from the wind. We shall soon be home. Why, how troubled you look, my dear. When you have a nursery full of little plagues, you won't fidget about one so much."
But, despite her cheery words, she hurries on as fast as her feet can carry her. The little fellow shivers constantly during that passage through the avenue, and glad indeed is she when the ruddy blaze of lights and fire gleams from the great dark old mansion.
"He will soon be warm now," she says, cheerfully when they reach the house. Lauraine and herself take off his hat and coat, and sit down with him before the great blazing fire in the hall, and chafe his little cold hands and feet until he crows and laughs, and seems to have quite recovered himself again.
The two women sit there and have tea brought to them, and administer some to baby, who appreciates it immensely. They play games with him, and sing nursery rhymes, and in fact, have an hour of the simplest, and perhaps also the purest enjoyment that women can have. Then nurse comes, and he is carried off to bed, flushed, rosy, boisterous, his pretty laughter echoing down the wide oak staircase, his eyes beaming star-like down on his mother's face so long as ever she remains in sight. When he is fairly gone the two friends ensconce themselves comfortably before the great fireplace.
A footman enters with the post-bag, and hands it to his mistress. Lauraine unlocks it, and takes out its contents. She hands two or three letters to Lady Etwynde, and glances carelessly at her own. One, she sees, is from her husband, the other—a sudden wave of colour crimsons her face. Only too well she knows those bold, clear characters. "Why does he write to me?" she thinks, passionately. "Can't he even try and let me forget?"
Lady Etwynde is absorbed in her own correspondence. Lauraine hastily tears open the envelope and takes out two sheets closely covered. The letter begins without any preamble, or formal mode of address:
"Perhaps I ought not to write to you. You gave me no permission to do so before you left town; but, all the same, I feel I must. It is only a week since you went away. How long a week can be! I can't make up my mind where to go. I have heaps of invitations, but don't care to accept any of them. Mrs. Woollffe and her niece are at Scarborough, they go to Trouville afterwards. I may join them. Despite eccentricities, they suit me better than English people. How is the 'Ladye'? Is she pursuing culture amidst the gloomy grandeur of Northumbrian shores, and does she bore or entertain you? Perhaps it is no use to ask questions, for you have never promised to write. Would you do so, I wonder, if I told you what a great,greatpleasure it would be to me; and I think you know something of the emptiness of my life. Do not fancy I am complaining, or that I wish to excite your pity. I only leave it to yourself and your own kind-heartedness, I won't even plead the old 'boy and girl' claim now. With you, Lauraine, I have always felt more as if speaking to myself in a way—you have so much comprehension, so much sympathy. You know there are few people to whom we ever open up ourrealselves and most of us go through life really strangers to those who think they know us best. But with you and me this will never be. We have stood heart to heart in our childish days, and known to the full each other's faults, weaknesses, capabilities. How often you used to lecture me on my selfishness, my headstrong will, my impulsiveness. Ah me! how often that sweet little child face of yours looks back at me from the mists of the past. I have only to close my eyes and I see you, oh, so plainly, in your simple cotton frock, and with your great eyes upraised to mine. I can even feel the touch of your little hand on my arm; and your voice—will ever a woman's voice on the face of God's earth thrill my soul and calm my wild heart as yours has done, and does? Oh! the pity of it all; the pity of it....
"My pen is running away with me, my thoughts are no longer under my control. As I sit alone here, I hear a band in the street below playing a sad waltz air, an air that we danced to once, this season that is over. How it brings you back to me. I can see the colour of the dress you wore. I feel the scents of the flowers in your breast; you are floating by my side and your heart beats close to mine. Ah! the music ceases; you are gone? I am looking out on the evening sky; purple and gold and amethyst, the clouds bordered with a fringe of fire as the sun just sinks away. Perhaps you are looking at the same sky; perhaps your thoughts——. But no, I will not dare to say that. It is so hard. Lorry, oh, so hard, to think that we are not now as we were. Do you think I have grown sentimental? I, who was always so rough and wild and impetuous, and laughed to scorn the milk-and-water of poetry? No. I think you will know what it is that is in me, and with me, and why I feel like this; as the thoughts flow into my mind, my hand traces them just as in those past happy days. I can put into words for you, and you alone, the strange feelings and wild imaginings that no other human being ever suspects me of possessing. This is a long letter. Perhaps you will smile at it. I should not wonder; but, in any case, don't visit its folly on the writer, who is now and always—Yours only,
"KEITH."
In the reddened glow of the fire-blaze Lauraine reads these words. Her eyes grow dark and misty; a strange, soft trouble takes possession of her heart.
"He is quite right," she thinks. "We two stand to each other in quite a different light to what we do to any one else. It was so natural once to speak to each other like this; but, though I thought I knew Keith, I am afraid I did not. I never gave him credit for such depth of feeling. I thought, after that day, he would forget me. And, after all——" A heavy sigh breaks from her lips.
She folds the letter together, and puts it in her pocket. Her husband's lies on the table, unopened.
"Sir Francis is a good correspondent," remarks Lady Etwynde. "Is he enjoying his cruise?"
"Sir Francis!" murmurs Lauraine, vaguely. "I—I have not read his letter yet."
"I beg your pardon!" exclaims Lady Etwynde, hastily, and colouring with embarrassment. It has not occurred to her that that long, bold, manly scrawl could be from any one but Sir Francis. Lauraine takes up the other letter now. No closely covered sheets here. Rather a different missive:
"DEAR LAURAINE,
"Weather beastly; every one out of sorts. Awfully slow, if it wasn't for Lady Jean. Hope you and the boy are all right. Ask some people for next month. The Salomans will come back with me.—Yours,
"FRANCIS VAVASOUR
"PS.—Will write and say what date to expect us."
"Husbands don't trouble to write long letters," remarks Lauraine, folding up this curt epistle. "Sir Francis is going to bring the Salomans here next month. I wonder what on earth Lady Jean will do with herself."
"She will organize all sorts of entertainments, and turn the place upside down," answers Lady Etwynde. "Are you going to have a large party?"
"I suppose so. I am sorry for it. I hoped to have a long spell of rest and quiet."
"You will ask your mother, I suppose?"
"My mother?" Lauraine starts and looks uncomfortable. "I—I don't know. I haven't thought about it."
"I wonder what is in the background," thinks Lady Etwynde to herself. "She and her mother don't get on; and there is Keith Athelstone. Did she make Lauraine marry Sir Francis? I should have thought the girl had sufficient strength of mind to hold her own against persuasion. Still one never knows."
Alone in her dressing-room before dinner Lauraine reads again that letter of Keith Athelstone's.
"I wonder what I ought to do," she thinks. "Is it dangerous to go on with this? The case looks so different to just 'us two' to what it would, to an outsider. And though I might send him away now, we should be sure to meet again at some period or another. The world is never wide enough to part those whooughtto be parted. And the poor fellow is so unhappy. No one understands him as I do. I know in books whenever there is anything of this sort, any danger, the two people always go into heroics, and part nobly, and have fearful sufferings to endure; but then in the third volume everything is sure to come right. If I thought, if I knew there would be a third volume inourlives... Ah, dear me, when do things ever come right in real life? Never, never, never." With a weary sigh that ends these thoughts she locks the letter away.
Far enough is she from guessing then what will soon put it and the writer out of her thoughts.
Meanwhile the Lady Etwynde is seriously disturbed and perplexed. She is too genuinely fond of Lauraine not to perceive that she has some inward trouble weighing on her mind, and yet she does not ask its nature, or even appear to notice it. She knows the girl is pure-minded, loyal, self-controlled; but so have been other women, who, beneath a sudden tempting—a fierce, wild, incomprehensible passion—have fallen from their high estate. And there is that in and about Lauraine that betrays that she could love very deeply, very passionately, with that absorption of herself into what she loves that is so dangerous a trait in any woman's character. To the weak, the placid, the prosaic, the cold, such a nature as this is quite incomprehensible. To the untempted it is so easy to be strong; to the cold, so easy to be virtuous. The conquest of self seems so possible when you have not to count the cost. To yourself? ah, no, not toyourself, but to one other who is all the world to you, and whose pain and sorrow intensify your own till the agony grows too much for human strength to bear.
Lady Etwynde had no personal experience to guide her through this maze of conclusions; but she had an immense amount of sympathy, and an infinite tenderness of nature. It pleased her to veil and deny this to the world at large, but it made her all the more beloved by the chosen few whom she neither could nor would deceive.
For Lauraine she had conceived a strong liking, not the mere pretty, gushing fancy that stands in lieu of friendship with so many women of the world; but an earnest and appreciative affection that would serve and stand by her all her life. She had a shrewd suspicion that all was not right with her; some care, some secret trouble, was preying on her mind, she felt assured.
"Perhaps, in time, she will tell me," she thinks to herself. "I hope she may. I might help her. Brooding over these things with one's self always makes them worse. What a woman can't talk of is bad for her. It eats into her heart and life, and absorbs all that is best in both. There is a disdain, a weariness about Lauraine unnatural in one so young. She loves her child, that one can see; but apart and aside from him she seems to have no life, no interest. Apathy, indifference, despair; those are not things that should be about her yet; but I know they are. And why?"
The dinner-bell sounds, and puts an end to her reflections, and she goes down the great oak staircase in her floating, artistic draperies, and, despite her beauty and her picturesqueness, actually has the bad taste to murmur
"What a comfort there are no men here!"