Kitabı oku: «An Old Man's Darling», sayfa 8

CHAPTER XIX

Colonel Carlyle keeps the peace for several days. He finds that he has overstepped the mark and that it will take careful management to regain his lost ground in his wife's regard. Bonnibel, though she married him without a spark of love, has yet given him a very frank and tender regard and esteem until now. She has always thought him a perfect gentleman, a model of courtesy and propriety, and as such she has given him all that was left in her heart to give—the reverence and affection of a dutiful daughter. Now, without a moment's warning, her ideal has fallen from the proud pedestal where she had placed it—its shattered fragments bestrewed the ground, and she knows, if he does not, that the broken image can never be restored.

He has deceived her, she tells herself bitterly, but now that he has won her, the mask of courtliness is laid aside, and he shows the iron hand that was hidden beneath the velvet glove.

But a few short weeks had fled, and he begins to play the tyrant already.

Her passionate, undisciplined nature rises up in hot rebellion against his injustice. The foolish jealousy of his old age appears very contemptible to her youthful eyes. She does not try to excuse it to herself. A great revulsion of feeling comes over her, chilling the gentle growth of tenderness and gratitude in her heart. Her manner grows cold, reserved, almost offensively haughty.

Ere this first cloud on the matrimonial horizon clears away the grand ball of the season comes off. The gay visitors at Long Branch dance every night, but this is to be the most brilliant affair of any—a "full dress affair" is what the ladies call it—meaning to say that they wear their finest dresses and costliest jewels—the gentlemen likewise.

The night is cloudless, balmy, beautiful—such nights as we have in the last of July when the moon is full and Heaven martials its hosts of stars in the illimitable canopy above. The spacious ball-room is thronged with revelers. The dreamy, passionate strains of waltz-music float out upon the air, filling it with melody.

Standing beside a window is Colonel Carlyle, in elegant evening dress, looking very stately and distinguished despite his seventy years. Leaning on his arm is Felise Herbert, looking radiant in rose-colored satin and gauze, with a diamond fillet clasping her dark hair, and diamonds shining like dew on her bare throat and rounded arms. Smiles dimple her red lips as she watches the animated scene about her, and her dark eyes shine like stars. Her companion thinks that he never saw her half so handsome before as she hangs on his arm and chatters airy nothings in his ears.

"Look at our little Bonnibel," she says, in a tone of innocent amusement; "is she not a demure little coquette? She looks like a veritable snow-maiden, as cold and as pure, yet she has young Penn inextricably prisoned in her toils, and everyone knows it—no one better than herself."

His glance follows hers across the room to where his young wife stands a little outside the giddy circle of waltzers, leaning on the arm of a handsome, dreamy-looking youth, and despite the jealous pang that thrills him at Felise's artful speech, his heart throbs with a great love and pride at her exceeding beauty.

She looks like a snow-maiden, indeed, as her enemy says. She wears costly white lace over her white silk, and her cheeks and brow, her arms and shoulders are white as her dress. Colonel Carlyle's wedding gift, a magnificent set of diamonds, adorns her royally. There is not a flower about her, nothing but silk and laces and costly gems, yet withal, she makes you think of a lily, she looks so white, and cold, and pure in the whirl of rainbow hues around her.

Her companion bends toward her, speaking earnestly, yet she listens with such apparent indifference and almost ennui that if that be coquetry at all it can surely be characterized by no other term than that of Felise—"demure."

"I thought that Penn's loves were all ideal ones," the colonel says, trying to speak carelessly as he watches his wife's companion closely. "To judge from his latest volumes of poems, the divinities of his worship are all too ethereal to tread this lower earth."

Felise laughs significantly as her companion ceases to speak.

"Byron Penn, despite the ethereal creatures of his brain, is not proof against mortal beauty," she says. "Remember, Colonel Carlyle, that angels once looked down from Heaven and loved the women of earth."

"He is a graceful waltzer," her companion returns, as the young poet circles the waist of the snow-maiden with one arm and whirls her into the mazes of the giddy, breathless waltz.

"Very," says Felise, watching the graceful couple as they float around the room, embodying the very poetry of motion.

She is silent a moment, then looks up into her companion's face with a slightly curious expression.

"Pardon my question," she says, thoughtfully; "but do you quite approve of married women waltzing with other men than their husbands?"

He starts and looks at her sharply. The innocent deference and unconsciousness of her voice and face are perfect.

"Since you ask me," he says, slowly, "I may say that upon mature consideration I might think it was not exactly comme il faut. Yet I have really never before given a second thought to the subject. It is quite customary, you know, and it seems even more excusable in my wife than other women, since I never waltz myself, and she would be compelled to forego that pleasure entirely unless she shared it with others."

"Oh, pray do not think that I have any reference to Bonnibel," exclaimed Felise, hurried and earnestly, "I was speaking altogether in the abstract. Yet I fully agree with you that your wife would be more excusable for many little errors of head and heart than most women. She is scarcely more than a child, and has never had the proper training to fit her for her present sphere. Her uncle was culpably indulgent to her, and hated to force her inclination, which was very adverse to study or application of any kind. Consequently our little Bonnibel, though beautiful as a dream, is little more than an unformed child. She should be in the school-room this minute."

Every word is spoken with such a pretty air of excusing and defending the young wife's errors, and condemning her dead uncle as their cause, that Colonel Carlyle is entirely deceived. He did not know that Bonnibel was so neglected and unformed before, but he takes it on trust since Felise is so confident of it, and the thought rankles bitterly in his proud heart. But he passes over the subject in silence and returns to the primal one.

"So you would not, as a rule, Miss Herbert, commend the practice of married women waltzing with other men than their husbands?"

She drops her eyes with a pretty air of mingled confusion and earnestness.

"Perhaps you will call me prudish," she says, "or perhaps I may be actuated by the more ignoble passion of jealousy; but I have always felt that were I a man it would be insupportable shame and agony for me to see my wife, whom I loved and revered as a being little lower than an angel, whirled about a common ball-room in the arms of another, while the gaping public nodded and winked."

She saw a look of shame and pain cross his face as his eyes followed the white figure floating round the room in the clasp of Byron Penn's arms.

"I suppose there are not many women who feel as strongly on that subject as you do," he says, slowly.

"Oh, dear, no, nor men either, or they would not permit their wives such license," is the quick reply.

The waltz-music ceases with a bewildering crash of melody, and some one comes up and claims Felise for the next german. She floats away airily as a rose-colored cloud on her partner's arm, and leaves her victim alone. He stands there quite silently a little, seeming lost in troubled thought, then goes to seek his wife.

He finds her the center of an admiring circle, the young poet, Byron Penn, conspicuous among them.

With a slight apology to his friends he offers his arm and leads her away from the throng out to the long moonlighted piazzas.

"Shall I find you a seat or will you promenade?" he inquires politely.

"Oh! promenade, by all means," she answers a little constrainedly.

They take a few turns up and down the long piazza, Mrs. Carlyle's long robe trailing after her with a silken "swish, swish;" she makes no observation, does not even look at him.

Her large eyes wander away and linger upon the sea that is glorious beyond description with the radiance of the full moon mirrored in its deeps, and making a pathway of light across its restless waves.

She thinks vaguely that the golden streets of the celestial city must look like that.

"I hope you are enjoying the ball?" her liege lord observes interrogatively.

"As much as I ever enjoy anything," she returns listlessly.

"Which means–" he says, quickly, then checks himself abruptly.

She finishes his sentence with a dreary little sigh:

"That I do not enjoy anything very much!"

He looks down at her, wondering at the unusual pathos of her tone, and sees a face to match the voice.

Moonlight they say brings out the true expression of the soul upon the features.

If that be true then Bonnibel Carlyle bears a sad and weary soul within her breast.

The white face looks very spirituelle in the soft, mystical light, and the delicate lips are set in a line of pain.

No man likes to see his wife unhappy. It is a reflection upon himself. It is his first duty to secure her happiness. Colonel Carlyle is nettled, and says, half querulously:

"I am sorry to see you ennuyed where everything seems conspiring to promote your happiness. Can I do nothing to further that end?"

Her large eyes look up at him a moment in grave surprise at his fretful tone. Then she says to herself in apology for him:

"He is old, and I have heard that old people become irritated very easily."

"Pray do not trouble yourself over my thoughtless words, sir," she says, aloud. "I am tired—that is all. Perhaps I have danced too much."

"It was of that subject I wished to speak with you when I brought you out here," he answers, abruptly. "Are you very fond of the waltz, Bonnibel?"

"I like it quite well;" this after a moment's study. "There is something dreamy, intoxicating, almost delightful in the music and the motion."

A spasm of jealousy contracts his heart. He speaks quickly and with a labored breath.

"I have never waltzed in my life, and cannot, of course, enter into the feelings of those who have, but I can see what I am about to ask may be a great sacrifice to you."

She glances up inquiringly into his face, but he will not meet her eyes.

"Bonnibel, I want you to give up waltzing altogether—will you do it?" he asks, bruskly.

"Give up waltzing?" she echoes, in surprise. "Is not that a very sudden notion, Colonel Carlyle? I did not know you harbored any objections to the Terpsichorean art."

"I do not in the abstract," he answers, evasively. "But you will pardon me for saying that I consider it exceedingly indelicate and improper for a married woman to dance with any man but her husband. That is why I have asked you to give it up for my sake."

"Do other people think the same way, sir?" she inquires timidly.

"All right-minded people do," he answers firmly, quite ignoring the fact that he is a perfectly new proselyte to his boldly announced conviction of the heinousness of the waltz.

Silence falls between them for a little time. They have stopped walking and stand leaning against the piazza rails. Quite unconsciously she has pulled a flower from his elegant boutonniere, and is tearing it to pieces between her white-gloved fingers. She looks up as the last rose-leaf is shredded away between her restless fingers and asks, quietly:

"Would it please you very much to have me give up waltzing, sir?"

"More than words can express, my darling; are you going to make me happy by the promise?"

"I am quite willing to please you, sir, when it is possible for me to do so," she answers quite gently; "you have my promise."

"Bonnibel, you are an angel!" exclaims the enraptured colonel. He draws his arm around her an instant and bends to kiss her lips. "A thousand thanks for your generous self-sacrifice!"

"You need not thank me, sir—it is not much of a sacrifice," she answers, dryly.

She has drawn out her programme of the dances for the evening and is hurriedly consulting it.

"I find that I am engaged for one more waltz," she says, carelessly. "I suppose you do not object to my dancing that? It would be embarrassing to excuse myself."

"Your partner is—whom?" he inquires, with a slight frown.

Again she consults her programme.

"It is Mr. Penn."

"Cannot you excuse yourself? Say you are tired? Your head aches? Women know how to invent suitable excuses always—do they not?"

"I will do as you wish, sir," she answers, in so low a voice that he does not catch its faint inflection of scorn.

Other promenaders come out on the piazza, and one or two laughing jests are thrown at him for keeping the "belle of the ball away from her proper sphere."

"Perhaps I am selfish," he says. "Let us return to the ball-room, my love."

"As you please," she answers.

He leads her back and lingers by her side awhile, then it strikes him that les proprietes do not sanction a man's monopolizing his wife's company in society. With a sigh he leaves her, and tries to make himself agreeable to other fair women.

He has hardly left her before the band strikes up "The Beautiful Blue Danube," and Byron Penn starts up from some remote corner, from which he has witnessed her return to the ball-room.

"This is our waltz, is it not?" he says, with a tremor of pleasure in his voice.

A slight flush rises over Bonnibel's cheek.

"I believe it is," she answers; "but if you will not think me very rude, Mr. Penn, I am going to ask you to excuse me from it. I am tired and shall dance no more this evening."

"You are very cruel," says the poet, plaintively; "but if you wish to atone for your injustice you will walk down to the shore with me and look at the moonlight on the sea, and hear how delicious the music sounds down there. You can form no conception of its sweetness when mellowed by a little distance and blent with the solemn diapason of the waves."

"If you will go and tell my maid to bring me a shawl," she answers, indifferently, "I will go with you for a minute."

He returns with a fleecy white wrap, and they stroll away from the "dancers dancing in tune."

CHAPTER XX

Colonel Carlyle soon misses his heart's fair queen from the ball-room, and immediately the whole enchanting scene becomes a desert in his love-lorn eyes. He glances hither and thither; he wanders disconsolately around, yet no flitting glimpse of his snow-maiden rewards his eager eyes. She has vanished as completely from his sight as if a sunbeam had shone down upon and dissolved her into a mist.

"Have you seen Bonnibel anywhere?" he inquires of Felise, meeting her on her partner's arm as he wandered around.

Felise looks up with a low, malicious laugh.

"Bonnibel?" she says. "Oh, yes; she and Byron Penn have been down on the beach this half hour in the moonlight, composing sonnets."

Her partner laughs and hurries her on, leaving the anxious old husband standing in the floor like one dazed. A dozen people standing around have heard the question and its answer. They nod and wink at each other, for Colonel Carlyle's patent jealousy has begun to make him a laughing stock. After a moment he recollects himself and turns away. People wonder if he will go out and confront the sentimental pair, and a few couples, on curiosity bent, stroll out to watch his proceedings. They are rewarded directly, for he comes out and takes his way down the shore.

Felise's assertion of a half an hour is merely a pleasant fiction. It has not been ten minutes since she left the house on the arm of the young poet. They are standing on the beach looking out at the glorious sea, and the young man whose soul is so deeply imbued with poetry that he can think and speak of nothing else, has been telling her what a sweet poem is "Lucille," Owen Meredith's latest. He repeats a few lines, and the girl inclines her head and tries to be attentive.

 
"O, being of beauty and bliss! seen and known
In the depths of my heart, and possessed there alone,
My days know thee not, and my lips name thee never,
Thy place in my poor life is vacant forever,
We have met, we have parted, no more is recorded
In my annals on earth."
 

The pretty lines have a more attentive listener than Bonnibel. Her husband has come up softly and unnoticed. He sees the graceful head graciously inclined, hears the lines that Byron Penn has, unconsciously to himself, made the vehicle for expressing his own sentiments, and his heart quakes with fury. He strides before them, white and stern.

"Mrs. Carlyle," he says, in low, stern accents, "will you come with me?"

The young wife lifts her drooping head with a start and sees him standing before her, wan, white and haggard, quite a different man from the enraptured lover who had kissed and praised her but a little while ago.

"I—oh, dear me—has anything happened, Colonel Carlyle? Are you ill?" she falters, in her innocent unconsciousness.

"Will you come with me?" he repeats, grinding his teeth in a fury.

"Certainly," she says, thinking that something dreadful must have happened surely, and simply saying, "You will excuse me, Mr. Penn," she bows and turns away on her husband's arm.

The handsome young fellow looks after them blankly.

"Upon my word," he exclaims, "what a furious, uncalled-for outbreak of jealousy! So that's what it is to be an old man's darling, is it? Truly an enviable position for such a peerless angel."

He throws himself down on the beach, to the detriment of his immaculate evening costume, and resigns himself to some rather melancholy musings.

Meanwhile Bonnibel, as she walks away, again asks, with sweet unconsciousness:

"Has anything happened, Colonel Carlyle?"

"Let us go to your private parlor; I will tell you there," he answers, coldly.

Inside that safe retreat they confront each other in momentary silence, Bonnibel anxious, troubled, and totally unconscious, Colonel Carlyle pale with anger and wild, unreasoning jealousy, his brain on fire with contending passions that have been seething there ever since Felise's consummate art had been employed to torture him this evening.

"Now you will tell me?" she inquires, standing before him with loosely-clasped hands, the fleecy drapery falling from her shoulders, the fairest vision his eyes ever rested upon.

"Bonnibel, you surely do not pretend to be ignorant that you have given me cause for offense?" he exclaims, hoarsely.

Her blue eyes dilate; she retreats a step with genuine surprise depicted on her face. Then she remembered her promise about waltzing.

"Surely, there is some misunderstanding," she answers, slowly. "I assure you, sir, that I have not waltzed any more since you asked me not to do so."

"You have done worse, much worse!" he exclaims, passionately, "and your affectation of innocence must certainly be feigned. No woman in her senses could be oblivious to the fact that your open flirtation with that silly rhymester, Byron Penn, is simply scandalous."

In his excitement he characterizes her offense in terms more forcible than true. She is dumb with astonishment for a moment, then she walks straight up to him, a blaze of color rushing over her face and neck, while her eyes flash lightning scorn upon him.

"This to me!" she exclaims, her girlish voice ringing with passion and resentment. "Such an accusation to Harry Vere's daughter! Oh! for shame! How dare you!"

"You provoked it yourself," he answers, retreating before her, for her little hands were clenched wildly as if she would strike him down to earth; "I gave you my honored name to wear—a name as proud as your father's—and you have dragged it through the mire of a moonlight flirtation with a dandy, an idiot."

"It is false," she answers, proudly, "I never flirted in my life, I should not know how to do it. And there was no harm in my short walk down to the shore with Mr. Penn. No one could make harm of it except a man blinded by jealousy!"

A glimmer of the truth had begun to dawn upon her. It angered him bitterly to know that she had detected his weakness.

"I have been blinded by many things," he answers, furiously. "I was blinded by your beautiful face before I married you, and could not see that you had never received the proper training and education to fit you for the position to which I elevated you. My eyes have been opened by your recent conduct, and I find you simply an unformed child, utterly ignorant how to maintain your dignity as my wife!"

Word for word he is going over the specious sophistries of Felise, but he is utterly unconscious of the fact. He has been merely a pliant tool in her artful hands, but he believes that he has found out all these facts for himself, and he asserts them with a perfect conviction of truth.

For Bonnibel stands listening in stunned silence to his vehement rhodomontade. She has walked away from him a little way, and stands clinging to the back of a chair, as if to save herself from falling. The angry flush has died out of her face, and she looks marble-cold, and white even to her lips. As he pauses, she speaks in low, resentful accents:

"Colonel Carlyle, you are the first man who has ever offered me an insult!"

"An insult!" he exclaims. "Do you call the truth an insult? You talk like a child and act like a child, Bonnibel. I see no other resource before me than to put you at school and keep you there until you learn the necessary amenities of social life which your uncle's blind indulgence aided and abetted you in ignoring."

"Send me—a married woman—to school—like a child!" she says, staring at him blankly.

"Why not? You are quite young enough yet," he answers, moodily. "Two years at a convent school in Paris would give you the training and finish you lack at present."

"I assure you, sir, that my education has not been so totally neglected as your words imply," she answers from the depths of the arm-chair into which she has wearily fallen. "My Uncle Francis, though he loved me too well to send me away from him to school, always provided me with competent governesses, and if my training does not do them credit it is my own fault, not his; so I beg that you will not needlessly reflect on his memory."

He was silent a moment, pacing restlessly up and down the floor. An unconscious pathos in her words had stung him into reflection. "My Uncle Francis loved me too well to send me away from him," has touched a responsive chord in his own heart. Her uncle had loved her like that, yet he, her husband, bound to her by the dearest tie on earth, could talk of sending her away from him like a naughty child that, having disobeyed, must be punished for its fault.

"Could I do it?" he asked himself, suddenly. "I love her as my own life, though her childish follies drive me mad with jealousy. I am growing old—could I lose her out of my life two precious years when my span of existence may be so short? No, no, fool that I was to threaten her so; I will retract it if I can without compromising my dignity."

He paused before her and said abruptly:

"I understand from your words then, Bonnibel, that you refuse your consent to my proposed plan?"

To his surprise and confusion she lifted her head with a proud, stag-like motion, and said icily:

"Au contraire, sir, I think well of it, and fully agree with you that I need more training and polish to fit me for the exalted position I occupy as your wife!"

The fine, delicate irony of her tone could not fail to strike him keenly.

He tried to ignore it as he said in a voice that betrayed nothing of his conflicting emotions:

"My proposed course meets with your full approval, then, madam?"

She inclines her head with stately grace.

"I cannot think of anything at present, Colonel Carlyle, that would please me so well as a few years at a Parisian school such as you mentioned."

"She is only too glad to have an opportunity of separating herself from me," he thinks, bitterly; but aloud he answers coldly, "So be it; I shall be happy to meet your wishes."