A MOTHER'S APPEAL.
"She would not bear it--she could not bear it," this was Lady Marion's
conclusion in the morning, when the sunbeams peeping in her room told
her it was time to rise. She turned her face to the wall and said it
would be easier to die--her life was spoiled, nothing could give her
back her faith and trust in her husband or her love for him.
Life held nothing for her now. It was noon before she rose, and then she
went to her boudoir. Lord Chandos had gone out, leaving no message for
her. She sat there thinking, brooding over her sorrow, wondering what
she was to do, when the Countess of Lanswell was announced.
Lady Marion looked up. It was as though an inspiration from Heaven had
come to her; she would tell Lady Lanswell, and hear what she had to say.
"You have been crying," said the countess, as she bent over her
daughter-in-law. "Crying, and how ill you look--what is the matter?"
"There is something very wrong the matter," said Lady Marion. "Something
that I cannot bear--something that will kill me if it is not stopped."
"My dearest Marion," said the countess, "what is wrong? I have never
seen you so distressed before. Where is Lance?"
"I never know where he is now," she said. "Oh, Lady Lanswell, I am so
miserable, so unhappy that I wish I were dead."
This outbreak from Lady Marion, who was always so calm, so high-bred, so
reticent in expressing her feelings, alarmed Lady Lanswell. She took the
cold, trembling hands in her own.
"Marion," she said, "you must calm yourself; you must tell me what is
the matter and let me help you."
Lady Chandos told her all, and the countess listened in wondering amaze.
"Are you quite sure?" she said. "Lady Ilfield exaggerates sometimes when
she repeats those gossiping stories."
"It must be true, since my husband acknowledged it himself, and yet
refused to give me any explanation of it. Some time since, I found that
he passed so much of his time away from home I asked you if he had any
friends with whom he was especially intimate, and you thought not. Now I
know that it was Madame Vanira he went to see. She lives at Highgate,
and he goes there every day."
"I should not think much of it, my dear, if I were you," said the
countess. "Madame Vanira is very beautiful and very accomplished--all
gentlemen like to be amused."
"I cannot argue," said Lady Chandos; "I can only say that my own
instinct and my own heart tell me there is something wrong, that there
is some tie between them. I know nothing of it--I cannot tell why I feel
this certain conviction, but I do feel it."
"It is not true, I am sure, Marion," said the countess, gravely. "I know
Lance better than any one else; I know his strength, his weakness, his
virtues, his failings. Love of intrigue is not one, neither is lightness
of love."
"Then if he cares nothing for Madame Vanira, and sees me unhappy over
her, why will he not give her up?"
"He will if you ask him," said Lady Lanswell.
"He will _not_. I have asked him. I have told him that the pain of it is
wearing my life away; but he will not. I am very unhappy, for I love my
husband."
"And he loves you," said the countess.
"I do not think so. I believe--my instinct tells me--that he loves
Madame Vanira."
"Marion, it is wicked to say such things," said the countess, severely.
"Because your husband, like every other man of the world, pays some
attention to the most gifted woman of her day, you suspect him of
infidelity, want of love and want of truth. I wonder at you."
Lady Marion raised her fair, tear-stained face.
"I cannot make you understand," she said slowly, "nor do I understand
myself. I only know what I feel, what my instinct tells me, and that is
that between my husband and Madame Vanira there is something more than I
know. I feel that there is a tie between them. He looks at her with
different eyes; he speaks to her with a different voice; when he sung
with her it was as though their souls floated away together."
"Marion," interrupted the countess, "my dear child, I begin to see what
is the matter with you--you are jealous."
"Yes, I am jealous," said the unhappy wife, "and not without cause--you
must own that. Ah, Lady Lanswell, you would be sorry for me if you knew
all. See, it is wearing me away; my heart beats, my hands tremble, and
they burn like fire. Oh, my God, how I suffer!"
The Countess of Lanswell, in her superb dress of black velvet, sat by in
silence; for the first time in her life she was baffled; for the first
time in her life she was face to face with a human passion. Hitherto, in
her cold, proud presence all passion had veiled itself; this unhappy
wife laid hers bare, and my lady was at a loss what to say. In her calm,
proud life there had been no room for jealousy; she had never known it,
she did not even understand the pain.
If her husband had gone out for a day with the most beautiful woman on
earth, she would either have completely ignored the fact, or, with a
smiling satire, have passed it by. She did not love the earl well enough
to be jealous of him; she did not understand love or jealousy in others.
She sat now quite helpless before the unhappy wife, whose grief annoyed
her.
"This will not do, Marion," she said, "you will make yourself quite
ill."
"Ill," repeated Lady Marion, "I have been ill in heart and soul for many
days, and now I am sick unto death. I wish I could die; life has nothing
left for me."
"Die, my dear, it seems such a trifle, such a trifle; one day spent
together on a river. Is that anything for you to die about?"
The sweet blue eyes raised wistfully to hers were full of pain.
"You do not see, you do not understand. Only think how much intimacy
there must have been between them before he would ask her to go, or she
consent to go. If they are but strangers, or even every-day friends,
what could they find to talk about for a whole day?"
The countess shrugged her shoulders.
"I am surprised," she said, "for I thought Madame Vanira so far above
all coquetry. If I were you, Marion, I would forget it."
"I cannot forget it," she cried. "Would to God that I could. It is
eating my heart away."
"Then," said my lady, "I will speak to Lance at once, and I am quite
sure that at one word from me he will give up the acquaintance, for the
simple reason that you do not like it."
And with this promise the countess left her daughter-in-law. Once
before, not by her bidding, but by her intrigues, she had persuaded him
to give up one whom he loved; surely a few words from her now would
induce him to give up her whom he could not surely love. It never
occurred to her to dream that they were the same.
She saw him as she was driving home, and, stopping the carriage, asked
him to drive with her.
"Lance, I have something very serious to say to you. There is no use
beating about the bush, Marion is very ill and very unhappy."
"I am sorry for it, mother, but add also she is very jealous and very
foolish."
"My dear Lance, your wife loves you--you know it, she loves you with all
her heart and soul. If your friendship with Madame Vanira annoys her,
why not give it up?"
"I choose to keep my independence as a man; I will not allow any one to
dictate to me what friends I shall have, whom I shall give up or
retain."
"In some measure you are right, Lance," said the countess, "and so far
as gentleman friends are concerned, I should always choose my own; but
as this is a lady, of whom Lady Marion has certain suspicions, I should
most certainly give her up."
"My wife has no right to be jealous," he said angrily; "it does not add
to my love for her."
"Let me speak seriously to you, Lance," said the countess. "Marion is so
unhappy that I should not wonder if she were really ill over it; now why
not do as she wishes? Madame Vanira can be nothing to you--Marion is
everything. Why not give her up?"
A certain look of settled determination that came to her son's face made
the countess pause and wonder. She had seen it there for the first and
last time when she had asked her son to renounce his young wife, and now
she saw it again. Strange that his next words should seem like an answer
to her thoughts.
"Mother," he said, "do not ask me; you persuaded me to give up all the
happiness of my life, years ago--do not try me a second time. I refuse,
absolutely refuse, to gratify my wife's foolish, jealous wish. I say,
emphatically, that I will not give up my friendship for Madame Vanira."
Then my lady looked fixedly at him.
"Lance," she said, "what is Madame Vanira to you?"
He could not help the flush that burned his handsome, angry face, and
that flush aroused his mother's curiosity. "Have you known her long? Did
you know her before your marriage, Lance? I remember now that I was
rather struck by her manner. She reminds me forcibly of some one. Poor
Marion declares there is some tie between you. What can it be?"
She mused for some minutes, then looked into her son's face.
"Great Heaven, Lance, it can never be!" she cried. "A horrible idea has
occurred to me, and yet it is not possible."
He made no answer, but a look of more dogged defiance came into his
face.
"It can never be, and yet I think it is so. Can it be possible that
Madame Vanira is the--the dairy-maid to whom you gave your young
affections?"
"Madame Vanira is the girl I loved, mother, and whom I believed to be my
wife--until you parted us."
And my lady fell back in her carriage with a low cry of "Heaven have
mercy on us!"