DEFEAT.
"Art thou then desolate
Of friends, of hopes forsaken? Come to me!
I am thine own. Have trusted hearts proved false?
* * * * *
Why didst thou ever leave me? Know'st thou all
I would have borne, and called it joy to bear,
For thy sake? Know'st thou that thy voice hath power
To shake me with a thrill of happiness
By one kind tone?--to fill mine eyes with tears
Of yearning love? And thou--Oh! thou didst throw
That crushed affection back upon my heart.
Yet come to me!"
"'Tis he--what doth he here!"
LARA.
The great bell rang out at the lodge gate, and Charles Linchmore dashed
up to the Hall almost as hastily as he had left it, and with scarce a
word of greeting to the old butler, whom he passed on his way to the
drawing-room, and never staying to change his dress, he strode on, all
flushed and heated as he was, with his hurried journey and desperate
thoughts, until he stood face to face with Mrs. Linchmore.
"Why Charles!" exclaimed she, "what on earth has happened? What is the
matter?"
"Nothing," he replied. "Where's Frances?"
"Nothing," she rejoined, indignantly, "to come into the room in such a
plight as this! Look at the splashed state of your boots; and then your
face. No one can look at that and not suspect something dreadful having
happened. _I_ never saw anything so changed and altered as it is."
"I dare say. I don't much care."
"Are you mad? Where have you been?"
"Nowhere. Where's Frances?" he asked again.
"I do not know. But I advise you to make yourself a little more
presentable before you seek her. These freaks--_mad_ freaks of riding
half over the country, no one knows where, are not agreeable to those
you come in contact with afterwards," and Mrs. Linchmore pushed her
chair further away from him, and smoothed the rich folds of her dress,
as though the act of doing that would soothe her ruffled temper.
"It _was_ a mad freak," replied he, and without waiting for another
word, or tendering an apology for his disordered dress, he strode away
again, with the full determination of finding Frances.
Every room below stairs he searched, but in vain; she was nowhere, and
driven reckless by the agony of his thoughts he went straight up to her
own room, and opened the door.
She was lying on the sofa, her eyes red and swollen with weeping,
passionate, hopeless tears at the thought that long before now he and
Amy had met, and he consequently lost to herself for ever.
"Charles!" she exclaimed, springing off the sofa, her cheeks flushing
hotly with surprise and pleasure.
But another glance at his face, and her heart sank within her, for its
expression almost terrified her.
He closed the door and came and stood opposite to where she was, looking
as though he would have struck her.
She quailed visibly before his menacing glance. Then resolutely regained
the mastery over herself, and drawing up her figure proudly, she said,
"Do you know this is my room? I wonder how you dare come here."
"Your room? Well, what if it is, I care not," he replied. "I am reckless
of everything."
"But I am not; and--and," she hesitated, and tried again to steady her
beating heart, "what--what has happened, Charles, that you look so
strangely?"
"Happened? Can you ask me what has happened, you who have wrecked the
hopes of my whole life."
"I, Charles? You talk in riddles; I do not understand you."
"You dare not say that!" exclaimed he, hoarsely. "You know well that I
loved her with all my heart and soul, and you--you schemed to draw her
from me. I would have laid down my life for her; and you guessed it, and
told me she loved another, and, like a fool, I believed you. You have
driven me to despair; her to a life-long living death; and this, all
this, I have dared to come and tell you."
"It was no lie. She never loved you!"
"She did!" he cried, hotly; "I swear she did. I saw it; knew it but a
few hours since."
"You have seen her?" asked Frances.
"Seen her! Yes; and I wish to God I had died before seeing her," and he
clasped his hands over his damp brow in an agony of grief.
"See," he said, presently, "are you not satisfied with my sufferings?
Look here;" and he drew his hand across his forehead and temples, and
showed the large drops that fell from them. "I loved her as my life. My
life, do I say? She was more than life to me, and I have lost her; and
this--this is your devil's work."
"Lost her!" echoed Frances, inquiringly.
He heeded her not; but walked the room with rapid strides, then
gradually calmed again, and then again burst forth with the hopeless
agony of his thoughts, as he recalled Amy's last words:
"_It is too late, I am married._"
"Aye," he said, despairingly, "too late to save us both; too late,
indeed."
Frances could not listen calmly, or see unmoved the strong man's agony;
but she never once repented the evil she had wrought, but rather gloried
at heart in having so successfully separated him and Amy; and the more
so now, because she saw how madly he loved her. She waited quietly,
almost afraid to speak, until the paroxysm of grief had exhausted
itself. Then she said, timidly,
"Too late, Charles. Did you say too late?"
But her words roused him to fury again.
"I did," he cried; "I said too late; God knows I was too late. A day,
only a day earlier, and I should have been in time to save her!"
"To save Miss Neville? And from what?"
"From what?" he cried; "you are not satisfied with my sufferings, then?
but would drain the last bitter drop of agony in my cup--the telling;
the naming--Oh, God! She is married!"
Married! Frances was not prepared for this. A mist swam before her eyes;
a sudden faintness seized her, and she clung to the back of the sofa for
support.
"Yes, married!" he cried, fiercely seizing her arm. "You would have me
tell you, and you shall hear it too, and remember it to your dying day;
and I--I saw her only an hour after she was lost to me for ever."
But Frances' tongue was stayed, and she never answered one word.
"You have driven me mad," he continued savagely, "and it is a mercy you
have not a murder on your soul, for, by Heaven, I was tempted more than
once to take my life on my road down here? Do you hear?" he cried.
"Oh, Charles! don't, don't talk so wildly: you will kill me!"
"Kill you! No, I don't wish to do that; I'll only wish you half the
misery you have caused me, and that shall be your punishment and my
revenge."
And then he turned to leave her; but Frances sprang forward and stopped
him.
"Do not go away like that, Charles. Do not go, leaving almost a curse
behind you. I have not been guilty of half the wickedness you accuse me
of. I did say Miss Neville did not love you; but--but I believed it."
"You did not," he cried. "You hated and then you slandered her."
"And if I did, it was your fault; yours, for you taught me to love you."
"You love me! It is like the rest false, and a flimsy attempt to
palliate your wickedness."
"No, no; it is true. I have loved you for years past," exclaimed
Frances, sinking on her knees, and hiding her face, "and--and I thought
you loved me, too, until _she_ came and took your love away; and then I
hated her--yes, words cannot tell how much I hated her. What had I in
life worth living for when your love was gone? and I thought if I could
only take her away from you, your heart would come back to me again. If
you have suffered, what have not I? and she never could have loved you
to have married another. Oh! forgive me, Charles, forgive me! and
don't--don't hate me."
"Forgive you!" he replied. "No; years hence, when we meet again, I may,
but not now."
"Years hence? Are you going away, then? Oh! you cannot be so cruel!"
"In another month I shall leave England, perhaps for ever,--a
broken-hearted wretch, with an aimless, hopeless existence. All this you
have driven me to, and yet you ask me to forgive you. For her
sake--hers, of whom I dare not trust myself to speak--I will not, cannot
forgive you!"
The bitterness of his grief was over; the first burst was past; and he
spoke calmer now, although his every word, the tone even of his voice,
sank like ice into Frances' soul, convincing her how hopelessly she
loved.
"Oh! say not so, Charles," she cried, "or you will crush me utterly.
See,--see how I must love you to kneel here, and to humble my pride so
entirely as to tell you I--I love you."
"Love! Does love break the heart of the loved one as you have broken
mine? Call you such a deadly feeling as this, love? Say, rather, that
you hate me."
"No, no; never! Whatever you do, whatever you say, I shall love you
still,--love you for ever!"
"Give me your hate," he replied, "I would rather have that."
But Frances only answered by sobs and wringing her hands.
"If," he continued, "you have wrecked my happiness and hers through love
of me, I wish to God you had hated me!"
"I could not," sobbed Frances, utterly overcome. "You--you won my love
two years ago. Yes! you loved me then."
"Never!" he cried vehemently, almost savagely. "Never! I swear it!"
"Cruel!" murmured Frances.
"Cruel? Yes; what else do you deserve? Had you never told me that
falsehood--never deceived me I--I might; but it is too late--all too
late. And yet how I love her, love her to madness, and she the--the wife
of another!" and he groaned and clenched his hands together, until the
nails seemed buried in the very flesh, in utter anguish at the thought.
"Don't talk of her so, Charles, you will break my heart. Have some
pity."
"Pity! I have none. What had you for either her or me. I tell you I have
no mercy, no pity, only scorn and--and--" he would have said hate, but
somehow the word would not come to his lips, as he looked at the bent,
bowed figure kneeling so humbly before him.
"Oh! don't go! don't go, Charles. Say one, only one kind word," cried
Frances, imploringly, as he turned again to leave her.
"Don't ask me," he replied, "for I have none to give. Don't ask me, lest
I say more than I have done. Pray God that he will change your
revengeful, cruel heart. I pray that we may never meet again."
"Oh, my God, he's gone!" moaned Frances, as the door closed upon him,
"and not one kind word, not one. Oh! I have not deserved it! indeed I
haven't," and burying her face in the sofa cushion, she burst into a
fresh passion of hopeless, despairing tears.
After a few moments she raised her head again and sobbed and moaned
afresh, as she cried.
"He was cruel to the last, and all through her. Oh! I will hate her
tenfold for this, and work her more misery if I can. I will never repent
what I have done. Never! but will make her suffer more frightfully,
if--if possible, than this!"
She tossed back her hair, and almost for the moment regained her former
proud bearing; for, strange and unnatural as it may seem, this
desperate resolve of making Amy, if she could, more wretched than she
had already, soothed and calmed for a time the hopeless nature of her
thoughts, and was the one hope that supported her through the long,
terrible hours of the night that followed.