CHAPTER XVThe body faints sore,It is tired in the race.Do you know Erlsbach?Very likely not. You won't find it in any map or guide-book, or directions to fashionable spas and watering-places. You won't find it by this name either, for its people call it differently. It is just a little dusky spot on the confines of the Austrian Tyrol, a little village shut in by pine forests washed by silvery waters; quaint, old world, unremarkable, but beautiful exceedingly.In the warm June weather Erlsbach is at its best. So green, and fragrant, and cool, with soft airs blowing from the pine forests, and the gleam of snow on the mountain heights, and the emerald waters of the river shining in vivid brightness where the sunrays slant amidst the greenness of the boughs. It boasts of but one hotel does Erlsbach, a little old-fashioned hostelry, with nothing to recommend it save that it is very clean and picturesque, and its people are honest as the day.To Erlsbach, and, as a matter of course, to the Kaiser Hof, come one June evening a party of two ladies and two maids, a courier, and luggageen attendance. Their arrival is expected, their rooms are taken; the best rooms, with a balcony overlooking the river, and that far-off view of the mountain heights beyond, where the purple light of evening is melting on the whiteness of eternal snows. When the bustle of arrival is over, one of the two ladies comes out on the balcony and stands there for long, looking out at the pretty, peaceful scene. A voice from a room within speaks after a time:"Do you like it, Lauraine?"The figure moves, turns half round. "It is like a poem," she says, softly. "Like it? One can hardly say that; onefeelsit." The speaker advances and joins her."Yes; you are right. I only came here once; it was years ago, and my heart was heavy with a great sorrow. I left it behind me, Lauraine; buried it amid the lonely woods and mountain ways. Oh, my dear, my dear, if you might do the same?"A sigh parts the beautiful grave lips of Lauraine Vavasour; she grows very pale. "That cannot be," she says, faintly. "I could never forget easily; and this, this was part of my life—myself. Do not let us speak of it, Etwynde; it hurts me still.""People say to talk of their troubles lightens them.""I am not like that then. My sorrow is shut in my heart. I cannot bear to profane it with speech.""But it makes it so much harder to bear, Lauraine.""Not to me; nothing on earth, even your sympathy, could lighten it."Lady Etwynde is silent. Her thoughts go back to that dreary, awful time when the child's death was yet so new a thing; it is nearly nine months ago now, and Lauraine has been all that time in the gloomy old mansion on the Northumbrian shores. The funeral had been long over before Sir Francis returned, and then he had made but a brief stay, and gone to Scotland with some friends."Fretting could do no good," he said philosophically, and he hated the gloomy quietude of Falcon's Chase, and was only too glad to leave it. Lady Etwynde stayed with Lauraine all through that dreary winter; she could not bear to leave her alone in her grief and despair, for the sorrow seemed but to take deeper root in her nature. Even all Lady Etwynde's gentle sympathy could make no way. She half-feared and only half-comprehended this new phase in her friend's character. For she could not know that Lauraine felt a terror of herself now; that it seemed to her as if the one safeguard she had clung to had been swept from her hold, and she lay anchorless, shelterless on the great dark sea of life, beholding no hope or ray of light, turn where she would.The chill of winter passed into the fair, sweet month of spring; but no change came to her. Nothing seemed to thaw the ice about her heart. A strange chill and silence from the outer world rested upon her life as it was now. Of all her many friends and acquaintances none seemed to remember her or heed her. Keith had written again and yet again; she had never answered him once. Shedarednot. His sympathy, his presence would have been a comfort too great not to be dangerous, and the more she longed for them the more rigorously she denied them to herself. With the spring her husband wrote to know whether she wanted to come to town for the season. She read the letter with a shuddering horror. The season! To dance, drive, gossip, kill time in a round of empty pleasures; sate herself with luxury and extravagance. The thought seemed loathsome to her now. Her youth and all that was best in her seemed to have died with her little child. Her eyes seemed ever to have that look in them that has so frightened and pained her friend; the look as of tears that could not fall.She was awfully, terribly changed, both in body and mind, and when Lady Etwynde paid her a flying visit, tearing herself from æsthetic joys and the glories of the Grosvenor Gallery Exhibition, and endlessréunionsamong the cultured, she was shocked and alarmed at the alteration."You must leave here, or you will go melancholy mad!" she said, imperatively; and Lauraine, having arrived at that stage when she was too spiritless and too indifferent to oppose any vigorous scheme, yielded passively, and was borne off to Erlsbach.Sir Francis, of course, could not come. He liked London, and was not going to give up its thousand and one enjoyments for the sake of an invalid's whim. Her mother offered voluntarily to sacrifice herself in the matter; but Lauraine would not hear of it, and in the end she and Lady Etwynde, under charge of an experienced courier, set out for Germany and, travelling by slow and easy stages, arrived one warm June evening at quaint, pretty Erlsbach."But, Lauraine," says Lady Etwynde, continuing the conversation after a long, thoughtful pause, "have you ever considered that it is like putting yourself in rebellion against God to go on like this? All strokes of sorrow are sent for some wise purpose. We do not see it, believe it, at the time; but, later on——""Ah," interrupts Lauraine, "that is just it. It has not come to 'later on' with me. I had but one thing to make me happy; it has gone. Don't expect me to be consoled in a few months.""But, my dear, you have your husband, your duties. Do you know it seems to me as if you were, in a way, estranging yourself from him?""He can find plenty of amusement in the world," says Lauraine, coldly. "Little Frank was nothing to him, except just simply the heir who would come after him in due time, and keep the estates in the family. But to me——" She breaks off abruptly.The faint wind from the pine woods blows over her head and ruffles the soft dusky curls above her brow. In that dim light, with her pale, beautiful face turned upwards to the purple sky, she looks so young, so fair, so sorrowful, that a rush of tears dims Lady Etwynde's eyes as she gazes at her. "I didn't think she would have taken her sorrow to heart like this. How little one knows, after all!" she thinks to herself.A week drifts by. Amidst that tranquil pastoral loveliness, amidst the beauty of the woods and streams, in the whole dreamy, simple life they lead, Lauraine rests and rejoices in such quiet, unecstatic fashion as is left to her. Her sorrow seems less hard and cold a thing here; the angel face of her lost darling comes with a more tender grace to her memory. She can talk and even smile with something of the old playful witchery that used to be hers. There is always something new to see; there are no landmarks here as at Falcon's Chase to recall the footsteps of that baby life whose journeying was so short a one. She begins to feel a little interest in places and things once more. She likes Lady Etwynde's talk, even when it may be on culture and ethics; she can listen to her when she reads out, which she does admirably as well as judiciously. On the whole, there is a decided improvement about the mental "tone" that delights Lady Etwynde, though she never appears to notice it.Life and worldly cares, and even worldly joys, seemed sometimes to sink into almost insignificance amidst these mountain solitudes. They were so grand, so sublime, so immovable. Their lessons came home to Lauraine's aching heart, and soothed and comforted it insensibly to herself. She grew less sad, she brooded less over what she had lost. She had no hope, nothing to look forward to; yet still the present so steeped her in peace and rest that it seemed to her in after years as if these fragrant forests, this wilderness of ferns and flowers, these foaming waters, and far-off gleam of shining glaciers and crowning snows, had possessed some magic power that insensibly soothed and lulled her heart's long pain.Late one afternoon she and Lady Etwynde are returning from a drive to a little village some two miles distant. The sun is just setting above the forest heights, there is alternate light and gloom among the heavy foliage, those beautiful shades of green and gold that make up so much of the charm of a wood. Lady Etwynde is driving rather quickly, and the road is narrow. Before them she sees the figure of a horseman proceeding leisurely along. At the near approach of the ponies' rapid trot he draws his horse aside to make room. Lauraine leaning back in the little low carriage, gives a careless glance up as she passes, then all the pallor of her face flushes deepest scarlet; she starts forward with an exclamation of amazement. Lady Etwynde notices it, and reins in the ponies. "Mr. Athelstone! Is it possible?" she says.In astonishment quite as genuine, Keith draws the bridle, and bends towards the two figures."What a strange meeting," he says, as he shakes hands first with Lauraine, then with Lady Etwynde."I thought you were in London," Lauraine says quickly. After one wild leap of joy her heart seems to grow still and cold with a great dread. What evil fate, she wonders, has thrown him across her path now?They are all too genuinely astonished to be embarrassed, and Keith proceeds to explain how he has been mountaineering for the last month in the Tyrol district; how his headquarters at present are that very little village they have just visited; and how he has ridden over to Erlsbach from idle curiosity, to see what the place is like. Of course there remains nothing for it but to invite him to the Kaiser Hof, and an hour later the trio are sitting at dinner, the table drawn close by the open window, and the fresh pine-scented air blowing in cool and soft from the mountains. Keith and Lauraine talk very little to each other. The brunt of the conversation falls on Lady Etwynde, and she in no way objects. Keith has always been a favourite of hers, and they have many sharp and witty arguments, while that pale, grave figure in the soft draperies listens and smiles, and feels at once disturbed and restless, and yet glad.Sooner or later they would meet. She had known that always, but had never dreamt of it being so soon, or so strangely.Somehow in life the meetings we expect never do take place as we expect them. We may rehearse our little scenes as carefully as we please, we may arrange our looks, our words, the very tones of our voices, but when the actualrencontredoes occur it is sure to be utterly different, and the carefully-arranged programme is never carried out.It is so with Lauraine now. She has sometimes longed, sometimes dreaded to meet him, but always imagined it at some distant time and in some totally different manner; and now Keith is sitting at her table, her own guest, smiling, talking, looking at her to all appearance as unconcerned and forgetful as if that "garden scene" had never been enacted.He is a better actor than herself, and he determines to be it. She shows that she is troubled, pained, perplexed. He ignores everything that might lead to that past, is careless, cynical, indifferent as of yore; but all the time his heart is beating with tumultuous pain; he is thinking how sadly altered she is, how changed from the bright, beautiful Lauraine of his boyhood, and yet dearer to him in her sufferings and sorrow than in any years that are past. It is hard work to keep down the thoughts that are thronging, the love that is leaping, the joy that is thrilling his every sense; but he knows it must be done, and he succeeds in doing it and in deceiving Lauraine. The cloth is removed. The soft dusk settles on the pretty quiet scene without. Lady Etwynde, who dislikes a glare of light, blows out nearly all the illumination of candles in the room, and they sit there by the window watching the stars come out one by one, talking less now, but with something grave and earnest in the talk that it has lacked before.At last Lady Etwynde rises, and, saying she has letters to write, moves away to a little inner room, partitioned off by curtains from the one where they have all been sitting. It is solitude, yet not solitude. The sense of being together, the knowledge that their low tones are unheard, is just restrained by the feeling that another person is close at hand. Keith is silent for some moments, then bends towards Lauraine."You never answered my letters; I could hardly expect it. But I do hope you believe I felt for your grief?""Yes," she answers, simply; "I always felt sure of that.""I am glad you say so. When you never wrote I thought you were offended, indifferent, perhaps. It has been a terribly blank time for me.""I think you have no right to tell me that," she says, flushing and paling with nervous agitation. "I cannot help you, and it only adds to the sufferings of my own life that yours is also sad.""Sad!" he echoes, wearily. "If you only knewhowsad. But you are right; I ought not to speak of that. How strange it seems to meet you here; almost makes one believe in Fate! To think that I rose this morning and rode off haphazard, not even guessing you were within a hundred miles of me, and now, at evening, I am sitting by your side!""How is it you have forsaken the London season?""It I told you therealtruth you would be angry, and I cannot utter conventional lies to you, Lorry."She trembles a little. Her eyes go out to the shining river that mirrors the silver glory of the starlight. At her heart a dull pain beats. "Your friends, the Americans, where are they?" she asks evasively."In Paris, I believe. At least, they may have left now; but they were there up to May. Nan is mad about Paris." "Nan," be it remarked, is what he always calls Miss Anastasia Jefferson. Lauraine knows this, and smiles a little."You and she are as great friends as ever, I suppose?" she remarks."She is a jolly little girl," Keith answers, carelessly. "Yes, I suppose we are friends in a way. We are always quarrelling, and yet always making it up.""Why don't you—marry—her?" asks Lauraine.He stares at her as if uncertain of what he has heard. "Marry Nan! Good Lord! I never dreamt of such a thing!""Other people have," continues Lauraine; "even the girl herself, I fancy."He laughs a little bitterly. "What fad have you got into your head? Nan looks upon me as a sort of elder brother. There has never been anything of 'that sort' between us. As for marrying, well,youought to know I am not likely to do that.""I think you ought to marry," says Lauraine, very quietly. "You see you have wealth and position, and yet you lead such a 'homeless' kind of life. That is the only word that expresses it. And some day surely you will think of settling down; you cannot be always like this.""Youcounsel me to marry," he says, with bitterness. "Have you found the experience so pleasant a one?"The crimson colour rushes all over the proud fair face. "That has nothing to do with it," she says, coldly."Has it not? Well, if I choose to be faithful to a memory, that is my look out. I am not one to forget easily, as I have told you before.""And you don't care for Miss Jefferson?" asks Lauraine, unwisely.He looks at her in silence for a moment, and under the strong magnetism of his glance, her eyes turn from the scene without and meet his own."I thinkyoushould know," he says, very softly.There comes the sound of a rustling skirt, a closing door. Lady Etwynde has left the inner room; they are alone. In an instant he is kneeling by the low chair on which she sits. Her hands are clasped in his."Oh, Lorry, Lorry!" he cries; "it is so hard!"The passionate plaint thrills to her very heart. She lays her hands on either shoulder, and looks down into the pain-filled depths of the blue eyes."I know it, dear," she says, very gently. "Is it not hard for me too?""You are so cold, so different, and then you have your home, your husband, your——. Oh, forgive me, darling! How could I be so thoughtless?"He sees the spasm of pain on the white face, the sudden quiver of the soft red lips."I—I have nothing now!" she groans, despairingly, and her two hands go up to hide her face. A storm of passionate weeping shakes her from head to foot. Keith is alarmed, distressed, but he is wise enough to rise and stand quietly by. He attempts no consolation.The storm abates at last. Those tears have done Lauraine good. She has been cold and hard in her grief for so long a time. She also rises, a little ashamed, a little confused. "Let us go out on the balcony," she says, and he follows her without a word.It seems like a dream to him; a dream that will never be forgotten, that will haunt his memory with a vivid thrill of pain whenever he feels the scents of mountain air, or sees the gleam of quiet stars. With them, too, he will see the little balcony of the quaint old "Hof," and a slender figure with draperies of dusky black, and a face white, solemn, inexpressibly sad that looks back to his."Keith," she says, very gently, "there has come a time when I must be frank with you. You say you do not forget, that you cannot. In that case, if you have any honour at all, you must see that you should avoid me. Of myself, of my pain, I will not speak. What use? Between us two lies a barrier we can never cross. When you say such words to me as you have said to-night, you make the very question of friendship an impossibility. Is there any thought in our minds that in any way is cold enough forthat. I doubt it. Mind, I say 'ours.' I make no pretence at deceiving you.""You do not deny that you love me?""Of what use?" she says. "I made a fatal error in my marriage. But error or not, I must keep to it and its consequences. Only, Keith, if you had any pity, and mercy, you would avoid me, leave me to fight out my life alone. At least I owe my husband—fidelity."A hundred words rush to his lips. It is in his mind then to tell her of what her husband really is; of the scandals that are whispered in club and boudoir, over cigarettes and Souchong, but something restrains him. It would be mean, he thinks; and, after all, would it make any difference to her? Had she been any other woman.... And, after all, she loveshim, not her husband. On that small crumb of comfort he feeds his starved and aching heart, standing there beside her, silent, troubled, fighting against every wild and passionate impulse that bids him fling honour and scruples to the wind, and snatch at the perilous joy of a sinful happiness."Yes," she says, with a heavy sigh. "I must at least give that. The best part of me and my life is laid in the grave of my little child. Often I think I shall never feel glad again, but after to-night I leave it to you whether you are to make my life harder for me, or help me to struggle against myself."His eyes gleam with momentary anger, petulance, pride. "You give me a hard enough task, I hope," he says passionately. "And yet your last words hold all the tempting that could possibly beset a man. Why should I save you from yourself? By heaven if you loved me, if you only knewhowI love you, you would not count the cost of anything that stood between us and our happiness!""Would it be happiness?" answers Lauraine. "I thinknot, Keith. Is a guilty love ever happy? Does it ever last? If it did the world would not teem with forsaken women, nor the rivers of our great cities bear such burdens of shame and despair.""You do not know me, if you doubt. Have I not been true to you, since, boy and girl, we stood together, and played at sweethearts in the old Grange garden at Silverthorne? Till I die I shall remember you, and love you, Lorry.""Other men have said the same, and have forgotten.""Other men! Yes; but you surely know me well enough to believe me.""It is because I believe you that I wish to save you deeper pain. You cannot command your feelings, and I—I must not listen to you now. It is wrong, shameful."He moves impatiently. "Your words are very cruel. But to me you have always been that. You could not be true to me even for a few years."She shudders as if a blow had struck her. "It is ungenerous to speak of that now; you know the fault was not all mine."But Keith is in no mood to listen to her. His blood is on fire, his heart is hot and angry, and he feels that sort of rage within him that longs to spend itself in bitter words and unjust reproaches, even to one he loves as dearly as he loves Lauraine. There is a sort of savage satisfaction in making her suffer too, and he pours out a fury of wrath and reproach as she stands there mute and pale and still."I am not ice, like yourself," he says, in conclusion, "Other women love, and forget all else for love. You—you are too cold and prudent. I am young, and you have wrecked my whole life, and given me nothing but misery. I wish I had died a thousand deaths before I had seen you!"A shiver as of intense cold passes over her. She knows Keith's wild temper of old, but she had not thought it was in him to speak as he had spoken to her. She forgets that a great love borders almost on hate, so intense may be its passions, its longing, its despair."After all," says Keith, with a mocking laugh that grates terribly on her ear, "whyshouldI not follow your advice as well as your example? Why should I eat my heart out, and waste my life on an empty love? You have told me to leave you; that you wish to see me no more. Very well;thistime I will take you at your word. I will leave you, and let the future prove who was right or wisest. I—I will go away! Iwillforget!""It is well," she says, her voice low and faint. "I deserve all you have said, and more. I have only brought sorrow to you! Go away, live your own life, forget me, and be happy again.""Those are your last words?""Yes. My life is hard and sad enough; you would add to it shame and misery and undying remorse, and call that a proof of—love. Forgive me if I cannot see it in the same light as yourself.""And I say you do not love me, and never did, or you would know——""Very well," she interrupts, "believe that. It is best that you should.""And I am to go now?" he says, sorrowful and hesitating. "If you send me from you to-night, Lauraine, I will never come back. Remember that."Both of them are hurt and angry now, both beset with cruel pain, and waging that terrible conflict with passionate love and wounded pride that is at once so ill-judged, and resentful a thing.Lauraine looks steadily away from the entreating, watchful eyes; away, away to the far-off mountain range swept with faint grey clouds, silvered by the clear moonlight and the haze of the shining stars."If he only knew," she thinks, in the depths of her aching heart, "if he only, only knew!"But he does not know. To him she is only cold, calculating, unloving. Right and pure he knows in her mode of loving and thinking; but what man who loves as Keith loves can see right and purity as they are?"I have never asked you to come back," says Lauraine, faint and low, "and be very sure I never will. I am sorry that you are angry with me. Perhaps to-morrow you will be sorry too. But I know it is best.""Good-bye then!"She turns, and gives him her hand. He looks at her long, and the blue eyes grow misty, the fire and anger die out. He bends suddenly forward and touches her fingers with his lips. He does not speak another word, only drops her hand and goes.The echo of his footsteps dies away. The door closes with a heavy sound. With a stifled sob Lauraine falls on her knees, and leans her head against the low railings of the flower-covered balcony."Dear Heaven! how hard it is to do right!" she moans.The wind stirs the pine boughs, and the stars shine calmly down. They have seen so much of trouble, have heard so much despair, and to them a human life is such a little space to sorrow in, or be glad.
The body faints sore,It is tired in the race.
Do you know Erlsbach?
Very likely not. You won't find it in any map or guide-book, or directions to fashionable spas and watering-places. You won't find it by this name either, for its people call it differently. It is just a little dusky spot on the confines of the Austrian Tyrol, a little village shut in by pine forests washed by silvery waters; quaint, old world, unremarkable, but beautiful exceedingly.
In the warm June weather Erlsbach is at its best. So green, and fragrant, and cool, with soft airs blowing from the pine forests, and the gleam of snow on the mountain heights, and the emerald waters of the river shining in vivid brightness where the sunrays slant amidst the greenness of the boughs. It boasts of but one hotel does Erlsbach, a little old-fashioned hostelry, with nothing to recommend it save that it is very clean and picturesque, and its people are honest as the day.
To Erlsbach, and, as a matter of course, to the Kaiser Hof, come one June evening a party of two ladies and two maids, a courier, and luggageen attendance. Their arrival is expected, their rooms are taken; the best rooms, with a balcony overlooking the river, and that far-off view of the mountain heights beyond, where the purple light of evening is melting on the whiteness of eternal snows. When the bustle of arrival is over, one of the two ladies comes out on the balcony and stands there for long, looking out at the pretty, peaceful scene. A voice from a room within speaks after a time:
"Do you like it, Lauraine?"
The figure moves, turns half round. "It is like a poem," she says, softly. "Like it? One can hardly say that; onefeelsit." The speaker advances and joins her.
"Yes; you are right. I only came here once; it was years ago, and my heart was heavy with a great sorrow. I left it behind me, Lauraine; buried it amid the lonely woods and mountain ways. Oh, my dear, my dear, if you might do the same?"
A sigh parts the beautiful grave lips of Lauraine Vavasour; she grows very pale. "That cannot be," she says, faintly. "I could never forget easily; and this, this was part of my life—myself. Do not let us speak of it, Etwynde; it hurts me still."
"People say to talk of their troubles lightens them."
"I am not like that then. My sorrow is shut in my heart. I cannot bear to profane it with speech."
"But it makes it so much harder to bear, Lauraine."
"Not to me; nothing on earth, even your sympathy, could lighten it."
Lady Etwynde is silent. Her thoughts go back to that dreary, awful time when the child's death was yet so new a thing; it is nearly nine months ago now, and Lauraine has been all that time in the gloomy old mansion on the Northumbrian shores. The funeral had been long over before Sir Francis returned, and then he had made but a brief stay, and gone to Scotland with some friends.
"Fretting could do no good," he said philosophically, and he hated the gloomy quietude of Falcon's Chase, and was only too glad to leave it. Lady Etwynde stayed with Lauraine all through that dreary winter; she could not bear to leave her alone in her grief and despair, for the sorrow seemed but to take deeper root in her nature. Even all Lady Etwynde's gentle sympathy could make no way. She half-feared and only half-comprehended this new phase in her friend's character. For she could not know that Lauraine felt a terror of herself now; that it seemed to her as if the one safeguard she had clung to had been swept from her hold, and she lay anchorless, shelterless on the great dark sea of life, beholding no hope or ray of light, turn where she would.
The chill of winter passed into the fair, sweet month of spring; but no change came to her. Nothing seemed to thaw the ice about her heart. A strange chill and silence from the outer world rested upon her life as it was now. Of all her many friends and acquaintances none seemed to remember her or heed her. Keith had written again and yet again; she had never answered him once. Shedarednot. His sympathy, his presence would have been a comfort too great not to be dangerous, and the more she longed for them the more rigorously she denied them to herself. With the spring her husband wrote to know whether she wanted to come to town for the season. She read the letter with a shuddering horror. The season! To dance, drive, gossip, kill time in a round of empty pleasures; sate herself with luxury and extravagance. The thought seemed loathsome to her now. Her youth and all that was best in her seemed to have died with her little child. Her eyes seemed ever to have that look in them that has so frightened and pained her friend; the look as of tears that could not fall.
She was awfully, terribly changed, both in body and mind, and when Lady Etwynde paid her a flying visit, tearing herself from æsthetic joys and the glories of the Grosvenor Gallery Exhibition, and endlessréunionsamong the cultured, she was shocked and alarmed at the alteration.
"You must leave here, or you will go melancholy mad!" she said, imperatively; and Lauraine, having arrived at that stage when she was too spiritless and too indifferent to oppose any vigorous scheme, yielded passively, and was borne off to Erlsbach.
Sir Francis, of course, could not come. He liked London, and was not going to give up its thousand and one enjoyments for the sake of an invalid's whim. Her mother offered voluntarily to sacrifice herself in the matter; but Lauraine would not hear of it, and in the end she and Lady Etwynde, under charge of an experienced courier, set out for Germany and, travelling by slow and easy stages, arrived one warm June evening at quaint, pretty Erlsbach.
"But, Lauraine," says Lady Etwynde, continuing the conversation after a long, thoughtful pause, "have you ever considered that it is like putting yourself in rebellion against God to go on like this? All strokes of sorrow are sent for some wise purpose. We do not see it, believe it, at the time; but, later on——"
"Ah," interrupts Lauraine, "that is just it. It has not come to 'later on' with me. I had but one thing to make me happy; it has gone. Don't expect me to be consoled in a few months."
"But, my dear, you have your husband, your duties. Do you know it seems to me as if you were, in a way, estranging yourself from him?"
"He can find plenty of amusement in the world," says Lauraine, coldly. "Little Frank was nothing to him, except just simply the heir who would come after him in due time, and keep the estates in the family. But to me——" She breaks off abruptly.
The faint wind from the pine woods blows over her head and ruffles the soft dusky curls above her brow. In that dim light, with her pale, beautiful face turned upwards to the purple sky, she looks so young, so fair, so sorrowful, that a rush of tears dims Lady Etwynde's eyes as she gazes at her. "I didn't think she would have taken her sorrow to heart like this. How little one knows, after all!" she thinks to herself.
A week drifts by. Amidst that tranquil pastoral loveliness, amidst the beauty of the woods and streams, in the whole dreamy, simple life they lead, Lauraine rests and rejoices in such quiet, unecstatic fashion as is left to her. Her sorrow seems less hard and cold a thing here; the angel face of her lost darling comes with a more tender grace to her memory. She can talk and even smile with something of the old playful witchery that used to be hers. There is always something new to see; there are no landmarks here as at Falcon's Chase to recall the footsteps of that baby life whose journeying was so short a one. She begins to feel a little interest in places and things once more. She likes Lady Etwynde's talk, even when it may be on culture and ethics; she can listen to her when she reads out, which she does admirably as well as judiciously. On the whole, there is a decided improvement about the mental "tone" that delights Lady Etwynde, though she never appears to notice it.
Life and worldly cares, and even worldly joys, seemed sometimes to sink into almost insignificance amidst these mountain solitudes. They were so grand, so sublime, so immovable. Their lessons came home to Lauraine's aching heart, and soothed and comforted it insensibly to herself. She grew less sad, she brooded less over what she had lost. She had no hope, nothing to look forward to; yet still the present so steeped her in peace and rest that it seemed to her in after years as if these fragrant forests, this wilderness of ferns and flowers, these foaming waters, and far-off gleam of shining glaciers and crowning snows, had possessed some magic power that insensibly soothed and lulled her heart's long pain.
Late one afternoon she and Lady Etwynde are returning from a drive to a little village some two miles distant. The sun is just setting above the forest heights, there is alternate light and gloom among the heavy foliage, those beautiful shades of green and gold that make up so much of the charm of a wood. Lady Etwynde is driving rather quickly, and the road is narrow. Before them she sees the figure of a horseman proceeding leisurely along. At the near approach of the ponies' rapid trot he draws his horse aside to make room. Lauraine leaning back in the little low carriage, gives a careless glance up as she passes, then all the pallor of her face flushes deepest scarlet; she starts forward with an exclamation of amazement. Lady Etwynde notices it, and reins in the ponies. "Mr. Athelstone! Is it possible?" she says.
In astonishment quite as genuine, Keith draws the bridle, and bends towards the two figures.
"What a strange meeting," he says, as he shakes hands first with Lauraine, then with Lady Etwynde.
"I thought you were in London," Lauraine says quickly. After one wild leap of joy her heart seems to grow still and cold with a great dread. What evil fate, she wonders, has thrown him across her path now?
They are all too genuinely astonished to be embarrassed, and Keith proceeds to explain how he has been mountaineering for the last month in the Tyrol district; how his headquarters at present are that very little village they have just visited; and how he has ridden over to Erlsbach from idle curiosity, to see what the place is like. Of course there remains nothing for it but to invite him to the Kaiser Hof, and an hour later the trio are sitting at dinner, the table drawn close by the open window, and the fresh pine-scented air blowing in cool and soft from the mountains. Keith and Lauraine talk very little to each other. The brunt of the conversation falls on Lady Etwynde, and she in no way objects. Keith has always been a favourite of hers, and they have many sharp and witty arguments, while that pale, grave figure in the soft draperies listens and smiles, and feels at once disturbed and restless, and yet glad.
Sooner or later they would meet. She had known that always, but had never dreamt of it being so soon, or so strangely.
Somehow in life the meetings we expect never do take place as we expect them. We may rehearse our little scenes as carefully as we please, we may arrange our looks, our words, the very tones of our voices, but when the actualrencontredoes occur it is sure to be utterly different, and the carefully-arranged programme is never carried out.
It is so with Lauraine now. She has sometimes longed, sometimes dreaded to meet him, but always imagined it at some distant time and in some totally different manner; and now Keith is sitting at her table, her own guest, smiling, talking, looking at her to all appearance as unconcerned and forgetful as if that "garden scene" had never been enacted.
He is a better actor than herself, and he determines to be it. She shows that she is troubled, pained, perplexed. He ignores everything that might lead to that past, is careless, cynical, indifferent as of yore; but all the time his heart is beating with tumultuous pain; he is thinking how sadly altered she is, how changed from the bright, beautiful Lauraine of his boyhood, and yet dearer to him in her sufferings and sorrow than in any years that are past. It is hard work to keep down the thoughts that are thronging, the love that is leaping, the joy that is thrilling his every sense; but he knows it must be done, and he succeeds in doing it and in deceiving Lauraine. The cloth is removed. The soft dusk settles on the pretty quiet scene without. Lady Etwynde, who dislikes a glare of light, blows out nearly all the illumination of candles in the room, and they sit there by the window watching the stars come out one by one, talking less now, but with something grave and earnest in the talk that it has lacked before.
At last Lady Etwynde rises, and, saying she has letters to write, moves away to a little inner room, partitioned off by curtains from the one where they have all been sitting. It is solitude, yet not solitude. The sense of being together, the knowledge that their low tones are unheard, is just restrained by the feeling that another person is close at hand. Keith is silent for some moments, then bends towards Lauraine.
"You never answered my letters; I could hardly expect it. But I do hope you believe I felt for your grief?"
"Yes," she answers, simply; "I always felt sure of that."
"I am glad you say so. When you never wrote I thought you were offended, indifferent, perhaps. It has been a terribly blank time for me."
"I think you have no right to tell me that," she says, flushing and paling with nervous agitation. "I cannot help you, and it only adds to the sufferings of my own life that yours is also sad."
"Sad!" he echoes, wearily. "If you only knewhowsad. But you are right; I ought not to speak of that. How strange it seems to meet you here; almost makes one believe in Fate! To think that I rose this morning and rode off haphazard, not even guessing you were within a hundred miles of me, and now, at evening, I am sitting by your side!"
"How is it you have forsaken the London season?"
"It I told you therealtruth you would be angry, and I cannot utter conventional lies to you, Lorry."
She trembles a little. Her eyes go out to the shining river that mirrors the silver glory of the starlight. At her heart a dull pain beats. "Your friends, the Americans, where are they?" she asks evasively.
"In Paris, I believe. At least, they may have left now; but they were there up to May. Nan is mad about Paris." "Nan," be it remarked, is what he always calls Miss Anastasia Jefferson. Lauraine knows this, and smiles a little.
"You and she are as great friends as ever, I suppose?" she remarks.
"She is a jolly little girl," Keith answers, carelessly. "Yes, I suppose we are friends in a way. We are always quarrelling, and yet always making it up."
"Why don't you—marry—her?" asks Lauraine.
He stares at her as if uncertain of what he has heard. "Marry Nan! Good Lord! I never dreamt of such a thing!"
"Other people have," continues Lauraine; "even the girl herself, I fancy."
He laughs a little bitterly. "What fad have you got into your head? Nan looks upon me as a sort of elder brother. There has never been anything of 'that sort' between us. As for marrying, well,youought to know I am not likely to do that."
"I think you ought to marry," says Lauraine, very quietly. "You see you have wealth and position, and yet you lead such a 'homeless' kind of life. That is the only word that expresses it. And some day surely you will think of settling down; you cannot be always like this."
"Youcounsel me to marry," he says, with bitterness. "Have you found the experience so pleasant a one?"
The crimson colour rushes all over the proud fair face. "That has nothing to do with it," she says, coldly.
"Has it not? Well, if I choose to be faithful to a memory, that is my look out. I am not one to forget easily, as I have told you before."
"And you don't care for Miss Jefferson?" asks Lauraine, unwisely.
He looks at her in silence for a moment, and under the strong magnetism of his glance, her eyes turn from the scene without and meet his own.
"I thinkyoushould know," he says, very softly.
There comes the sound of a rustling skirt, a closing door. Lady Etwynde has left the inner room; they are alone. In an instant he is kneeling by the low chair on which she sits. Her hands are clasped in his.
"Oh, Lorry, Lorry!" he cries; "it is so hard!"
The passionate plaint thrills to her very heart. She lays her hands on either shoulder, and looks down into the pain-filled depths of the blue eyes.
"I know it, dear," she says, very gently. "Is it not hard for me too?"
"You are so cold, so different, and then you have your home, your husband, your——. Oh, forgive me, darling! How could I be so thoughtless?"
He sees the spasm of pain on the white face, the sudden quiver of the soft red lips.
"I—I have nothing now!" she groans, despairingly, and her two hands go up to hide her face. A storm of passionate weeping shakes her from head to foot. Keith is alarmed, distressed, but he is wise enough to rise and stand quietly by. He attempts no consolation.
The storm abates at last. Those tears have done Lauraine good. She has been cold and hard in her grief for so long a time. She also rises, a little ashamed, a little confused. "Let us go out on the balcony," she says, and he follows her without a word.
It seems like a dream to him; a dream that will never be forgotten, that will haunt his memory with a vivid thrill of pain whenever he feels the scents of mountain air, or sees the gleam of quiet stars. With them, too, he will see the little balcony of the quaint old "Hof," and a slender figure with draperies of dusky black, and a face white, solemn, inexpressibly sad that looks back to his.
"Keith," she says, very gently, "there has come a time when I must be frank with you. You say you do not forget, that you cannot. In that case, if you have any honour at all, you must see that you should avoid me. Of myself, of my pain, I will not speak. What use? Between us two lies a barrier we can never cross. When you say such words to me as you have said to-night, you make the very question of friendship an impossibility. Is there any thought in our minds that in any way is cold enough forthat. I doubt it. Mind, I say 'ours.' I make no pretence at deceiving you."
"You do not deny that you love me?"
"Of what use?" she says. "I made a fatal error in my marriage. But error or not, I must keep to it and its consequences. Only, Keith, if you had any pity, and mercy, you would avoid me, leave me to fight out my life alone. At least I owe my husband—fidelity."
A hundred words rush to his lips. It is in his mind then to tell her of what her husband really is; of the scandals that are whispered in club and boudoir, over cigarettes and Souchong, but something restrains him. It would be mean, he thinks; and, after all, would it make any difference to her? Had she been any other woman.... And, after all, she loveshim, not her husband. On that small crumb of comfort he feeds his starved and aching heart, standing there beside her, silent, troubled, fighting against every wild and passionate impulse that bids him fling honour and scruples to the wind, and snatch at the perilous joy of a sinful happiness.
"Yes," she says, with a heavy sigh. "I must at least give that. The best part of me and my life is laid in the grave of my little child. Often I think I shall never feel glad again, but after to-night I leave it to you whether you are to make my life harder for me, or help me to struggle against myself."
His eyes gleam with momentary anger, petulance, pride. "You give me a hard enough task, I hope," he says passionately. "And yet your last words hold all the tempting that could possibly beset a man. Why should I save you from yourself? By heaven if you loved me, if you only knewhowI love you, you would not count the cost of anything that stood between us and our happiness!"
"Would it be happiness?" answers Lauraine. "I thinknot, Keith. Is a guilty love ever happy? Does it ever last? If it did the world would not teem with forsaken women, nor the rivers of our great cities bear such burdens of shame and despair."
"You do not know me, if you doubt. Have I not been true to you, since, boy and girl, we stood together, and played at sweethearts in the old Grange garden at Silverthorne? Till I die I shall remember you, and love you, Lorry."
"Other men have said the same, and have forgotten."
"Other men! Yes; but you surely know me well enough to believe me."
"It is because I believe you that I wish to save you deeper pain. You cannot command your feelings, and I—I must not listen to you now. It is wrong, shameful."
He moves impatiently. "Your words are very cruel. But to me you have always been that. You could not be true to me even for a few years."
She shudders as if a blow had struck her. "It is ungenerous to speak of that now; you know the fault was not all mine."
But Keith is in no mood to listen to her. His blood is on fire, his heart is hot and angry, and he feels that sort of rage within him that longs to spend itself in bitter words and unjust reproaches, even to one he loves as dearly as he loves Lauraine. There is a sort of savage satisfaction in making her suffer too, and he pours out a fury of wrath and reproach as she stands there mute and pale and still.
"I am not ice, like yourself," he says, in conclusion, "Other women love, and forget all else for love. You—you are too cold and prudent. I am young, and you have wrecked my whole life, and given me nothing but misery. I wish I had died a thousand deaths before I had seen you!"
A shiver as of intense cold passes over her. She knows Keith's wild temper of old, but she had not thought it was in him to speak as he had spoken to her. She forgets that a great love borders almost on hate, so intense may be its passions, its longing, its despair.
"After all," says Keith, with a mocking laugh that grates terribly on her ear, "whyshouldI not follow your advice as well as your example? Why should I eat my heart out, and waste my life on an empty love? You have told me to leave you; that you wish to see me no more. Very well;thistime I will take you at your word. I will leave you, and let the future prove who was right or wisest. I—I will go away! Iwillforget!"
"It is well," she says, her voice low and faint. "I deserve all you have said, and more. I have only brought sorrow to you! Go away, live your own life, forget me, and be happy again."
"Those are your last words?"
"Yes. My life is hard and sad enough; you would add to it shame and misery and undying remorse, and call that a proof of—love. Forgive me if I cannot see it in the same light as yourself."
"And I say you do not love me, and never did, or you would know——"
"Very well," she interrupts, "believe that. It is best that you should."
"And I am to go now?" he says, sorrowful and hesitating. "If you send me from you to-night, Lauraine, I will never come back. Remember that."
Both of them are hurt and angry now, both beset with cruel pain, and waging that terrible conflict with passionate love and wounded pride that is at once so ill-judged, and resentful a thing.
Lauraine looks steadily away from the entreating, watchful eyes; away, away to the far-off mountain range swept with faint grey clouds, silvered by the clear moonlight and the haze of the shining stars.
"If he only knew," she thinks, in the depths of her aching heart, "if he only, only knew!"
But he does not know. To him she is only cold, calculating, unloving. Right and pure he knows in her mode of loving and thinking; but what man who loves as Keith loves can see right and purity as they are?
"I have never asked you to come back," says Lauraine, faint and low, "and be very sure I never will. I am sorry that you are angry with me. Perhaps to-morrow you will be sorry too. But I know it is best."
"Good-bye then!"
She turns, and gives him her hand. He looks at her long, and the blue eyes grow misty, the fire and anger die out. He bends suddenly forward and touches her fingers with his lips. He does not speak another word, only drops her hand and goes.
The echo of his footsteps dies away. The door closes with a heavy sound. With a stifled sob Lauraine falls on her knees, and leans her head against the low railings of the flower-covered balcony.
"Dear Heaven! how hard it is to do right!" she moans.
The wind stirs the pine boughs, and the stars shine calmly down. They have seen so much of trouble, have heard so much despair, and to them a human life is such a little space to sorrow in, or be glad.