THE WOUND IN HER HEART.
If Leone had been wiser after that one evening, she would have avoided
Lord Chandos as she would have shunned the flames of fire; that one
evening showed her that she stood on the edge of a precipice. Looking in
her own heart, she knew by its passionate anguish and passionate pain
that the love in her had never been conquered. She said to herself, when
the evening was over and she drove away, leaving them together, that she
would never expose herself to that pain again.
It was so strange, so unnatural for her--she who believed herself his
wife, who had spent so many evenings with him--to go away and leave him
with this beautiful woman who was really his wife. She looked up at the
silent stars as she drove home; surely their pale, golden eyes must
shine down in dearest pity on her. She clinched her white, soft hands
until the rings made great red dents; she exhausted herself with great
tearless sobs; yet no tears came from her burning eyes.
Was ever woman so foully, so cruelly wronged? had ever woman been so
cruelly tortured?
"I will not see him again," she cried to herself; "I cannot bear it."
Long after the stars had set, and the crimson flush of dawn stirred the
pearly tints of the sky, she lay, sobbing, with passionate tears,
feeling that she could not bear it--she must die.
It would have been well if that had frightened her, but when morning
dawned she said to herself that hers had always been a mad love, and
would be so until the end. She made one desperate resolve, one desperate
effort; she wrote to Lord Chandos, and sent the letter to his club--a
little, pathetic note, with a heart-break in every line of it--to say
that they who had been wedded lovers were foolish to think of being
friends; that it was not possible, and that she thought they had better
part; the pain was too great for her, she could not bear it.
The letter was blotted with tears, and as he read it for whom it was
written, other tears fell on it. Before two hours had passed, he was
standing before her, with outstretched hands, the ring of passion in his
voice, the fire of passion in his face.
"Leone," he said, "do you mean this--must we part?"
They forgot in that moment all the restraints by which they had
surrounded themselves; once more they were Lance and Leone, as in the
old days.
"Must we part?" he repeated, and her face paled as she raised it to his.
"I cannot bear the pain, Lance," she said, wearily. "It would be better
for us never to meet than for me to suffer as I did last evening."
He drew nearer to her.
"Did you suffer so much, Leone?" he asked, gently.
"Yes, more almost than I can bear. It is not many years since I believed
that I was your wife, and now I have to see another woman in my place.
I--I saw you kiss her--I had to go away and leave you together. No, I
cannot bear it, Lance!"
The beautiful head drooped wearily, the beautiful voice trembled and
died away in a wail that was pitiful to hear; all her beauty, her
genius, her talent--what did it avail her?
Lord Chandos had suffered much, but his pain had never been so keen as
now at this moment, when this beautiful queenly woman wailed out her
sorrow to him.
"What shall I do, Leone? I would give my life to undo what I have done;
but it is useless--I cannot. Do you mean that we must part?"
The eyes she raised to his face were haggard and weary with pain.
"There is nothing for it but parting, Lance," she said. "I thought we
could be friends, but it is not possible; we have loved each other too
well."
"We need not part now," he said; "let us think it over; life is very
long; it will be hard to live without the sunlight of your presence,
Leone, now that I have lived in it so long. Let us think it over. Do you
know what I wanted to ask you last evening?"
"No," she replied, "what was it?"
"A good that you may still grant me," he said. "We may part, if you wish
it, Leone. Leone, let us have one happy day before the time comes.
Leone, you see how fair the summer is, I want you to spend one day with
me on the river. The chestnuts are all in flower--the whole world is
full of beauty, and song, and fragrance; the great boughs are dipping
into the stream, and the water-lilies lie on the river's breast. My dear
love and lost love, come with me for one day. We may be parted all the
rest of our lives, come with me for one day."
Her face brightened with the thought. Surely for one day they might be
happy; long years would have to pass, and they would never meet. Oh, for
one day, away on the river, in the world of clear waters, green boughs
and violet banks--one day away from the world which had trammeled them
and fettered them.
"You tempt me," she said, slowly. "A day with you on the river. Ah, for
such a pleasure as that I would give twenty years of my life."
He did not answer her, because he dared not. He waited until his heart
was calm and at rest again, then he said:
"Let us go to-morrow, Leone, no one knows what twenty-four hours may
bring forth. Let us go to-morrow, Leone. Rise early. How often we have
gone out together while the dew lay upon the flowers and grass. Shall it
be so?"
The angel of prudence faded from her presence as she answered, "Yes."
Knowing how she loved him, hearing the old love story in his voice,
reading it in his face, she would have done better had she died there in
the splendor of her beauty and the pain of her love than have said,
"Yes." So it was arranged.
"It will be a beautiful day," said Lord Chandos. "I am a capital rower,
Leone, as you will remember. I will take you as far as Medmersham Abbey:
we will land there and spend an hour in the ruins; but you will have to
rise early and drive down to the river side. You will not mind that."
"I shall mind nothing that brings me to you," she said, with a vivid
blush, and so it was settled.
They forgot the dictates of honor; he forgot his duty to his wife at
home, and she forgot prudence and justice.
The morning dawned. She had eagerly watched for it through the long
hours of the night; it wakes her with the song of the birds and the
shine of the sun; it wakes her with a mingled sense of pain and
happiness, of pleasure and regret. She was to spend a whole day with
him, but the background to that happiness was that he was leaving a wife
at home who had all claims to his time and attention.
"One happy day before I die," she said to herself.
But will it be happy? The sun will shine brightly, yet there will be a
background; yet it shall be happy because it will be with him.
It was yet early in the morning when she drove to the appointed place at
the river side. The sun shone in the skies, the birds sang in the trees,
the beautiful river flashed and glowed in the light, the waters seemed
to dance and the green leaves to thrill.
Ah, if she were but back by the mill-stream, if she were but Leone Noel
once again, with her life all unspoiled before her; if she were anything
on earth except a woman possessed by a mad love. If she could but
exchange these burning ashes of a burning love for the light, bright
heart of her girlhood, when the world had been full of beauty which
spoke to her in an unknown tongue.
God had been so good to her; he had given to her the beauty of a queen,
genius that was immortal, wit, everything life holds most fair, and they
were all lost to her because of her mad love. Ah, well, never mind, the
sun was shining, the river dancing far away in the sun, and she was to
spend the day with him. She had dressed herself to perfection in a
close-fitting dress of dark-gray velvet, relieved by ribbons of rose
pink; she wore a hat with a dark-gray plume, under the shade of which
her beautiful face looked doubly bewitching; the little hands, which by
their royal gestures swayed multitudes, were cased in dark gray. Lord
Chandos looked at her in undisguised admiration.
"The day seems to have been made on purpose for us," he said, as he
helped her in the boat.
Leone laughed, but there was just the least tinge of bitterness in that
laugh.
"A day made for us would have gray skies, cold rains, and bleak, bitter
winds," she said.
And then the pretty pleasure boat floated away on the broad, beautiful
stream.
It was a day on which to dream of heaven; there was hardly a ripple on
the beautiful Thames; the air was balmy, sweet, filled with the scent of
hay from the meadows; of flowers from the banks; it was as though they
had floated away into Paradise.
Lord Chandos bent forward to see that the rugs were properly disposed;
he opened her sunshade, but she would not use it.
"Let me see the beautiful river, the banks and the yews, while I may,"
she said, "the sun will not hurt me."
There was no sound save that of the oars cleaving the bright waters.
Leone watched the river with loving eyes; since she had left River
View--and she had loved it with something like passion--it seemed like
part of that married life which had ended so abruptly. They passed by a
thicket, where the birds were singing after a mad fashion of their own.
"Stop and listen," she said, holding up her hand.
He stopped and the boat floated gently with the noiseless tide.
"I wonder," said Leone, "if in that green bird kingdom there are
tragedies such as take place in ours?"
Lord Chandos laughed.
"You are full of fanciful ideas, Leone," he said. "Yes, I imagine, the
birds have their tragedies because they have their loves."
"I suppose there are pretty birds and plain birds, loving birds, and
hard-hearted ones; some who live a happy life, filled with sunlight and
song--some who die while the leaves are green, shot through the heart.
In the kingdom of birds and the kingdom of men it is all just the same."
"Which fate is yours, Leone?" asked Lord Chandos.
"Mine?" she said, looking away over the dancing waters, "mine? I was
shot while the sun shone, and the best part of me died of the wound in
my heart."