"After a storm comes a calm."--It seemed as if a calm, the calm of a
great despair had settled on Lauraine. All human love had passed out
of her life; and that life itself looked grey, colourless as an
autumn sky that has known no sunshine. But there was something in
this dull stupor that kept the sharpness of pain in abeyance, that
left her, to outward seeming, much the same as ever, and rejoiced
Lady Etwynde's heart.
"After all," she thinks to herself, "she could not have loved him so
very much."
She does not attempt to allude to the confidence of that night, nor
does Lauraine return to it. Just for two or three days she watches
with anxious eyes the arrival of the post: she is half fearful of a
letter from Keith, a letter that will be a sort of blaze of anger,
and upbraiding, like his own last words. But there comes neither
letter nor sign.
After a week or two Lauraine begins to get restless.
"This is a place to sleep and dream in," she says to her friend; "I
want to see some life again. Let us go to Baden or Monaco."
Lady Etwynde is amazed.
"Will Sir Francis object?" she asks.
Lauraine smiles with faint contempt. "He never troubles himself
about what I do," she says. "We will go, and if he objects, we can
leave again!"
Lady Etwynde yields, and they go to Baden.
Lauraine seems now to have as great a horror of solitude as before
she has had of gaiety. She is always out, always restless. No one
they know of the fashionable world is at Baden, it being yet too
early in the season. It is crowded with Germans and Austrians, and
adventurers of all nationalities, who throng the pretty Kursaal under
the shadow of the pine-crowned hills.
Lauraine makes numerous acquaintances, and is always inventing
projects of amusements, such as picnics, excursions, _jêtes_, drives,
and balls. She goes to concerts and theatres, she is one of the
loungers in the shady alleys of the Lichtenthal; she goes to
supper-parties that to Lady Etwynde seem reckless and _risqué_, and
meets all her friend's feeble remonstrances with the unanswerable
argument that her husband does not mind, and therefore no one else
need trouble their head about it.
She seems so horribly, unaccountably changed that it fills Lady
Etwynde's mind with dread and pain.
Better the morbid grief, the dreary apathy of the past, than this
feverish and unnatural gaiety, this craving for excitement and
pleasure. Just as suddenly as she has gone to Baden, so suddenly
does she tire of it. "She will go down the Rhine," she declares,
"and stop anywhere that is pretty and picturesque." The change of
programme delights her friend, and they leave their circle of new
acquaintances desolate at their sudden departure.
The lovely scenery and the constant change seem for a while to quiet
Lauraine's restlessness. She takes a fancy to Bingen, and stays
there for a month; but it distresses Lady Etwynde to see how pale and
thin she is getting, how weary and sleepless her eyes always look.
A letter comes one day from Sir Francis. He is coming to Baden for
the races; he is going to run a horse for the Prix de Dames. They
had better remain abroad and meet him there. He will arrange for
rooms at the Bairischer Hof, or D'Angleterre, as a lot of people are
coming at the same time. Meanwhile he hopes Lauraine is tired of
moping, and intends to be reasonable again.
She reads the letter quietly through, and then hands it to Lady
Etwynde.
"I can scarcely expect you to continue giving up your time to me as
you have done," she says. "But this arrangement suits me very well.
It is quiet and pleasant here, and I shall remain on till the time
fixed for Baden. But you--there is your home, your own friends----"
"Unless you are tired of me," interrupts Lady Etwynde, "I am not
going to run away. I do not think you are either in health or
spirits to be left alone."
They are at the Victoria Hof. Their rooms are very pleasant; their
life has been more like what it was at Erlsbach, spent chiefly in the
open air, in drives and rambles and excursions on the river, and
visits to the beautiful old Rochus Capelle, which, for Lauraine, has
endless interest, and of which she never seems to tire.
This evening they are both sitting by the open window overlooking the
Rhine. In these hot summer nights Lauraine has cast aside her heavy
black dresses, and wears chiefly white, with knots of black ribbon
here and there. Lady Etwynde thinks how lovely she looks, sitting
there, with the sunrays touching her dusky hair, her soft snowy gown,
her slender hands that are idly folded on her lap.
Instinctively she comes forward and kneels by her side. "Am I to go,
Lauraine?" she asks, softly.
For all answer Lauraine clasps her round the neck, and bursts into
tears. "No, no; a thousand times no!" she cries, weeping. "You are
the only one left to me to love. Don't leave me quite desolate."
"I will not," answers Lady Etwynde, softly. "I wish I could be of
some use--of some help; but in these cases the tenderest sympathy
seems to hurt. No one can help us."
"You speak as if you too had 'loved and lost'?" says Lauraine, wiping
the tears from her eyes, and looking at the beautiful, noble face
beside her.
A faint warmth of colour comes over it; the proud head, with its
golden halo of hair, droops a little. "Yes," she says, "I have.
Sometimes I think it was my own fault, after all I was too proud, too
exacting. Shall I tell you the story? Would you care to hear?"
"Indeed, I would," said Lauraine, earnestly.
"He was a soldier," begins Lady Etwynde. "I was seventeen; romantic
to my finger-tips. He, thirty years or more; bronzed, bold,
stalwart, a king among men, I always thought. We met at my first
season in London, loved, were engaged. He was of good family, but
not rich. My parents objected strongly at first; but I was their
only child, and they had never crossed whim or wish of mine. Of
course I gained my point. Oh, how happy I was! It was like all the
ecstasy of dreams, all the fancies of poets, all the purity and
waking passion of first love steeping my life in golden glamour. I
only lived, watched, thought for him, and he--all the time--he
deceived me!"
Her voice breaks. The bitterness and anguish of that time seems
present over again. The colour fades from her cheeks as she kneels
there in the radiant moonlight.
"No man comes to thirty years of age without a 'past' of some sort,"
she resumes. "But I, in my childish ignorance, imagined him another
Bayard. He had been so brave, his name was crowned with so many
laurels. He seemed the very soul of honour, of truth, and I--I loved
him so. And one night, oh, shall I ever forget that night? We had
gone down to Richmond to dinner. We had been out on the river
afterwards. It was a warm June night, so fair, so still, so
fragrant, and he rowed the boat himself and the rest of the party
left us far behind. Suddenly another boat passed us; there were two
men in it, and a woman. I remember noticing she had something
scarlet wrapped about her and was very dark; foreign-looking I
fancied. They were rowing fast, their boat shot by. I heard a cry,
the sound of a name--_his_ name--and he was sitting before me, his
face white as death, his eyes full of horror and doubt. 'Good God!'
I heard him cry, 'and she is _not_ dead?'
"My heart seemed to stand still. Then I grew very calm and cold.
'Who is that woman, Cyril?' He stared at me like one in a dream, and
turned the boat back without a word and rowed me to the hotel. Then
he led me up one of the quiet river walks, and standing there before
me told me the whole sickening, miserable tale. There may have been
extenuation in it. I saw none. I was young and ignorant of life and
of men, and cruel, I suppose. He called me so. I could only cling
to one fact--that she had been his wife. What mattered to me the
folly, the caprice, the infatuation that had chained his hot youth
and held him powerless now? What mattered to me anything, anything,
save that he was lost to me, that my idol was shattered, my heart was
broken. 'You told me you had loved no other woman as you loved me,'
I said, scornfully; 'and all the time, all the time, you had given
her the surest, truest proof of love a man can give. Pity! No, I
have no pity! You made your choice, you must abide by it. If you
were free this hour I would not marry you now. You have deceived me.
Your love was a pretence; perhaps you call it also such names as you
have called hers. Go to her, your wife; I never will voluntarily
look upon your face again.' Oh, Lauraine, was I cruel, was I unjust;
God knows. Oh, the bitterness, the agony, the shame of that night.
I felt as if I hated him in the new sharp fever of jealousy that had
come to my heart. I hated to think he had belonged to another, held
her to his heart, kissed her, loved or seemed to love her. My whole
nature seemed to change. I could only think he had deceived me,
whether willingly, or mercifully did not matter. Love, youth, joy,
hope, all seemed to die out of my heart. Nothing he said seemed to
soften me. I would not listen, I would not yield, I would not pity.
He left me, and I never saw him again. The next news I had was that
he had gone abroad on foreign service. I had seen his name from time
to time, but of his life, the life I once so fondly hoped to share, I
know nothing!"
Lauraine touches the trembling hands. "You were hard on him, I
think," she says gently. "I suppose he thought her dead--that he was
free."
"He said so," answers Lady Etwynde. "Oh, yes, and doubtless he
believed it. He could not have dared to offer such an insult to me,
or my family. But what I resented was that he should have kept the
story back, that he should have pretended that I was his first, his
only love, and all the time _she_ had been his wife. I could not
forgive that!"
"But, my dear," says Lauraine, gently, "you may have had his first
_real_ love. The other was but a youthful folly, a hot-headed
infatuation. Does any man come to us with his heart pure and free?
Few, I think, if any. We cannot judge them by ourselves. That is
how so many women wreck their lives. They expect too much. No man
can ever be what a girl's dreams would make him. But it is so hard
for her to believe that."
"I know it now," answers Lady Etwynde. "I have learnt my lesson in
bitterness and grief. But I think it has done me good. I have
forgiven him long ago. I shall never see him again to tell him so, I
suppose; perhaps he would not care even to hear it. But I am happier
since I could pardon and pity his weakness, only--my Bayard he could
never be again!"
"And of her? Do you know anything about her fate?" asks Lauraine,
forgetful of her own sorrows in this new interest.
"I heard she was dead. She was a vile, cruel woman. He divorced her
afterwards, but what was that to me? What can anything be to me now
that concerns his name, his life?" There comes a long silence. The
thoughts of both are busy with sad memories. As Lauraine looks at
Lady Etwynde's face she sees it is full of pain, but her eyes have a
dreamy look, as the eyes of one who sees some sweet vision afar off.
"I was wrong, I suppose," she says, slowly. "A woman who loves must
forget _herself_ in that love, and I, I thought too much of my
wounded pride, my lost ideal. But I have never held a thought of
love for any other man. The lips that he kissed were his first, they
will be his for ever. I have never forgotten; and now I am thirty
years old, and my parents, as you know, are dead, and I live alone,
and am looked upon as a marvel of eccentricity, and have my school of
apostles and fool them to the top of their bent. Sometimes life
seems a horrible travesty of all that is dignified and pure, and
sometimes a jest that one laughs at and forgets. But no one knows me
as I really am, save you, Lauraine. To most people I suppose I
hardly seem a woman. But my true self and my lost love live a life
apart, a life of dreams, sad but yet beautiful. A life that feeds
itself on memories, memories that are recalled by the colours of
every changing sky, the scents of leaf and flower that touch one like
a sound of music. Ah! those nights, those mornings, those scenes
that are the same, yet _not_ the same, how they make one's whole soul
sick with longing, and mad with regret!"
"And you have borne all this so long?" says Lauraine, wonderingly.
"Yes," she answers; "it seems long, does it not? And I have not
pined away much. I don't look like a love-lorn maiden, do I? I have
not gone into a decline, or fallen away to a shadow, or grown grey
with sorrow, or done anything I ought to have done according to
romancers. I suppose no one I know ever suspects that I have had a
love-story, much less that I cherish its memory."
"Your nature must be a very constant one," says Lauraine. "You make
me ashamed of myself. No wonder Keith reproaches me with
unfaithfulness."
"I think fidelity is an established instinct," says Lady Etwynde.
"It is very much an accident of our own natures. To me, it seems an
utter impossibility to even think of caring for another man. Cyril
Carlisle was my first lover; I gave him all that was in me to give.
It was all my life to me. I suppose--to him--it was but another
experience."
"Yours is a grand nature," says Lauraine, looking wonderingly at the
calm, noble face. "You shame me for myself. If I had but kept true
a little space----"
"One can never judge of another's case by one's own," answers Lady
Etwynde. "No doubt you were tried, hurried into it. I know, oh! I
know. You are not the first girl who has told me the same, nor will
you be the last. The mothers of Society do it all for the best,
doubtless. Love seems such a poor, contemptible thing in their eyes
in comparison with--settlements. Oh, yes! that is so always.
Perhaps they forget their own youth; one does, they say, when one
outlives romance. And I suppose an 'Establishment' is better than
poetry any day. They are wise, after all. Year after year the
season has its martyrs. Girls are brought out and introduced with no
higher aim or object set before them than a 'great marriage.'
Fashion and Society expect it. I suppose it is what they were born
for! Thank God! my parents were neither ambitious nor mercenary.
Perhaps I too might have been over-persuaded. I don't think it
likely. Still---"
She hesitates and looks compassionately at Lauraine's sad face. "You
must try and be brave, dear, and bear your life as it is. Regrets,
repining, sorrowing won't make it any better. You say you are weak,
but I don't think you are so weak as all that. And there is one
thing I have wanted to say to you of late. You will pardon me if it
seems intrusive. But, do you know you are behaving very coldly, and,
I think, unwisely, towards your husband? You leave him alone, to
other temptations that your presence would restrain. All these
months you have not seen him, you scarcely even write with more
warmth or interest than you do to your steward; and, after all, he is
your husband. Nothing can alter that; and he loved you very dearly,
and no doubt he does still. Can you not see that your duty to him
demands even more than the sacrifice you have already made? I know
it is hard, terribly hard. You say there is no sympathy, no
comprehension between you, and your heart is aching with this
forbidden love, and he must seem in a way hateful; but you were not
honest with him quite, if you promised to marry him, and yet held
back your heart. You see what I mean?"
"Yes," Lauraine says faintly, "I see."
"Duty demands much, but it also repays much,", continues Lady Etwynde
gently. "Heaven knows I am not fit to preach to you; but in the
world, as we know it, Lauraine, there are so many faithless wives, so
many divided households. Oh, my dear, don't you add to the number!
You have many enemies of whom you know nothing, and they would gladly
seize your name, and smirch its purity with scandals, and whispers,
and evil words. I want you to be brave, and face them all, and live
out your life nobly and well. I know I am bidding you do a hard
thing; but it is right, and I am sure you see it."
Lauraine bends her head down wearily, and lays it on her friend's
shoulder. She feels spent, tired, exhausted. The tears throng to
her eyes, her heart aches with dull and ceaseless pain. "I do see
it!" she half sobs. "I will try."
"May Heaven give you strength!" murmurs Lady Etwynde, and she kisses
her on the brow.