She heard him pass through the Lilliputian hall, and down the
garden path; heard the gate clang behind him, and at the sound a
pang of pain shot through her.
She sat, where he had left her, looking out at the night with
vacant eyes. Her life seemed to have come to a sudden stop; he had
taken all the joy, the hope in it away with him.
She had tried to think, to realize her future; but it was hard
work, for his voice was ringing in her ears, and his face--so white
and haggard--came between her and the darkened window. She had
promised not to go, not to leave him--to avoid the scandal; and
he had promised to forget that she was his wife. They would be
friends, in outward seeming, at any rate. She sighed. She knew she
could trust him, for in all else but in marrying her for her money,
she felt that he was the soul of honor, and a promise would be
sacred to him.
Not one word of Lady Ada had she said; shame for him, not herself,
kept the name from her lips. He should never know she had heard
Lady Ada’s shameful avowal or his words of love to her.
Life stretched before her grim and black; she thought of Three
Star, of Varley Howard’s love, of the “boys’” protecting care of
her, and her eyes grew moist, and a tear dropped upon the Worth
dress, and shone beside the diamonds. If she could only go back,
and forget that she had ever been anything but the pride of a
diggers’ camp! Forget she was Miss Chetwynde, the millionairess--a
crimson blush rose like a stain to her pale face; no, she was not
Miss Chetwynde, but the Marchioness of Trafford. She was married to
a man with whom she had quarreled on her wedding-night, a man to
whom she was only to be “a friend in outward seeming!”
She scarcely gave a thought to Norman Druce, for Trafford and Lady
Ada were the central figures in her mind, and no one else counted.
She did not know how long she sat in the darkened room, but she
felt at last that it must be very late, and, with a dazed feeling,
she rose, and went upstairs. Trafford had not come in, she knew,
for she had not heard him. Where was he? Had he changed his mind
and left her?
Barker was waiting for her, and being still full of the rustic
charms of Deepdale, was eager to talk. Esmeralda let her chatter
on, scarcely hearing a word, then sent her away as soon as
possible. A strange feeling of loneliness took possession of her;
and yet it was not strange, for until to-night she had always had
friends near her. To-night she was utterly alone. The Marchioness
of Trafford, the future Duchess of Belfayre, with a jewel-box
crammed with gems, with a million of money to do as she pleased
with, was, with it all, one of the unhappiest women in all England!
She sat up for hours listening; the little house grew still; she
went to bed at last, but lay awake, listening still. But his
footstep did not sound on the gravel path. The house remained as
silent as the grave.
It was her wedding-night.
Trafford went out into the darkness, feeling like a man who had
been smitten by a mortal illness. His brain was in a whirl; the
whole thing seemed like a hideous nightmare. He did not ask himself
how Esmeralda had discovered the truth; it never occurred to him
that she might have overheard Lady Ada’s wild words; he thought
that, perhaps, some fool of a woman had been talking to her, and
opening her eyes.
As he strode along the perfumed lanes he felt his love for her--the
love which had been growing gradually for months past, but which
he had only fully realized to-night--sharpening his misery. How
beautifully she had looked as she stood before him, with her
indignant accusation! Her face haunted and tortured him. There was
no one like her in the wide world. The women of his set, with their
selfishness and artificiality, seemed hateful to him beside her
purity and true nobility. She was a waif of the wilds, no doubt,
but all the same she was one of Nature’s gentlewomen.
How sweet she had looked, how exquisite, in her beautiful dress,
with the diamonds which she wore so unconsciously! Any man might be
proud of her--not only love her, but be proud of her. And he had
lost her! Well, it served him right. For the first time in his life
he had played a base part, and he was deservedly punished. Rather
than deceive this girl who loved him, he should have let Belfayre,
twenty Belfayres, go to the devil.
Now, what was he to do? Well, there was only one thing to do--to
keep the promise he had made her. She had behaved nobly. If she
had left him, and gone back to that place in Australia, he could
scarcely have blamed her. She had sacrificed herself, had condemned
herself to living in the same house with him, to avoid a scandal;
he must do what he could to make her life at least endurable.
The thought brought him a grim kind of consolation. His life should
be devoted to her; no woman in the world should be more surrounded
by watchful care and attention than she should be. She should do
exactly as she liked, should go where she pleased; her wish should
be his law; he would be just a superior kind of servant to her.
He strode on, heedless of the direction he was taking, and as
heedless of the time. His excitement gave place to a dull, hopeless
weariness. Presently he felt that the air had grown cooler; it
was the chill of early dawn. He stood in the center of the lonely
heath, and looked round him, and its vague outlines seemed to
symbolize his own life; for he felt as Esmeralda had done, that it
had come to a sudden stop. He turned and walked slowly back to the
cottage. The dawn was breaking, and a thrush was beginning to sing
timidly and sweetly as he went up the narrow path. Somehow, it
reminded him of Esmeralda’s voice. He entered the house, and went
upstairs very quietly, and he paused at the door and listened with
knit brows, and his lips moved, shaping the words: “My love, my
love!” Then he went into his own room, and threw himself, dressed
as he was, upon the bed; and he, too, lay awake communing with his
unhappiness.
When Esmeralda went down to the breakfast-room the next
morning--the dainty room redolent with the perfume of the roses
which stood in great bowls on the table and sideboard--she saw him
outside in the garden, and a faint blush rose to her pale face.
How should she greet him? What should she say to him? When he came
in, they were alone, and he stood in the door-way for a second or
two, looking at her. She just glanced at him, and was busy with the
coffee cups.
“What a lovely morning!” he said. His voice was grave and weary,
though he tried to make it light, and she had noticed that he was
pale and haggard.
“Yes,” she said, without looking up.
He went to his place at the other end of the table, and, to their
mutual relief, the neat parlor-maid came in to wait upon them.
“What are you going to do to-day?” he asked.
She crumbled her toast nervously, just glancing at him. “I do not
know,” she said. “Anything you like.”
“Will you have the ponies, and go for a drive?” he said. “The
country round here is very beautiful, and it will not be very
dusty; there was a shower this morning.”
“Yes, that will be very nice,” she said, trying to speak as if it
did not matter what she did or where she went.
“I must get a map of the country,” he said, “and plan out some
excursions.”
He went on talking, and she responded now and again--they were
acting for the benefit of the parlor-maid. When the girl had left
the room, they fell into a silence; but Trafford struggled against
it. They could not go through the whole of their lives sitting
mum-chance opposite each other.
“Esmeralda,” he said, “I want you to do, to go wherever you please.
Whatever you do will seem right in my eyes. If this idea of the
drive doesn’t suit you, you will say so, will you not?”
“Yes,” she said in a low voice; “I should like to go.”
“Would you like to have me with you?” he asked, paying great
attention to his plate. “Don’t say ‘yes’ if you’d rather be alone.”
She considered for a moment, then the thought that the fact of her
driving about the country without him on the day after her marriage
would excite surprise, flashed upon her, and she said:
“I think it would be better if you came.”
He had hoped that she would have said: “I should like you to come,”
and his face fell.
“Better?” he said. “Ah, yes; I see. I will order the ponies. Would
you like to come round the garden?”
She arose at once with wifely obedience. The garden was flooded
with sunlight, the flowers shone like so many gems, the full
concert of birds was in progress. These two mortals looked round
with aching hearts.
“It is an earthly paradise,” he said; and he sighed.
“Yes,” she assented; and both of them thought of that other
paradise into which the eating of the Tree of Knowledge had brought
so much misery.
He cut a blush-rose and held it in his hand for a minute or two,
then with an affectation of carelessness, he held it out to her.
She took it with a little feeling of surprise which she carefully
concealed, and put the blossom in the bosom of her dress. He looked
at it for a moment, and then turned his eyes away.
The ponies came round with the diminutive groom in attendance, and
Trafford was just on the point of dismissing him, when he reflected
that perhaps Esmeralda would prefer to have the lad with them, and
the boy got up in the rumble behind. She took her seat in the place
beside the driver’s, but Trafford shook his head with a smile and
gave her the reins.
“You must drive your own ponies,” he said; and then he grew red,
for it seemed to him an unlucky speech, as if he wished to remind
her that in reality her money had bought them; but Esmeralda was
not thinking of money, of her wealth and his poverty, at that
moment, and did not notice his embarrassment. The ponies were
fresh, and her whole attention was taken up by them at the time. A
faint tinge of color came to her face, as it always did when she
was riding or driving, and she seemed to forget for the moment the
cloud that hung over her life. Trafford watched her management of
the ponies with admiration, which was shared by the boy behind, who
talked about it for an hour when he got back to the stables.
There is no lovelier county than Surrey, and Deepdale lies in one
of the prettiest parts of it. Trafford thought how happy they
would have been under other circumstances, if only Esmeralda had
not made her fatal discovery. He remembered their drive to Shirley,
and how he had put his arm round her and proposed to her. Why, he
must have been in love with her then. What a double-dyed idiot
and fool he must have been not to have known it! They were almost
silent during the drive. They stopped at the nearest town.
“Don’t you want to buy something?” Trafford asked. “I’ve never
known a woman go into a town without wanting to buy something.”
She looked round the drowsy place, with its shops prettily
affecting a London air, and shook her head.
“I suppose I’m not so fond of buying things as most women,” she
said. “Lady Wyndover used to say that I was uncanny and unnatural.
I never seem to want anything.”
“Not some ribbon?” he said. “I thought women wanted ribbon every
hour of the day.”
“I’ll buy some if you like,” she said; and she pulled up at the
linen draper’s.
The shop-keeper and one of his assistants came out hurriedly to
wait upon the great folk. Of course every one in the little place
had heard and read of the great Marquis of Trafford, and of his
rich and lovely bride, and felt that their presence in the county
shed a luster upon it. Some ribbons were brought out and Esmeralda
purchased some.
“I haven’t any money,” she said. The shop-keeper almost bowed
himself to the ground.
“Certainly not, my lady,” he said. “We will put it down. If at any
time your ladyship should want anything, we shall be happy to send
one of our young men down to Deepdale.”
People came to their doors to look at the illustrious pair in a
covertly respectful way, which had been familiar to Traffords all
his life, but to which Esmeralda was not even yet quite used. The
shopman’s “my lady” had somewhat startled her.
They drove home at a rattling pace, and once or twice the ponies
evinced an ardent desire to bolt, but Esmeralda’s slim wrists were
like steel, and she kept them in hand “like a stunner,” as the
boys said in the stable afterward. When they got home there was
lunch, and she and Trafford again sat opposite each other, and
again played the farce for the benefit of the parlor-maid; and he
felt, while he was playing his part, that it would be impossible
for him to continue to do so for very long. To sit and calmly utter
commonplaces to a lovely girl whom you longed to crush to your
heart was more than any man could be expected to accomplish.
He went out after lunch and did not appear until dinner-time. Their
dinner was as elaborate a farce as the breakfast and the luncheon,
but, alas and alas! they found themselves playing it more easily.
A box of books had been sent down from Mudie’s, and Esmeralda sat
in the drawing-room with one of them in her hand. It was a love
story, in which the love ran roughly through two volumes and a
half, and then glided smoothly through the concluding chapters. She
read it with a kind of bitterness. Her love had run smoothly enough
through its first chapters, and now only in the concluding ones
had the roughness come in. She could hear Trafford pacing up and
down outside with his cigarette. Once he paused at the open French
window and looked at her. She could feel his eyes upon her, though
she did not look up from the book.
“It is very warm,” he said; and she answered:
“Yes, it is.”
So the days wore on, one day like another. No one could have been
more devoted to her than he was. He seemed to study her every wish,
and his attentions to her were rather those of a lover than a
husband. He appeared to have no will but hers. The little household
was eloquent in praise of him, and declared that they had never
heard or read of any one so much in love with his wife as was the
marquis.
If Esmeralda wanted to ride or drive, he himself went down to the
stable and saw to the harnessing of the horse; if she wanted to
walk, he got her sunshade or umbrella, and guarded her from the
rays of kingly Sol, or Jupiter Pluvius, as if she were something
so precious that heat or rain might melt. He would rise from the
table to carry to her some trifle that he thought she might want,
and every morning he gathered with his own hand a little bunch of
flowers which, with his own hand, he placed beside her plate.
All this would have broken down Esmeralda’s pride and resolution,
but for her memory of his parting with Lady Ada. Never for a moment
did she forget it. She saw him grow more pale and haggard day by
day, but she thought that he was pining for the love and sympathy
of the woman he had not been able to marry.
At the end of the week Trafford found the strain tighter than he
could endure. He felt that if he remained by her side another day,
his love would break the bounds of restraint and force him beyond
himself; so he said that he must go up to town on business; and he
went.
The day seemed very long and dreary to Esmeralda after he had gone,
and she could have found in her heart to welcome his return by
throwing her arms round him; but she restrained herself, and said
only, with a smile.
“I suppose London is very hot?”
“Yes,” he said; “very hot.”
He had sat in the smoking-room of the Marlborough nearly all the
time--sat and thought of the wife he loved, the woman who was wife
to him only in name, and who would never be anything more.
One or two men had approached him with greetings of welcome, but
had been frightened away by his grim coldness.
“Trafford doesn’t seem to have been improved by his marriage,” said
one. “It’s always the way; the best fellow in the world is spoiled
by marrying. You can go as far as you like with women, if you stop
short of that.”
Trafford began to hate the prettiness of Deepdale, its rustic
garden and the sunny country around it, and when there came a
letter from Lilias to Esmeralda inviting them, if they were tired
of Deepdale, to Belfayre, he breathed a sigh of relief.
“Would you like to go?” asked Esmeralda, as she threw the letter
across to him.
He kept his eyes on it long after he had read it.
“It is for you to decide,” he said.
Esmeralda looked at her plate and sighed also. The strain was
beginning to tell upon her, too. Anything would be better than this
daily, hourly companionship with a man for whom she dared not show
her love.
“We will go if you like,” she said.
“It is for you to say,” he said.
“Then let us go,” she said. “You must be tired of this small place,
and want to see the duke and Lilias and--other people.”
“I do not want to see any one,” he responded, grimly; “but you must
be dull. We will go.”
They started two mornings afterward, and all the way down his
attention to her was exemplary. As they drove from the station to
Belfayre, they saw several small crowds on the road, and presently
the carriage passed under a triumphal arch. Trafford looked up
and saw “Welcome to the happy pair!” upon it, and he glanced at
Esmeralda and then looked aside.
Esmeralda looked straight before her; she, too, had seen the
inscription. When they drove up the terrace they were aware of a
mob which had gathered to welcome them. The servants were ranged in
double file, the duke, and Lilias, and Lord Selvaine were standing
under the famous peristyle.
“It is evidently a gala day,” said Trafford, grimly. As he assisted
her out of the carriage a hearty cheer rose from the crowd, the
duke came hobbling down the steps, bare-headed and with one hand
extended, and he took Esmeralda’s hand and drew her toward him and
kissed her.
“Welcome home, my dear!” he said in his thin, quavering voice. “It
is very good of you to come so soon.”
Esmeralda, with dry eyes, looked round her. Lilias came and kissed
her; then some one came forward and took her hand.
It was Norman Druce. He looked at her earnestly, noted the pallor
of her face, the sadness in her eyes. He flushed, then went pale,
and he glanced quickly from her to Trafford with a puzzled,
startled look. Esmeralda, suddenly made aware of his presence,
started too.
“Are--are you here?” she said.
“Yes,” said Lilias, with a smile; “Norman is here, and Ada Lancing,
and one or two others. We thought you might be dull!”