BAD MADE WORSE.
Sir Ronald came nearer to Lady Hermione; his face was white and stern,
his eyes gleamed with an angry light.
“Let me ask you a plain question, Lady Hermione. Perhaps this
conversation had been better left alone. Having commenced it, I must
know more than you have said. You must not refuse to answer me. Either
you are deceiving me now, or I have been tricked more foully than man
ever was before. I must know which it is.”
“I am not deceiving you; why should I? Deceit is foreign to me; I abhor
it. I repeat what I have said. It is possible that I may have addressed
cards of invitation to you; but in my whole life I have never written
to you one single letter.”
Looking into her pale, sweet face, where all truth, purity and goodness
reigned, it was not possible to doubt her.
“Hermione,” he said, more gently, “you remember the evening of the
ball?”
“Yes,” she said, sadly, “I remember it well.”
“We stood among the roses, you and I, the moon shining, the distant
sound of music floating near us. You did not chide me when I kissed
your lips, and I--oh, blind fool that I was!--I looked upon that kiss
as a solemn betrothal.”
She shrank from the passionate tones of his voice, then looked at him.
“I made the same mistake,” she said, simply, “and I have paid very
dearly for it.”
“Then, for a whole week afterward, Hermione, I went to Leeholme every
day. I tried hard to find an opportunity of speaking to you; you were
always surrounded by people. There were times, even, when I imagined
you felt a delight in baffling what you must have known to be my
heart’s desire.”
“It was but a girlish delight in mischief,” she interrupted; “and, ah
me! the bitter price I have paid.”
“I wrote to you,” he continued, “finding that there was no chance of
speaking. I wrote and told you how most dearly I loved you, and prayed
you to be my wife. What was your answer to that prayer?”
He looked into her face as he asked the question; it was so sweet, sad
and sorrowful, but there was no untruth to mar its beauty. The wind
stirred the bluebells faintly, and a deep, soft sigh shivered through
them.
“What was your answer to my prayer?” he repeated.
“None,” she replied. “I never received such a letter; therefore, I
could not answer it.”
“Say that again,” he gasped, in a thick, hoarse voice.
“I never received it, Ronald. This is the first word I have ever heard
of it.”
He reeled as though one had struck him a sudden, mortal blow. The
sweet, soft voice continued sadly:
“You have not thought more hardly of me than I of you. I believed that
night you loved me, and I was--well, it does not matter how happy;
then you came and went without saying one word. Suddenly you absented
yourself altogether; you never came near me. I met you, and you avoided
me. I knew no more until I heard and knew that you were going to Mount
Severn.”
His face was not pleasant to look upon as she uttered these words.
“Then you never read it, Hermione, or knew of my writing at all?”
“Not one word,” she said, earnestly.
There were a few moments of silence, unbroken save by the wind among
the harebells.
“Answer me only one more question, and I have done,” he said. “If you
had received my letter, what would your answer have been?”
The light he remembered so well came into her face; for a few moments
she forgot the barrier between them that could never be passed.
“You know what it would have been, Ronald. I--I should have said ‘Yes,’
because I have loved you, and you alone, all my life.”
Then the words died on her lips, for, strong and brave as he was, he
had flung himself face downward among the harebells, and lay there,
sobbing like a child.
A strong man’s tears are terrible to see. Women weep, and, though one
pities them, it seems but natural. When a proud, self-controlled,
high-spirited man breaks down and weeps, the grief is terrible to
witness.
So she thought who bent over him now with soothing words.
“Ronald, you will break my heart if you do this. There has been a
terrible mistake, but it will be made right for us in another world. We
have one comfort--we did love each other. God knows what has parted us;
it is not untruth or falsity. Oh, Ronald! does it not comfort you to
know this?”
All that answered her was the deep-drawn, bitter sobs that shook his
strong frame, and the sweet, rustling sound of the bells in the breeze.
“If I had been false to you, as you believed, Ronald, the memory of
me would have been a lifelong pain. If you had been false to me, the
very thought of you would have been a perpetual sorrow; but now we may
remember without sin that we once loved each other in all truth.”
She was startled when he raised his face to her, and clutched her hand
in his strong grasp.
“Oh, my lost love, my lost, dearest, only love! what has parted us?
Tell me! I must know--I will know!”
“I cannot tell,” she replied, gently laying her white, cool, soft hand
on his hot brow. “I cannot even imagine. All I am certain of is that I
never until this morning even heard of such a letter.”
“Who has done it?” he cried, wildly. “Oh, Hermione, do you know I have
been mad for love of you, and for the loss of you? Do you know that,
after I believed you rejected me, I have lived like a man without
reason, without soul? My days and nights have been one long dream of
anguish, one long madness. I hate the sun that shines, the night that
succeeds day, for no time will ever bring you back to me, and without
you life is death.”
“You forget,” she interrupted, gently. “You have your wife, Clarice,
who loves you.”
“I do not forget. Poor Clarice!--God pity her and pity me! I do not
love her, Hermione. I have tried as hard to love her as I have to
forget you, but cannot. I pray Heaven to pardon me the wrong I did in
marrying her; I was blind enough to think it for the best. Oh, my lost
love, I am going mad! Lay your cool hands on my brow again; fight down
the demons who master me, my angel, my loadstar, my treasure! And you
would have married me, Hermione? You would have made my life heaven
instead of what it is. I might have been the happiest, even as I am the
most wretched, of men.”
“It might have been so; but, Ronald, you must not talk so to me. I am
so glad I have seen you--glad to know you were not fickle in love and
fancy, as I thought; but now we must part, and we must not meet again.”
“I know; but before you leave me, Hermione, tell me how it happened?”
“I cannot; how did you send that letter to me, Ronald?”
“By my groom. He had orders to deliver it into your own hands, but you
were away. He waited some hours, and, as you did not return, he gave it
to your maid. I asked him every particular.”
“To my maid! She never gave me any letter from you, Ronald. When did
you send it?”
“It was exactly one week after the ball,” he replied.
“I remember,” said Lady Hermione. “We had all been over to Thringston,
and it was late when we returned. My maid told me there was an
envelope on the toilet-table that Sir Ronald’s groom had brought.”
“That was it,” he said, eagerly.
“No,” she said; “there is some mistake. I opened it, and there was
nothing inside but a white rose, carefully folded. I laughed at what
seemed to me a romantic idea.”
“Was the envelope addressed to you?” he asked, quickly.
“Yes, and in your handwriting. I knew it at once.”
“There must have been foul play,” he said.
“But how, Ronald? You spoke of a letter from me; tell me of that.”
“It was an answer to mine; it came by post a day afterward. It was in
your handwriting, I swear, and it--rejected me.”
“I cannot understand it,” she cried.
“Nor I. But if it takes the whole of my life to find it out, it shall
not remain a mystery,” he said; and then he stood erect and silent
before her.