"I told George every--almost every time I met Mr. Lansdell," she exclaimed; "and George knows that he lends me books; and he likes me to have books--nice, in-st-structive books," said Mrs. Gilbert, stifling her sobs as best she might; "and I n-never thought that anybody could be so wicked as to fancy there was any harm in my meeting him. I don"t suppose any one ever said anything to Beatrice Portinari, though she was married, and Dante loved her very dearly; and I only want to see him now and then, and to hear him talk; and he has been very, very kind to me."
"Kind to you!" cried Lady Gwendoline, scornfully. "Do you know the value of such kindness as his? Did you ever hear of any good coming of it? Did such kindness ever bear any fruit but anguish and misery and mortification? You talk like a baby, Mrs. Gilbert, or else like a hypocrite. Do you know what my cousin"s life has been? Do you know that he is an infidel, and outrages his friends by opinions which he does not even care to conceal? Do you know that his name has been involved with the names of married women before to-day? Are you besotted enough to think that his new fancy for you is anything more than the caprice of an idle and dissipated man of the world, who is ready to bring ruin upon the happiest home in England for the sake of a new sensation, a little extra aliment for the vanity which a host of foolish women have pampered into his ruling vice?"
"Vanity!" exclaimed Mrs. Gilbert; "oh, Lady Gwendoline, how can you say that _he_ is vain? It is you who do not know him. Ah, if you could only know how good he is, how n.o.ble, how generous! I know that he would never try to injure me by so much as a word or a thought. Why should I not love him; as we love the stars, that are so beautiful and so distant from us? Why should I not worship him as Helena worshipped Bertram, as Viola loved Zanoni? The wicked Graybridge people may say what they like; and if they tell George anything about me, I will tell him the truth; and then--and then, if I was only a Catholic, I would go into a convent like Hildegonde! Ah, Lady Gwendoline, you do not understand such love as mine!" added Isabel, looking at the Earl"s daughter with an air of superiority that was superb in its simplicity.
She was proud of her love, which was so high above the comprehension of ordinary people. It is just possible that she was even a little proud of the slander which attached to her. She had all her life been pining for the glory of martyrdom, and lo, it had come upon her. The fiery circlet had descended upon her brow; and she a.s.sumed a dignified pose in order to support it properly.
"I only understand that you are a very foolish person," Lady Gwendoline answered, coldly; "and I have been extremely foolish to trouble myself about you. I considered it my duty to do what I have done, and I wash my hands henceforward of you and your affairs. Pray go your own way, and do not fear any further interference from me. It is quite impossible that I can have the smallest a.s.sociation with my cousin"s mistress."
She hurled the cruel word at the Doctor"s Wife, and departed with a sound of silken rustling in the narrow pa.s.sage. Isabel heard the carriage drive away, and then flung herself down upon her knees, to sob and lament her cruel destiny. That last word had stung her to the very heart. It took all the poetry out of her life; it brought before her, in its fullest significance, the sense of her position. If she met Roland under Lord Thurston"s oak,--if she walked with him in the meadows that his footsteps beautified into the smooth lawns of Paradise,--people, vulgar, ignorant people, utterly unable to comprehend her or her love, would say that she was his mistress. His mistress! To what people she had heard that word applied! And Beatrice Portinari, and Viola, and Leila, and Gulnare, and Zelica, what of them? The visions of all those lovely and shining creatures arose before her; and beside them, in letters of fire, blazed the odious word that transformed her fond platonic worship, her sentimental girlish idolatry, into a shame and disgrace.
"I will see him to-morrow and say farewell to him," she thought. "I will bid him good-bye for ever and ever, though my heart should break,--ah, how I hope it may, as I say the bitter word!--and never, never will see him again. I know now what he meant by shame and humiliation; I can understand all he said now."
Mrs. Gilbert had another of her headaches that evening, and poor George was obliged to dine alone. He went up-stairs once or twice in the course of the evening to see his wife, and found her lying very quietly in the dimly-lighted room with her face turned to the wall. She held out her hand to him as he bent over her, and pressed his broad palm with her feverish fingers.
"I"m afraid I"ve been neglectful of you sometimes, George," she said; "but I won"t be so again. I won"t go out for those long walks, and keep you waiting for dinner; and if you would like a set of new shirts made--you said the other day that yours were nearly worn out--I should like to make them for you myself. I used to help to make the shirts for my brothers, and I don"t think I should pucker so much now; and, oh, George, Mrs. Jeffson was talking of your poor mother to-day, and I want you to tell me what it was she died of."
Mr. Gilbert patted his wife"s hand approvingly, and laid it gently down on the coverlet.
"That"s a melancholy subject, my love," he said, "and I don"t think it would do either of us any good to talk about it. As for the shirts, my dear, it"s very good of you to offer to make them; but I doubt if you"d manage them as well as the work-woman at Wareham, who made the last.
She"s very reasonable; and she"s lame, poor soul; so it"s a kind of charity to employ her. Good-bye for the present, Izzie; try to get a nap, and don"t worry your poor head about anything."
He went away, and Isabel listened to his substantial boots creaking down the stairs, and away towards the surgery. He had come thence to his wife"s room, and he left a faint odour of drugs behind him. Ah, how that odious flavour of senna and camomile flowers brought back a magical exotic perfume that had floated towards her one day from _his_ hair as he bent his head to listen to her foolish talk! And now the senna and camomile were to flavour all her life. She was no longer to enjoy that mystical double existence, those delicious glimpses of dreamland, which made up for all the dulness of the common world that surrounded her.
If she could have died, and made an end of it all! There are moments in life when death seems the _only_ issue from a dreadful labyrinth of grief and horror. I suppose it is only very weak-minded people--doubtful vacillating creatures like Prince Hamlet of Denmark--who wish to die, and make an easy end of their difficulties; but Isabel was not by any means strong-minded, and she thought with a bitter pang of envy of the commonplace young women whom she had known to languish and fade in the most interesting pulmonary diseases, while she so vainly yearned for the healing touch which makes a sure end of all mortal fevers. But there was something--one thing in the world yet worth the weariness of existence--that meeting with _him_--that meeting which was to be also an eternal parting. She would see him once more; he would look down at her with his mysterious eyes--the eyes of Zanoni himself could scarcely have been more mystically dark and deep. She would see him, and perhaps that strangely intermingled joy and anguish would be more fatal than earthly disease, and she would drop dead at his feet, looking to the last at the dark splendour of his face--dying under the spell of his low tender voice. And then, with a shudder, she remembered what Lady Gwendoline had said of her demi-G.o.d. Dissipated and an infidel; vain, selfish! Oh, cruel, cruel slander,--the slander of a jealous woman, perhaps, who had loved him and been slighted by him. The Doctor"s Wife would not believe any treasonous whisper against her idol. Only from his own lips could come the words that would be strong enough to destroy her illusions. She lay awake all that night thinking of her interview with Lady Gwendoline, acting the scene over and over again; hearing the cruel words repeated in her ears with dismal iteration throughout the dark slow hours. The pale cheerless spring daylight came at last, and Mrs. Gilbert fell asleep just when it was nearly time for her to think of getting up.
The doctor breakfasted alone that morning, as he had dined the day before. He begged that Isabel might not be disturbed, A good long spell of rest was the best thing for his wife"s head, he told Mrs. Jeffson; to which remark that lady only replied by a suspicious kind of sniff, accompanied by a jerk of the head, and followed by a plaintive sigh, all of which were entirely lost upon the parish surgeon.
"Females whose headaches keep "em a-bed when they ought to be seeing after their husband"s meals hadn"t ought to marry," Mrs. Jeffson remarked, with better sense than grammar, when she took George"s breakfast paraphernalia back to the kitchen. "I heard down the street just now, as _he_ come back to the Priory late last night, and I"ll lay she"ll be goin" out to meet him this afternoon, William."
Mr. Jeffson, who was smoking his matutinal pipe by the kitchen fire, shook his head with a slow melancholy gesture as his wife made this remark.
"It"s a bad business, Tilly," he said, "a bad business first and last.
If _he_ was anything of a man, he"d keep away from these parts, and "ud be above leadin" a poor simple little thing like that astray. Them poetry-hooks and such like, as she"s allus a-readin", has half turned her head long ago, and it only needs a fine chap like him to turn it altogether. I mind what I say to Muster Jarge the night as I fust see her; and I can see her face now, Tilly, as I see it then, with the eyes fixed and lookin" far away like; and I knew then what I know better still now, my la.s.s,--them two"ll never get on together. They warn"t made for one another. I wonder sometimes to see the trouble a man"ll take before he gets a pair o" boots, to find out as they"re a good fit and won"t gall his foot when he comes to wear "em; but t" same man"ll go and get married as careless and off-hand like, as if there weren"t the smallest chance of his wife"s not suiting him. I was took by thy good looks, la.s.s, I won"t deny, when I first saw thee," Mr. Jeffson added, with diplomatic gallantry; "but it wasn"t because of thy looks as I asked thee to be my true wife, and friend, and companion, throughout this mortal life and all its various troubles."
CHAPTER XXV.
"FOR LOVE HIMSELF TOOK PART AGAINST HIMSELF."
It was eleven o"clock when Isabel woke; and it was twelve when she sat down to make some pretence of eating the egg and toast which Mrs.
Jeffson set before her. The good woman regarded her young mistress with a grave countenance, and Mrs. Gilbert shrank nervously from that honest gaze. Shame and disgrace--she had denied the application of those hideous words to herself: but the cup which she had repudiated met her lips at every turn, and the flavour of its bitter waters was intermingled with everything she tasted. She turned away from Mrs.
Jeffson, and felt angry with her. Presently, when the faithful housekeeper was busy in the kitchen, Mrs. Gilbert went softly up-stairs to her room, and put on her bonnet and shawl.
She was not to meet _him_ till three o"clock in the afternoon, and it was now only a little after twelve; but she could not stay in the house.
A terrible fever and restlessness had taken possession of her lately.
Had not her life been altogether one long fever since Roland Lansdell"s advent in Midlandshire? She looked back, and remembered that she had lived once, and had been decently contented, in utter ignorance of this splendid being"s existence. She had lived, and had believed in the shadowy heroes of books, and in great clumsy grey-coated officers stationed at Conventford, and in a sickly curate at Camberwell; and long, long ago--oh, unutterable horror!--in a sentimental-looking young chemist"s apprentice in the Walworth Road, who had big watery-looking blue eyes, and was not so very unlike Ernest Maltravers, and who gave more liberal threepenny-worths of lavender-water or hair-oil than any other chemist on the Surrey side of the water--to Isabel! not to other people! Miss Sleaford sent one of the boys for the usual threepenny-worth on one occasion, and the chemist"s measure was very different, and the young lady was not a little touched by this proof of her admirer"s devotion.
And looking back now she remembered these things, and wondered at them, and hated herself because of them. There was no low image of a chemist"s a.s.sistant lurking dimly in the background of Viola"s life when she met her fate in the person of Zanoni. All Isabel"s favourite heroines seemed to look out at her reproachfully from their cloudland habitations, as she remembered this portion of her existence. She had lived, and there had been no prophetic vision of _his_ face among all her dreams. And now there was nothing for her but to try to go back to the same dull life again, since to-day she was to part from him for ever.
The day was a thorough March day--changeable in mood--now brightened by a sudden glimpse of the sun, now grey and threatening, dull and colourless as the life which lay before Isabel Gilbert when _he_ should be gone, and the sweet romance of her existence closed abruptly, like a story that is never to be finished. The Doctor"s Wife shuddered as she went out into the lane, where the dust was blowing into eddying circles every now and then by a frolicsome north-easter. She closed the gate safely behind her and went away, and to-day for the first time she felt that her errand was a guilty one. She went into the familiar meadow pathway; she tried to walk slowly, but her feet seemed to carry her towards Thurston"s Crag in spite of herself; and when she was far from Graybridge, and looked at her watch, it was only one o"clock, and there were two long hours that must elapse before Roland Lansdell"s coming. It was only a quarter past one when she came in sight of the miller"s cottage--the pretty little white-walled habitation nestling low down under big trees, which made a shelter even in winter time. A girl was standing at a door feeding chickens and calling to them in a loud cheerful voice. There was no sorrowful love story in her life, Mrs.
Gilbert thought, as she looked at the bouncing red-elbowed young woman.
She would marry some floury-visaged miller"s man, most likely, and be happy ever after. But it was only a momentary thrill of envy that shot through Isabel"s breast. Better to die for Roland Lansdell than to live for a miller"s man in thick clumpy boots and an elaborately-st.i.tched smock-frock. Better to have lived for the briefest summer time of joy and triumph, and then to stand aloof upon a rock for ever afterwards, staring at the wide expanse of waters, and thinking of the past, like Napoleon at St. Helena.
"He has loved me!" thought Isabel; "I ought never to be unhappy, when I remember that."
She had brought Sh.e.l.ley with her, and she seated herself upon the bench under the oak; but she only turned the leaves over and over, and listened to the brawling waters at her feet, and thought of Roland Lansdell. Sometimes she tried to think of what her life would be after she had parted from him; but all the future after four o"clock that afternoon seemed to recede far away from her, beyond the limits of her understanding. She had a vague idea that after this farewell meeting she would be like Louise de la Valliere in the days of her seclusion and penitence. If Father Newman, or any other enthusiastic Romanist, could have found her sitting by the brawling water that afternoon, he would have secured a willing convert to his tender sentimental creed. The poor bewildered spirit pined for the shadowy aisles of some conventual sanctuary, the low and solemn music, the glimmering shrines, the dreamy exaltation and rapture, the separation from a hard commonplace world.
But no sympathetic stranger happened to pa.s.s that way while Isabel sat there, watching the path by which Roland Lansdell must come. She took out her watch every now and then, always to be disappointed at the slow progress of the time; but at last--at last--just as a sudden gleam of sunshine lighted the waterfall, and flickered upon the winding pathway, a distant church clock struck three, and the master of Mordred Priory pushed open a little gate, and came in and out among the moss-grown trunks of the bare elms. In the next minute he was on the bridge; in the next moment, as it seemed, he was seated by Isabel"s side, and had taken her pa.s.sive hand in his. For the last time--for the last time! she thought. Involuntarily her fingers closed on his. How closely they seemed linked together now; they who so soon were to be for ever parted; they between whom all the expanse of the Atlantic would have been only too narrow a barrier!
Mrs. Gilbert looked up sadly and shrinkingly at Roland"s face, and saw that it was all flushed and radiant. There was just the faintest expression of nervous hesitation about his mouth; but his dark eyes shone with a resolute glance, and seemed more definite in colour than Isabel had ever seen them yet.
"My darling," he said, "I am very punctual, am I not? I did not think you would be here before me. You can never guess how much I have thought of our meeting to-day, Isabel:--seriously; solemnly even. Do you remember the garden-scene in "Romeo and Juliet," Izzie? What pretty sportive boy-and-girl gallantry the love-making seems; and yet what a tragedy comes of it directly after! When I look at you to-day, Isabel, and think of my sleepless nights, my restless weary days, my useless wanderings, my broken vows and wasted resolutions, I look back and remember our first meeting at Warncliffe Castle--our chance meeting. If I had gone away ten minutes sooner, I might not have seen you--I might never have seen you. I look back and see it all. I looked up so indifferently when poor Raymond introduced you to us; it was almost a bore to get up and bow to you. I thought you were very pretty, a beautiful pale-faced automaton, with wonderful eyes that belonged of right to some Italian picture, and not to a commonplace little person like you. And then--having so little to do, being altogether such an idle purposeless wretch, and being glad of any excuse for getting away from my stately cousin and my dear prosy old uncle--I must needs stroll to Hurstonleigh Grove, and meet you again under the changing shadows of the grand old trees. Oh, what was it, Isabel? why was it? Was it only idle curiosity, as I believed, that took me there? Or had the cruel arrow shot home already; was my destiny sealed even then? I don"t know--I don"t know. I am not a good man, Izzie; but I am not utterly bad either. I went away from you, my dear; I _did_ try to avoid the great peril of my life; but--you remember the monk in Hugo"s "Notre Dame." It seems a grand story in that book, Izzie, but it"s the commonest story in all the world. Some day--some careless day--we look out of the window and see the creature dancing in the sunshine, and from that moment every other purpose of our life is done with and forgotten; we can do nothing but go out and follow her wherever she beckons us. If she is a wicked siren, she may lure us into the dark recesses of her cave and pick our bones at her leisure. If she is Undine, and plunges deep down into the blue water, we can only take a header and go to the bottom after her.
But if she is a dear little innocent creature, worthy of our best love and worship, why should we not be happy with her ever afterwards, like the good people in the story-books? why should we not plan a bright life of happiness and fidelity? Isabel, my darling, I want to talk very seriously to you to-day. The crisis has come in our lives, and I am to find out to-day whether you are the true woman I believe you to be, or only a pretty little village coquette, who has fooled me to the top of my bent, and who can whistle me off and let me down the wind to prey at fortune directly I become a nuisance. Izzie, I want you to answer a serious question to-day, and all the happiness of my future life depends upon your answer."
"Mr. Lansdell!"
She looked up at him--very much frightened by his manner, but with her hand still clasping his. The link must so soon be broken for ever. Only for a little while longer might she retain that dear hand in hers. Half an hour more, and they would be parted for ever and ever. The pain of that thought was strangely mingled with the delicious joy of being with him, of hearing from his lips that she was beloved. What did she care for Lady Gwendoline now?--cruel jealous Lady Gwendoline, who had outraged and insulted the purity of her love.
"Isabel," Roland said, very gravely, bending his head to a level with hers, as he spoke, but looking at the ground rather than at her, "It is time that we ended this farce of duty and submission to the world; we have tried to submit, and to rule our lives by the laws which other people have made for us. But we cannot--we cannot, my dear. We are only hypocrites, who try to mask our revolt under the pretence of submission.
You come here and meet me, and we are happy together--unutterably and innocently happy. But you leave me and go home to your husband, and smile at him, and tell him that, while you were out walking, you met Mr.
Lansdell, and so on; and you hoodwink and fool him, and act a perpetual lie for his delusion. All that must cease, Isabel. That Preacher, whom _I_ think the n.o.blest reformer, the purest philosopher whose voice was ever heard upon this earth, said that we cannot serve two masters. You cannot go on living the life you have lived for the last three weeks, Isabel. That is impossible. You have made a mistake. The world will tell you that, having made it, you must abide by it, and atone for your folly by a life of dissimulation. There are women brave enough--good enough, if you like--to do this, and to bear their burden patiently; but you are not one of them. You cannot dissimulate. Your soul has flown to me like a bird out of a cage; it is mine henceforth and for ever; as surely as that I love you,--fatally, unaccountably, mysteriously, but eternally. I know the strength of my chain, for I have tried to break it. I have held aloof, and tested the endurance of my love. If I ask you now to accept that love, it is because I know that it is true and pure,--the true metal, Izzie, the real virgin gold! I suppose a narrow vein of it runs through every man"s nature; but it is only one woman"s hand that has power to strike upon the precious ore. I love you, Isabel; and I want you to make an end of your present life, and leave this place for ever.
I have written to an agent to get me a little villa on the outskirts of Naples. I went there alone, Izzie, two months ago, and set up your image in the empty rooms, and fancied you hovering here and there in your white dress, upon the broad marble terrace, with the blue sea below you, and the mountains above. I have made a hundred plans for our life, Izzie. There is not a whim or fancy of yours that I have not remembered.
Ah, what happiness! to show you wonderful things and beautiful scenes!
What delicious joy to see your eyes open their widest before all the fairest pictures of earth! I fancy you with me, Isabel, and, behold, my life is transformed. I have been so tired of everything in the world; and yet, with you by my side, all the world will be as fresh as Eden was to Adam on the first day of his life. Isabel, you need have no doubt of me. I have doubted myself, and tested myself. Mine is no light love, that time or custom can change or lessen: if it were, I would have done my duty, and stayed away from you for ever. I have thought of your happiness as well as my own, darling; and I ask you now to trust me, and leave this place for ever."
Something like a cry of despair broke from Isabel"s lips. "You ask me to go away with you!" she exclaimed, looking at Roland as if she could scarcely believe the testimony of her own ears. "You ask me to leave George, and be your--mistress! Oh, Lady Gwendoline only spoke the truth, then. You don"t understand--no one understands--how I love you!"
She had risen as she spoke, and flung herself pa.s.sionately against the bal.u.s.trade of the bridge, sobbing bitterly, with her face hidden by her clasped hands.
"Isabel, for Heaven"s sake, listen to me! Can you doubt the purity of my love--the truth, the honesty of my intentions? I ask you to sign no unequal compact. Give me your life, and I"ll give you mine in exchange--every day--every hour. Whatever the most exacting wife can claim of her husband, you shall receive from me. Whatever the truest husband can be to his wife, I swear to be to you. It is only a question of whether you love me, Isabel. You have only to choose between me and that man yonder."
"Oh, Roland! Roland! I have loved you so--and you could think that I----. Oh, you must despise me--you must despise me very much, and think me very wicked, or you would never----"
She couldn"t say any more; but she still leant against the bridge, sobbing for her lost delusion.
Lady Gwendoline had been right, after all,--this is what Isabel thought,--and there had been no platonism, no poet-worship on Roland Lansdell"s side; only the vulgar every-day wish to run away with another man"s wife. From first to last she had been misunderstood; she had been the dupe of her own fancies, her own dreams. Lady Gwendoline"s cruel words were only cruel truths. It was no Dante, no Ta.s.so, who had wandered by her side; only a dissipated young country squire, in the habit of running away with other people"s wives, and glorying in his iniquity. There was no middle standing-place which Roland Lansdell could occupy in this foolish girl"s mind. If he was not a demi-G.o.d, he must be a villain. If he was not an exalted creature, full of poetic aspirations and n.o.ble fancies, he must be a profligate young idler, ready to whisper any falsehood into the ears of foolish rustic womanhood. All the stories of aristocratic villany that she had ever read flashed suddenly back upon Mrs. Gilbert"s mind, and made a crowd of evidence against Lady Anna Lansdell"s son. If he was not the one grand thing which she had believed him to be--a poetic and honourable adorer--he was in nothing the hero of her dreams. She loved him still, and must continue to love him, in spite of all his delinquencies; but she must love him henceforward with fear and trembling, as a splendid iniquitous creature, who had not even one virtue to set against a thousand crimes. Such thoughts as these crowded upon her, as she leaned sobbing on the narrow wooden rail of the bridge; while Roland Lansdell stood by, watching her with a grave and angry countenance.
"Is this acting, Mrs. Gilbert? Is this show of surprise and indignation a little comedy, which you play when you want to get rid of your lovers?
Am I to accept my dismissal, and bid you good afternoon, and put up patiently with having been made the veriest fool that ever crossed this bridge?"
"Oh, Roland!" cried Isabel, lifting her head and looking piteously round at him, "I loved you so--I l-loved so!"
"You love me so, and prove your love by fooling me with tender looks and blushes, till I believe that I have met the one woman in all the world who is to make my life happy. Oh, Isabel, I have loved you because I thought you unlike other women. Am I to find that it is only the old story after all--falsehood, and trick, and delusion? It was a feather in your cap to have Mr. Lansdell of the Priory madly in love with you; and now that he grows troublesome, you send him about his business. I am to think this, I suppose. It has all been coquetry and falsehood, from first to last."