THAT STARTLING INTRODUCTION
Each in the other can descry
The tone constrained, the altered eye;
They know that each to each can seem
No longer as of yore;
And yet, while thus estranged, I deem
Each loves the other more.
Hers is, perhaps, the saddest heart;
His the more forced and painful part;
And troubled now becomes, perforce,
The inevitable intercourse,
So easy heretofore.
_Southey._
A slight start from Tudor Hereward, and a sudden paleness of Lilith’s
face, were the only signs of the shock that both had sustained in this
unexpected encounter; and even these had been seen by no one except the
watchful princess, who had planned the meeting and studied its effect.
Hereward bowed as to any other lady.
Lilith courtesied.
Both grew paler. Neither spoke. The strain was becoming unbearable.
Besides, Hereward was stopping the way.
The princess pitied them; and then she became frightened for the result
of her own coup-de-théâtre. Should Hereward “lose his head,” or Lilith
faint, or should they in any other manner bring “admired disorder” into
the serene repose of this patrician drawing-room? For nature, when hard
pressed, does sometimes break through all the elegant little barriers of
convenances and assert itself.
All this flashed through the mind of the princess in a very few seconds,
and then—always equal to the occasion—she turned with perfect ease to
her latest guest, and said:
“Mr. Hereward, the rooms are close, and Mrs. Wyvil is faint; will you
give her the support of your arm to my boudoir? She will show you the
way.”
Hereward bowed, drew his wife’s arm within his own, and led her from the
salon by the shortest way indicated only by a gesture from Lilith.
They entered the elegant boudoir, with its walls of fluted white satin,
and its furniture and draperies of white satin flowered with gold, and
its innumerable treasures of beauty and of art; but they saw none of
these things. They might have been in a West Virginia hut, for all
consciousness they had of these splendors.
As soon as they entered the room—which had no other occupant—Lilith,
sliding from her hold on Hereward’s arm, dropped into the nearest chair,
as if no longer able to stand.
Hereward bent over her.
No word had passed between them as yet.
“Lilith!” he said, at length.
“Tudor!” she murmured in reply.
“Lilith, is this real? Can this wonder be real, or is it only a phantasm
of fever, such as I have often had since I lost you! Oh, Lilith! if this
be real, come to me—come to me! Come to me, my own, and let me clasp you
to my heart!” he pleaded, holding out his arms.
“Tudor—do you care for me—now?” she inquired, in low and broken tones.
“Do I care for you? Oh, Lilith! so much, so much that your loss has
almost destroyed my life! Oh, my love! Oh, my darling. Why, why did you
ever leave me? Why, Lilith, why?” he pleaded, earnestly.
“Because,” she murmured very low—“because you told me that you had never
loved me; you said that you had married me only to please your dying
father; you bade me leave your presence, and you added that in a few
days you should leave the house, never to return to it while I should
desecrate it with my presence.”
“I! Did I ever utter such words as those to you—to my wife?” exclaimed
Hereward, as soon as he had recovered from the shock of hearing them
repeated to him.
“Indeed you did, Tudor. They were stamped—burned—too deeply into my
memory ever to be forgotten. I do not give them back to you now in
reproach, but only in reply to your question as to why I left you. You
see now that I had no alternative. I answered you at the time that I
must not be the means of banishing you from your patrimonial home; that
since one or the other must go, I myself should leave, and leave you in
peaceable possession of your home. Something like this I said to you
then, Tudor; but you bade me begone, and—I obeyed you. That was all,”
she concluded, in a low, gentle tone.
“I was mad—mad! Not one word that I uttered then was true or rational!
Oh, Lilith, I am no more responsible for the words and actions of that
hour than is the veriest maniac for his ravings!” he pleaded, sinking
over and leaning heavily on the back of the chair that supported her
slight frame.
“I know, Tudor,” she said, in a humble, deprecating tone—“I know, and I
do not criticise you. How could I? The circumstances that surrounded me
seemed criminating enough to destroy the faith of the most confiding
husband in the world, though he were married to the most faithful wife!”
“And yet they should not have touched my faith in you; the child brought
up in my father’s house, the child not only loved, but esteemed and
honored by my father, and not by him only, but by all his friends and
neighbors! No, Lilith, even those surrounding circumstances, though you
could not explain them, should never have touched my faith in you! would
never have done so, but that I was mad—mad with jealousy! Yes, I confess
it. Lilith, can you forgive me for that causeless, injurious jealousy?”
he pleaded, bending over her.
“Oh, Tudor! If there were anything to forgive, it was forgiven on that
very night in which we parted.”
“Ah! why did you go, my Lilith? Why did you let words of frenzy drive
you away? Could not you, my gentle child, have been patient with a
madman for a little while? Why act upon reproaches that you knew to be
undeserved and altogether unreasonable?”
“I knew they were undeserved, but I thought they were very reasonable,
under all the circumstances. Oh, Tudor, it was not your reproaches, not
your anger, that drove me away from you! I could have borne them and
waited for time to vindicate me, to justify me in your sight. No, Tudor,
it was not anger nor reproach that drove me away.”
“What was it, then?”
“I told you; but you have forgotten it, or misunderstood. Tudor, I had
to go. I had no choice. You told me that you did not love me; that you
had never loved me, and said that you would go away and never come back
while I stayed in the house. But you ‘never loved’ me. These were the
words that drove me from you.”
“The words of a maniac!”
“Did you find my farewell letter, left on your bureau, Tudor?”
“Yes—I did.”
“Do you remember its contents?”
“Yes. When I think of it I can recall every word. That letter is stamped
upon my memory, Lilith, as you say my sentence of banishment is upon
yours.”
“Then, Tudor, will you now recall what I said on bidding you good-bye?
It was something like this—though I cannot recall the precise words—I
told you that though I should not trouble you by my presence, or my
letters, yet neither should I take any pains to hide myself from you. I
told you that if the time should ever come when, after revising your
judgment of me, you should see reason to retract your charges against
me, and should ask me to return to you, I would return and would be all
to you in the future that I had been in the past. Do you remember
reading that in my farewell letter, Tudor?”
“Yes, yes! I do, I do! And oh, my child, I do retract all the cruel
charges that Satan and false shows ever goaded me to make. I believe you
to be as pure in mind and heart and life as any angel that stands before
the Throne,” he said, bending over her chair.
“Thank Heaven!” she fervently breathed.
“And you forgive me, Lilith?”
“I have more cause to ask forgiveness than to extend it,” she answered,
humbly.
“No, no!” he exclaimed, deprecatingly.
“Tudor,” she said, “you say that you esteem me—that you trust me; and I
thank Heaven for that! But—Tudor—do you love me?” she inquired, in a
low, thrilling, pathetic tone.
“I love you more than my own life, so help me Heaven!” replied Hereward,
in such tones of impassioned earnestness that no one who heard them
could have doubted their truth.
Lilith arose and turned, fronting him, and said:
“Then, Tudor, take me, for I am yours, yours entirely—spirit, soul and
frame! I say now, as I said once before, there is not, there never was—a
pulse in my heart that is not true to you.”
These last words were breathed out upon his bosom, to which he had
gathered her.
Presently they sat down, he holding her hand within his own, and gazing
with infinite content into her beautiful face.