LILITH REVEALS HERSELF
There was a time when meadow, grove and spring
The earth and every common sight,
To her did seem
Appareled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been before;
Turn wheresoe’er she may,
By night or day,
The things that she hath seen she now can see no more.
Waters on a starry night,
Sunshine is a glorious birth,
Yet she knows, where’er she goes,
That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.
_Wordsworth._
“‘That meeting may decide’ your ‘destinies!’ How?” inquired Lilith, in a
low, steady tone, which it required all her powers of self-control to
regulate.
“Oh, my child, did you never hear the homely old adage concerning
lovers—that ‘old coals are soon kindled?’ We—Tudor Hereward and Leda Von
Bruyin—have only to meet to come to a good understanding. My dear, we
love one another. That is the reason why, under present circumstances, I
did not choose to cross the ocean in the same steamer with him. Nor do I
wish to meet him for some months yet. We could not, under any
circumstances, unite our destinies in less than twelve or eighteen
months, you know,” said the baroness, speaking with much
self-complacence.
“‘Unite your destinies?’” repeated Lilith, in the same low tone.
“Why, yes! Don’t you understand? Why, marry, of course! Mr. Hereward and
myself understand each other at heart, I feel sure, although we parted
in mutual displeasure, and have never written or spoken to each other
since.”
“But—his—wife?” queried Lilith, in a low, hesitating voice.
“Oh, well, his wife! I am sorry for her, poor child! Really sorry for
her! And he, too, must be sorry that she met such an awful fate,” said
the baroness, pausing and falling into thought.
“What fate did she meet?” inquired Lilith, in the same constrained, low
monotone.
“Why, don’t you know? Did not I tell you? Oh, no! I believe I did not. I
said that we were both free, however, and you must have understood what
that meant.”
“No, I did not.”
“It meant, of course, that his wife was dead, as well as my husband—the
two events setting us both free to marry again.”
“His wife—dead! Tudor Hereward’s wife—dead! Madame, what reason have you
for supposing so?” demanded Lilith, in a low but firm tone.
“I do not wonder that you are surprised and incredulous! It is so
strange that the young wife, with perhaps seventy years of life before
her, should have been cut off by accident so soon; but strange things do
happen in this uncertain old world of ours! And, my dear, it is
true—Tudor Hereward’s wife is dead.”
“Dead? Yes, in some sense of the word, she is dead, I suppose,” muttered
Lilith to herself. Then slightly raising her voice she inquired: “Are
you sure that she is dead, madame?”
“As sure as I can be of anything in this world. I knew nothing about it
until I read what seemed to be a résumé of the whole story in the
_Pursuivant_. Strange how we sometimes read and forget things without
having the slightest idea of their significance to us! Some weeks ago I
read in the papers that the body of an unknown young woman had been
found in the woods on Cave Creek, near Frosthill in West Virginia. I
read it without the faintest idea that I, or any one connected with me,
could have any interest in that fact. And I had forgotten all about it
until I read in the _Pursuivant_ of Tuesday the announcement of Tudor
Hereward’s appointment as Secretary of Legation to the Court of ——, and
the theory that he had only accepted the appointment in order to seek,
by serving his country in foreign lands, some benefit to his health,
broken down by grief for the tragic fate of his young wife.”
“Merciful Heaven!” breathed Lilith to herself.
“And then, my dear,” continued the baroness, unconscious of the
interruption, “the whole story was gathered up and rehearsed—how young
Mrs. Hereward was missing from her home on the night of the 21st of
March, and how no trace of her could be found until about the middle of
April, when a body, much decomposed, was discovered in the woods on the
banks of Cave Creek, which, after much investigation, contradictory
evidence and dispute, was proved beyond all possibility of doubt to be
that of Tudor Hereward’s young wife.”
“How very strange!” muttered Lilith.
“Yes—very strange. It must have given Mr. Hereward a great shock, even
though he never loved the poor, inane young creature.”
“No; of course, he never loved her!” sighed Lilith.
“How could he love her? He loved me—madly, passionately, idolatrously—at
the very time that he married her. Why, I had rejected him only a few
hours before he proposed to her! And oh! what a fool she must have been
to have accepted a man who had never wooed her—accepted him at his very
first word! I am sorry for the poor thing, but you must acknowledge that
she was a great idiot, and in no way a fit and proper wife for Tudor
Hereward.”
“I do acknowledge it; but—but perhaps she loved him,” meekly suggested
Lilith.
“That does not excuse her for snatching at a man’s first offer.”
“But do you think it was quite right in him to ask a girl to be his wife
when he could not love her at all?”
“No, indeed; I do not. I think he did her a most grievous wrong. I told
him so in Washington when he announced his marriage to me. But, then, my
dear, he was half mad with rage, jealousy and disappointment. He married
her to be revenged upon me—nothing more.”
“It was a pity for the poor, unloved wife!” breathed Lilith.
“Indeed it was—poor child. And no doubt he repents the wrong he did her,
now that she has met so cruel a fate—robbed and murdered by tramps, it
is supposed, while she was on her way to relieve the wants of a sick and
destitute neighbor. Remorse is harder to bear than sorrow, and no doubt
it is remorse for the wrongs he had done her, and not sorrow for the
loss of the wife whom he never loved, that is breaking down his health.
However, he will get over it in time,” said the lady, complacently.
“And—you expect—some day—to bestow on him—your hand in marriage?” slowly
questioned Lilith.
“Yes, my dear; I mean to do him that justice—to give him that
consolation. We are both so young yet. He is not thirty, I am but a
little more than twenty years of age. We have a long life before us, in
which I shall do all that in me lies to make him forget his early
disappointments and sorrows; to make him as completely blessed and happy
as woman can make man,” said the baroness, with more depth of feeling in
her thrilling tones than Lilith had ever detected there before.
A dead silence followed these last words. Then at length Lilith spoke in
a low, firm, steady voice:
“Madame, you must not dream of your future life in connection with that
of Tudor Hereward.”
“What! Why must I not? Whatever do you mean? Why, I ask you?” demanded
the surprised baroness.
“Because it would be a great sin.”
“Sin! Why a sin?”
“Because Tudor Hereward’s wife still lives,” replied Lilith, in a voice
of such unnatural, mechanical calmness that it did not seem to come from
living lips.
“Tudor Hereward’s wife still lives?” demanded the baroness, in slow,
questioning, incredulous tones. “What can you know about it? Her dead
body was found—was identified; what, then, do you mean by saying that
she still lives? And what can you know about it, in any case?”
“Madame, I do not dispute that some woman’s dead body was found near her
dwelling. I know not whose it was; but I do know that it was not Tudor
Hereward’s wife’s.”
“How dare you say so! How can you know anything about the matter?”
demanded the baroness, almost indignantly.
“Because, madame—oh, forgive me—because—I—I am Mr. Hereward’s—most
unhappy wife!” answered Lilith, dropping her head in her hands with a
low, heart-breaking moan.
There was a dead silence between the two for a few minutes.
The baroness was the first to speak.
“You? You the wife of Tudor Hereward? Impossible!” she muttered, glaring
down on the little bowed head.
Lilith’s bosom heaved with a silent sob; but she did not reply.
“You the wife of Mr. Tudor Hereward? I say it is impossible!” repeated
Madame Von Bruyin.
“I would to Heaven that it were impossible,” moaned Lilith.
“It cannot be true!” reiterated the baroness.
“I call Heaven to witness that it is true, madame. I am very sorry—I beg
you to forgive me—I should never have told you, madame, but to save you
from vain and sinful hopes and dreams. Indeed, I am very sorry, and I
beg you to forgive me.”
“You are, then, the child-wife whom Tudor Hereward married in haste and
in rage to be revenged on me?” sternly demanded the baroness.
Lilith, with her face still buried in her hands, answered by a nod and a
silent sob.
“You seem, then, to have entered my service under false pretences?”
sneered the lady.
“No, madame,” gently replied Lilith, “under no false pretences. Under
reserve, if you please, under reticence in regard to my past life, but
under no false pretences.”
“You entered my service as a widow.”
“Pardon me, madame, I never told you that I was a widow. I signed my
name to my letters, Elizabeth Wyvil. When we met you called me Miss
Wyvil. I told you that I was not ‘Miss’ Wyvil. You then took it for
granted that I was Mrs. and a widow—as, indeed, I was in fate, if not in
law. Remember, dear madame, that I gave you my college testimonials as
references, and told you that the good women who allowed me to refer to
them—I mean Mrs. Ponsonby, of Baltimore, and Mrs. Downie, of New
York—really knew very little of me, but had taken me up in faith and
charity.”
“But why did you call yourself Mrs. Wyvil, and allow yourself to be
considered as a widow, when your name was Hereward?” demanded the lady.
“Because my husband, on the day that he discarded me, forbade me to use
his family name; and in obedience to him I dropped it, retaining only my
own maiden name—Elizabeth Wyvil. I could not explain this fact to you
without accusing my husband. Nor should I explain now but to prevent a
great evil,” said Lilith.
Again silence fell between them, which Lilith was the first to break:
“You never once questioned me as to my state, madame. If you had asked
me plainly, ‘Are you a widow?’ I must have told you that I was not
except in fate. But you took it for granted that because I was not
‘Miss’ Wyvil I must be a widow.”
“Yes, you are right. It was my own assumption,” said the baroness.
“I am very sorry that I have been with you in a mistaken position. I am
ready to make any amends in my power; ready even to leave your service
at this moment, if it be your wish that I should do so.”
“This moment! Why, you are out at sea and will have no opportunity to
leave until we reach Havre.”
“I remember that, madame; but if you wish to part with me, I can leave
you without leaving the ship. I can refund my passage money, and end our
connection now and here.”
“And what would you do then?”
“As soon as we reach Havre take passage in the first ship back to New
York, and return to Mrs. Downie.”
“Does she know your true story?”
“No; she knows me only as Elizabeth Wyvil. And by that name only must I
be known, since my husband has forbidden me to use his.”
“My dear, I do not wish to part with you. But tell me, since you have
told me the fact, why did your husband part with you?”
“Madame, you yourself gave the reason. I was not ‘fit’ to be his wife,”
said Lilith, mournfully.
“My dear, I should never have said that if I had known you,” replied the
baroness, who, notwithstanding her own disappointed love for Tudor
Hereward, still felt her heart drawn in pity towards his young discarded
wife—the youthful stranger to whom she had been so strongly attracted at
first sight, and whom in after intercourse she had grown to love.
“But I am surprised that you, who are so different from the girl whom I
had imagined as Hereward’s hastily married wife—you who are gifted with
rare intelligence and sensibility—should have condescended to marry him
at such very short notice. How was it?” gently inquired the baroness.
The answer came low and soft:
“Because I loved him, and believed he loved me.”
“You believed he loved you. Had he ever told you so?” demanded the lady.
“No, never. Tudor Hereward never spoke an untruth.”
“Then what reason, in the name of Heaven, had you for thinking that he
loved you?”
“Because he asked me to become his wife. Of course I never once imagined
that he could have any other motive than affection for wishing to marry
me?”
“But did not the suddenness of the proposal—for an immediate marriage,
too—awaken your suspicions?”
“No; for it was his dying father’s wish to see us married by his bedside
before he should pass away.”
“Oh! That puts quite a new face upon the whole proceeding. Poor child!
To please that dying father you consented to marry that son at a
moment’s notice.”
“No, madame; no. It was, as I said, because I loved Tudor Hereward, and
believed he loved me, that I consented. Otherwise I should never have
done so, even to satisfy the beloved, dying father, though I would
willingly have died to redeem his life, had that been possible,”
earnestly answered Lilith.
“Ah, well! You loved him, and I suppose he knew it. That redeems the
affair from utter abomination. But perhaps you do not like to speak of
your short union with Mr. Hereward?”
“I do not shrink from speaking of it, nor do I break any faith in
speaking of him, for, madame, we are parted more effectually than even
death can part those who love each other.”
“But you love him?”
Lilith answered by a deep, silent sob as she dropped her face into her
hands.
“And you are so young! Only seventeen! How long have you loved this man,
my dear?” compassionately inquired the lady.
“How long? As long as I have lived, I think. I do not remember the time
when I did not love Tudor Hereward as I love my Lord. It was my religion
to love him. I was brought up to worship God, and to adore Tudor
Hereward. Under the Almighty, he was my lord, my law-giver. This love
was my life,” murmured Lilith, in a low, thrilling, pathetic voice.
“Who trained you to this idolatry?”
“His father—my foster-father.”
Again silence fell between the two.
At length the baroness inquired:
“My dear, will you tell me how you came to be the foster-daughter of the
late Major Hereward? But do not do so if you would rather not.”
“I have no objection,” answered Lilith.
And in a few brief words she told the story of her adoption as it is
known to the reader.
“I am half inclined to retract all that I have said of Tudor Hereward.
It may be that revenge did not enter into his scheme of marrying a child
whom he did not love. It may be that he was actuated solely by the wish
to please his father and to pay a sacred debt,” said the baroness.
“Yes, to pay a sacred debt. That is what they called it—a sacred debt.
Ah! would to Heaven I had died with my mother rather than lived to be
the creditor of that fatal debt! Heaven knows how soon I would have
absolved both father and son from its responsibility had I known it was
only for that cause I was to be married,” said Lilith, with a sigh so
heavy that it moved the pity of the lady, who took the girl’s hand and
held it kindly as she said:
“I do suppose that a marriage contracted under such circumstances must,
sooner or later, end just as yours has. And, my poor child, since it was
doomed to end so, it is better that it should sooner than later. Yet—I
cannot imagine that you could have given any provocation for an act so
extreme as his repudiation of you; and I feel deeply interested to know
just what precipitated the event.”
“Dear madame, I can only tell you that it was a misapprehension on his
part, which, could he have loved and trusted me, need not have ended in
the fatal quarrel that has separated us forever. You understand now. I
need not go into the painful details of that scene.”
“No, you need not. And so you left your home secretly?”
“Oh, no, not secretly. For when at last he told me that he had never
loved me; that he had only married me to please his father; that he
should go away from his home and never return while I—desecrated—the
house with my presence, then I answered that I must not be the means of
driving him from his ancestral home; that I must depart.”
“Heavens! What did he say to that?”
“With a look full of scorn and wrath, he bade me quit his sight. I left
the room, went to my chamber and prepared for my journey. I went away
that night, leaving a farewell letter on my dressing-bureau.”
“And no one saw you go?”
“No one. It was late on a winter night, and I went forth alone.”
“Poor child! And this accounts for the story of your mysterious
disappearance and supposed death.”
“Yes, I presume so. They must have believed that I came to my death
after leaving the house.”
“And he believes that you are dead! And he suffers from remorse, if not
from grief. Well, we shall find him on the other side. Shall we make
your existence known to him?”
“I do not know, madame. I must think and pray over that question. But
even if he be assured that I do still live, he must not be annoyed by
the sight of my face. Oh! madame, though I long with all my soul to see
him again, to hear his voice once more, yet, yet, I shrink from the
ordeal as from fire!” said Lilith.
“I can well believe that. I am glad I did not tell you my news before we
sailed. If I had done so, you would not perhaps have come with me.”
“No,” said Lilith.
Silence fell between the two women, and lasted until the bell rang for
luncheon, for which neither of them felt the least desire.
It was an excuse for moving, however—something to do—and Madame Von
Bruyin arose and offered her arm to her slighter companion and the two
went down to the saloon together. It was about two o’clock. They were
well out at sea now and the waves were rather high; the ship was rolling
uncomfortably for those who had not found their sea legs and their sea
stomachs.
Neither Madame Von Bruyin nor Lilith as yet suffered from the motion.
After lunch, however, each retired alone to her state-room.
The baroness threw herself into her berth and gave way to the tide of
shame, grief and indignation which it had required all her pride,
conscience and self-control to restrain while she was in the presence of
Tudor Hereward’s young wife.
She had been strangely attracted to Lilith from the first meeting with
her, and she had grown to love the girl with the fond, protecting love
of an elder sister. She had given Lilith her confidence, revealed her
inmost heart, told her love-story—even her love for Tudor Hereward to
Tudor Hereward’s unknown wife! What a mortification in the thought that
she had done so! Yet, there was a selfish comfort, which she blamed
herself for taking, in the reflection that it was to the unloved and
discarded wife that she had told this story.
She had within the past few days had her heart’s deepest affections
raised from despair to something near absolute certainty. “Her hopes
soared up like fire!” And in the exaltation of her spirits she had
called on Lilith to share her joy and to congratulate her—only to have
them all extinguished by the damper of the girl’s communication—“Tudor
Hereward’s wife still lives.... I am Tudor Hereward’s most unhappy
wife!”
How all her soul had risen up in defiance and contradiction of that
statement until its truth was pressed in upon her consciousness. And
then, all her sense of justice, all her powers of self-command were
required to pass calmly through the ordeal of the interview that ensued.
She had passed through it successfully. She had so mastered her pain and
repressed her heart that she now felt sure Hereward’s young wife
regarded Leda Von Bruyin’s love for him as the mere passing fancy of a
wealthy woman of the world, soon to be forgotten in the change of travel
or the whirl of society. She felt no jealousy of this despised and
discarded wife, as she might have felt had Lilith been the beloved,
honored and cherished companion of her husband; on the contrary, she
felt pity, affection and sympathy for the poor, lonely and dependent
child.
But her spirit blazed out in fierce anger of Tudor Hereward’s whole
course of conduct toward them both, so that she was very unjust to him.
“He has ruined two lives by his arrogant recklessness and precipitation.
He loved me; he never loved that poor girl. He loved me, and he ought to
have waited, in hope and faith, as long as I continued unmarried. He
ought not to have rushed into matrimony with that young creature whom he
never loved, and so made her miserable and put an insurmountable
obstacle between himself and me! Or—having married her, he should have
cherished her and not discarded her.
“No, Tudor Hereward,” she continued to herself, “you are no longer the
chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, that I once believed you! And—if I
suffer now, it is not that I love you still, but that my love is dying
hard—very, very hard!
“But I will take a queenly revenge upon you, my master! A most noble and
royal revenge. This child-wife whom you have discarded shall be to me as
the dearest little sister. She is already beautiful, elegant and
graceful by nature. She is cultivated, refined and accomplished by
education; all she needs is intercourse with the highest European
circles to give her the tone and manner of the most cultured society.
And that she shall have. I will introduce her, not as my salaried
companion—though she shall have her salary and much more than her
salary—but as my own adopted sister. And when you see her again, Tudor
Hereward, you will not be likely to despise her.
“And oh!” she passionately broke forth, “that I had the power to
annihilate the very fragments of that broken marriage tie and the very
memory of it, in her mind, and give her, all perfect as I shall make
her, into the hands of some nobler husband! But no! that would not be a
worthy revenge.
“To give her back, a pearl above price, to you, perhaps! Can I do that?
Can I conquer myself so entirely? That would be a magnanimous revenge.”
So ran the thoughts of the petted beauty, rioting through a mind
governed rather by feeling than by reason, yet with much more of good
than evil in it.
Meanwhile, Lilith, lying on the narrow sofa in her state-room, gave way
to one hearty fit of crying, and then wiped her eyes, and began to try
to understand her position and her duty.
She was not jealous of the handsome baroness, either. She remembered all
her husband had told her of his first fancy, of how harshly he had come
to judge her, and she fully believed that Madame Von Bruyin deceived
herself in imagining that Tudor Hereward still continued to love her, or
to entertain other feelings than disapprobation and dislike towards her.
Lilith now knew, from her intimate relations with the baroness, that Mr.
Hereward had greatly misjudged her; that she was not, and never had
been, the heartless coquette he had termed her; but that, in spite of
her training, she was a warm-hearted, generous and conscientious woman.
But the question now before Lilith was—whether she should continue with
the baroness, and run the risk of meeting Hereward in the court circle
of the city to which they were going, or whether she should, on reaching
Havre, take the first homeward bound steamer and return to New York and
to the safe protection of Aunt Sophie’s humble roof.
And though Lilith thought over this question and prayed over it, yet she
had come to no decision when there came a rap, followed by the entrance
of Lisette, the lady’s maid, who said:
“Madame has sent me to say that it is time for dinner, and to see if I
can assist you, madame.”
“Thank you, no. I will be ready in a few minutes,” replied Lilith,
rising from her sofa, and beginning to smooth down her dress and arrange
her hair.
She soon completed her very simple toilet and went out into the cabin,
where she found the baroness waiting for her.
The lady looked pale and grave, but otherwise as usual. No one could
have judged from her manner the dread ordeal through which she was
passing.
She looked searchingly into Lilith’s face, and saw there the traces of
emotion but recently overcome. She smiled softly, as she drew the girl’s
arm within her own and whispered:
“We do not either of us look quite well, dear; but n’importe—the fault
will be laid upon the sea! On land, all our feminine troubles, for which
we do not wish to account, we explain by a headache. At sea, all
grievances of soul or body may be put down to sea-sickness. Is a woman
pale from vexation or disappointment? She is only sea-sick. Is a man
unable to leave his berth in the morning, from having had too much
champagne over night? He is very sea-sick, poor wretch! Come! let us go
into the saloon.”
There were very few people at the tables, and so Madame Von Bruyin and
her companion had a large share of attention from the stewards. Yet they
could receive but little benefit from the sumptuous fare laid before
them, and they soon left the table for the upper deck, where they sat
late into the June night, watching the clear, starlit heavens above and
the boundless expanse of ocean below.
At eleven they retired to their berths.
And so ended the first day at sea.