A WOMAN'S HEART
It is difficult, perhaps, to analyze rightly the feelings and sensations
of a young girl, when she is literally being swept off her feet in a
whirlpool of passion and romance.
Some few years later when Lady Sue wrote those charming memoirs which
are such an interesting record of her early life, she tried to note with
faithful accuracy what was the exact state of her mind when three months
after her first meeting with Prince Amédé d'Orléans, she plighted her
troth to him and promised to marry him in secret and in defiance of her
guardian's more than probable opposition.
Her sentiments with regard to her mysterious lover were somewhat
complex, and undoubtedly she was too young, too inexperienced then to
differentiate between enthusiastic interest in a romantic personality,
and real, lasting, passionate love for a man, as apart from any halo of
romance which might be attached to him.
When she was a few years older she averred that she could never have
really loved her prince, because she always feared him. Hers, therefore,
was not the perfect love that casteth out fear. She was afraid of him in
his ardent moods, almost as much as when he allowed his unbridled temper
free rein. Whenever she walked through the dark bosquets of the park,
on her way to a meeting with her lover, she was invariably conscious of
a certain trepidation of all her nerves, a wonderment as to what he
would say when she saw him, how he would act; whether chide, or rave, or
merely reproach.
It was the gentle and pathetic terror of a child before a stern yet
much-loved parent. Yet she never mistrusted him ... perhaps because she
had never really seen him--only in outline, half wrapped in shadows, or
merely silhouetted against a weirdly lighted background. His appearance
had no tangible reality for her. She was in love with an ideal, not with
a man ... he was merely the mouthpiece of an individuality which was of
her own creation.
Added to all this there was the sense of isolation. She had lost her
mother when she was a baby; her father fell at Naseby. She herself had
been an only child, left helplessly stranded when the civil war
dispersed her relations and friends, some into exile, others in splendid
revolt within the fastnesses of their own homes, impoverished by pillage
and sequestration, rebellious, surrounded by spies, watching that
opportunity for retaliation which was so slow in coming.
Tossed hither and thither by Fate in spite of--or perhaps because
of--her great wealth, she had found a refuge, though not a home, at Acol
Court; she had been of course too young at the time to understand
rightly the great conflict between the King's party and the Puritans,
but had naturally embraced the cause--for which her father's life had
been sacrificed--blindly, like a child of instinct, not like a woman of
thought.
Her guardian and Mistress de Chavasse stood for that faction of
Roundheads at which her father and all her relatives had sneered even
while they were being conquered and oppressed by them. She disliked them
both from the first; and chafed at the parsimonious habits of the house,
which stood in such glaring contrast to the easy lavishness of her own
luxurious home.
Fortunately for her, her guardian avoided rather than sought her
company. She met him at meals and scarcely more often than that, and
though she often heard his voice about the house, usually raised in
anger or impatience, he was invariably silent and taciturn when she was
present.
The presence of Richard Lambert, his humble devotion, his whole-hearted
sympathy and the occasional moments of conversation which she had with
him were the only bright moments in her dull life at the Court: and
there is small doubt but that the friendship and trust which
characterized her feelings towards him would soon have ripened into more
passionate love, but for the advent into her life of the mysterious
hero, who by his personality, his strange, secretive ways, his talk of
patriotism and liberty, at once took complete possession of her girlish
imagination.
She was perhaps just too young when she met Lambert; she had not yet
reached that dangerous threshold when girlhood looks from out obscure
ignorance into the glaring knowledge of womanhood. She was a child when
Lambert showed his love for her by a thousand little simple acts of
devotion and by the mute adoration expressed in his eyes. Lambert drew
her towards the threshold by his passionate love, and held her back
within the refuge of innocent girlhood by the sincerity and exaltation
of his worship.
With the first word of vehement, unreasoning passion, the mysterious
prince dragged the girl over that threshold into womanhood. He gave her
no time to think, no time to analyze her feelings; he rushed her into a
torrent of ardor and of excitement in which she never could pause in
order to draw breath.
To-night she had promised to marry him secretly--to surrender herself
body and soul to this man whom she hardly knew, whom she had never
really seen; she felt neither joy nor remorse, only a strange sense of
agitation, an unnatural and morbid impatience to see the end of the next
few days of suspense.
For the first time since she had come to Acol, and encountered the
kindly sympathy of Richard Lambert, she felt bitterly angered against
him when, having parted from the prince at the door of the pavilion, she
turned, to walk back towards the house and came face to face with the
young man.
A narrow path led through the trees, from the ha-ha to the gate, and
Richard Lambert was apparently walking along aimlessly, in the direction
of the pavilion.
"I came hoping to meet your ladyship and to escort you home. The night
seems very dark," he explained simply in answer to a sudden, haughty
stiffening of her young figure, which he could not help but notice.
"I was taking a stroll in the park," she rejoined coldly, "the evening
is sweet and balmy but ... I have no need of escort, Master Lambert ...
I thank you.... It is late and I would wish to go indoors alone."
"It is indeed late, gracious lady," he said gently, "and the park is
lonely at night ... will you not allow me to walk beside you as far as
the house?"
But somehow his insistence, his very gentleness struck a jarring note,
for which she herself could not have accounted. Was it the contrast
between two men, which unaccountably sent a thrill of disappointment,
almost of apprehension, through her heart?
She was angry with Lambert, bitterly angry because he was kind and
gentle and long-suffering, whilst the other was violent, even brutal at
times.
"I must repeat, master, that I have no need of your escort," she said
haughtily, "I have no fear of marauders, nor yet of prowling beasts. And
for the future I should be grateful to you," she added, conscious of her
own cruelty, determined nevertheless to be remorselessly cruel, "if you
were to cease that system which you have adopted of late--that of
spying on my movements."
"Spying?"
The word had struck him in the face like a blow. And she, womanlike,
with that strange, impulsive temperament of hers, was not at all sorry
that she had hurt him. Yet surely he had done her no wrong, save by
being so different from the other man, and by seeming to belittle that
other in her sight, against her will and his own.
"I am grieved, believe me," she said coldly, "if I seem unkind ... but
you must see for yourself, good master, that we cannot go on as we are
doing now.... Whenever I go out, you follow me ... when I return I find
you waiting for me.... I have endeavored to think kindly of your
actions, but if you value my friendship, as you say you do, you will let
me go my way in peace."
"Nay! I humbly beg your ladyship's gracious forgiveness," he said; "if I
have transgressed, it is because I am blind to all save your ladyship's
future happiness, and at times the thought of that adventurer is more
than I can bear."
"You do yourself no good, Master Lambert, by talking thus to me of the
man I love and honor beyond all things in this world. You are blind and
see not things as they are: blind to the merits of one who is as
infinitely above you as the stars. But nathless I waste my breath
again.... I have no power to convince you of the grievous error which
you commit. But if you cared for me, as you say you do ..."
"If I cared!" he murmured, with a pathetic emphasis on that little word
"if."
"As a friend I mean," she rejoined still cold, still cruel, still
womanlike in that strange, inexplicable desire to wound the man who
loved her. "If you care for me as a friend, you will not throw yourself
any more in the way of my happiness. Now you may escort me home, an you
wish. This is the last time that I shall speak to you as a friend, in
response to your petty attacks on the man whom I love. Henceforth you
must chose 'twixt his friendship and my enmity!"
And without vouchsafing him another word or look, she gathered her cloak
more closely about her, and walked rapidly away along the narrow path.
He followed with head bent, meditating, wondering! Wondering!