INTERVIEW BETWEEN ADELAIDE AND LIONNE.
Forgive me if the love once thine
Hath changed itself unsought to me!
I did not tempt it from thy breast,
I nothing knew of thee!
And soon perhaps ’twill be my lot
As thou art now to be.—_Philip Bailey._
Let us return to Adelaide and to the fateful evening when light and
joyous as a bird, she flew up the stairs and opened her chamber door to
meet that which was to change the whole tenor of her future life.
Carolling a lively ditty, she crossed the threshold of her room and
suddenly paused in amazement.
There, in the centre of the chamber, facing the door, stood a tall,
majestic girl, clad in a dark riding-habit, faded, dusty, and
travel-stained. Her neglected hair, escaping from the round black
jockey-cap, hung in jet black elf-locks down her shoulders and bosom.
Her fine face was pale, thin, and haggard with fatigue, illness, and
sorrow. Her intensely black eyes were burning fiercely with the fires of
passion, or of madness.
All this Adelaide took in in one glance of mingled surprise and terror.
She was about to speak, and ask the motive of this presence, when the
stranger interrupted her by saying—
“Stop! do not move! do not speak yet! I wish to look at you!”
“Ah, she is mad! she is some poor creature who has eluded her keepers
and strayed into this house, and found her way to my chamber!” thought
Adelaide, regarding the intruder with a look of compassion that rendered
her beautiful face still more lovely.
The stranger gazed at her until the eyes of Adelaide fell beneath the
fixed scrutiny.
“Maid or wife are you?” asked the intruder.
“Both—I believe,” said the fair girl, hesitating and blushing.
“Both? You are foolish! how can that be?”
“I do not know.”
With a dark frown gathering upon her haggard face, the stranger averted
her head, as in the same calm, sepulchral tone, she inquired—
“What is your name?”
“Adelaide Deville.”
“Your husband’s name?”
“Orville Deville.”
Again the head of the dark girl was averted for a moment, as she said—
“And so you are wife as well as maid?”
“Yes.”
“Explain yourself!”
Now, had Lady Adelaide been proud, irascible and egotistical, she would
not have deigned to answer these seemingly impertinent questions; but
the Earl’s daughter, the heiress and the beauty, was humble, gentle and
merciful. She never thought of attempting to overwhelm with her own
dignity the poor wanderer and supposed lunatic before her. Not therefore
from haughtiness, but from bashfulness, she hesitated.
“Explain!” again, and more authoritatively commanded the wild girl.
“Oh! it is very simple, though very strange. Mr. Deville and myself,
when we were mere children, had the marriage-contract executed, and the
marriage-rites solemnized between us, by the authority of our respective
parents, at the death-bed of my father. Then we parted—he remaining at
school at Eton, I returning with my mother-in-law to River-view. And we
never met again until a few months ago.”
“_What_ month was that in which you met again?” suddenly demanded the
stranger.
“It was in November, after his return from the fatal expedition,”
replied Adelaide, wondering more and more at the behavior of this
fancied maniac.
“Then, though his hand was bound, his heart was free when he met me,”
murmured the stranger, in an almost inaudible voice. “But since! but
since!” she added, vehemently. And raising her fierce, black eyes, she
fixed them with a deep and threatening gaze upon the lovely face of
Adelaide and demanded—
“Since his return you have lived together as a married pair?”
“Yes—no—indeed I do not know!” said Adelaide, ingeniously.
Doubt, scorn, irony,—all disfigured the fine face of the stranger as she
gazed at the lovely girl, and mockingly inquired—
“Do you love him?”
“Love him?” repeated Adelaide, blushing and hesitating; “why, it is my
duty to love my husband, is it not?”
“_Duty!_” exclaimed the stranger, now with undisguised scorn; “oh, _of
course_ it is your duty! You love your mother-in-law also?”
“Oh yes!”
“And your servants?”
“Yes.”
“And your horse, and dog, and canary birds, and flowers?”
“Yes.”
“We should love _all_ creatures, should we not!” said the dark girl,
ironically.
“So our religion teaches us.”
“And you find that easy.”
“It is natural and pleasant to me.”
“Well, dainty lady! baby girl! love all creatures in the heavens above!
the earth beneath! and the waters under the earth, if you will! all
creatures but—ONE!” exclaimed the wild creature, with a sudden and
terrible change of manner, and stalking forward and laying her hand upon
the shoulder of Adelaide, who gazed upon her in sorrow and fear.
“Ay!” continued she, sending the glance of her fierce dark eyes like a
flaming two-edged sword into the very soul of her rival, “love all
creatures but one! as, should that one prove false to me——in life and in
death, through time and black eternity, I should hate but that one!”
“And that one, who doubtless turned your brain, poor girl, who was he?”
“MY HUSBAND, ORVILLE DEVILLE!” said Lionne, firmly meeting the eyes of
Adelaide.
“Poor thing, she is very, very mad!” thought Adelaide, gazing in deep
pity upon the speaker.
With the certainty of unerring instinct, the latter divined her thought,
and answered—
“Mad, am I?—no, little lady! the time for madness has not come! my work
is not done! the issue is not yet! I have to try and to judge a man! And
for this task my spirit masters every passion of my heart and every
faculty of my brain, and holds them in readiness to work its will.
Listen! Oh, you will find ‘strange method in my madness!’ Are you
listening?”
“Poor girl! Yes, I am attending to every word you say, if that will be
any consolation to you. But while you talk, sit down and let me get you
something. You look dreadfully worn out,” said Adelaide,
compassionately, drawing forward her easiest lounging-chair and then
moving towards the door, when Lionne recalled her—
“Stop, Lady Adelaide! I want no food and no seat! I cannot eat or rest!
It is you calm ones, who live for _duty_, that can do that! I have a
story to tell to which you must listen! Come back!”
Adelaide complied, returned, and stood with her elbow resting on the
corner of the toilet-table, while the stranger, standing before her with
folded arms, commenced her communication.
“Lady Adelaide Lorne—for you have no right to the name of Deville—you
shall soon know whether the wretch who stands before you, claiming the
name that you bear, be either mad or false! Mad women wander from their
theme, or stick to one point with crazy pertinacity. And false ones
bring no irresistible proof of what they advance. Ah! you are
listening!”
“To every syllable!” exclaimed Adelaide, upon whom the stranger’s
impressive manner was beginning to produce a painful effect.
“Lady Adelaide Lorne, it was upon the afternoon of the twentieth of last
September, that being caught out in a thunderstorm on the mountains, I
first met Orville Deville, faint from recent illness, lost with his
servant in the wilderness, and in search of shelter. I took him to my
father’s house, where he was rested, refreshed, and, in due time,
restored to health——”
“Go on! Go on! Why do you pause!” exclaimed Adelaide, growing pale and
leaning upon the dressing-table.
“Little lady, we loved each other! not as _you_ love who love from
_duty_! _we_ loved _despite_ of duty! yes! at the first mutual meeting
flash of our eyes that electric spark of love was lighted! it kindled
into a blaze! it spread into a conflagration that consumed every
obstacle between us! Six weeks passed in a burning dream, in which you,
his mother, his home, his duty, his _all_ of heaven and earth was
forgotten—IN ME! And _I_! I was so happy as it is seldom given to a
human being to be in time or in eternity! on earth or in heaven!”
“But, merciful Lord, girl, you were not his wife!” exclaimed Adelaide,
gazing now in horror upon the speaker.
Lionne smiled in bitter disdain, and replied—
“_I was._ We were married by special license, by the Episcopal clergyman
at Winchester, on the thirtieth of last October. Do you know this ring?”
and drawing a mourning-ring from her finger, she laid it on the
dressing-table under the eyes of Lady Adelaide, who immediately
recognized it as a family relic. “Farther proof would you have, young
lady?—Read this, then!” and she laid before her tortured auditor a
certificate of the marriage of Leonora Delaforêt with Orville Deville,
duly signed and witnessed.
Adelaide glanced over the paper, saw its purport, and silently
acknowledged its importance; and then, as if no longer able to stand,
moved from her position before the dressing-table and sank down in a
sitting posture on the lounge, beside it.
“Oh, go on! Go on!” was all that she found strength to say.
“A few days passed! We were awakened from our dream of love! A letter
came to him from his home, with news of his mother’s extreme illness.
With expressions of the deepest regret, with professions of the most
devoted affection, with promises of undying fidelity, sealed by the most
solemn vows, he took leave of me and departed. In due time I received
his first letter, written the day after his arrival at River-view. Do
you know his handwriting?—Look at this, lady!” and she placed Orville’s
letter before Adelaide, who threw a hasty glance at the superscription,
recognized the familiar handwriting, and covered her eyes with her
hands.
“Open and read it, young lady! I would have you to know all! Open and
read.”
“No, no, I cannot; it was not intended for my eyes,” said Lady Adelaide
with gentle dignity, yet with a voice so full of despair that the wild
girl started and gazed at her in consternation. But Adelaide lowered her
head until her pale gold ringlets fell forward and veiled her white face
from the eyes of the stranger, as she said—
“Have you any thing more to say to me?”
“Yes! I answered that letter; but received no second one! I waited and
_hoped_—no letter! I waited and _doubted_—yet no letter! I waited and
_feared_—still no letter! At last, when I no longer waited, but resolved
to write and find out the cause of his silence, came unexpected news of
him! A young girl, Kate Kyte—do you know her?”
“Yes, yes, I know her!”
“She came to our lodge, with her boy-brother, asking and receiving
hospitality for the night. In the course of our conversation that
evening, it fell out that Kate Kyte lived at Bush Creek Mill, adjoining
River-view, the seat of Mr. Orville Deville, who, she told me, was
married to the loveliest lady in the land!”
“Oh, Father in heaven, have pity on us!” wailed Adelaide, in a voice
full of woe, yet so low-toned that its sound failed to reach the ears of
the wild forest-girl, who continued—
“Young lady, I forgot the sacred rites of hospitality! I forgot my own
womanhood! I forgot all things else in my rising passion! I sprang upon
that girl as a tigress upon her prey! I told her she lied! lied in her
throat! that she had been bribed to make mischief between two hearts
that loved! I called upon her to retract her words or perish under my
hands! I shook, and tossed, and worried her as a terrier might a kitten,
until my strength utterly failed, and I dropped her! Then she had her
revenge! Knowing that _my_ greatest punishment and _her_ greatest
vindication lay in the words she had spoken, she told me that she
forgave my violence, and that I could easily satisfy myself of the truth
or falsehood of her statement by simply coming to see. I came! I am
here!”
“Oh, is there any thing else? Is there any thing else?” cried Adelaide,
in tones of such anguish that they seemed to burst from a breaking
heart.
“Yes, Lady Adelaide. I told you—_you_ who bear his _name_—that _I_ was
his _wife_! I _am_ his wife by stronger ties than the benediction
pronounced at the instance of guardians by a mercenary magistrate over
two unconscious children! I am his wife by mutual love, and knowledge,
and vows breathed earnestly before high heaven and sealed by God’s
minister! I am his wife and—the mother of his unborn child.”
“Help me! oh, help me, merciful Lord!” moaned Adelaide, in the utter
weakness of anguish, as she slipped down upon the carpet and buried her
face in the cushions of the lounge.
Lionne gazed upon her distress with the pitiless triumph with which a
jealous wife might gaze upon her crushed rival.
“Help me! help me! Saviour of the world!” still wept and wailed
Adelaide.
And while she still lay there upon the carpet, with her head and arms
cast upon the lounge, in the utter prostration of anguish, there was
heard a gentle rap at the door. It was repeated and reiterated before it
attracted the rapt senses of the two absorbed girls. At length Lionne
went up to Adelaide and shaking her gently, said:
“Some one knocks.”
Then starting up, Adelaide drew her disheveled hair from her pale face,
listened, and sought to collect her scattered faculties.
The knock was repeated the third time.
She arose, and smoothing her disordered dress, went to the door and
asked:
“Who is there?”
“Me, Miss Adely! Marse Awful say, how de horses is waitin’ dis half
hour, and now, is you gwine to take your ride?” spoke the voice of
Keziah, outside.
Without answering, and with an expression of extreme terror on her
lovely face, Adelaide hurried from the door, and walked several times up
and down the room, wringing her hands and crying:
“Oh, Saviour of the lost! help me! help me!”
A louder knock and the voice of Keziah inquiring:
“What shall I tell Marse Awful, honey?” recalled Adelaide to her senses.
Still pale, trembling and embarrassed, she hurried to the door.
“Tell him—he must excuse me! I—am not well! I cannot ride—with him
to-day! Go!” she said in weak, faltering, and hesitating tones. “I shall
never, never ride with him again!” added the poor girl, in a low,
despairing voice, as she left the door.
Keziah was heard retreating along the passage.
“Saviour of the lost, help or I perish!” prayed Adelaide, walking wildly
up and down the floor, and distractedly wringing her hands.
Lionne stood gazing pitilessly on her grief.
Presently was heard a man’s ringing footstep along the hall, approaching
the room.
Adelaide paused in a panic.
Lionne, started out of her stony stillness, stood bending forward, every
faculty merged in that of listening.
The steps stopped at the door and there was a sharp rap.
Adelaide glanced in terror towards Lionne.
The face of that wild, dark girl was a study. Her form was drawn up to
its proudest height; her head erect and thrust forward; her face deadly
pale, except where in each cheek burned a dark-red hectic spot, that
went in and out like the glow of a living coal of fire; her lips were
rigidly compressed until every drop of blood had left them colorless;
her eyes were strained, fixed, and blazing; her whole expression of
countenance exhibited curiosity, jealousy, suspicion, hatred, and
malice, in one terrible combination of unscrupulous purpose, immutable
will, and irresistible power!
Adelaide looked, and shuddered through every nerve.
The knock was repeated, and accompanied by the voice of Orville Deville,
calling in affectionate tones.
“Adelaide! Adelaide!”
With an adjuring gesture to Lionne, whose ears and heart had been
thrilled by hearing again the sound of that once loved voice, Adelaide
hurried to the door, unable to utter but the one single syllable—
“Well?”
“Adelaide, my dear, what is the matter?” he asked, in a low voice.
Before answering, Adelaide turned a deprecating look towards Lionne,
whose brows had gathered darkly over her flashing eyes. With a
beseeching gesture to her rival, the fair girl turned once more to the
door, and replied—
“I am not very well; I—have a slight headache.”
“The ride this lovely afternoon would do you good.”
“No; I feel certain that it would make me worse.”
“As you will, then, sweet cousin. But can I not do something for you?”
“No, I thank you.”
“Nor send any one to you?”
“Oh, no! I only need quiet, Mr. Deville.”
“Well, lie down and sleep, love! You will be better by tea-time.”
“Oh, yes!”
“And join us, as usual, at the table.”
“Oh, yes!” said Adelaide, with such an air and tone of distraction that
Mr. Deville, believing she really had a nervous headache, took leave,
saying—
“Good-by, sweet Adelaide! I leave you to your repose, in the hope of
seeing you restored by tea-time!”
The last echo of his steps had scarcely died away in the distance before
Lionne strode to the side of Adelaide, and laying her hand heavily upon
the shoulder of the girl, and gazing threateningly in her pale face,
asked—
“Do you know how much I have suffered standing here, hearing his voice,
feeling his presence, and knowing what I know?”
“I am sure that you did, and do suffer,” said Adelaide gently; “but
there are several things that should comfort you. First of all, your
conscience is clear of offence. You knew nothing of me when you gave
your free hand and heart to a man whom you deemed as free to wed as
yourself.”
“That is as true as heaven!”
“And secondly, you must see by what has just passed, that myself and my
cousin are not lovers. He speaks to me as to a little sister. He knocks
at my door, but does not enter. He calls me pet names. I call him Mr.
Deville. That is always our manner towards each other.”
As Adelaide said these words, she walked wearily across the room, and
dropped into her easy chair, where she sat silent and thoughtful for a
short time. Then looking up, and seeing the forest girl still standing
in the middle of the floor, where she had left her, she said—
“I must again entreat you to be seated.”
“I thank you, no! I am about to bid you adieu,” said Lionne, coldly.
“Not yet! I have something important to say to you.”
“Say on, then, and pray be brief.”
“But I beg you will sit while I speak.”
Lionne, with a haughty air, shook her head, and remained standing.
“Well, I think I know why you refuse to take a seat under this roof; but
you are wrong, as I shall soon show you.”
Lionne’s lip curled with angry scorn.
“Well, at least I must beg you to excuse me if I, through exhaustion,
keep my seat.”
Lionne bowed her head, and waved her hand excitedly.
“And now, as I listened patiently to your story,” (every word of which
stabbed me to the heart, she _thought_, but did not say,) “I must beg
you to listen patiently to mine.”
“I wait here for no other purpose,” said Lionne, curtly.
“In the first place, then, do not too severely blame Orville Deville.
Oh!” suddenly exclaimed Adelaide, with a retrospective shudder of
horror, “while you stood looking towards that door when he was talking
behind it, there was murder in your eyes!”
“Murder? never! A poor, stupid, vulgar vengeance for _any_ injury and
for such as MINE!”
“There is murder in your eyes now! or, worse than murder, if such could
be!” cried Adelaide, appalled.
Lionne laughed horribly.
“You must not! oh, you must not! It is because you are maddened with
wrongs that you do it, I know; but you must not! You must listen to me!
I do not wish to defend him beyond what is right. He has sinned
grievously, I know; but not so grievously as you think. You will say so
when you know all.”
“Girl, how _dare_ you take upon yourself to measure the extent of _his_
sin and _my_ wrongs?” broke forth Lionne, in a voice of thunder.
“Oh, be patient. Hear me out. I say you will judge less harshly when you
know all.”
Lionne threw up her head with a gesture of fierce scorn.
Patiently Adelaide continued:
“Orville Deville is no more responsible for the marriage ceremony that
took place between us when we were children than I am. It was the act of
our parents, while we were yet too young to understand, far less to
protest against, their doings. Immediately after that form we were
separated to pursue our diverse ways. And thus we grew up apart, until,
doubtless, he ceased to remember even the face of the little child to
whom he had been so rashly bound.”
“And you forgot him as well,” said Lionne, mockingly.
“No. I lived with his mother, who had no other son but _him_, and to
whom _I_ filled the place of an only daughter; therefore I could not
forget him, you know.”
Lionne’s lip curled.
Adelaide paused, sighed, nerved her heart, and continued:
“Without ever having set eyes upon me again he met you, under
circumstances the most interesting. You were beautiful, and he loved
you. And then, because he considered the marriage-form read over two
unconscious children five years before, a mere imposed betrothal at
best, he used his supposed liberty and married you. There was nothing so
heinously sinful in that, was there, Lionne?”
The forest girl did not speak, but looked intently at her fair rival.
“And so, Lionne, _you_ became, in every sense of the word, his _true_
wife, and not his wife only in name, as I had been.”
“You admit this!” exclaimed Lionne, in the utmost astonishment.
“Assuredly I admit the truth, wherever I recognize it as such.”
“You—you are one in ten thousand,” exclaimed Lionne, in growing wonder.
But without heeding or even hearing her interruption, Adelaide went on.
“Alas, I cannot so easily explain the strangeness of his course since
his return home.”
Again the face of Lionne darkened.
“Yet,” continued Adelaide, “something may be said in palliation of what
seems so wrong. He came hither, you know, summoned to the sick-bed of
his mother. He found her and every one else expecting him to take as his
wife the little girl who had been read over to him five years ago. He
had not the nerve at once to acknowledge his recent marriage, disappoint
his friends, and grieve his ailing mother, who had so long looked upon
_me_ as her daughter-in-law.”
“Well?”
“And so he did what many older and wiser men often do—he temporized and
waited, doubtless abiding a favorable opportunity for defining his real
position.” Here Adelaide dropped her head upon her breast and paused so
long that Lionne impatiently recalled her by saying—
“Well! well! what then?”
“_He never loved me!_ and of course he never gave me the slightest
reason to suppose that he did or could. He has treated me with no more
affection than a kind-hearted young man might naturally feel for his
young cousin, who is also his mother’s guest.”
“Ha!” sad Lionne, with an ironical smile.
“But I assure you he has not!” persisted the gentle Adelaide—“and now,
Lionne, _I must save you both_!”
“You, Lady Adelaide!”
“Yes, I! Take courage, Lionne! for you and for him all shall be well!”
“You! you! Lady Adelaide!”
“Yes! believe in me!”
“You promise me this. Tell me, do you love him?”
“That is a question which you have no right to ask nor I to answer,”
replied Lady Adelaide, with gentle dignity.
“But, young lady, you overwhelm me with astonishment; for well do I know
that though mine is the true marriage, yet yours, though only nominal,
being the _prior_, is consequently the _legal_ one. Do _you_ not know
this?”
“Yes, I know it! I know that though our marriage was nothing but a form,
yet that it was a form so binding that by law it is indissoluble except
through death or crime!” replied Adelaide, solemnly.
“And death has not released either party, and yet the marriage has been
broken! a crime has therefore been committed! A crime by him and against
you! I understand your plan now, Lady Adelaide! You will apply for a
divorce, which will readily be granted you, and thus you will release
him and leave him free to return to the woman of his choice!”
“What! apply for a divorce and cover with dishonor the head that I have
loved! Oh, how little you know of my heart!” thought the gentle girl, in
silence.
“Is not that your purpose, Lady Adelaide?” asked Lionne.
“No! that is not my purpose! My plan is a much quicker solution of the
difficulty.”
“May I ask you what it is, then?”
“Not yet! it is not quite matured, even in my own brain! I must have a
little time for reflection. Excuse me: do you lodge in this
neighborhood?”
“I am the guest of Kate Kyte.”
“Return to her then to-night. And early to-morrow morning you shall hear
from me.”
“Be it so! but I wish to withdraw as I came, without seeing any one.”
“How did you manage that?”
“I entered while you were all at dinner.”
“Then remain here until we are all at supper, when the coast will be
clear and you can retire unobserved.”
Almost as she spoke, the supper-bell rung, and with a parting promise to
communicate with Lionne on the following morning, Adelaide went to the
dining-room.