"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 a _daux 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
single _really_ happy 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, _great_
pleasure 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 our _real_
selves 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 who _ought_ to 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
in _our_ lives... 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 to _yourself_, 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!"