A pale and most unhappy bride awaited her bridegroom in the boudoir at a
few minutes to eight o'clock. She felt perfectly lifeless, as though she
had hardly enough will left even to act her part. The white satin of her
dress was not whiter than her face. The head gardener had sent up some
splendid gardenias for her to wear and the sight of them pained her, for
were not these the flowers that Tristram had brought her that evening of
her wedding day, not a fortnight ago, and that she had then thrown into
the grate. She pinned some in mechanically, and then let the maid clasp
the diamonds round her throat and a band of them in her hair. They were
so very beautiful, and she had not seen them before; she could not thank
him for them even--all conversation except before people was now at an
end. Then, for her further unhappiness, she remembered he had said:
"When the mockery of the rejoicings is over then we can discuss our
future plans." What did that mean? That he wished to separate from her,
she supposed. How could circumstance be so cruel to her! What had she
done? Then she sat down for a moment while she waited, and clenched her
hands. And all the passionate resentment her deep nature was capable of
surged up against fate, so that she looked more like the black panther
than ever, and her mood had only dwindled into a sullen smoldering
rage--while she still sat in the peculiar, concentrated attitude of an
animal waiting to spring--when Tristram opened the door, and came in.
The sight of her thus, looking so unEnglish, so barbaric, suddenly
filled him with the wild excitement of the lion hunt again. Could
anything be more diabolically attractive? he thought, and for a second,
the idea flashed across him that he would seize her to-night and treat
her as if she were the panther she looked, conquer her by force, beat
her if necessary, and then kiss her to death! Which plan, if he had
carried it out, in this case, would have been very sensible, but the
training of hundreds of years of chivalry toward women and things weaker
than himself was still in his blood. For Tristram, twenty-fourth Baron
Tancred, was no brute or sensualist, but a very fine specimen of his
fine, old race.
So, his heart beating with some uncontrollable excitement, and her heart
filled with smoldering rage, they descended the staircase, arm in arm,
to the admiration of peeping housemaids and the pride of her own maid.
And the female servants all rushed to the balustrade to get a better
view of the delightful scene which, they had heard whispered among them,
was a custom of generations in the family--that when the Lord of Wrayth
first led his lady into the state dining-room for their first dinner
alone he should kiss her before whoever was there, and bid her welcome
to her new home. And to see his lordship, whom they all thought the
handsomest young gentleman they had ever seen, kiss her ladyship, would
be a thrill of the most agreeable kind!
What would their surprise have been, could they have heard him say icily
to his bride as he descended the stairs:
"There is a stupid custom that I must kiss you as we go into the
dining-room, and give you this little golden key--a sort of ridiculous
emblem of the endowment of all the worldly goods business. The servants
are, of course, looking at us, so please don't start." Then he glanced
up and saw the rows of interested, excited faces; and that
devil-may-care, rollicking boyishness which made him so adored came over
him, and he laughed up at them, and waved his hand: and Zara's rage
turned to wild excitement, too. There would be the walk across the hall
of sixty paces, and then he would kiss her. What would it be like? In
those sixty paces her face grew more purely white, while he came to the
resolve that for this one second he would yield to temptation and not
only brush her forehead with his lips, as had been his intention, but
for once--just for this once--he would kiss her mouth. He was past
caring about the footmen seeing. It was his only chance.
So when they came to the threshold of the big, double doors he bent down
and drew her to him, and gave her the golden key. And then he pressed
his warm, young, passionate lips to hers. Oh! the mad joy of it! And
even if it were only from duty and to play the game, she had not
resisted him as upon that other occasion. He felt suddenly, absolutely
intoxicated, as he had done on the wedding night. Why, why must this
ghastly barrier be between them? Was there nothing to be done? Then he
looked at his bride as they advanced to the table, and he saw that she
was so deadly white that he thought she was going to faint. For
intoxication, affects people in different ways; for her, the kiss had
seemed the sweetness of death.
"Give her ladyship some champagne immediately," he ordered the butler,
and, still with shining eyes, he looked at her, and said gently, "for
we must drink our own healths."
But Zara never raised her lids, only he saw that her little nostrils
were quivering, and by the rise and fall of her beautiful bosom he knew
that her heart must be beating as madly as was his own--and a wild
triumph filled him. Whatever the emotion she was experiencing, whether
it was anger, or disdain, or one he did not dare to hope for, it was a
considerably strong one; she was, then, not so icily cold! How he wished
there were some more ridiculous customs in his family! How he wished he
might order the servants out of the room, and begin to make love to her
all alone. And just out of the devilment which was now in his blood he
took the greatest pleasure in "playing the game," and while the solemn
footmen's watchful eyes were upon them, he let himself go and was
charming to her; and then, each instant they were alone he made himself
freeze again, so that she could not say he was not keeping to the
bargain. Thus in wild excitement for them both the dinner passed. With
her it was alternate torture and pleasure as well, but with him, for the
first time since his wedding, there was not any pain. For he felt he was
affecting her, even if she were only "playing the game." And gradually,
as the time went on and dessert was almost come, the conviction grew in
Zara's brain that he was torturing her on purpose, overdoing the part
when the servants were looking; for had he not told her but three hours
before that he _had_ loved her--using the past tense--and no man
regretted a thing more! Perhaps--was it possible--he had seen when he
kissed her that she loved him! And he was just punishing her, and
laughing at his dominion over her in his heart; so her pride took fire
at once. Well, she would not be played with! He would see she could
keep to a bargain; and be icy, too, when the play was over. So when at
last the servants had left the room, before coffee was brought, she
immediately stiffened and fell into silence; and the two stared in front
of them, and back over him crept the chill. Yes, there was no use
deceiving himself. He had had his one moment of bliss, and now his
purgatory would begin again.
Thus the comedy went on. Soon they had to go and open the ball, and they
both won golden opinions from their first partners--hers, the stalwart
bailiff, and his, the bailiff's wife.
"Although she is a foreigner, Agnes," Mr. Burrs said to his life's
partner when they got home, "you'd hardly know it, and a lovelier lady I
have never seen."
"She couldn't be too lovely for his lordship," his wife retorted. "Why,
William, he made me feel young again!"
The second dance the bridal pair were supposed to dance together; and
then when they should see the fun in full swing they were supposed to
slip away, because it was considered quite natural that they might wish
to be alone.
"You will have to dance with me now, I am afraid, Zara," Tristram said,
and, without waiting for her answer, he placed his arm round her and
began the valse. And the mad intoxication grew again in both of them,
and they went on, never stopping, in a wild whirl of
delight--unreasoning, passionate delight--until the music ceased.
Then Zara who, by long years of suffering, was the more controlled,
pulled herself together first, and, with that ingrained instinct to
defend herself and her secret love, and to save his possible true
construction of her attitude, said stiffly:
"I suppose we can go now. I trust you think that I have 'played the
game.'"
"Too terribly well," he said--stung back to reality. "It shows me what
we have irreparably lost." And he gave her his arm and, passed down the
lane of admiring and affectionate guests to their part of the house; and
at the door of the boudoir he left her without a word.
So, with the bride in lonely anguish in the great state bed, the night
of the home-coming passed, and the morrow dawned.
For thus the God of Pride makes fools of his worshipers.
* * * * *
It poured with rain the next day, but the same kind of thing went on for
the different grades of those who lived under the wing of the Tancred
name, and neither bride nor bridegroom failed in their rôles, and the
icy coldness between them increased. They had drawn upon themselves an
atmosphere of absolute restraint and it seemed impossible to exchange
even ordinary conversation; so that at this, their second dinner, they
hardly even kept up a semblance before the household servants, and,
being free from feasting, Zara retired almost immediately the coffee had
come. One of the things Tristram had said to her before she left the
room was:
"To-morrow if it is fine you had better see the gardens and really go
over the house, if you wish. The housekeeper and the gardeners will
think it odd if you don't! How awful it is to have to conform to
convention!" he went on. "It would be good to be a savage again. Well,
perhaps I shall be, some day soon."
Then as she paused in her starting for the door to hear what he had
further to say, he continued:
"They let us have a day off to-morrow; they think, quite naturally, we
require a rest. So if you will be ready about eleven I will show you the
gardens and the parts my mother loved--it all looks pretty dreary this
time of the year, but it can't be helped."
"I will be ready," Zara said.
"Then there is the Address from the townspeople at Wrayth, on Thursday,"
he continued, while he walked toward the door to open it for her, "and
on Friday we go up to London to say good-bye to my mother. I hope you
have not found it all too impossibly difficult, but it will soon be over
now."
"The whole of life is difficult," she answered, "and one never knows
what it is for, or why?" And then without anything further she went out
of the door, and so upstairs and through all the lonely corridors to the
boudoir. And here she opened the piano for the first time, and tried it;
and finding it good she sat a long time playing her favorite airs--but
not the _Chanson Triste_--she felt she could not bear that.
The music talked to her: what was her life going to be? What if, in the
end, she could not control her love? What if it should break down her
pride, and let him see that she regretted her past action and only
longed to be in his arms. For her admiration and respect for him were
growing each hour, as she discovered new traits in him, individually,
and began to understand what he meant to all these people whose lord he
was. How little she had known of England, her own father's country! How
ridiculously little she had really known of men, counting them all
brutes like Ladislaus and his friends, or feckless fools like poor
Mimo! What an impossible attitude was this one she had worn always of
arrogant ignorance! Something should have told her that these people
were not like that. Something should have warned her, when she first saw
him, that Tristram was a million miles above anything in the way of his
sex that she had yet known. Then she stopped playing, and deliberately
went over and looked in the glass. Yes, she was certainly beautiful, and
quite young. She might live until she were seventy or eighty, in the
natural course of events, and the whole of life would be one long,
dreary waste if she might not have her Love. After all, pride was not
worth so very much. Suppose she were very gentle to him, and tried to
please him in just a friendly way, that would not be undignified nor
seem to be throwing herself at his head. She would begin to-morrow, if
she could. Then she remembered Lady Ethelrida's words at the dinner
party--was it possible that was only three weeks ago this very
night--the words that she had spoken so unconsciously, when she had
showed so plainly the family feeling about Tristram and Cyril being the
last in the male line of Tancred of Wrayth. She remembered how she had
been angered and up in arms then, and now a whole education had passed
over her, and she fully understood and sympathized with their point of
view.
And at this stage of her meditations her eyes grew misty as they gazed
into distance, and all soft; and the divine expression of the Sistine
Madonna grew in them, as it grew always when she held Mirko in her arms.
Yes, there were things in life which mattered far, far more than pride.
And so, comforted by her resolutions, she at last went to bed.
And Tristram sat alone by the fire in his own sitting-room, and stared
at that other Tristram Guiscard's armor. And he, too, came to a
resolution, but not of the same kind. He would speak to Francis Markrute
when they arrived on Friday night and he could get him quietly alone. He
would tell him that the whole thing was a ghastly failure, but as he had
only himself to blame for entering into it he did not intend to reproach
any one. Only, he would frankly ask him to use his clever brain and
invent some plan that he and Zara could separate, without scandal, until
such time as he should grow indifferent, and so could come back and
casually live in the house with her. He was only a human man, he
admitted, and the present arrangement was impossible to bear. He was
past the anguish of the mockery of everything to-night--he was simply
numb. Then some waiting fiend made him think of Laura and her last
words. What if there were some truth in them after all? He had himself
seen the man twice, under the most suspicious circumstances. What if he
were her lover? How could Francis Markrute know of all her existence,
when he had said she had been an immaculate wife? And gradually, on top
of his other miseries, trifles light as air came and tortured him until
presently he had worked up a whole chain of evidence, proving the lover
theory to be correct!
Then he shook in his chair with rage, and muttered between his teeth:
"If I find this is true then I will kill him, and kill her, also!"
So near to savages are all human beings, when certain passions are
aroused. And neither bride nor bridegroom guessed that fate would soon
take things out of their hands and make their resolutions null and
void.