WOMAN’S WAYS.
Of course it is very comfortable to be a philosopher. When people have
once succeeded in persuading themselves that it is as easy to reason as
to feel, it is wonderful how smoothly life ends.
As Colonel Dacre sat in the little inn parlor that night, he tried hard
to attain that enviable state of mind, and to be able to say, with a
shrug of the shoulder:
“If she be not fair for me,
What care I how fair she be.”
But it would not do. He did care, and so much, that he could have
dashed his head against the wall for very rage and misery.
But there was one thing he could not understand, and that was why Lady
Teignmouth took so much interest in seeing him disenchanted. She must
have sent him to Turoy, knowing quite well whom he would meet there,
and enjoying the thought of his pain. It was strange to find a young
and handsome woman so cruel--and he had never harmed her--that she
should take pleasure in dealing him such a blow. But for some reason
she was his enemy; and as he began to divine how utterly unscrupulous
she was, the idea was not an agreeable one, by any means.
He passed the livelong night pondering, trying to come to some
resolution; but unable to form any plan, so entirely stunned was he to
find that the woman he had loved so chivalrously was unworthy of his
long devotion.
Of course it would have been more dignified to leave Turoy early in
the morning, and this had been his first intention; but as the night
wore on a softer feeling intervened, and he decided that he must see
Gwendolyn once more.
For two years now she had been the star of his life--his one only
thought. To win her at last he had been ready to possess his soul in
patience, and the longing was still strong on him to look on her again,
ere he went sorrowfully into exile for her sake.
As dawn began to break, he went softly up-stairs, and lay down for
awhile without undressing. When he heard people about below he was glad
to rise again, and go out for a walk. Nothing was harder than to be
inactive when his thoughts stung him like very swords.
On returning to the inn, two hours later, he heard, to his relief, that
mine host’s other guest had already breakfasted, and was gone, taking
his carpetbag with him.
“And quite the gentleman I am sure he was,” observed the landlord,
smiling benignantly; “for he paid his bill without even looking at the
items.”
“A hint for me,” thought the colonel, as he sat down to breakfast, with
his face toward the Grange, a glimpse of which could be seen through
the open window.
But it was not until nearly eleven o’clock that he saw the gate open,
and Lady Gwendolyn came forth, her perfect figure showing to advantage
in a closely fitting dark serge dress, while a jaunty little hat,
garnished by a red feather, shaded, without concealing, her beautiful
face. He fancied her manner was listless, and preoccupied, and she
kept her eyes on the ground as she advanced. Nothing, however, showed
her conscious of his scrutiny, and she did not so much as even glance
toward his window as she went by.
Now, if the colonel had been a philosopher, here was a chance of airing
his theories. But we have already said that he was nothing of the
sort, and so he caught up his hat, and hurried after Lady Gwendolyn as
fast as he could.
He came up with her just as she was crossing a stile leading into
some meadows. She turned abruptly, and, startled by such a sudden
apparition, would have fallen to the ground had he not put out his arm
to save her.
For one brief, delicious, maddening moment she was leaning against his
breast--so close that a stray lock of her dark hair blew across his
lips, while the bewildering perfume he knew so well was fast stealing
his senses, and weakening all his fine resolutions.
But directly she recovered her footing she disengaged herself, and
changed rapidly from white to red, and then from red to white again,
while she thanked him, in a constrained manner, for his assistance.
“I am not accustomed to these high stiles,” she said. And then she
added coldly: “What brought you here, Colonel Dacre?”
“Isn’t the country worth seeing, Lady Gwendolyn?”
“Quite; only people never do come here to see the country.”
“There is ‘metal more attractive,’ perhaps.”
“Perhaps.” And she looked into his eyes unflinchingly, while her color
wavered again. “Although I have retired from the world I have taken no
vows, and am, therefore, still at liberty to welcome my friends.”
“Then I am forced to conclude that you do not look upon me as a friend,
since you refused to see me last night?”
“I was not able to do so,” she answered coldly.
“I know; you were better employed.”
“Was I? You seem to be wonderfully well informed as to my movements,
Colonel Dacre.”
“Too well, Lady Gwendolyn. But allow me to congratulate you upon having
so quickly recovered from your sprain. You seemed to be suffering so
much that afternoon I left you on the couch in my mother’s boudoir I
almost feared you would not be able to walk for some time.”
The mere shadow of a smile hovered on Lady Gwendolyn’s red mouth; but
she suppressed it directly, and said:
“A woman can generally manage to do anything she wants to do.”
“And you walked back to the Castle?”
“Really, Colonel Dacre, you are exceedingly curious!”
“I must confess that I am. Nobody likes to be deceived.”
“It isn’t pleasant, certainly,” she answered, with a bitter smile. “But
women are quite accustomed to that sort of thing, you know.”
“Accustomed to deceive, you mean, of course.”
Lady Gwendolyn turned from him disdainfully.
“You, at any rate, ought to be indulgent to a failing of this kind,
Colonel Dacre, since you have lived a lie, so to speak, for a great
many years.”
He uttered a sharp exclamation of surprise at such an extraordinary
accusation.
“What do you mean?” he inquired at last. “You are surely dreaming, Lady
Gwendolyn.”
“I wish I were!” and there was a ring of passionate regret in her
voice. “If all the world had disappointed me, I would still have sworn
that you were true, until--until the day before yesterday.”
“And then?”
“And then I knew the truth.”
“What truth? Upon my word and honor, I have not the least idea what you
mean?”
“Come, Colonel Dacre, is it worth while to deny anything to me? I do
not accuse you, remember; I have no right; I simply state a fact. It is
a pity you sought the meeting I would have avoided, for it must needs
humiliate you as it pains me.”
“There is nothing in my past that humiliates me in the smallest degree.
I have had great sorrows, but they were not brought about by any fault
of my own. I came here to seek you because I considered that you owed
me an explanation, and I did not choose you should be able to say that
I could not defend myself against your implied accusation. But what I
saw last night has altered my feeling in the matter, and if I sought
you this morning it was only because I am a miserable, weak stupid,
and wanted to see your face once more before we parted, never to meet
again, I trust, on this side of the grave.”
Lady Gwendolyn had turned very pale, but her pride sustained her still,
for the stately head never lowered itself one inch, and her full under
lip curled in a disdainful smile.
“You must have seen some strange things last night to change your
intentions and feelings so suddenly, Colonel Dacre.”
He was silent. Her calm effrontery was so startling that it seemed
almost as easy at the moment to doubt his own eyes as to doubt her. But
then she was only a fine actress, of course. She was so greedy of power
that she could not bear to lose a single worshiper, and would have kept
him at any cost if he showed that he was weak enough to give her his
heart to toy with and break.
“The things that I saw last night were not strange,” he said hoarsely.
“I dare say they would have seemed natural enough to any other
looker-on, but, as I told you before, I am a miserable stupid; I
believed in all women, and you above the rest; and now----”
“And now?” she echoed softly as he paused.
“And now I believe in none; and in you, least of all.”
“You are more candid than complimentary, Colonel Dacre.”
“Perhaps--I cannot flatter.”
“It would be almost better if you tried to acquire the accomplishment,”
she returned haughtily. “People who pride themselves upon being frank
are exceedingly bad company.”
“At any rate, I sha’n’t be in your way long, Lady Gwendolyn. I leave
Turoy in a couple of hours.”
“For Borton Hall?”
And if he had been a coxcomb he would have detected the ring of
suppressed eagerness in her voice.
“For a couple of days only. I am going abroad, and shall not probably
return for three or four years--if then; so that I have a few
arrangements to make with my steward. I shall let the Hall, if I can
get a good tenant.”
“You cannot do better,” she said, with sudden, almost stern decision.
“You have no right to live there, as it were, under false pretenses.”
“I really don’t understand you, Lady Gwendolyn, and must beg you will
explain.”
“I did not understand you just now, Colonel Dacre; but I did not demand
an explanation.”
“You had a perfect right to do so.”
“Possibly; but it is not my habit. If people take a pleasure in
misjudging me----”
“A pleasure?” he interrupted vehemently. “Oh! if you only knew what it
cost me last night to believe what I saw.”
“Then why did you believe it?”
“I could not help myself.”
“I make it a point of never believing anything I don’t wish to
believe,” she said slowly and determinedly. “After all, it is so easy
to make mistakes----”
“Under some circumstances. But if you actually see a person----”
“Then, of course, you cannot make a mistake. But people sometimes fancy
they see things, you know. To be absolutely certain myself I should
require to look into another’s face--so close that I could not be
wrong, otherwise I would not allow myself to condemn even my greatest
enemy. I have a great many faults, I know, but I always strive to be
just.”
“And yet, you condemned me unheard, Lady Gwendolyn.”
“When?” she asked.
For sole answer he took from his pocketbook the little note she had
left on the table of his mother’s room the day of her pretended
accident, and held it up before her eyes.
“Well?” she said half defiantly.
“Was that either just or true?”
“It was true, anyhow.”
“You cannot prove it, Lady Gwendolyn. I should be an idiot, indeed, if,
having a secret to guard----”
“Which you admitted,” put in Lady Gwendolyn.
“Or, rather say, which I did not deny. But I repeat that I should have
been an idiot indeed if, under these circumstances, I had introduced
you into the very room where you would find something to betray me.”
“There was nothing in that room to betray you.”
“Where, then?”
“I am not bound to say.”
“I think you are, for your own sake. I am sure you would not like me to
think that you had taken any mean advantage of the small courtesy it
was such a great pleasure to me to show you.”
“How can it signify to me what you think?” she flashed round upon him
to say.
His silence was a rebuke, and shamed her as no words could have done.
She colored hotly up to the very roots of her hair.
“I mean,” she added, “that you would be sure to misunderstand me.”
“On the contrary, Lady Gwendolyn.”
“Anyhow, I will tell you nothing. I have a right to my secrets as well
as you.”
“Just as you like,” he said, bowing coldly. “It is better so, perhaps.
But I am keeping you from your walk, Lady Gwendolyn. Let me thank you
before I go for the many pleasant hours you have allowed me to pass in
your company. The memory of them will always be both a pleasure and a
pang.”
He could almost have vowed that he saw two large tears in her dark
eyes; nevertheless, she said, carelessly enough to outward appearance:
“It is not very probable that I shall ever cause you another pang, so
that you can afford to pardon me. I have quite made up my mind not to
return to Teignmouth.”
“I suppose one may expect to hear of your marriage shortly?” he
observed, conscious of another pang at this moment--a pang so strong
that it whitened his very lips, and made his heart tremble within him.
“My marriage? No, thank you. You are much more likely to hear of my
taking the veil.”
“You are the last person I know to do such a thing as that, Lady
Gwendolyn. You are too fond of the world to desert it.”
“You think so?” she answered, with a gravity that surprised him. “I
suppose the kind of intercourse you and I have had makes it impossible
that you should understand me.”
“And you think that I was flirting with you, Lady Gwendolyn?” he said,
in a stifled voice.
“Assuredly; and why not?”
“I should not have dreamed of insulting you thus. The whole aim and
ambition of my life was to win you for my wife--that I swear.”
“And yet you say you would not have dreamed of insulting me.”
“By professing what I did not feel, I meant!”
“Or promising what you could not perform?”
“I never did such a thing in my life, Lady Gwendolyn.”
“According to your own account you were on the brink of it a little
while ago. What right have you to ask any woman to be your wife? And,
supposing she accepted you, what, then?” inquired Lady Gwendolyn, with
angry vehemence.
“Why, then, we should marry, I presume.”
“How could you?”
“I see no just cause or impediment, Lady Gwendolyn!”
“Then I am sorry for you, that is all. I can understand people’s doing
wrong from the evil impulse of the moment; but it must be a very bad
man indeed who would commit a deliberate fraud, and ruin the woman who
trusted in him.”
“I don’t understand why my marriage would have such terrible
consequences, Lady Gwendolyn. One would think that I was a monster in
human form.”
And then, in spite of himself, he smiled to think how completely Lady
Gwendolyn had turned the tables upon him. He had joined her, intending
simply to bid her adieu, in order that he might look once more on the
fatal beauty that had stolen his heart away, and if any conversation
did take place he certainly pictured himself as the accuser, whereas he
had done little else but defend himself, and had only been able to get
in his own complaints edgewise.
Decidedly Lady Gwendolyn understood the art, and also the advantage,
of carrying the war into the enemy’s country. And yet, though he had
seen her in the arms of another man, and knew her to be an unprincipled
coquette, how he yearned after her, his mad infatuation increasing as
he gazed, until he felt as if he could not give her up were she twenty
times worse than she was.
He drew near to her with a look in his eyes no woman can misunderstand
even when she sees it for the first time. His lips were trembling with
the eager, passionate words that flowed up from his heart; his face was
as white as death.
“Gwendolyn,” he said hoarsely, “you must despise me as much as I
despise myself, but I cannot let you go.”
The hour of her supreme triumph had come--the hour she had panted for,
and longed for even in her dreams. This man, who had resisted her so
long, was at her feet now, in spite of himself, and for one moment her
victory seemed very sweet.
Then a revulsion of feeling came over her, and she hated him as
intensely as she had loved him before. If he despised himself for
falling into her power, if he was only in love with her beauty and
would still win her for that when he deemed her unworthy of any finer
sentiment, her victory was no better really than a defeat.
She drew away from him quickly, and burst into a passion of tears.
“You are right,” she sobbed out; “I do despise you; but I despise
myself still more. How horribly I must have lowered myself to inspire
such a feeling as you have dared confess. At least, you might have
spared me the knowledge, Colonel Dacre, if only because I am of the
same sex as your mother.”
“Gwendolyn, you don’t understand me. I am asking you to be my wife.”
“Which is the greatest insult of all,” she responded. “Oh! go
away--pray, pray go away. I would rather be alone.”
“Give me my answer first, Lady Gwendolyn?”
“You have had your answer.”
He opened his mouth to reply, when suddenly Lady Gwendolyn’s face
assumed an expression of stolid composure, and she added, in a loud,
formal voice:
“I am afraid you will find this a very dull place, Colonel Dacre.
Beyond a little fishing, there is really nothing for a gentleman to
do. Oh! is that really you, Captain Wyndham?” holding out her hand
cordially, to a tall, pale man, who had approached them without
attracting her companion’s attention. “Allow me to introduce you to
Colonel Dacre--a near neighbor of my brother’s, at Teignmouth.”
The two men bowed to each other coldly. It is odd how quickly lovers
scent a rival, and no very friendly look passed between them; although,
outwardly, each assumed to be gratified at making the other’s
acquaintance. But Colonel Dacre was too agitated to be able to keep
up this farce long, and, pleading business, left the two together.
But instead of going on to the station, according to his original
intention, he returned to the inn, and took possession once more of the
little parlor he had occupied the day before.
He cursed his own folly bitterly; but even if this woman destroyed him,
he could not tear himself away from her now. The very air she breathed
was sweet to him, and yet, poor deluded mortal, he had fancied it
possible to escape from her toils.
That day passed like a dream. In comparison with the agitated ones that
followed it seemed so vague and colorless to Colonel Dacre, that it
slipped from his memory later as if it had never been.
He saw no sign of Lady Gwendolyn again, and the Grange windows did
not betray her presence. At dusk he ventured out for a stroll, and
mechanically--guided by fate, no doubt--he crossed the stile that led
into Turoy Wood--a pretty shaded walk in the sunny part of the day, but
almost dark now.
He walked on steadily for about half an hour, finding it a relief from
the worry of his thoughts to be moving, and minding little where he
went.
But presently he came back to himself with a start. He distinctly
heard, a few paces in front of him, the voice of the man who had roused
all the Cain in him, and made him afraid of himself. And he knew,
by the sudden wild riot in his pulses, and the mad jealousy in his
heart, that he was no better to be trusted than before, and so, to his
infinite regret later, he hurried from the spot, and made his way back
to the inn as fast as he could.
He did not even feel safe until he had bolted the parlor door, although
Mr. Wiginton distinctly said he did not expect another customer that
night, and shut up the house at eleven o’clock, as usual.
Colonel Dacre went to his room then, even undressed, and lay down,
although he knew sleeping was out of the question. He heard all the
hours strike up to three o’clock, and then he fell into what seemed
like a doze, although all his senses were unnaturally acute. So acute,
indeed, that when he heard a groan presently, he knew what direction it
had proceeded from, and did not wait for a repetition to spring out of
bed, and hurry into his clothes.
In another minute he was down the stairs, and, unbolting the door
softly, so as not to disturb mine host, he found himself in the garden.
Another groan, fainter though than the first, guided him to a little
copse by the roadside, where lay, apparently in the agonies of death,
Lady Gwendolyn’s “braw wooer,” the man whose splendid privileges he had
envied the night before.
For one cruel moment Colonel Dacre rejoiced to see his enemy laid so
low; but better feelings intervened, and he remembered nothing but that
the other was in a sore strait, and needed his aid.
He knelt down beside him, and said quite gently:
“I am afraid you are hurt. Have you had an accident?”
The dim eyes unclosed, and the blue lips muttered a word faintly. But
although Colonel Dacre bent close down he could not catch it, and he
shook his head expressively.
The dying man made a great effort, and repeated, in a loud whisper:
“Poisoned.”
“By whom?” inquired Colonel Dacre, resolutely but reluctantly.
But the poor creature’s mind had wandered off, and he babbled of
“Mother” incoherently, as if he fancied he were a child again.
Colonel Dacre would have fetched some brandy from the inn, but as he
saw that no human means could avail aught, he considered it better to
remain where he was.
Almost involuntarily he began to repeat the beautiful prayer with which
most of us begin and end our day, and when he came to “Forgive us our
trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us,” the dying man
raised himself on his elbow, and said, loudly and distinctly:
“Tell her I forgive her, and----”
But the sentence was never finished in this world. He fell back heavily
on the turf, and when Colonel Dacre looked into his face he saw that he
was gone.