Lady Vera waking from her long and death-like swoon, wakens also to
a dream of happiness. The terrible incubus that weighed upon her so
heavily is lifted from her heart. The loveless fetter that bound her is
snapped asunder. Leslie Noble, whose very name has been a shuddering
horror to her for more than two years, is dead, and she is free--free!
What exquisite possibilities of happiness thrill her heart at the very
thought!
She keeps her room that evening, pleading weariness as an excuse for
not appearing at dinner. She wants time to think over the joyful change
in her prospects before she meets Captain Lockhart again. She is
scarcely herself now. Such a strange, tremulous, passionate happiness
is thrilling through her heart as makes her nervous with its intensity.
Little shafts of fire seem thrilling through her veins. Love, which
she had thought never to experience, has taken up its dwelling in her
heart, and every nerve thrills with its unspeakable rapture.
"And I was so blind, I thought it only friendship!" the fair young
countess murmurs to herself, with a happy smile playing around her
lips. "How happy he will be when I tell him that I love him, and that
I will be his wife! It cannot be wrong for me to marry him. I am sure
he will help me to my vengeance when I tell him of the oath I swore by
my father's death-bed. Dear Philip, how grand and handsome he is! He is
the noblest of men!"
Lady Clive, having privately questioned her brother as to Vera's
fainting fit, and received no satisfaction, is at her wits' end! Why
this terrible swoon, when she had deemed Lady Vera well and strong
again?
She wonders even more when the young girl appears at breakfast the next
morning. Never had the young countess appeared so enchantingly lovely.
Clothed in a delicate, white morning dress, with purple pansies at her
throat and waist, and all her glorious golden hair floating loosely
about her perfect form, with a blush of happiness on her cheeks, and
the shy light of tenderness in her splendid eyes, it seemed to all as
if her peerless beauty had received a new dower of glory. All wondered,
but none knew that the threatening cloud that had overshadowed her life
so long had rolled away, and that it was the new light of hope that
made her face so radiant.
"You look unusually well, my dear. There is no trace of your illness
left this morning," Lady Clive exclaims, with her usual charming good
nature, as Lady Vera glides into her seat.
A blush and smile of acknowledgement from the young girl. She glances
shyly under her long lashes at Captain Lockhart, who is her _vis-a-vis_
at table. But the handsome soldier, after one slight glance and a
courtly bow, does not seem to see her. Miss Montgomery, who sits next
him, absorbs his attention this morning. She is a belle and beauty,
and has long angled for Captain Lockhart. Seeing Lady Vera so gay and
smiling, he resolves not to damp her pleasure by a sight of his own
grave, troubled face, so he lends himself assiduously to the coquette's
efforts to amuse him, succeeding so well in his plan that she is
completely blinded, and murmurs to herself with sudden bitterness:
"He is flirting with Miss Montgomery to show me how little he cares for
my rejection. Ah, well, if he is satisfied, I am!"
So the first seeds of pride are sown in her heart by a coquette's petty
arts.
"Alas! how slight a cause may move
Dissension between hearts that love!"
"I had meant to win him back to my side," she thinks, with a sudden
sigh. "I would not have told him so in so many words, but I thought to
let him see that I repented after all, and that--I love him! I fear me
I am too late after all. Oh, that he had not spoken yesterday. If only
he had waited until to-day!"
After breakfast they organized a riding-party. Captain Lockhart rides
by Miss Montgomery's side, the countess goes with Lord Gordon--poor
Lord Gordon, who has long been waiting for this chance to put his fate
"To the test,
And win or lose it all."
How lovely she was in her sable habit and streaming feather. Though
Captain Lockhart rode attentive by Miss Montgomery's side, he could not
help seeing her beauty and repeating to himself Tennyson's exquisite
lines:
"As she fled fast through sun and shade,
The happy winds upon her played,
Blowing the ringlet from the braid,
She looked so lovely as she swayed
The rein with dainty finger tips,
A man had given all other bliss,
And all his worldly wealth for this;
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips."
"And yet after all, in her quiet, proud way, she must be a flirt," he
thinks to himself, with subdued bitterness. "How bright and gay she
appeared this morning, as if careless of my sorrow, and almost exulting
in it. I thought she had more feeling. And, indeed, she appeared to
smile on my suit, though she was coy and cold at first. See now how
charming she is with Lord Gordon. Poor fellow, he has long been seeking
a chance to propose to her. Well, he will find it to-day, and she will
ruthlessly trample his heart as she did mine yesterday."
Sweet, innocent Vera, how fast the springing hopes of last night and
this morning are turning to dead sea fruit upon thy lips.
Lord Gordon speaks and receives his answer. Lady Vera is very sorry to
pain him, but she has no heart to give.
Captain Lockhart sees the shadow on the fair, English face of the young
lord, and is secretly conscious of a savage satisfaction.
She has refused him, too. She is too cold and proud to love any one, he
tells himself.
"Are you really going to-morrow, Lockhart?" Lord Gordon asks him in the
drawing-room, that evening.
"Yes, I am really going," he answers, and never dreams of the wild
throb Lady Vera's heart gives beneath its silken bodice.
"Why don't you ask me to go with you?" Lord Gordon continues,
good-naturedly. "I have long contemplated a tour of the United States.
I am _ennuyed_ to death. I should like a taste of a different life."
"I shall be glad of your company, and you will be quite likely to have
a taste of something different if you go with me," laughs Captain
Lockhart. "Father writes me that my regiment may be ordered out on the
plains to fight the Indians next month."
"Ugh! those horrid savages!" the ladies cry, all but Lady Vera.
She raises the black satin fan a little higher before her face, and
leans back in her chair, indifferent, to all appearance, but, oh, with
such a deadly pain tearing at her heart-strings.
"To lose him like this," she moans to herself, "it is too dreadful. Oh,
if I had even ten minutes alone with him, I would make him understand
the truth. He should not leave me!"
But Captain Lockhart, stealing a furtive glance at the beautiful face
in its high-bred repose, tells himself sadly:
"She is utterly indifferent to what fate I meet. Beautiful as she is,
she must be utterly heartless."
"Then if you like to have me I will be ready to go with you to-morrow,
Lockhart," Lord Gordon announces, and gives Lady Vera one gloomy glance
and heavy sigh.
It is for her sake he is going. Since she is not for him he means to
try and forget her.
But Lady Vera, in the keen smart of her own pain is oblivious to his.
She rises and slips through the low, French window out upon the
balcony, and sits down in the darkness not heavier than her thoughts.
Presently low voices float out to her from the curtained recesses of
the window--Captain Lockhart's and Lord Gordon's.
"Rather a sudden resolution, isn't it, this trip across the water?" in
Lockhart's clear, full voice.
"Well, yes," in Gordon's voice. "I'm running away from myself, you
understand. I fancy we are sailing in the same boat, eh, old fellow?"
"Yes," Captain Lockhart answers, quietly.
"I thought so. Saw that you were hard hit. What are you going to do
about it?"
"Nothing," Captain Lockhart answers, with grim pleasantry. "I am a
soldier. I look for wounds upon the field of battle."
"Has she really a heart, do you think?" Lord Gordon pursues. "The
fellows raved about her last season in London. She refused Greyhurst
and a score of others as eligible. She must be very cold."
"I fancy so," Captain Lockhart answers, dryly. "A beautiful iceberg."
"Few women would have refused you, Lockhart. There was the beautiful
Clarendon year before last, and now the charming Montgomery ready to
fling herself at your head."
"Spare my modesty, Lord Gordon. You are calling in the aid of your
imagination now. Cannot we have some music to beguile the moments of
our last evening at Sunny Bank?"
They pass away to another portion of the room.
Lady Vera sits silent, brooding over the words she has heard.
"How coolly they discussed their rejection," she thinks. "Lord Gordon
wondered if I had a heart. Captain Lockhart called me a beautiful
iceberg. Perhaps he does not care much. How carelessly he said that he
was a soldier and expected wounds upon the field of battle. Perhaps he
does not mind it, now that it is over. I remember that one of the poets
has written:
"Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence."
The moon comes out and shines upon her, sitting sad and lonely, with
her white hands folded across her black dress. Two quiet tears tremble
upon her lashes, and fall upon her cheeks.
"If I were a fatalist," she thinks, "I should believe that my life is
destined to lie always in the shadow. I have never known an hour of
perfect happiness."
No one seems to miss her. In the drawing-room they are singing. Miss
Montgomery's pretty soprano blends softly with the soldier's superb
tenor.
The pretty, sentimental song dies away into silence presently.
There is some careless talk and laughter. Again the piano keys thrill
under the firm touches of a man, and this time Captain Lockhart sings
alone, sings with such passion and fervor as Lady Vera has never heard
before, sings with his whole heart trembling on his lips, and she feels
within her heart that it is his farewell to her:
"I love thee, I love thee,
Far better than wine;
But the curse is above,
Thou'lt never be mine.
"As the blade wears the scabbard,
The billow the shore,
So sorrow doth fret me
Forevermore.
"Fair beauty, I leave thee
To conquer my heart;
I'll see thee, I'll bless thee,
And then depart.
"Let me take, ere I vanish,
One look of thine eyes--
One smile for remembrance,
For life soon flies.
"And now for the fortune
That hangeth above,
And to bury in battle
My dreams of love."
"Does he know that I am here?" she asks herself. "Perhaps he meant me
to hear what he said just now. A beautiful iceberg, that is what he
thinks me."
Someone misses Lady Vera, perhaps the significance of the soldier's
song recalls her to mind; they go out to seek her, the giddy girls, who
cannot guess how she has stolen out to bear her pain alone.
"Here she is, hiding from us," they cry. "Come, Lady Vera, it is your
turn now to sing."
"I--cannot," she murmurs, faintly.
"No such obstinacy can be tolerated," they reply. "Lord Gordon and
Captain Lockhart leave us to-morrow and everyone must contribute to
their entertainment to-night. Only one song, Lady Vera, then we will
excuse you."
She hesitates for a moment. Then a thought flashes over her mind.
"He sang to me," she thinks. "Why cannot I sing to him? Surely he must
understand me then."
She suffers them to persuade her, and Lord Gordon comes forward to turn
the leaves of the music. She shakes her head.
"I will sing some simple thing from memory," she says, and then he
takes her fan and retains his place near her on that small pretext.
His eyes linger on her beauty, the proud throat and fair face rising
lily-like from the somber black dress.
She touches the white keys softly with her slim, white fingers. A
plaintive melody rises, a mournful, minor chord; she sings with sudden,
passionate fervor, some simple, pathetic words:
"I strove to tear thee from my heart,
The effort was in vain,
The spell was ever on my life,
And I am here again.
"Oh, I have ranged in countries strange,
And vowed no more to meet,
But power was in thy parting glance
To bring me to thy feet.
"We cannot go against love's will
When he has bound us fast;
Forgive the thought that did thee wrong
And be my own at last!"
She glances up. If she can point the words by even one deep glance into
her lover's eyes, all may yet be well. But Miss Montgomery, as if in
malice prepense, has suddenly risen and leaned against the piano just
before the singer's eyes. Captain Lockhart, standing with folded arms
across the room, is out of the range of her vision. Lady Vera rises
in despair. Her innocent little plan has failed. All hope dies in her
breast.
She sits down in a quiet corner, and Lord Gordon insists on fanning
her, and showing her a new portfolio of engravings. This is his last
evening with her, and like the reckless moth that he is, he singes his
wings in the flame of her beauty.
Someone calls him away at last, and the girl's heart gives a great,
muffled throb of relief. She is alone for the moment, in the quiet
alcove, half hidden by the white lace curtain. Will Captain Lockhart
come to her now? she asks herself, with a wildly-beating heart.
He sees her sitting there in her black dress and lily-white beauty, the
light shining down on her golden head and star-like face. Some impulse
stronger than his pride moves him to cross the room to her side. She
glances up with a smile so dazzling in its joy, that Tennyson's lines
rush into his mind:
"What if with her sunny hair,
And smile as sunny as cold,
She meant to weave me a snare
Of some coquettish deceit,
Cleopatra-like, as of old,
To entangle me when we met,
To have her lion roll in a silken net,
And fawn at a victor's feet?"
He sits down in Lord Gordon's vacant chair, the little stand with the
portfolio of new engravings and a vase of roses just between them. The
countess takes one of the crimson roses and plays with it to hide her
nervousness. She does not think how beautiful her slender, white hands
look playing with the red leaves of the rose.
The handsome soldier is for once embarrassed. That smile which she had
thought would tell him all has only puzzled him.
"Is she only a coquette, after all?" he asks himself. "Is she trying to
draw me into the toils again that she may see how great is her power?"
With that thought he grows cold and hard toward her.
"Lady Vera, do you know that you are very cruel to that poor rose?" he
asks.
"Am I? I did not mean to be," she answers, gently, looking down at the
torn petals strewing her lap. "I did not really think what I was doing."
"You had better give it to me, I will care for it more tenderly," he
pursues.
"Not this, but a sweeter one," she answers, with a beating heart.
Her white hands flutter over the vase a moment, and she selects a
lovely scarlet one just opening into perfect bloom.
Bending her head with regal grace, she touches the rose to the crimson
flower of her lips and holds it toward him.
Something in the strange significance of the action strikes him oddly.
An eager, impetuous speech springs to his lips, but Miss Montgomery,
who has seen the rose given, comes hastily up to them, interrupting him.
"Lord Gordon has been telling me of those beautiful new engravings. May
I look at them, Lady Vera, if I do not interrupt your _tete-a-tete_?"
she asks with sweet unconsciousness.
"Certainly. Pray take my seat," Lady Vera answers with icy coldness,
moving away.
Captain Lockhart is about to follow her when the fair marplot claims
his assistance in adjusting the stereoscope to the right focus.
Before she releases him the attention of Lady Vera is claimed by Sir
Roger Mansfield, who admires her immensely.
She leans back in her chair listening to his lively sallies of wit and
humor with a languid smile, in apparent forgetfulness of the episode of
the roses.
"It was only a bit of careless coquetry. I was a fool to think she
meant anything by it," the captain tells himself, angrily, turning away.
Fifteen minutes later they are all separating for the night, and
Captain Lockhart and Lord Gordon make their adieux to the ladies
because they must take the early train for London in the morning before
the household is astir.
Lady Vera stands quietly waiting her turn. She has wished Lord Gordon
farewell and _bon voyage_ with a smile, and she summons all her pride
to bear her up in her parting with Captain Lockhart.
He has left her for the last one, perhaps with some care that hers
shall be the last hand he clasps, the last eyes he looks into on
leaving England.
"Lady Vera, I have to thank you at parting that you have helped to make
my stay in England very pleasant," he says, offering his hand, with his
soldierly grace.
No reproaches for the pain she has caused him, the wrecked heart he
carries away from the field whereon he was vanquished.
Only the brave, soldierly smile, and the courtly words. He wears the
scarlet rose proudly on his breast, though he feels it to be a token of
defeat.
Lady Vera lays her hand on his and tries to say something very calm and
friendly, but the words die on her white lips.
She is very pale; he cannot help from seeing that. Her voice is very
gentle, but so low he fails to catch the words.
She does not look up at him; that is what pains him most. How is he to
know that the lowered lids veil the terrible pain in the dark eyes she
cannot lift to meet his yearning glance.
Others are looking on, and Vera, Countess of Fairvale, is too proud to
wear her heart on her sleeve. The message of the rose has failed, and
there is now no other sign to tell him that she loves him and would
fain take back the denial of yesterday.
So he goes, wounded by the coldness of her parting, yet wondering a
little why the hand that lay a moment in his own had felt so icy cold.
Ah, if he only had guessed the truth. But nothing was further from
Captain Lockhart's thoughts than that Lady Vera loved him and longed to
let him know the truth.
He carried back with him to his native land the memory of a fair face
and a heart that seemed colder than the beautiful iceberg to which he
had likened her in the bitterness of his pain.
For Lady Vera, she glides from the room, calm and cold to all outward
seeming, but filled with the bitterness of a great despair.
The long night passes in a weary vigil, and the handsome soldier never
dreams whose dark eyes watch his departure next morning while the words
of his song echo through her heart and brain.
"As the sword wears the scabbard,
The billow the shore,
So sorrow doth fret me
Forevermore."