"LET US BE FRIENDS."
"Lance," said the sweet voice of Lady Marion, plaintively, "I am
beginning to have a faint suspicion about you."
"Indeed. Your suspicions are not faint as a rule. What is this?"
"I am afraid that you are growing just a little tired of me," said the
beautiful queen of blondes.
"What makes you think so?" he asked, trying to laugh, as he would have
done a few weeks since at such an accusation.
"Several reasons. You are not so attentive to me as you used to be; you
do not seem to listen when I speak; you have grown so absent-minded; and
then you say such strange things in your sleep."
He looked grave for half a minute, then laughed carelessly.
"Do I? Then I ought to be ashamed of myself. Men talk enough in their
waking hours without talking in their sleep. What do I say, Marion?"
He asked the question carelessly enough, but there was an anxious look
in his dark eyes.
"I cannot tell; I hardly remember," said Lady Chandos; "but you are
always asking some one to forgive you and see you. Have you ever
offended any one very much, Lance?"
"I hope not," he replied. "Dreams are so strange, and I do not think
they are often true reflections of our lives. Have you any further
reason for saying I am growing tired of you? It is a vexed question, and
we may as well settle it now as renew the argument."
"No, I have no other reason. Lance, you are not cross with me, dear?"
"No, I am not cross; but, at the same time, I must say frankly I do not
like the idea of a jealous wife; it is very distasteful to me."
Lady Marion raised her eyes in wonder.
"Jealous, Lance?" she repeated. "I am not jealous. Of whom could I be
jealous? I never see you pay the least attention to any one."
"Jealous wives, as a rule, begin by accusing their husbands of cooling
love, want of attention, and all that kind of thing."
"But, Lance," continued the beautiful woman, "are you quite sure that
there is no truth in what I say?"
He looked at her with a dreamy gaze in his dark eyes.
"I am quite sure," he replied. "I love you, Marion, as much as ever I
did, and I have not noticed in the least that I have failed in any
attention toward you; if I have I will amend my ways."
He kissed the fair face bent so lovingly over him; and his wife laid her
fair arms round his neck.
"I should not like to be jealous," she said; "but I must have your whole
heart, Lance; I could not be content with a share of it."
"Who could share it with you?" he asked, evasively.
"I do not know, I only know that it must be all or none for me," she
answered. "It is all--is it not, Lance?"
He kissed her and would fain have said yes, but it came home to him with
a sharp conviction that his heart had been given to one woman, and one
only--no other could ever possess it.
A few days afterward, when Lord Chandos expressed a wish to go to the
opera again, his wife looked at him in wonder.
"Again?" she said. "Why, Lance, it is only two nights since you were
there, and it is the same opera; you will grow tired of it."
"The only amusement I really care for is the opera," he said. "I am
growing too lazy for balls, but I never tire of music."
He said to himself, that if for the future he wished to go to the opera
he would not mention the fact, but would go without her.
They went out that evening: the opera was "Norma." Lord Chandos heard
nothing and saw nothing but the wondrous face of Norma; every note of
that music went home to his heart--the love, the trust, the reproaches.
When she sang them in her grandly pathetic voice, it was as though each
one were addressed to himself. Three times did Lady Chandos address him
without any response, a thing which in her eyes was little less than a
crime.
"How you watch La Vanira," she said. "I am sure you admire her very
much."
He looked at her with eyes that were dazed--that saw nothing; the eyes
of a man more than half mad.
"And now look," she said. "Why, Lance, La Vanira is looking at me. What
eyes she has. They stir my very heart and trouble me. They are saying
something to me."
"Marion, hush! What are you talking about?" he cried.
"La Vanira's eyes--she is looking at me, Lance."
"Nonsense!" he said, and the one word was so abruptly pronounced that
Lady Chandos felt sure it was nonsense and said no more.
But after that evening he said no more about going to the opera. If he
felt any wish to go, he would go; it would be quite easy for him to make
some excuse to her.
And those evenings grew more and more frequent. He did not dare to
disobey Leone; he did not dare to go to her house, or to offer to see
her in the opera house. He tried hard to meet her accidentally, but that
happy accident never occurred; yet he could not rest, he must see her;
something that was stronger than himself drew him near her.
He was weak of purpose; he never resolutely took himself in hand and
said:
"I am married now. I have a wife at home. Leone's beauty, Leone's
talents, are all less than nothing to me. I will be true to my wife."
He never said that; he never braced his will, or his energies to the
task of forgetting her; he dallied with the temptation as he had done
before; he allowed himself to be tempted as he had done before; the
result was that he fell as he had fallen before.
Every day his first thought was how he could possibly get away that
evening without drawing particular attention to his movements; and he
went so often that people began to laugh and to tease him and to wonder
why he was always there.
Leone always saw him. If any one had been shrewd and quick enough to
follow her, they would have seen that she played to one person; that her
eyes turned to him continually; that the gestures of her white arms
seemed to woo him. She never smiled at him, but there were times, when
she was singing some lingering, pathetic notes, it seemed as though she
were almost waiting for him to answer her.
He did not dare to go behind the scenes, to linger near the door, to
wait for her carriage, but his life was consumed with the one eager
desire to see her. He went night after night to the box; he sat in the
same place; he leaned his arms on the same spot, watching her with eyes
that seemed to flash fire as they rested on her.
People remarked it at last, and began to wonder if it could be possible
that Lord Chandos, with that beautiful wife, the queen of blondes, was
beginning to care for La Vanira; he never missed one night of her
acting, and he saw nothing but her when she was on the stage.
Again one evening Lady Chandos said to him:
"Lance, have you noticed how seldom you spend an evening--that is, the
whole of an evening--with me? If you go to a ball with me, it seems to
me that you are always absent for an hour or two."
"You have a vivid imagination, my dear wife," he replied.
And yet he knew it was on the night Leone played; he could no more have
kept from going to see her than he could have flown; it was stronger
than himself, the impulse that led him there.
Then his nights became all fever; his days all unrest; his whole heart
and soul craved with passionate longing for one half hour with her, and
yet he dared not seek it. Even then, had he striven to conquer his love,
and have resolutely thought of his duty, his good faith and his loyalty,
he would have conquered, as any strong man can conquer when he likes; he
never tried. When the impulse led him, he went; when the temptation came
to him to think of her, he thought of her, when the temptation came to
him to love her, he gave way to it and never once set his will against
it.
Then, when the fever of his longing consumed him, and his life had grown
intolerable to him, he wrote a note to her; it said simply:
"DEAR LEONE,--Life is very sad. Do let us be friends--why should we
not? Life is so short. Let us be friends. I am very miserable;
seeing you sometimes would make me happy. Let us be friends, Leone.
Why refuse me? I will never speak of love--the word shall never be
mentioned. You shall be to me like my dearest, best-beloved sister.
I will be your brother, your servant, and your friend; only give
me, for God's dear sake, the comfort of seeing you. Leone, be
friends."
It was one evening when she was tired that this letter was brought to
her. She read it with weeping eyes; life was hard; she found it so. She
loved her art, she lived in it, but she was only a woman, and she wanted
the comfort of a human love and friendship.
Wearily enough she repeated the words to herself:
"Let us be friends. As he says, 'life is short.' The comfort will be
small enough, Heaven knows, but it will be better than nothing. Yes, we
will be friends."
So she answered the letter in a few words, telling him if he really
wished what he said, she would discuss the prudence of such a friendship
with him.
This letter of hers fell into the hands of Lady Marion. She looked at
the fine, beautiful, clear handwriting.
"Lance, this is from a lady," she said.
When he took it from her his face flushed, for he knew the hand.
"It is from a lady," she repeated.
"It is on business," he replied, coldly, putting the envelope aside;
and, to his intense delight, Lady Marion forgot it.
He was to go and see her. It was wrong to be so pleased, he knew, but he
did not even try to hide his delight over it.
When should he go? He should count the hours--he could not wait longer
than to-morrow. Would she be willing; or would she not? How long the
hours seemed, yet they passed, and once more he was at the Cedars.