LOVE AND DUTY.
Lady Mitford was alone on the afternoon of the following day, when Sir
Laurence Alsager was announced. She was often alone now; for the world
falls readily and easily away, not only from the forsaken, but from
the preoccupied--from those to whom its gaieties are childish follies
and its interests weariness. She had fallen out of the ranks, as much
through inclination as in compliance with the etiquette of mourning;
and it came to pass often that the afternoon hours found her, as on
this occasion, sitting alone in her splendid, vapid, faultless,
soulless home. The softened light which reached her stately figure and
irradiated her thoughtful lace showed the grace and loveliness which
distinguished her untouched, undimmed. Under the discipline of sorrow,
under the teaching of disappointment, her face had gained in
expression and dignity,--every line and curve had strength added to
its former sweetness; the pure steadfast eyes shone with deeper, more
translucent lustre, and the rich lips met each other with firmer
purpose and more precision. The perfecting, the refinement of her
beauty, were sensibly felt by Alsager as he advanced towards the end
of the room where she was seated in the recess between a large window
and a glittering fireplace. She sat in a deep low chair of purple
velvet; and as she leaned slightly forward and looked at him coming
rapidly towards her, his eye noted every detail of the picture. He saw
the glossy hair in its smooth classic bandeaux, the steadfast eyes,
the gracious, somewhat grave, smile, the graceful figure in its soft
robe of thick mourning silk, and its rich jet trimmings; he saw the
small white hands, gentle but not weak,--one extended towards him in
welcome, the other loosely holding an open book. In a minute he was
by her side and speaking to her; but that minute had a deathless
memory,--that picture he was to see again and again, in many a place,
at many a time and it was never to be less beautiful, less divine for
him. He loved her--ay, he loved her--this injured woman, this
neglected, outraged wife, this woman who was a victim, crushed under
the wheels of the triumphal car which had maimed him once on a time,
though only slightly, and by a hurt soon healed by the balsam of
contempt. Was she crushed, though? There was sorrow in that grand
face--indeed, to that look of sorrow it owed its grandeur,--but there
was no pining; there was sad experience, but no weak vain
retrospection. All the pain of her lot was written upon her face; but
none could read there a trace of what would have been its
mortification, its bitter humiliation to commoner and coarser minds.
It mattered nothing to her that her husband's infatuation and their
mutual estrangement were topics for comment to be treated in the style
current in society, and she herself an object of that kind of
compassion which is so hard to brook: these were small things, too
small for her range of vision; she did not see them--did not feel
them. She saw the facts, she felt their weight and significance; but
for the rest! If Lady Mitford had progressed rapidly in knowledge of
the great world since she had been of it, she had also graduated in
other sciences which placed her above and beyond it.
"I am fortunate in finding you at home, Lady Mitford," said Alsager.
She answered by a smile They had got beyond the talking of
commonplaces to each other, these two, in general; but there was a
sense of oppression over them both to-day, and each was conscious that
it weighed upon the other. The remembrance of the talk to which he had
listened at the Club, of the light discussion of Sir Charles's
conduct, of the flippant censure of the woman who had won him from his
wife, was very strong upon Alsager; while she,--of what was she
thinking? Who could undertake to tell that? who could categorize the
medley which must occupy the mind of a woman so situated? Was she
suffering the sharp pangs of outraged love? or was she enduring the
hardly less keen torture of discovering that that which she had
believed to be love, had cherished in her breast as the true deity,
had given, in that belief, to her husband, was not love, but only a
skilful (and innocent) counterfeit, only a mock jewel which she had
offered in good faith for the flawless pearl of price? Who can tell?
She could hardly have answered such a question truly, if she had put
it to herself at the close of the interview which began after so
commonplace a fashion.
"I have not seen you since your father's death," said Lady Mitford,
gently; and in a tone which lent the simple words all the effect of a
formal condolence. "You have not been long in town, I'm sure?"
"No, indeed," he said; "I have but just returned. There is so much to
be done on these occasions; there are so many forms to be gone
through; there is so much immediate business to be transacted, in the
interests of the living, that--that,"--he hesitated; for he had neared
that precipice so dreaded by all now-a-days, the exhibition of natural
emotion.
"That one has to wait for leisure to mourn for the dead," said Lady
Mitford. "Ah, yes, I understand that. But you remain in town now, do
you not?"
There was a tone of anxiety in the question which struck on Alsager's
ear with a sound of music. She had missed him, then,--she would miss
him if he went away again! He loved her well, ay, and worthily,
contradictory though that may seem; but his heart was stirred with a
joy which he dared not analyze, but could not deny, at the thought. He
answered hurriedly, "Yes, I remain here now." And then he changed his
tone, and said eagerly,
"Tell me something of yourself. How has it been with you since we met
last?"
"Of myself!" she replied sadly; and her colour flushed and faded as
she spoke, and her restless fingers trifled with the ornaments of her
dress. "Myself is an unprofitable subject, and one I am weary of. I
have nothing new to tell,--nothing you would care to hear."
He dissented by an eager gesture; but she appeared not to perceive it,
and went on, with attempted gaiety:
"We have missed you dreadfully, of course. I need not tell you what a
void your absence must necessarily make. We all know you are beyond
spoiling."
She looked at him, and something in his face warned her not to pursue
this tone. She felt vaguely that the position was unreal, and must be
changed. He knew, as she supposed, what she was thinking of; she knew,
as he fancied, what he was thinking of; and though, as it happened,
each was wrong, it was manifestly absurd to carry on false pretences
any longer. Woman-like, she was the first to brave the difficulty of
the situation.
"You have come to me," she said steadily, and looking at him with the
clear upheld gaze peculiar to her, "because you have heard something
which concerns me nearly, and because, man of the world,--of this
heartless world around us,--as you are, and accustomed to such things,
still you feel for me; because you would have prevented this thing if
you could; because you tried to prevent it, and failed; because you
knew--yes, Sir Laurence Alsager, because you knew the extent and the
power of the danger that menaced me, and my helplessness: say, am I
right?--for these reasons you are here to-day."
The composure of her voice was gone, but not its sweetness; her colour
had faded to a marble paleness; and her hands were firmly clasped
together. Alsager had risen as she spoke, and was standing now,
leaning against the low velvet-covered mantelpiece. He answered
hurriedly, and with scant composure:
"Yes, Lady Mitford, for these reasons, and for others."
"For what others?"
This almost in a whisper.
"Never mind them now," he said impetuously; and then the superficial
restraint which he had imposed upon himself gave way, broke down
before that strongest and most terrible of temptations, the sight of
the sorrow and the silent confidence of the woman one loves, granted
at the moment when a hope, a guilty hope, that that love may not be
vain, begins to stir, like life, at one's heart. She shrank a little
back in the chair, but she looked at him as earnestly as before.
"It's all true, then," he said,--and there was a tone of deep and
bitter hatred in his voice,--"all true. The prophecy I heard among
those fellows the first time I ever heard your name--the coarse
language, the cynical foresight,--all true. That heartless demon has
caught his shallow nature in her shallow lure, and worked the woe of
an angel!"
His voice rang with a passionate tremor, his eyes deepened and
darkened with the passionate fervour which glowed in them. His
impetuous feeling mastered her. She had no power to arrest him by a
conventional phrase, though he had overstepped more than
conventionality by invading the sacred secrecy of her domestic grief.
"Yes, Lady Mitford," he went on; "I have returned to find that all I
feared,--more than I feared,--has befallen you. It was an unequal
contest; you had only innocence and purity, an old-fashioned belief in
the stability of human relations and the sanctity of plighted faith;
and what weapons were these in such a fight? No wonder you are
vanquished. No wonder she is triumphant--shameless as she is
heartless. I wound you," he said, for she cowered and trembled at his
words; "but I cannot keep silence. I have seen shameful things,--I am
no stranger to the dark passages of life; but this is worse than all.
Good God! to think that a man like Mitford should have had such a
chance and have thrown it away! To think that--"
"Hush, Sir Laurence!" she said, and stretched her hand appealingly
towards him; "I must not hear you. I cannot, I will not affect to
misunderstand you; but there must be no more of this. I am an unhappy
woman--a most wretched wife; all the world--all the little world we
think so great, and suffer to torment us so cruelly--knows that.
Pretence between us would be idle; but confidence is impossible. I
cannot discuss Sir Charles Mitford's conduct with any one, least of
all with you." She seemed to have spoken the last words unawares, or
at least involuntarily, for a painful blush, rose on her face and
throat.
"And why," he eagerly asked,--"why least of all with me? I have been
honoured by your friendship,--I have not forfeited it, have I? I know
that conventionality, which is a systematic liar and a transparent
hypocrite, would condemn in theory a woman to keep her garments folded
decorously over such mortal heart-wounds; I know that poets snivel
rhymes which tell us how grand and great, how high and mighty, it is
'to suffer and be strong.' I know how easy some people find it to see
others suffer, and be perfectly strong in the process; but such
rubbish is not for you nor for me. I cannot return to London and hear
all that I have heard; I cannot come here and look upon you--" his
voice faltered, but he forced it into the same hurried composure with
which he had been speaking. "I cannot see you as I see you now, and
talk to you as an ordinary morning visitor might talk, or even as we
have talked together, when these things were coming indeed, but had
not yet come."
She was leaning forward now, her face turned towards him, but hidden
in her hands. He gazed at her with a kindling glance, and strode
fiercely backward and forward across the wide space which lay before
the window.
"I am not a good man," he went on, "according to your standard of
goodness, Lady Mitford; but I am not a bad man according to my own. I
have had rough tussles with life, and some heavy falls; but I swear
there is a dastardly, cold, heartless ingratitude in this business
which I cannot bear; and in the sight of you there is something
terrible to me. Men know this man's history; we know from what
degradation you raised him; we are not so blind and coarse that we
cannot guess with what fidelity and patience you loved him when it was
at its deepest. And now, to see him return to it; to see him, without
any excuse of poverty or struggle, in the enjoyment of all that fate
and fortune have blindly given him; to see him play the part of a liar
and a villain to you--to you--to see you left unprotected, openly
neglected and betrayed, to run the gauntlet of society such as ours! I
cannot see all this, Lady Mitford, and pretend that I do not see it;
and what is more, you do not wish that I could. You are too true, too
womanly to form such a wish; and you are too honest to express it, in
obedience to any laws of cant."
He went near to her; he bent down, he lowered his voice, he gently
drew away the hands that hid her face from him; they dropped into her
lap, nerveless and idle; the first tears he had ever seen in her eyes
dimmed them now.
"You mean kindly, as you have always meant to me, Sir Laurence," she
said; "but we cannot discuss this matter,--indeed we cannot. I am
weaker than I ought to be,--I should not listen to this; but oh, God
help me, I have no friends; I am all alone, all alone!"
If she had been beautiful in the pride and dignity of her sorrowful
composure, if his strong heart had quailed and his firm nerve had
shrunk at the sight of her pale and placid grief, how far more
beautiful was she now, when the restraint had fallen from her, when
the eyes looked at him from the shadow of wet lashes, and the perfect
lips trembled with irrepressible emotion.
"No!" he said vehemently; and as he spoke he stood close before her,
and stretched his hands towards her, but without taking hers; the
gesture was one of mingled denial and appeal, and had no touch of
boldness in it; "no, you are not alone; yes, you have friends,--at
least you have one friend. Listen to me,--do not fear to hear me; let
us at least venture to tell and listen to the truth. This man, to whom
you were given as a guardian angel, is quite unworthy of you. You know
it; your keen intellect accepts a fact and all its consequences,
however terrible to your woman's heart, and does not palter with the
truth. Are you to be always miserable because you have been once
mistaken? If you had known, if you had been able to comprehend the
real nature of this man, would you, could you ever have loved him?"
She put up her hand with a faint gesture of protest; but he
impetuously waved it away, and went on, once more striding up and
down.
"No, no; I must speak! There can be more reticence now. You would not,
you could not have loved him, this heartless, ungrateful profligate,
as tasteless and low as he is faithless and vicious,--this scoundrel,
who, holding good in his grasp, has deliberately chosen evil. Ay, I
will say it, Lady Mitford! You _could_ not have loved him, and you
know it well; you have admitted it to yourself before now, when you
little dreamed that anyone--that I--would ever dare to put your
thought in form and shape before you. What did you love? A girl's
fancy,--a shadow, a dream! It was no reality, it had no foundation,
and it has vanished. Your imagination drew a picture of an injured
victim of circumstances,--a weak being, to be pitied and admired, to
be restored and loved! The truth was a selfish scoundrel, who has
returned in wealth with fresh zest to the miserable pleasures for
which he lived in poverty; a mean-hearted wretch, who could care for
your beauty while it was new to him indeed, but to whose perception
you, your heart and soul, your intellect and motives, were mysteries
as high and as far off as heaven. Are you breaking your heart, Lady
Mitford, under the kindly scrutiny of the world, because the thistle
has not borne figs and the thorn has not given you purple grapes? Are
you sitting down in solitary grief because the animal has done
according to its kind, because effect has resulted from cause, because
the wisdom of the world, wise in the ways of such men, has verified
itself? Do you love this man now? Are you suffering the pangs of
jealousy, of despair? No, you do not love him; you are suffering no
such pangs. You are truth itself,--the truest and the bravest, as you
are the most beautiful of women; and you cannot, you dare not tell me
that you love this man still, knowing him as you know him now." He
stopped close beside her, and looked at her with an eager, almost a
fierce glance.
"Why do you ask me?" she gasped out faintly. There was a sudden
avoidance of him in her expression, a shadow of fear. "Why do you
speak to me thus? Oh, Sir Laurence, this--this is the worst of all."
She was not conscious of the effect of the tone in which these words
were spoken, of the pathos, the helplessness, the pleading tenderness
it implied. But he heard them, and they were enough. They were faint
as the murmur of a brook in summer, but mighty as an Alpine storm; and
the barriers of conventional restriction, the scruples of conscience,
the timidity of a real love, were swept away like straws before their
power.
"Why?" he repeated, "because I love you!"
She uttered a faint exclamation; she half rose from her chair, but he
caught her hands and stopped her.
"Hush!" he said; "I implore you not to speak till you have heard me!
Do not wrong me by supposing that I have come here to urge on your
unwilling ear a tale of passion, to take advantage of your husband's
crime, your husband's cowardice, to extenuate crime and cowardice in
myself. Before God, I have no such meaning! But I love you--I love you
as I never even fancied I loved any woman before; though I am no
stranger to the reality or the mockery of passion, though I have
received deep and smarting wounds in my time. I wish to make myself no
better in your eyes than I am. And I love you--love you so much better
than myself; that I would fain see you happy with this man, even with
_him_, if it could be. But it cannot, and you know it. You know in
your true heart, that if he came back to his allegiance to you
now--poor bond of custom as it is--you could not love him, any more
than you could return to the toys of your childhood. I read you
aright; I know you with the intuitive knowledge which love, and love
only, lends to a man, when he would learn the mystery of a woman's
nature. You are too noble, too true, to be bound by the petty rules,
to be governed by the small scruples, which dominate nine-tenths of
the women who win the suffrages of society. You have the courage of
your truthfulness."
He stood before her, looking steadfastly down upon her, his arms
tightly folded across his chest, his breath coming quickly in hurried
gasps. She had shrunken into the recesses of her velvet chair, and she
looked up at him with parted lips and wild eyes, her hands holding the
cushions tightly, the fingers hidden in the purple fringes. Was it
that she could not speak, or that she would not? However that may have
been, she did not, and he went on.
"Yes, yes, I love you. I think you knew it before?" She made no reply.
"I think I have loved you from the first,--from the moment when,
callous and _blasé_ as I had come to believe myself--as, God knows, I
had good right to be, if human nature may ever claim such a right--I
could not bear to see the way your fate was drifting, or to hear the
chances for and against you calculated, as men calculate such odds. I
think I loved you from the moment I perceived how completely you had
mistaken your own heart, and how beautifully, how innocently loyal you
were to the error. While your delusion lasted, Lady Mitford, you were
safe with me and from me, for in that delusion there was security.
While you loved Mitford, and believed that he returned your love, you
would never have perceived that any other man loved you. But you are a
woman who cannot be partially deceived or undeceived; therefore I tell
you now, when your delusion is wholly at an end, when it can come no
more to blind your eyes, and rend your heart with the removal of the
bandage, that I love you,--devotedly, changelessly, eternally. You
must take this fact into account when you meditate upon your future;
you must number this among the component parts of your life. Hush! not
yet. I am not speaking thus through reckless audacity, availing itself
of your position; you know I am not, and you must hear me to the end."
She had made a movement as if about to speak, but he had again checked
her; and they maintained their relative positions, he looking down at
her, she looking up at him.
"We are facing facts, Lady Mitford. I love you, not as the man who
left you, in your first year of marriage, for the worthless woman who
forsook me for a richer lover, and would have wronged the fool who
bought her without a scruple, could she have got me into her power
again--not as he loved you, even when he came nearest to the truth of
love. That woman, your enemy, your _rival_,"--he spoke the word with a
stringent scorn which would have been the keenest punishment in human
power to have inflicted on the woman it designated,--"she knows I
love you, and she has struck at me through you; struck at me, poor
fool--for she is fool as well as fiend--a blow which has recoiled upon
herself. She has taught me how much, how well, how devotedly I love
you, and learned the lesson herself thereby, for the intuition of hate
is no less keen than that of love. But why do I speak of her? Only to
make you understand that I am a portion of your fate,--only to lay the
whole truth before you; only to make it clear to you that mine is no
chance contact, no mere intrusion. I am not a presumptuous fool, who
has dared to use a generously-granted friendship as a cover for an
illicit passion. Have patience with me a little longer. Let me tell
you all the truth. You cannot dismiss me from your presence as you
might another who had dared to love you, and dared to tell you so; you
cannot do this."
"Why?" she asked faintly, but with an angry sparkle in her eyes. For
the second time she said that one word.
"Because I have injured you, Lady Mitford,--injured you unconsciously,
unintentionally; and that is a plea which cannot fail, addressed to
such as you. Had I never crossed your path, the woman for whom your
husband has wronged you would never have crossed it either. I am the
object, you are the victim, of the hatred of a she-devil. You don't
suppose she cares for Mitford, do you?"
"Not if she ever loved you," was the reply.
Alsager passed it over, but a sudden light flashed into his face.
"Of course she does not. She has played her ruthless game skilfully
according to her lights, and your happiness has been staked and lost.
Indirectly, I am the cause of this. Was the feeling which came over me
the first time I saw you a presentiment, I wonder? Well, no matter;
you see now that I am a portion of your fate. You see now that a
hidden tie binds us together, and the folly, the delusion of my youth,
and the mistaken love of your girlhood, have borne mysterious common
fruit."
She sat like one enthralled, entranced, and listened to him; she bent
her head for a moment as he took an instant's breath, but she did not
attempt to speak. His manner changed, grew softer, and his voice fell
to almost a whisper:
"May not this mysterious tie of misfortune mean more to us?" he said.
"May not the consolation come, as the curse has come, and all the
designs of our enemies be disconcerted? I do not say my love is worthy
of your acceptance,--I am too much travel-stained in my wanderings in
the world's ways to make any such pretension; but it is yours, such as
it is--faulty, imperfect, but loyal and eternal. I love you, Lady
Mitford, and I ask nothing of you but permission to love you freely
and fully; I ask your leave to give you all the devotion of my
heart, all the loyalty of my life. I know how the world would
hold such a demand; but I care nothing for the world, and I fancy
you know it too well to care much for it now. You cherished a
delusion long and sacredly; it was at least a noble one, but it is
gone, and the world can neither satisfy you for its loss nor
substitute another. Dearest--" he paused; she shivered, but she said
not a word,--"dearest, what remains? Inexpressible tenderness was in
his voice, in his bending figure, in his moistened eyes. There was a
moment's silence, and then she spoke, replying to his last words:
"Duty, Sir Laurence,--duty, the only thing which is not a delusion;
that remains."
He drew back a little, looking at her. She raised herself in her
chair, and pointed to a seat at a little distance from her own. She
was deadly pale, but she did not tremble, and her voice was firm and
low as she said:
"Sit down, and listen to me."
He obeyed, silent and wondering. Perhaps he had not told himself
exactly what he had expected,--perhaps no one ever does, when the
emotions of the heart are called into evidence; but he knew that it
was not this. Had he more to learn of this woman whom he had so
closely studied; had her nature heights which he had not seen, and
depths which he had not comprehended? Breathless he waited for her
words. In an agony of suspense he looked at her averted face, which
appeared to address itself to something in the distance,--which had
settled into a wondrous composure at the command of the strong will.
He had not estimated that strength of will aright; he had made the
common mistake of overlooking a quality because he had not seen it in
active employment. There was neither confusion nor weakness in the
manner of the woman to whom he had just spoken such words as no woman
could hear unmoved; and there mingled strangely with his love
something of wonder and of awe.
After a little interval, which seemed endless to him, she turned her
face towards him again, laid her hand heavily upon her breast, and
spoke:
"You have been cruel to me, Sir Laurence, in all that you have said;
but men, I believe, are always cruel to women if they love them, or
have loved them. I acquit you of intentional cruelty, and I accept all
you say of the necessity for the truth being spoken between us in the
new phase of our relation which you have brought about to-day."
The intensity of her face deepened, and the pressure of her hand grew
heavier. He muttered a few words of protest, but she went on as if she
had not heard him.
"You have spoken words to me, Sir Laurence, which I should not have
heard; but they have been spoken, and the wrong cannot be undone. It
may be atoned for, and it must. Neither these words nor any other must
be spoken between us henceforth--"
He started up.
"You cannot mean this," he said; "it is impossible; I do not believe
it.--I will not bear it."
"Be still and hear me," she replied; "I kept silence at your
desire,--you will not, I am sure, do less at mine. I too must speak to
you, uninterrupted, in the spirit of that truth of which you have
spoken so eloquently and with such sophistry--yes, with such
sophistry."
Once more she paused and sighed.
"Speak to me, then," he said; and there was true, real anguish in his
tone. "Say what you will, but do not be too hard on me. I am only a
mortal man; if I have offended you, it is because you are an angel."
"You have not offended me," she said very slowly: "perhaps I ought to
be offended, but I am not. I think you judge me aright when you say
that truth holds the foremost place in and for me: therefore I tell
you truth. You have grieved me; you have added a heavy burden to a
load which is not very easy to bear, though the world, which you
exhort me to despise and to deny, cannot lay a feather's weight upon
it. Your friendship was very dear to me,--very precious; I did not
know how dear, I think, until to-day."
How eagerly he listened to the thrilling voice! how ardently he gazed
into the dreamy beautiful eyes! how breathlessly he kept the silence
so hard to maintain!
"If I could use any further disguise with myself, Sir Laurence, if
self-deception could have any further power over me, I might terminate
this interview here, and tell you, and tell myself, that it should be
forgotten. But I have done with self-deception."
"For God's sake, don't speak in that bitter tone!" Alsager said
entreatingly; "spare me, if you will not spare yourself."
"No," she replied; "I will spare neither you nor myself. Why should I?
The world has spared neither of us--will spare neither of us; only it
will tell lies, and I will tell truths,--that's all."
Her colour was heightened, and her eyes were flashing now; but the
pressure of her hand upon her bosom was steady.
"You have read my story aright: I know not by what art or science--but
you have read it. If, as you say, you have an involuntary share, an
unconscious responsibility in my heavy trial, it is a misfortune,
which I put away from my thoughts; I hold you in no way accountable.
My sorrow is my own; my delusion is over; my duty remains."
"Do you speak of duty to Sir Charles Mitford?" asked Alsager with a
sneer.
"Yes," she said gently; "I do. Your tone is unworthy of you, Sir
Laurence; but I pass it by; for it is the tone of a man of the world,
to whom inclination is a law. Can my husband's faithlessness absolve
me from fidelity? Is his sin any excuse for my defection from my duty?
You say truly, I cannot love him now as I loved him when I did not
know him as he is; but I can do my duty to him still--a hard duty, but
imperative. The time will come when this woman will weary of him, of
her vain and futile vengeance; and then--"
"Well, Lady Mitford, and then--?" asked Alsager in a cold hard voice.
She looked at him with eyes in which a holy calm had succeeded to her
transient passion, and replied:
"Then he will return to me, and I must be ready to meet him without a
shade upon my conscience, without a blush upon my cheek."
He started up angrily, and exclaimed:
"You pass all comprehension! What! You are no longer in error about
this man; the glamour has passed. You know him for the cold cynical
profligate he is; and you talk of welcoming him like a repentant
prodigal; only yourself it is you are prepared to kill--your own
pride, your own delicacy, your own heart! Good God! what are good
women made of, that they set such monstrous codes up for themselves,
and adhere to them so mercilessly!"
"He is my husband," she faltered out; and for a moment her courage
seemed to fail. The next she rose, and standing by the mantelpiece,
where he had stood before, she went on, with hurry and agitation in
her voice: "Don't mistake me. Love is dead and gone for me. But this
world is not the be-all and the end-all; there is an inheritance
beyond it, reserved for those who have 'overcome.' Duty is hard, but
it is never intolerable to a steadfast will, and a mind, fixed on the
truth. Time is long, and the round of wrong is tedious; but the day
wears through best to those who subdue impatience, and wrong loses
half its bitterness when self is conquered. I have learned my lesson,
Sir Laurence, and chosen my part."
"And what is to be mine?" he said with angry impatience,--"what is to
be mine? You moralize charmingly, Lady Mitford; and your system is
perfect, with one little exception--and what is that? A mere nothing,
a trifle--only a man's heart, only a love that is true! You are all
alike, I believe, bad or good, in this,--you will pine after, you will
endure anything for, a man who is false to you, and you will tread
upon the heart of one who is true. What do you care? We do not square
with the moral code of the good among you, nor with the caprice and
devilment of the bad; and so away with us! I am 'cruel' to you,
forsooth, because I tell you that you no longer love a worthless
profligate, who sports with your peace and your honour at the bidding
of a wanton! I am 'cruel' because I tell you that I, who have
innocently wronged you, love you with every pulse of my heart and
every impulse of my will! Is there any cruelty on your side, do you
think, when you talk, not puling sentiment--I could more easily pardon
that; it would be mere conventional silliness--but these chilly,
chilling moralities, which are fine in copy-books, but which men and
women abandon with their writing-lessons?"
"Do they?" she said with imperturbable gentleness; "I think not. You
are angry and unjust, Sir Laurence,--angry with _me_, unjust to _me!_"
The keen pathos of her tone, its innocent pleading, utterly overcame
him.
"Yes," he cried; "I _am_ unjust, and you are an angel of goodness;
but--I love you,--ah, how I love you!--and you reject me, utterly,
utterly. You reject me, and for him! You give _her_ a double triumph;
you lay my life waste once more."
He stopped in his hurried walk close to her. She laid her hand upon
his arm, and they looked at one another in silence for a little. She
broke it first.
"And if I did not reject you, as you say--if I accepted this love,
this compensating truth and loyalty, which you offer me, what should I
be, Laurence Alsager, but her compeer? Have you thought of that? Have
you remembered that there is a law in marriage apart from and above
all feeling? Have you considered what she who breaks that law is, in
the sight of God, in the unquenchable light of her own conscience,
though her conduct were as pure from stain as the ermine of a royal
robe? I am speaking, not chilly, chilling moralities, but immortal,
immutable truth. In the time to come you will remember it, and believe
it; and then there will be no bitterness in your heart when you
recollect how I bade you farewell!"
The lustrous eyes looked into his with a gaze as pure as an infant's,
as earnest as a sibyl's, and the gentle hand lay motionless upon his
arm.
"How you bade me farewell!" he repeated in a hoarse voice. "What do
you mean? Are you sending me from you?"
"Yes," she answered; "I am sending you from me. We have met once too
often, and we must meet no more. You say you love me;" she shrunk and
shivered again,--"and--and I believe you. Therefore you will obey me."
"No," he said resolutely; "I will not obey you! I will see you,--I
must. What is there in my love to frighten or to harm you? I ask for
nothing which even your scrupulous conscience might hesitate to give;
I seek no change in the relation that has subsisted between us for
some time now."
"Dreams, dreams," she said, sadly; "unworthy of your sense,--unworthy
of your knowledge of the world. Nothing can ever replace us on our old
footing. The words you have spoken to me can never be unsaid. They are
words I never ought to have heard--and--" In a moment her firmness
deserted her, her voice failed; she sank into a chair, and burst into
passionate tears.
"You would not have them unsaid!" he cried; "tell me that you would
not! Tell me that the coldness and the calm which those streaming
tears deny are not true, are not real! Tell me that I am something in
your life,--that I might have been more! Dearest, I reverence as much
as I love you; but give me that one gleam of comfort. It cannot make
your heavenly rectitude and purity poorer, while to me it will be
boundless riches. Tell me that you could love me if you would; tell me
that the sacred barrier of your conscience is the only one between us!
I swear I will submit to that! I will not try to shake or to remove
it. Nay, more, I will leave you,--if indeed you persist in commanding
my absence,--if only you will tell me that under other circumstances
you would have loved me. Tell me this! I ask a great, a priceless
boon; but I do ask it. Dearest, will you not answer me?" Her
agitation, her tears, had reassured him, had broken the spell which
her calmness had imposed. The hope that had come to him once or twice
during their interview came again now, and stayed.
There was no sound for a while but that of her low rapid sobs. The
clocks upon the mantelpieces in the suite of rooms ticked loudly, and
their irritating metallic voices mingled strangely with the rushing
pulses of Alsager's frame, as he leant over her,--one arm round the
back of her chair, the other hand upon its velvet arm. His face was
bent above her drooping head; his thick moustache almost touched the
waved ridges of her scented hair. He implored her to speak to him; he
poured out protestation and entreaty with all the ardour of his strong
and fiery nature, with all the eloquence which slumbered in him,
unsuspected even by himself. Little by little she ceased to weep, and
at length she allowed him to see her face. Again he renewed his
entreaties, and she answered him.
"You try me too far, and I am weak. Yes, I would love you, if I
might!"
"Then you _do_ love me!" he exclaimed. "You and I are no dreaming boy
and girl, no Knight and Dame of old romance, but man and woman; and we
know that these shades of difference are merest imagination. We love
each other, and we know it. We love each other, and the acknowledgment
makes the truth no truer. I am ungenerous, you would say; I am
breaking the promise I have just made. Yes, I am; but I love you--and
you love me!" He had dropped on one knee beside her chair now, and as
he spoke he caught her hand in his. Without any sign of anger or
prudery, she withdrew her hand quietly, but resolutely, and signed to
him to rise and be seated. He obeyed her; but exultation shone out
from every line and feature of his face.
"You _are_ ungenerous," she said,--"very ungenerous, and very cruel;
but I will not the less be true in these the last words I shall say to
you. If I have dreamed of a life other than mine, of love well
bestowed and faithfully returned, it was only in the most passing,
transient visions. My lot is cast; my mind is made up; my heart is
fixed. I linger here for a few moments longer because they are the
last I shall ever pass alone with you. Do not interrupt me, or I
terminate this interview on the instant. This subject must never be
renewed,--indeed it never can be; for you know my resolution, and I
know you will respect it. The past remains with us; but the future has
no common history for you and me. When I have ceased speaking, and
that door has closed behind you, you must remember me, if you do not
see me, and regard me if you do, as a woman wholly devoted to her
wifely duty, of whom to think otherwise is to do a deadly wrong."
He stood before her as pale as she had been; something wrathful and
something reverential contended in his expression. She waved her hand
with a slight gesture, and went on "Now I have done with myself; there
is no more question of me. But of you, Sir Laurence, there is much and
serious question. Your life is aimless and unreal. Give it an object
and an aim; invest it with truth, occupy it with duty. I am speaking
with you face to face for the last time, and I go back to the old
relation which you have destroyed for a few minutes. In that relation
I speak to you of your father's death-bed request. Fulfil it; and by
doing so, end this vain and sinful strife,--quell this demon which
deludes you."
"You mean that I should marry my father's ex-ward, I presume?" said
Alsager, coldly.
"I do."
"Thank you, Lady Mitford. Your proposition is full of wisdom, however
it may lack feeling. But there are sundry objections to my carrying it
into effect. The lady does not love me, nor do I love the lady."
"You hardly know her," Lady Mitford said with a timid smile; "you have
not given yourself any opportunity of testing your power of obedience
to your father's dying wish. You cannot judge of how she would be
disposed towards you." Once more she smiled timidly and sadly. "You
would have little cause to fear ill-success, I should think."
"Except that in this case, Lady Mitford, the lady's affections are
preëngaged, and she is doubtless a miracle of constancy."
"You speak bitterly, Sir Laurence, but your bitterness will pass, and
your better nature will assert itself."
"Is this all you intend to say to me, Lady Mitford?"
"This is all. My words will supplement themselves in silence and
reflection, and you will acknowledge that I have spoken the
truth--that I am as true as you believe me."
"And are we to part thus?" he asked in a slightly softened tone.
A quick spasm crossed her face, but she answered him at once, and
looked at him as she spoke, "Yes!"
He bowed profoundly. She held out her hand, On the third finger was a
heavy-looking seal-ring, which she constantly were. As he coldly took
the hand in his, his eyes fell upon this ring. She marked the look,
and when he released her hand, she drew off the ring and offered it to
him.
"You are angry with me now," she said; "but your anger will pass away.
When no shade of it remains, wear this for my sake, and make its
motto, which is mine, yours."
He took the ring, and without looking at it, dropped it into his
waistcoat-pocket. Then he stood quite still as she passed him with her
usual graceful step, and watched the sweep of her soft black robe as
she walked down the long room, and disappeared through a door which
opened into her boudoir.
Late that night Alsager, angry still, dark and wrathful, tossed
the ring with a contemptuous frown into a jewel-case; but he
first took an impression of it in wax, and read, the motto thus:
"Fortiter--Fideliter--Feliciter."