WORLD-WEARY
The memory of things precious keepeth warm
The heart that once did hold them. They are poor
That have lost nothing; they are poorer far
Who, losing, have forgotten; they most poor
Of all who lose and wish they might forget.
For life is one, and in its warp and woof
There runs a thread of gold that glitters fair,
And sometimes in the pattern shows most sweet
Where there are sombre colors. This thread of gold
We would not have it tarnish; let us turn
Oft and look back upon the wondrous web,
And when it shineth sometimes we shall know
That memory is possession. _Jean Ingelow._
The Baroness Von Bruyin and her suite reached Paris about the middle of
June.
They went first to the Splendide Hotel, Place de l’Opéra, at which
Monsieur Le Grange had secured, by telegraph, a handsome suite of
apartments.
But they remained there only for a few days, until a suitable house was
procured on the Champs Elysées to which they immediately removed.
Madame Von Bruyin was supposed, on account of her recent widowhood, not
to go into the gay world; yet, somehow or other, as soon as she was
settled in her magnificent “hotel,” she managed to see much of society,
or what was left of society in the French capital; for at this season
the gay birds of passage in the fashionable world were already pluming
their wings for flight to sea-side or mountain range for the summer. Yet
enough still remained to make life gay in the gayest city of
Christendom.
And though Madame Von Bruyin went to no balls or large public
receptions, yet she saw a great deal of company both at home and abroad.
And Lilith was always by her side, not as her salaried companion, but as
her friend and equal.
The court had not left Paris, and it was through Madame Von Bruyin that
Lilith obtained her first entrée into the “charmed” circle of Tuileries.
And no less from her freshness, her piquancy and simplicity than from
her rare beauty, la belle Virginienne became the fashion, just when the
season was wearing to its close and wanted a new sensation.
Somehow also the impression had got abroad that Madame Wyvil was a very
wealthy woman—the daughter of some New York merchant prince and the
widow of some California mine king.
Who was responsible for starting the story is not certainly known; but
it is undeniable that Madame Von Bruyin chuckled a great deal over the
hallucination, when she saw Lilith sought, followed, flattered and
fawned upon by impoverished nobles and impecunious princes.
Lilith knew nothing of the romances in circulation concerning her vast
riches. The adulation she received both pleased and pained her. No
beautiful girl of seventeen could be quite insensible or indifferent to
the homage of the world; homage that she innocently supposed was paid to
herself, rather than to her imaginary wealth; but when she remembered
her position, she felt that she would gladly give all, all this worship
for one kind word, or glance, from her alienated husband—
“Coldly she turns from their praise and weeps,
For her heart ‘at his feet’ is lying.”
She was often glad to get away from those court circles—though they were
never gay scenes—to escape from everybody, even from her kindest friend,
Madame Von Bruyin—lock herself up in her room at night, and there in
solitude and darkness forget or ignore the cruel sentence that had
banished her from her beloved husband and her dear home; bridge over the
painful scenes that had marred the last weeks of their wedded life and
go back and live over again in memory and imagination the brief, bright
days of their harmony and happiness, and recall the few precious words
of affection or approbation Tudor Hereward had ever addressed to her.
How fondly, how vividly—lying with her eyes closed and her fingers laid
upon her eyelids as if the better to shut out the real world and the
present time—how fondly and how vividly she recalled that day when she
sat all day long over the writing-table in their room at the hotel, so
busy at work for him, so happy, ah! so happy to be of use to him,
answering piles of letters that he had marked for her, copying the
crabbed manuscript for his speech, looking out authorities for his
reference.
And when evening came and he returned from the Capitol, and sank wearily
into his easy-chair at the table and slowly examined her work, and
finally said:
“You have performed your task only too well.... Your day’s work has
saved me from a night’s work, my little lady love.” And he kissed her.
It was a precious memory.
How happy she was that day! How very, very happy!
Again and again, through the power of memory and imagination, in the
silence and solitude of night, she recalled and lived over that day—and
one or two other days embalmed in her mind.
All these few happy days belonged to the month of February—the most
sunshiny month of her year, midwinter though it might have been to
everybody else.
During all the remainder of the season in Paris it required all Lilith’s
tact to avoid receiving a direct proposal of marriage from one or
another of her fortune-hunting adorers.
At length she almost offended Madame Von Bruyin by declining to go into
company at all.
“They take me for ‘a widow indeed,’ madame, and it becomes very
embarrassing,” she pleaded.
“Well, but, petite, we cannot explain; so what is to be done?” inquired
the baroness, laughing at the absurdity of Lilith’s dilemma.
“I do not know, unless I avoid society. I might stay home when you go
out, and keep my room when you have company here,” replied the girl.
“But I cannot consent to any such isolation on your part. It would not
be good for your health of mind or body. Come, my dear, cheer up! Endure
the homage of the world for a few days longer—only for a few days,
petite, and then it will be over. Paris will be empty, and we ourselves
will be inhaling the mountain air of Switzerland,” laughed the lady.
And Lilith, having no alternative, endured the tortures of her false
position until the fashionable world had fled from town.
The baroness and her companion lingered a little behind the others, in
order that Madame Von Bruyin might show Lilith all those places of
interest which a new-comer must see, but which had hitherto been
neglected for other and more social pastimes.
It was, then, near the end of July when they left Paris for Switzerland.
They spent the months of August, September and October in traveling over
the north of Europe, halting at no point for more than three or four
days.
In November they went to Rome, and sojourned in the “Eternal City” until
the first of January, when they returned to Paris, where the Baroness
Von Bruyin, having laid aside her first mourning, plunged into all the
gayeties of the capital, taking her young companion with her.
Everywhere they were very much admired. They could not possibly be
rivals, even when constantly seen together. They were both so beautiful,
yet their style was so dissimilar, so well contrasted, that they
actually enhanced each other’s attractions.
Lilith was no longer in danger of receiving embarrassing proposals of
marriage. The same mysterious agent which had started the report of her
fabulous wealth was most probably responsible for another report, to the
effect that the beautiful young widow was about to bestow her hand and
fortune upon an eminent American statesman, to whom she had been for
many months engaged. But she was none the less admired because she was
inaccessible.
In February, however, the restless baroness, with all her party, crossed
the channel, and went to London, to be in time to see the pageant of the
queen’s opening of Parliament.
Madame Von Bruyin, through her friends, obtained admission for herself
and protégée to the peeress’ gallery in the House of Lords, and from
that vantage point witnessed the imposing ceremony.
But in all the solemn magnificence of the scene Lilith seemed to see
only the queen, and through the queen only the almost peerless woman,
wife and mother, and as Lilith gazed she sank into a dream of Victoria’s
life.
Later on in the season our country girl from West Virginia saw the
majesty of England once again.
It was on the occasion of the first drawing-room of the season at
Buckingham Palace, when Madame Von Bruyin and her protégée were
presented by the wife of the German Ambassador.
After this presentation, the baroness, who had taken a handsome
furnished house on Westbourne Terrace, and whose year of mourning had
expired, issued invitations for a large party, which she wished to make
the most brilliant of the season.
The baroness had passed two seasons in London. The first as a débutante
with her father, and a German princess as a chaperone; the second as a
bride, with her newly married husband; and now in her third season she
entered society as a young, handsome and wealthy widow, with a very
extensive acquaintance.
She issued over five hundred invitations to her ball, and these included
many of the most distinguished persons of the age, celebrities of high
rank, of worldwide scientific, literary, diplomatic or military renown,
the beauties and geniuses of the hour, and so forth.
The ball was to be a great success.
Lilith strongly objected to being present—pleaded earnestly to be
relieved from attending it.
“Dear madame, I feel as if, in my circumstances, I ought to live in
strict retirement. I am not Mrs. Wyvil. I am not a widow. I am Tudor
Hereward’s repudiated wife. When I find myself in a ball-room or in a
drawing-room, surrounded by people who seem anxious to do me honor—I
feel—oh, I feel just as if I were only a fraud, a humbug, an impostor,
an adventuress. And, oh! I feel so deeply ashamed of myself and my false
position! So humiliated and degraded! I feel this even more deeply in
these English drawing-rooms than I did in the Parisian salons. Oh, dear
madame, pray do not insist on my presence at your ball!” she prayed.
“Lilith, you are the most morbid creature I ever met with in all the
days of my life. You would like to shut yourself up in a convent, I
suppose, just because that hateful man, after marrying you to be
revenged on me, has thrown you off to please himself!” exclaimed Leda
Von Bruyin.
“Pray do not speak of Mr. Hereward in that way,” said the loyal young
wife.
“I will speak of him as he deserves. I am beginning to hate that man.
Yes, and to hate myself for ever having imagined that I liked him.”
“Oh, Madame Von Bruyin!”
“It is true. The more I see of the world, the longer I live, the more
experience I gain, the more heartily I dislike that man, and dislike
myself for ever having fancied that I liked him,” exclaimed the
baroness.
“I am very sorry you feel so,” said Lilith.
“Sorry! Sorry that I have ceased to be in love with your husband,
Lilith? Well, you are an oddity!”
“Oh, no, not sorry for that! Glad—thankful for that! But very sorry that
you cannot feel friendly towards him!”
“Bah! what a baby you are! He himself once quoted this line to me:
‘Friendship sometimes turns to love,
But love to friendship, never!’
And it does not! It dies out in indifference, or it turns to hate and
scorn, and self-scorn as well!”
“Ah, madame——” commenced Lilith.
“‘Ah, madame,’” mocked the baroness. “Look here, my dear, I have known,
and I thank Heaven that I have known one unselfish man who loved without
self-love! And he was Nicholas Von Bruyin. And the more I see of other
men, the more I love and honor him. Mr. Hereward certainly suffers in
that comparison. But to return to the subject of the ball, Lilith, my
dear, I really cannot consent to your absenting yourself.”
“But, madame——”
“But, nonsense! If you are in a false position it is not one of your
choosing. Your husband has forced you into it. If you are called Mrs.
Wyvil, it is because your husband has forbidden you to bear his name,
and you are so meek as to obey him. And if you seem to be a widow, it is
because he has made you one in fate if not in law. But you shall not
‘wear the willow’ for his undeserving sake! You shall enjoy life as your
youth and beauty entitle you to do. And I will protect you in this. Do
not fear to be embarrassed by any more proposals of marriage. That
embarrassment is forestalled. You are understood to be engaged to an
American statesman of high rank. And that is also true, is it not? You
do consider yourself most solemnly engaged, yes, most solemnly and
eternally engaged, to that man, notwithstanding his repudiation of you,
do you not?”
“Yes, madame! But I wish you would not call Mr. Hereward ‘that man,’”
said Lilith.
“Very well! Since you object, I will call him this man! And while we are
objecting, let me tell you that I object to your calling me ‘madame,’ as
if I were somebody’s aunt or grandmother! I am only about three years
older than you are. And I call you ‘Lilith,’ do you observe? And my name
is Leda; though I am likely to forget it, for since my father and my
husband died there is no human being in the world left to call me Leda,
unless my chosen friend and sister will do so,” said Madame Von Bruyin,
with a touch of pathos in her tone.
“I will go to your ball, Leda,” said Lilith, conceding both points in
her gentle answer.
The ball was to be a great success, and it was a great success.
Lilith was exposed to another complication. She was in danger of being
“taken up” by a certain distinguished clique, patronized by a certain
august personage, and being turned into a “professional beauty.”
And the baroness made the conquest of an Italian prince, of about her
own age, of much grace, beauty and accomplishments; of—what is much
rarer in continental princes—great wealth also, and of a family who
claimed to read their title clear through all the centuries of recorded
history, back into the age of fable and chaos, where all things are void
or misty.
Prince Otto Gherardini as a matter of detail.
This fascinating young Florentine was in personal appearance and
temperament so diametrically antagonistic to the charming baroness that
they were inevitably destined to be attracted to each other, as positive
and negative in electricity.
Therefore it followed that at their very first meeting the dark,
graceful, fiery Italian youth became desperately enamored of the fair,
stately, serene German lady.
After the ball, the baroness and her protégée were inundated with
invitations to all sorts of entertainments, so that had they accepted
every one, between garden parties, morning concerts, five o’clock teas,
dinner parties and balls, they would have had scarcely an hour to call
their own.
Lilith, with her saddened heart, sank from all these social excitements
and dissipations, yet, being irresistibly borne on by the imperious will
of the baroness, she was drawn into the maelstrom.
Gherardini, with Italian subtlety, contrived to meet the baroness
everywhere, so that gossip soon connected their names, and the world
looked forward to the announcement of their betrothal.
The baroness laughed at him, as a boy, behind his back, but treated him
as a prince before his face.
Lilith secretly hoped that they might marry, and be happy, so that she
herself might be at liberty to return to New York and rest in Aunt
Sophie’s quiet though humble home.
So the London season drew to its close. The announcement of the marriage
of Prince Otto Gherardini with the Baroness Von Bruyin, arranged to come
off early in the ensuing year, appeared in the _Court Journal_, and in
the society columns of other London papers. It took no one by surprise,
not even Lilith.
Madame Von Bruyin and her suite left London for a short tour in Wales
and Cornwall, and spent a few pleasant and healthful weeks in leisurely
travel through that beautiful, picturesque and legendary land.
In September they halted, and took lodgings at a farm-house near the
mountain village of Llandorf.
There they settled down for a brief period to enjoy the simple country
life of the neighborhood.
Lilith, world-weary and heart-sick, felt the benign and soothing
influence of nature around her, and resigned herself to rest—if rest
might be granted her.
It was now eighteen months since she had been driven from her home. In
all this time she had never once heard from her husband, and only once
had she heard of him; and that was when she learned from Madame Von
Bruyin that Mr. Hereward had been appointed Secretary of Legation to the
Court of ——. Since that day, fifteen months ago, no sign of his
existence had appeared to her. In vain she searched all the insular and
continental papers. His name never by any chance appeared in any paper.
Did Lilith resign all hope of ever hearing of him, seeing him, being
reconciled to him again?
Ah, no! Though hope was only torture now, she could not help but
entertain it. A thousand times she had said to herself:
“There is not the slightest possibility of such happiness for me. I am
dead to my husband! Yes, I am dead to him, as I could never have been
had only a natural death divided us, and not a spiritual one. I shall
never meet him again, neither in this life nor the life to come.”
But though she continually said this to herself, and though she tried to
school her heart to believe it, yet, yet, she could not resign hope, for
“While there is life there is hope”—“Hope springs eternal in the human
breast.” And so, though hope was anguish, she could not give it up.
One lovely day, near the last of September, Lilith was sitting alone in
the little parlor of their lodgings. She had drawn her chair to the
window to sit and enjoy the fine view of mountain, lake and wood
stretched out before her.
The breakfast table was set, but Madame Von Bruyin, who was a late
riser, had not come down.
While Lilith sat there gazing from the window, and waiting for her
patroness, the old postman for that neighborhood came up the garden
walk, and seeing her at the window, nodded pleasantly, and stopped to
deliver his mail.
He laid a pile of letters and papers on the sill, nodded and smiled
again, and turned away.
Lilith looked over the superscriptions of the letters. They were all for
Madame Von Bruyin, Monsieur Le Grange, the lady’s maid or the footman.
There was not one for Lilith. Nor was she disappointed. There seldom was
a letter for her, so she did not expect one.
She placed the letters on the breakfast table, and turned to look at the
papers.
She took up the _Times_ first, of course, and she turned first to the
foreign and diplomatic news, hoping against hope—as she had done a
thousand times before—that she might see her husband’s name, if it were
only a line in the list of guests at some State dinner, or in any casual
event.
But no! There was nothing! She was again disappointed, as she had been a
thousand times before.
Wearily, drearily her sad eyes wandered over the paper, indifferent now
to anything she might find there.
Yet—great Heaven! What was this? Not the name of Tudor Hereward! No; but
the answer to a daily, nightly agonized prayer to Almighty God!—or so it
seemed to Lilith’s amazed vision. Daily and nightly, in her morning and
evening worship, for the last two years, Lilith had prayed:
“Have mercy, oh, Father, upon all poor prisoners and captives; upon all
miserable criminals and convicts; bringing the guilty to a profound
contrition, to pardon and to peace; bringing the innocent to a full
vindication, deliverance and salvation.”
And these words, upon which her wandering eyes became fixed in
astonishment, seemed the answer to that prayer.