"O life! thou art a galling load
Along a rough, a weary road,
To wretches such as I."
The crisis has come, she tells herself, with a rather grim smile. Well,
better have it and get it over.
That there had been a violent scene between Baltimore and his wife after
dinner had somehow become known to her, and the marks of it still
betrayed themselves in the former's frowning brow and sombre eyes.
It had been more of a scene than usual. Lady Baltimore, generally so
calm, had for once lost herself, and given way to a passion of
indignation that had shaken her to her very heart's core. Though so
apparently unmoved and almost insolent in her demeanor toward Lady
Swansdown during their interview, she had been, nevertheless, cruelly
wounded by it, and could not forgive Baltimore in that he had been its
cause.
As for him, he could not forgive her all she had said and looked. With a
heart on fire he had sought Lady Swansdown, the one woman whom he knew
understood and believed in him. It was a perilous moment, and Beatrice
knew it. She knew, too, that angry despair was driving him into her
arms, not honest affection. She was strong enough to face this and
refused to deceive herself about it.
"I didn't think you and Beauclerk had anything in common," says
Baltimore, seating himself beside her on the low lounge that is half
hidden from the public gaze by the Indian curtains that fall at each
side of it. He had made no pretence of finishing the dance. He had led
the way and she had suffered herself to be led into the small anteroom
that, half smothered in early spring flowers, lay off the dancing room.
"Ah! you see you have yet much to learn about me," says she, with an
attempt at gayety--that fails, however.
"About you? No!" says he, almost defiantly. "Don't tell me I have
deceived myself about you, Beatrice; you are all I have left to fall
back upon now." His tone is reckless to the last degree.
"A forlorn pis-aller," she says, steadily, with a forced smile. "What is
it, Cyril?" looking at him with sudden intentness. "Something has
happened. What?"
"The old story," returns he, "and I am sick of it. I have thrown up my
hand. I would have been faithful to her, Beatrice. I swear that, but she
does not care for my devotion. And as for me, now----" He throws out his
arms as if tired to death, and draws in his breath heavily.
"Now?" says she, leaning forward.
"Am I worth your acceptance?" says he, turning sharply to her. "I hardly
dare to think it, and yet you have been kind to me, and your own lot is
not altogether a happy one, and----"
He pauses.
"Do you hesitate?" asks she very bitterly, although her pale lips are
smiling.
"Will you risk it all?" says he, sadly. "Will you come away with me? I
feel I have no friend on earth but you. Will you take pity on me? I
shall not stay here, whatever happens; I have striven against fate too
long--it has overcome me. Another land--a different life--complete
forgetfulness----"
"Do you know what you are saying?" asks Lady Swansdown, who has grown
deadly white.
"Yes; I have thought it all out. It is for you now to decide. I have
sometimes thought I was not entirely indifferent to you, and at all
events we are friends in the best sense of the term. If you were a happy
married woman, Beatrice, I should not speak to you like this, but as it
is--in another land--if you will come with me--we----"
"Think, think!" says she, putting up her hand to stay him from further
speech. "All this is said in a moment of angry excitement. You have
called me your friend--and truly. I am so far in touch with you that I
can see you are very unhappy. You have had--forgive me if I probe
you--but you have had some--some words with your wife?"
"Final words! I hope--I think."
"I do not, however. All this will blow over, and--come Cyril, face it!
Are you really prepared to deliberately break the last link that holds
you to her?"
"There is no link. She has cut herself adrift long since. She will be
glad to be rid of me."
"And you--will you be glad to be rid of her?"
"It will be better," says he, shortly.
"And--the boy!"
"Don't let us go into it," says he, a little wildly.
"Oh! but we must--we must," says she. "The boy--you will----?"
"I shall leave him to her. It is all she has. I am nothing to her. I
cannot leave her desolate."
"How you consider her!" says she, in a choking voice. She could have
burst into tears! "What a heart! and that woman to treat him
so--whilst--oh! it is hard--hard!"
"I tell you," says she presently, "that you have not gone into this
thing. To-morrow you will regret all that you have now said."
"If you refuse me--yes. It lies in your hands now. Are you going to
refuse me?"
"Give me a moment," says she faintly. She has risen to her feet, and is
so standing that he cannot watch her. Her whole soul is convulsed. Shall
she? Shall she not? The scales are trembling.
That woman's face! How it rises before her now, pale, cold,
contemptuous. With what an insolent air she had almost ordered her from
her sight. And yet--and yet----
She can remember that disdainful face, kind and tender and loving! A
face she had once delighted to dwell upon! And Isabel had been very good
to her once--when others had not been kind, and when Swansdown, her
natural protector, had been scandalously untrue to his trust. Isabel had
loved her then; and now, how was she about to requite her? Was she to
let her know her to be false--not only in thought but in reality! Could
she live and see that pale face in imagination filled with scorn for the
desecrated friendship that once had been a real bond between them?
Oh! A groan that is almost a sob breaks from her. The scale has gone
down to one side. It is all over, hope and love and joy. Isabel has won.
She has been leaning against the arm of the lounge, now she once more
sinks back upon the seat as though standing is impossible to her.
"Well?" says Baltimore, laying his hand gently upon hers. His touch
seems to burn her, she flings his hand from her and shrinks back.
"You have decided," says he quickly. "You will not come with me?"
"Oh! no, no, no!" cries she. "It is impossible!" A little curious laugh
breaks from her that is cruelly akin to a cry. "There is too much to
remember," says she, suddenly.
"You think you would be wronging her," says Baltimore, reading her
correctly. "I have told you you are at fault there. She would bless the
chance that swept me out of her life. And as for me, I should have no
regrets. You need not fear that."
"Ah, that is what I do fear," says she in a low tone.
"Well, you have decided," says he, after a pause. "After all why should
I feel either disappointment or surprise? What is there about me that
should tempt any woman to cast in her lot with mine?"
"Much!" says Lady Swansdown, deliberately. "But the one great essential
is wanting--you have no love to give. It is all given." She leans toward
him and regards him earnestly. "Do you really think you are in love with
me? Shall I tell you who you are in love with?" She lets her soft cheek
fall into her hand and looks up at him from under her long lashes.
"You can tell me what you will," says he, a little impatiently.
"Listen, then," says she, with a rather broken attempt at gayety, "you
are in love with that good, charming, irritating, impossible, but most
lovable person in the world--your own wife!"
"Pshaw!" says Baltimore, with an irritated gesture. "We will not discuss
her, if you please."
"As you will. To discuss her or leave her name out of it altogether will
not, however, alter matters."
"You have quite made up your mind," says he, presently, looking at her
searchingly. "You will let me go alone into evil?"
"You will not go," returns she, trying to speak with conviction, but
looking very anxious.
"I certainly shall. There is nothing else left for me to do. Life here
is intolerable."
"There is one thing," says she, her voice trembling. "You might make it
up with her."
"Do you think I haven't tried," says he, with a harsh laugh "I'm tired
of making advances. I have done all that man can do. No, I shall not try
again. My one regret in leaving England will be that I shall not see you
again!"
"Don't!" says she, hoarsely.
"I believe on my soul," says he, hurriedly, "that you do care for me.
That it is only because of her that you will not listen to me."
"You are right!" (in a low tone)--"I--" Her voice fails her, she presses
her hands together. "I confess," says she, with terrible abandonment,
"that I might have listened to you--had I not liked her so well."
"Better than me, apparently," says he, bitterly. "She has had the best
of it all through."
"There we are quits, then," says she, quite as bitterly. "Because you
like her better than me."
"If so--do you think I would speak to you as I have spoken?"
"Yes. I think that. A man is always more or less of a baby. Years of
discretion he seldom reaches. You are angry with your wife, and would be
revenged upon her, and your way to revenge yourself is to make a second
woman hate you."
"A second?"
"I should probably hate you in six months," says she, with a touch of
passion. "I am not sure that I do not hate you now."
Her nerve is fast failing her. If she had a doubt about it before, the
certainty now that Baltimore's feeling for her is merely friendship--the
desire of a lonely man for some sympathetic companion--anything but
love, has entered into her and crushed her. He would devote the rest of
his life to her. She is sure of that--but always it would be a life
filled with an unavailing regret. A horror of the whole situation has
seized upon her. She will never be any more to him than a pleasant
memory, while he to her must be an ever-growing pain. Oh! to be able to
wrench herself free, to be able to forget him to blot him out of her
mind forever.
"A second woman!" repeats he, as if struck by this thought to the
exclusion of all others.
"Yes!"
"You think, then," gazing at her, "that she--hates me?"
Lady Swansdown breaks into a low but mirthless laugh. The most poignant
anguish rings through it.
"She! she!" cries she, as if unable to control herself, and then stops
suddenly placing her hand to her forehead. "Oh, no, she doesn't hate
you," she says. "But how you betray yourself! Do you wonder I laugh? Did
ever any man so give himself away? You have been declaring to me for
months that she hates you, yet when I put it into words, or you think I
do, it seems as though some fresh new evil had befallen you. Ah! give up
this role of Don Juan, Baltimore. It doesn't suit you."
"I have had no desire to play the part," says he, with a frown.
"No? And yet you ask a woman for whom you scarcely bear a passing
affection to run away with you, to defy public opinion for your sake,
and so forth. You should advise her to count the world well lost for
love--such love as yours! You pour every bit of the old rubbish into
one's ears, and yet--" She stops abruptly. A very storm of anger and
grief and despair is shaking her to her heart's core.
"Well?" says he, still frowning.
"What have you to offer me in exchange for all you ask me to give? A
heart filled with thoughts of another! No more!----"
"If you persist in thinking----"
"Why should I not think it? When I tell you there is danger of my hating
you, as your wife might--perhaps--hate you--your first thought is for
her! 'You think then that she hates me'?" (She imitates the anxiety of
his tone with angry truthfulness.) "Not one word of horror at the
thought that I might hate you six months hence."
"Perhaps I did not believe you would," says he, with some embarrassment.
"Ah! That is so like a man! You think, don't you, that you were made to
be loved? There, go! Leave me!"
He would have spoken to her again, but she rejects the idea with such
bitterness that he is necessarily silent. She has covered her face with
her hands. Presently she is alone.