To one and all she said the same thing:
"Hush, do not speak; I am listening!"
It had grown too late to see; there was no moon, and the pale light of the stars revealed nothing; it had grown colder, too. There was a faint sound in the wind that told of coming rain. Her own maid--more at liberty to speak than the others--prayed her to come in; but all advice, reason, remonstrance received the same answer:
"I must not leave this spot until the twenty-four hours are ended."
She would not have suffered half the torture had the letter arrived; she would have known then at once that she was not to expect him; and the ordeal of waiting would have been over at once; but she clung to the hope he would come, he must come. She recalled his promises given solemnly--she said to herself with a little shudder:
"If he does not come to-day he will never come."
And then she hated herself for the half-implied doubt of him. No matter if the sun had fallen and the nightingale was singing; no matter if the solemn hush of night had fallen, and soft, deep shadows lay around, he would come. The sighs of the wind grew deeper; the roses drooped. She leaned forward, for it seemed to her there was a stir among the trees; it was only some night bird in quest of its prey. Again she bent her head; surely, at last, there was the click of the gate. But no; it was only the swaying of the branches in the wind.
Then clear and full and distinct, cleaving the air, rang out the hour of twelve; it was midnight, and he had not come. The thirtieth of June was over, and he had failed.
One by one she counted those strokes as they fell, in the vain hope that she must be mistaken, that it was only eleven. When she realized it she rose from her solitary watch with a long, low sigh. He had failed; he had not come. She would not judge him; but he had not kept that promise which was more solemn to her than any oath. There were many perils, both by sea and land; the steamer might have run ash.o.r.e, the train may have been delayed; but if the appointment had been for her to keep she would have kept it in spite of all obstacles and all cost.
She rose from her long dull watch; she tried to cross the room and ring the bell, but the strength of her limbs failed her. She did not fall, she sunk into a senseless, almost helpless heap on the floor; and there, long after midnight, her servants found her, and for some time believed her dead. That was the thirtieth of June--for which she had hoped, worked, and prayed as woman never did before.
They raised her from the ground and took her to her room. One kinder than the others sat by her until the dawn, when the dark eyes opened with a look in them which was never to die away again.
"This is the first of July," she said, faintly.
And the maid, seeing that the morning had dawned, said:
"Yes, it is July."
She never attempted to rise that day, but lay with her face turned to the wall, turned from the sunlight and the birds" song, the bloom of flowers, the ripple of leaves, the warmth and light of the summer, thinking only of the mill-stream and the words that for her had so terrible a prophecy:
"A ring in pledge I gave her, And vows of love we spoke-- Those vows are all forgotten, The ring asunder broke."
Over and over again they rang through her brain and her heart, while she fought against them, while she lay trying to deaden her senses, to stifle her reason, doing deadly battle with the fears that a.s.sailed her.
She would not give in; she would not doubt him; there would come to her in time some knowledge; she should know why he had failed.
Failed, oh, G.o.d! how hard the word was to say--failed. Why, if every star in the sky had fallen at her feet it would not have seemed so wonderful.
Perhaps his mother--that proud, haughty woman, who seemed to trample the world under her feet--perhaps she had prevented his coming; but he would come, no matter what the mill-stream said, no matter what his mother wished. The day pa.s.sed and the morrow came--the second of July. She rose on that day and went down-stairs the shadow of her former self--pale, cold, and silent. She did not say to herself "He will come to-day," hope was dying within her. Then at noon came the letter--her maid brought it in. She gave a low cry of delight when she saw the beloved handwriting, that was followed by a cry of pain. He would not have written if he had been coming; that he had written proved that he had no intention of coming. She took the letter, but she dared not trust herself to open it in the presence of her maid; but when the girl was gone, as there was no human eye to rest on the tortured face she could not control, she opened it.
Deadly cold seemed to seize her; a deadly shudder made the letter fall from her hands.
No, he was not coming.
He _must_ go to Spain--to Spain, with his parents and a party of tourists--but he loved her just the same, and he should return to her.
"He is weak of purpose," she said to herself when she had read the last word; "he loves me still; he will come back to me; he will make me his wife in the eyes of the law as he has done in the sight of Heaven. But he is weak of purpose. The Countess of Lanswell has put difficulties in his way, and he has let them conquer him."
Then came to her mind those strong words:
"Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel."
For the second time her servants found her cold and senseless on the ground; but this time she had an open letter in her hand.
The pity was that the whole world could not see how women trust the promises of men, and how men keep theirs.
CHAPTER x.x.xI.
A MAN OF WAX.
It is not pleasant to tell how the foundations of a n.o.ble building are sapped: to tell how the grand, strong trunk of a n.o.ble tree is hacked and hewn until it falls; how the constant rippling of water wears away a stone; how the a.s.sociation with baser minds takes away the bloom from the pure ones; how the constant friction with the world takes the dainty innocence of youth away. It is never pleasant to tell of untruth, or infidelity, or sin. It is not pleasant to write here, little by little, inch by inch, how Lord Chandos was persuaded, influenced, and overcome.
The story of man"s perfidy is always hateful--the story of man"s weakness is always contemptible. Yet the strongest of men, Samson, fell through the blandishments of a woman. Lord Chandos was neither as strong as Samson nor as wise as Solomon; and that a clever woman should get the upper hand of him was not to be wondered at.
He was a brave, gallant, generous gentleman, gay and genial; he could not endure feeling unhappy, nor could he bear the thought of any other person"s unhappiness; he had no tragedy about him; he was kind of heart and simple of mind; he was clever and gifted, but he was like wax in the hands of a clever woman like Lady Lanswell.
He was singularly unsuspicious, believed in most things and most persons; he never misjudged or gave any one credit for bad qualities. He had no more intention of deserting Leone when he left England than he had of seizing the crown of Turkey. His honest, honorable intention was to return to her and marry her on the first hour that such a marriage could be legal. He would have laughed to scorn any one who would have hinted at such a thing. His love then was his life, and he had nothing beside it.
Gradually, slowly but surely, other interests occupied him. A great writer says: "Love is the life of a woman, but only an episode in the life of a man." That was the difference--it was Leone"s life; to him it had been an episode--and now that the episode was somewhat pa.s.sed, other interests opened to him. He meant to be faithful to her and to marry her; nothing should ever shake that determination; but he had ceased to think it need be so hurriedly done; he need not certainly forego the pleasure of the tour and hurry home for his birthday; that was quixotic nonsense; any time that year would do. After his marriage he should lose his mother and Lady Marion; he would enjoy their company as long as he could; Leone was right, she had a luxurious home, the a.s.surance of his love and fidelity, the certainty of being his wife--a few weeks or months would make but little difference to her. He did not think he had done any great harm in going to Spain. One might call it a broken promise; but then most promises are made with a proviso that they shall be kept if possible; and this was not possible; he would have been very foolish--so he said to himself--if he had made matters worse by refusing to go with his mother to Spain. It would have increased her irritation and annoyance all to no purpose.
He tried to convince himself that it was right; and he ended by believing it.
He felt rather anxious as to what Leone would say--and the tone of her letter rather surprised him. She had thought, long before she answered him, reproaches were of no avail--they never are with men; if he had not cared to keep his promise no sharply written words of hers could avail to make him keep it. She made no complaint, no reproaches; she never mentioned her pain or her sorrow; she said nothing of her long watch or its unhappy ending; she did not even tell him of the delayed letter--and he wondered. He was more uncomfortable than if her letter had been one stinging reproach from beginning to end. He answered it--he wrote to her often, but there was a change in the tone of her letters, and he was half conscious of it.
He meant to be true to her--that was his only comfort in the after years; he could not tell--nor did he know--how it first entered his mind to be anything else. Perhaps my lady knew--for she had completely changed her tactics--instead of ignoring Leone she talked of her continually--never unkindly, but with a pitying contempt that insensibly influenced Lord Chandos. She spoke of his future with deepest compa.s.sion, as though he would be completely cut off from everything that could make life worth living; she treated him as though he were an unwilling victim to an unfortunate promise. It took some time to impress the idea upon him--he had never thought of himself in that light at all.
A victim who was giving up the best mother, the kindest friend, everything in life, to keep an unfortunate promise. My lady spoke of him so continually in that light at last he began to believe it.
He was like wax in her hands; despite his warm and true love for his wife that idea became firmly engraved on his mind--he was a victim.
When once she had carefully impressed that upon him my lady went further; she began to question whether really, after all, his promise bound him or not.
In her eyes it did not--certainly not. The whole thing was a most unfortunate mistake; but that he should consider himself bound by such a piece of boyish folly was madness.
So that the second stage of his progress toward falsehood was that, besides looking on himself as a kind of victim, he began to think that he was not bound by his promise. If it had been an error at first it was an error now; and the countess repeated for him very often the story of the Marquis of Atherton, who married the daughter of a lodge-keeper in his nineteenth year. His parents interfered; the marriage was set aside.
What was the consequence? Two years after the girl married the butler, and they bought the Atherton Arms. The marquis, in his twenty-fifth year, married a peeress in her own right, and was now one of the first men in England. My lady often repeated that anecdote; it had made a great impression on her, and it certainly produced an effect on Lord Chandos.
My lady had certainly other influences to bring to bear. The uncle of Lady Erskine, the Duke of Lester, was one of the most powerful n.o.bles in England--the head of the Cabinet, the most influential peer in the House of Lords, the grandest orator and the most respected of men. My lady enjoyed talking about him--she brought forward his name continually, and was often heard to say that whoever had the good fortune to marry Lady Erskine was almost sure to succeed the duke in his numerous honors. Lord Chandos, hearing her one day, said:
"I will win honors, mother--win them for myself--and that will be better than succeeding another man."
She looked at him with a half-sad, half-mocking smile.
"I have no ambition, no hope for you, Lance. You have taken your wife from a dairy--the most I can hope is that you may learn to be a good judge of milk."
He turned from her with a hot flush of anger on his face. Yet the sharp, satirical shaft found its way to his heart. He thought of the words and brooded over them--they made more impression on him than any others had done. In his mother"s mind he had evidently lost his place in the world"s race, never to regain it.