Kitabı oku: «A Mad Love», sayfa 19

CHAPTER LIII.
A QUARREL

From that hour all pretense of peace was at an end between them. Lady Chandos was justly indignant and wounded. If her husband had trusted her all might, even then, have been well, but he did not; he said to himself that she would forget the story of her annoyance in time, and all would be well; he did not give his wife credit for the depth of feeling that she really possessed. Fiercest, most cruel jealousy had taken hold of the gentle lady, it racked and tortured her; the color faded from her face, the light from her eyes; she grew thin and pale; at night she could not sleep, by day she could not rest; all her sweetness, grace and amiability, seemed to have given way to a grave sadness; the sound of her laughter, her bright words, died away; nothing interested her. She who had never known a trouble or a care, now wore the expression of one who was heart-broken; she shrunk from all gayety, all pleasures, all parties; she was like the ghost of her former self; yet after those words of her husband's she never spoke again of Madame Vanira. The sword was sheathed in her heart and she kept it there.

There is no pain so cruel as jealousy; none that so quickly deteriorates a character; it brings so many evils in its train – suspicion, envy, hatred of life, distrust in every one and in everything; it is the most fatal passion that ever takes hold of a human heart, and turns the kindest nature to gall. There was no moment during the day in which Lady Chandos did not picture her husband with her rival; she drove herself almost mad with the pictures she made in her own mind. All the cruel pain, the sullen brooding, the hot anguish, the desolation, the jealousy seemed to surge over her heart and soul like the waves of a deadly sea. If she saw her husband silent and abstracted, she said he was thinking of Madame Vanira; if she saw him laugh and light of heart she said he was pleased because he was going to see Madame Vanira. She had sensible and reasonable grounds for jealousy, but she was unreasonably jealous.

 
"Trifles light as air
Are to the jealous confirmation strong
As proofs of holy writ."
 

It was so with Lady Marion, and her life at last grew too bitter to be borne. There was excuse for Lord Chandos, the mistake was in renewing the acquaintance; a mistake that can never be remedied.

People were beginning to talk; when Lord Chandos was mentioned, they gave significant smiles. Against Madame Vanira there had never been even the faintest rumor of scandal; but a certain idea was current in society – that Lord Chandos admired the queen of song. No one insinuated the least wrong, but significant smiles followed the mention of either name.

"Madame Vanira was at Lady Martyn's last night," one would say.

And the laughing answer was always:

"Then Lord Chandos was not very far away."

"La Vanira sung to perfection in 'Fidelio,'" would remark one.

Another would answer:

"Lord Chandos would know how to applaud."

Madame Vanira was more eagerly sought after than other women in London. She reigned queen, not only over the stage, but over the world of fashion also.

The Countess of Easton gave a grand ball – it was the most exclusive of the season. After much praying Madame Vanira had promised to go, and Lady Chandos was the belle of the ball. They had not met since the evening madame had sung for her, and Lord Chandos had many an anxious thought as to what their next meeting would be like. He knew that Leone would bear much for his sake, yet he did not know what his wife would be tempted to say.

They met on the night of Lady Easton's ball; neither knew that the other was coming. If Lady Chandos had dreamed of meeting Leone there she would not have gone. As it was, they met face to face in the beautiful ante-room that led to the ballroom.

Face to face. Leone wore a superb dress of pale amber brocade, and Lady Chandos a beautiful costume of pale-blue velvet, the long train of which was fastened with white, shining pearls.

It was like the meeting of rival queens. Leone's face flushed, Lady Marion's grew deadly pale. Leone held out her hand; Lady Marion declined to see it. They looked at each other for a brief space of time, then Leone spoke.

"Lady Marion," she said, in a low, pained voice, "have I displeased you?"

"Yes, you have," was the brief reply.

"You will not touch my hand?" said Leone.

"No, I decline to touch your hand," said Lady Marion; "I decline to speak to you after this."

"Will you tell me why?" asked Leone.

Lady Marion's face flushed crimson.

"Since you ask me, I will tell you. You have been seeking my husband, and I do not approve of it. You spent a day with him on the river – he never told me about it. I am not a jealous wife, but I despise any woman who would seek to take the love of a husband from his wife."

Conscience, which makes cowards of us all, kept Leone silent.

Lady Chandos continued:

"What is there between my husband and you?"

"True friendship," answered Leone, trying to speak bravely.

"I do not believe it," said Lady Chandos; "true friendship does not hide itself, or make mystery of its actions. Madame Vanira, I loved you when I first saw you; I take my love and my liking both from you. Now that I find that you have acted treacherously I believe in you no more."

"Those are strong words, Lady Chandos," said Leone.

"They are true; henceforth we are strangers. My friends are honorable women, who would seek to steal my jewels rather than seek to steal from me my husband's love."

Leone could have retaliated; the temptation was strong; she could have said:

"He was my husband, as I believed, before he was yours; you stole him from me, not I from you."

The temptation was strong, the words leaped in a burning torrent from her heart to her lips; she repressed them for his sake and bore the crushing words without reply.

"I have always heard," she said, "that there was ample reason that singers, even though they be queens of song, should not be admitted into the heart of one's home; now I see the justice of it; they are not satisfied with legitimate triumphs. You, Madame Vanira, have not been contented with my liking and friendship, with the hospitality of my home, but you must seek to take my husband's interest, time, affection."

"Are you not judging me harshly, Lady Chandos?" asked the singer. "You bring all these accusations against me and give me no opportunity of clearing myself of them."

"You cannot," said Lady Chandos; "I have no wish to hear your defense, you can neither deny nor explain the fact that you spent a day with my husband on the river; all the sophistry in the world cannot deny that fact, and that fact condemns you."

"Would you say the same thing to any of your former friends?" asked Leone – "to Lady Caldwell or Lady Blake?"

"Neither of them would do such a thing," cried Lady Chandos. "Ladies of the class to which I belong do not spend whole days on the river with gentlemen unknown to their wives. Madame Vanira – you and I are strangers from this time."

"You are very hard on me," said Leone; "the day may come when you will admit that."

"The day will never come in which I will mistake good for evil, or right for wrong," said Lady Chandos. "Others may applaud you, you may continue your sway over the minds and hearts of men, but I shall protest against you, and all those like you, who would come between husbands and wives to separate them."

It was such a satire of fate, such a satire of her own life, that Leone's beautiful lips curled with a bitter smile. It was she who had been parted from her husband by a quibble of the law, and this fair, angry woman had taken him for herself.

Lady Chandos saw the smile and misunderstood it. She bowed, and would have passed, but Leone tried to stop her.

"Will you not say one kind word to me before you go, Lady Chandos?" she asked.

"I have not one kind word to say," was the brief reply.

She would have passed on, but fate again intervened in the person of Lord Chandos, who was walking with his hostess, the Countess of Easton. They stopped before the two ladies, and Lord Chandos saw at once that something was wrong. Madame Vanira, after exchanging a few words with the countess, went away, and as soon as he could, Lord Chandos rejoined his wife.

"Marion," he said, curtly, "you have had some disagreeable words with Madame Vanira. I know it by the expression of your face."

"You are right," she said; "I have told her that henceforth she and I shall be strangers."

"You have dared!" he cried, forgetting himself at the thought of Leone's face.

She turned her fair face proudly to him.

"I have dared," she replied; "I refuse to speak or see Madame Vanira again – she must not cross the threshold of my door again."

Lord Chandos grew deadly pale as he heard the words.

"And I say that you wrong a good and blameless woman, Marion, when you say such words."

"My lord, am I or am I not at liberty to choose my friends?" she asked, haughtily.

"Certainly you are at liberty to do just as you please in that respect," he replied.

"Then among them I decline to receive Madame Vanira," she said.

"As you refuse to see my friends, I must go to meet them," said Lord Chandos.

And then between husband and wife began one of those scenes which leave a mark on both their lives – cruel, hard, unjust and bitter words – hard and cruel thoughts.

Then Lady Chandos had her carriage called and went home.

CHAPTER LIV.
A MOTHER'S APPEAL

"She would not bear it – she could not bear it," this was Lady Marion's conclusion in the morning, when the sunbeams peeping in her room told her it was time to rise. She turned her face to the wall and said it would be easier to die – her life was spoiled, nothing could give her back her faith and trust in her husband or her love for him.

Life held nothing for her now. It was noon before she rose, and then she went to her boudoir. Lord Chandos had gone out, leaving no message for her. She sat there thinking, brooding over her sorrow, wondering what she was to do, when the Countess of Lanswell was announced.

Lady Marion looked up. It was as though an inspiration from Heaven had come to her; she would tell Lady Lanswell, and hear what she had to say.

"You have been crying," said the countess, as she bent over her daughter-in-law. "Crying, and how ill you look – what is the matter?"

"There is something very wrong the matter," said Lady Marion. "Something that I cannot bear – something that will kill me if it is not stopped."

"My dearest Marion," said the countess, "what is wrong? I have never seen you so distressed before. Where is Lance?"

"I never know where he is now," she said. "Oh, Lady Lanswell, I am so miserable, so unhappy that I wish I were dead."

This outbreak from Lady Marion, who was always so calm, so high-bred, so reticent in expressing her feelings, alarmed Lady Lanswell. She took the cold, trembling hands in her own.

"Marion," she said, "you must calm yourself; you must tell me what is the matter and let me help you."

Lady Chandos told her all, and the countess listened in wondering amaze.

"Are you quite sure?" she said. "Lady Ilfield exaggerates sometimes when she repeats those gossiping stories."

"It must be true, since my husband acknowledged it himself, and yet refused to give me any explanation of it. Some time since, I found that he passed so much of his time away from home I asked you if he had any friends with whom he was especially intimate, and you thought not. Now I know that it was Madame Vanira he went to see. She lives at Highgate, and he goes there every day."

"I should not think much of it, my dear, if I were you," said the countess. "Madame Vanira is very beautiful and very accomplished – all gentlemen like to be amused."

"I cannot argue," said Lady Chandos; "I can only say that my own instinct and my own heart tell me there is something wrong, that there is some tie between them. I know nothing of it – I cannot tell why I feel this certain conviction, but I do feel it."

"It is not true, I am sure, Marion," said the countess, gravely. "I know Lance better than any one else; I know his strength, his weakness, his virtues, his failings. Love of intrigue is not one, neither is lightness of love."

"Then if he cares nothing for Madame Vanira, and sees me unhappy over her, why will he not give her up?"

"He will if you ask him," said Lady Lanswell.

"He will not. I have asked him. I have told him that the pain of it is wearing my life away; but he will not. I am very unhappy, for I love my husband."

"And he loves you," said the countess.

"I do not think so. I believe – my instinct tells me – that he loves Madame Vanira."

"Marion, it is wicked to say such things," said the countess, severely. "Because your husband, like every other man of the world, pays some attention to the most gifted woman of her day, you suspect him of infidelity, want of love and want of truth. I wonder at you."

Lady Marion raised her fair, tear-stained face.

"I cannot make you understand," she said slowly, "nor do I understand myself. I only know what I feel, what my instinct tells me, and that is that between my husband and Madame Vanira there is something more than I know. I feel that there is a tie between them. He looks at her with different eyes; he speaks to her with a different voice; when he sung with her it was as though their souls floated away together."

"Marion," interrupted the countess, "my dear child, I begin to see what is the matter with you – you are jealous."

"Yes, I am jealous," said the unhappy wife, "and not without cause – you must own that. Ah, Lady Lanswell, you would be sorry for me if you knew all. See, it is wearing me away; my heart beats, my hands tremble, and they burn like fire. Oh, my God, how I suffer!"

The Countess of Lanswell, in her superb dress of black velvet, sat by in silence; for the first time in her life she was baffled; for the first time in her life she was face to face with a human passion. Hitherto, in her cold, proud presence all passion had veiled itself; this unhappy wife laid hers bare, and my lady was at a loss what to say. In her calm, proud life there had been no room for jealousy; she had never known it, she did not even understand the pain.

If her husband had gone out for a day with the most beautiful woman on earth, she would either have completely ignored the fact, or, with a smiling satire, have passed it by. She did not love the earl well enough to be jealous of him; she did not understand love or jealousy in others. She sat now quite helpless before the unhappy wife, whose grief annoyed her.

"This will not do, Marion," she said, "you will make yourself quite ill."

"Ill," repeated Lady Marion, "I have been ill in heart and soul for many days, and now I am sick unto death. I wish I could die; life has nothing left for me."

"Die, my dear, it seems such a trifle, such a trifle; one day spent together on a river. Is that anything for you to die about?"

The sweet blue eyes raised wistfully to hers were full of pain.

"You do not see, you do not understand. Only think how much intimacy there must have been between them before he would ask her to go, or she consent to go. If they are but strangers, or even every-day friends, what could they find to talk about for a whole day?"

The countess shrugged her shoulders.

"I am surprised," she said, "for I thought Madame Vanira so far above all coquetry. If I were you, Marion, I would forget it."

"I cannot forget it," she cried. "Would to God that I could. It is eating my heart away."

"Then," said my lady, "I will speak to Lance at once, and I am quite sure that at one word from me he will give up the acquaintance, for the simple reason that you do not like it."

And with this promise the countess left her daughter-in-law. Once before, not by her bidding, but by her intrigues, she had persuaded him to give up one whom he loved; surely a few words from her now would induce him to give up her whom he could not surely love. It never occurred to her to dream that they were the same.

She saw him as she was driving home, and, stopping the carriage, asked him to drive with her.

"Lance, I have something very serious to say to you. There is no use beating about the bush, Marion is very ill and very unhappy."

"I am sorry for it, mother, but add also she is very jealous and very foolish."

"My dear Lance, your wife loves you – you know it, she loves you with all her heart and soul. If your friendship with Madame Vanira annoys her, why not give it up?"

"I choose to keep my independence as a man; I will not allow any one to dictate to me what friends I shall have, whom I shall give up or retain."

"In some measure you are right, Lance," said the countess, "and so far as gentleman friends are concerned, I should always choose my own; but as this is a lady, of whom Lady Marion has certain suspicions, I should most certainly give her up."

"My wife has no right to be jealous," he said angrily; "it does not add to my love for her."

"Let me speak seriously to you, Lance," said the countess. "Marion is so unhappy that I should not wonder if she were really ill over it; now why not do as she wishes? Madame Vanira can be nothing to you – Marion is everything. Why not give her up?"

A certain look of settled determination that came to her son's face made the countess pause and wonder. She had seen it there for the first and last time when she had asked her son to renounce his young wife, and now she saw it again. Strange that his next words should seem like an answer to her thoughts.

"Mother," he said, "do not ask me; you persuaded me to give up all the happiness of my life, years ago – do not try me a second time. I refuse, absolutely refuse, to gratify my wife's foolish, jealous wish. I say, emphatically, that I will not give up my friendship for Madame Vanira."

Then my lady looked fixedly at him.

"Lance," she said, "what is Madame Vanira to you?"

He could not help the flush that burned his handsome, angry face, and that flush aroused his mother's curiosity. "Have you known her long? Did you know her before your marriage, Lance? I remember now that I was rather struck by her manner. She reminds me forcibly of some one. Poor Marion declares there is some tie between you. What can it be?"

She mused for some minutes, then looked into her son's face.

"Great Heaven, Lance, it can never be!" she cried. "A horrible idea has occurred to me, and yet it is not possible."

He made no answer, but a look of more dogged defiance came into his face.

"It can never be, and yet I think it is so. Can it be possible that Madame Vanira is the – the dairy-maid to whom you gave your young affections?"

"Madame Vanira is the girl I loved, mother, and whom I believed to be my wife – until you parted us."

And my lady fell back in her carriage with a low cry of "Heaven have mercy on us!"

CHAPTER LV.
"WAR TO THE KNIFE."

Lucia, Countess of Lanswell, was in terrible trouble, and it was the first real trouble of her life. Her son's marriage had been rather a difficulty than a trouble – a difficulty that the law had helped her over. Now no law could intervene, and no justice. Nothing could exceed her surprise in finding Madame Vanira, the Queen of Song, the most beautiful, the most gifted woman in England, positively the "dairy-maid," "the tempestuous young person," the artful, designing girl from whom by an appeal to the strong arm of the law she had saved her son. She paused in wonder to think to herself what would have happened if the marriage had not been declared null and void. In that case, she said to herself, with a shrug of the shoulders, in all probability the girl would not have taken to the stage at all. She wondered that she had not sooner recognized her. She remembered the strong, dramatic passion with which Leone had threatened her. "She was born an actress," said my lady to herself, with a sneer. She determined within herself that the secret should be kept, that to no one living would she reveal the fact that the great actress was the girl whom the law had parted from her son.

Lord Chandos, the Duke of Lester, the world in general, must never know this. Lord Chandos must never tell it, neither would she. What was she to do? A terrible incident had happened – terrible to her on whose life no shadow rested. Madame Vanira had accepted an engagement at Berlin, the fashionable journals had already announced the time of her departure, and bemoaned the loss of so much beauty and genius. Lord Chandos had announced his intention of spending a few months in Berlin, and his wife would not agree to it.

"You know very well," she said, "that you have but one motive in going to Berlin, and that is to be near Madame Vanira."

"You have no right to pry into my motives," he replied, angrily; and she retorted that when a husband's motives lowered his wife, she had every reason to inquire into them.

Hot, bitter, angry words passed between them. Lord Chandos declared that if it pleased him to go to Berlin he should go; it mattered little whether his wife went or not; and Lady Chandos, on her side, declared that nothing should ever induce her to go to Berlin. The result was just what one might have anticipated – a violent quarrel. Lady Chandos threatened to appeal to the duke. Her husband laughed at the notion.

"The duke is a great statesman and a clever man," he replied; "but he has no power over me. If he interfered with my arrangements, in all probability we should not meet again."

"I will appeal to him," cried Lady Marion; "he is the only friend I have in the world."

The ring of passionate pain in her voice startled him; a sense of pity came over him. After all, this fair, angry woman was his wife, whom he was bound to protect.

"Marion, be reasonable," he said. "You go the wrong way to work; even supposing I did care for some one else, you do not go the way to make me care for you; but you are mistaken. Cease all these disagreeable recriminations, and I will be the kindest of husbands and the best of friends to you. I have no wish, believe me, Marion, to be anything else."

Even then she might have become reconciled to him, and the sad after consequences have been averted, but she was too angry, too excited with jealousy and despair.

"Will you give up Madame Vanira for me?" she said, and husband and wife looked fixedly at each other. "You say you will be a loving husband and a true friend: prove it by doing this – prove it by giving up Madame Vanira."

Lord Chandos was silent for a few minutes; then he said:

"I cannot, for this reason: Madame Vanira, as I happen to know, has had great troubles in her life, but she is thoroughly good. I repeat it, Marion, thoroughly good. Now, if I, as you phrase it, 'give her up,' it would be confessing that I had done wrong. My friendship is some little comfort to her, and she likes me. What harm is there in it? Above all, what wrong does it inflict on you? Answer me. Has my friendship for Madame Vanira made me less kind, less thoughtful for you?"

No answer came from the white lips of the trembling wife.

He went on:

"Why should you be foolish or narrow-minded? Why seek to end a friendship pure and innocent? Why not be your noble self, Marion – noble, as I have always thought you? I will tell you frankly, Madame Vanira is going to Berlin. You know how lonely it is to go to a fresh place. She happened to say how desolate she should feel at first in Berlin. I remarked that I knew the city well, and then she wished we were going. I pledge you my honor that she said 'we.' Never dreaming that you would make any opposition, I said that I should be very glad to spend the next few weeks in Berlin. I cannot tell how it really was, but I found that it was all settled and arranged almost before I knew it. Now, you would not surely wish me to draw back? Come with me to Berlin, and I will show you how happy I will make you."

"No," she replied; "I will share your heart with no one. Unless I have all I will have none. I will not go to Berlin, and you must give up Madame Vanira," she continued; "Lance, you cannot hesitate, you must see your duty; a married man wants no woman friend but his wife. Why should you spend long hours and whole days tete-a-tete with a stranger? Of what can you find to speak? You know in your heart that you are wrong. You say no. Now in the name of common sense and fairness, let me ask, would you like me to make of any man you know such a friend as you have made of Madame Vanira?"

"That is quite another thing," he replied.

Lady Chandos laughed, sadly.

"The usual refuge of a man when he is brought to bay," she said. "No words, no arguments will be of any use to me; I shall never be really friends with you until you give up Madame Vanira."

"Then we will remain enemies," he replied. "I will never give up a true friend for the caprice of any woman," he replied, "even though that woman be my wife."

"Neither will I consent to go to Berlin," she answered, gravely.

"Then I must go alone," he said; "I will not be governed by caprices that have in them neither reason nor sense."

"Then," cried Lady Marion, "it is war to the knife between us!"

"War, if you will," said Lord Chandos; "but always remember you can put an end to the warfare when you will!"

"I shall appeal to Lady Lanswell and to the Duke of Lester," said Lady Marion, and her husband merely answered with a bow.

With them it was indeed "war to the knife." Such was the Gordian knot that Lady Lanswell had to untie, and it was the most difficult task of her life.

On the same evening when that conversation took place, Lord Chandos went to the opera, where Leone was playing "Anne Boleyn." He waited until she came out and was seated in her carriage; then he stood for a few moments leaning over the carriage door and talking to her.

"How you tremble, Leone," he said. "Your face is white and your eyes all fire!"

"The spell is still on me," she answered. "When I have thrown my whole soul into anything, I lose my own identity for many hours. I wish," she continued, "that I did not so thoroughly enter into those characters. I hardly realize this moment whether I am Anne Boleyn, the unhappy wife of bluff King Hal, or whether I am Leone, the singer."

"I know which you are," he said, his eyes seeking hers with a wistful look. "All King Hal's wives put together are not worth your little finger, Leone. See how the stars are shining. I have something to say to you. May I drive with you as far as Highgate Hill?"

The beautiful face, all pale with passion, looked into his.

"It is against our compact," she said; "but you may if you wish."

The silent stars looked down in pity as he took his place by her side.

"Leone," he said, "I want to ask you something. A crisis is come in our lives; my wife, who was told about that day on the river, has asked me to give up your acquaintance."

A low cry came from the beautiful lips, and the face of the fairest woman in England grew deadly pale.

"To give me up," she murmured; "and you, Lord Chandos, what have you said?"

"I said 'No,' a thousand times over, Leone; our friendship is a good and pure one; I would not give it up for any caprice in the world."

A great, tearless sob came from her pale lips.

"God bless you a thousand times!" she said. "So you would not give me up, and you told them so?"

"Yes; I refused to do anything of the kind," he replied; "why should I, Leone? They parted us once by stratagem, by intrigue, by working on all that was weakest in my character; now we are but friends, simply honest friends; who shall part us?"

She clasped his hand for an instant in her own.

"So you will not give me up again, Lance?" she said.

"No, I will die first, Leone. There is one thing more I have to say. I said that I would go to Berlin, and I have asked my wife to go with me; she has refused, and I have said that I would go alone. Tell me what you think?"

"I cannot – I think nothing; perhaps – oh, Heaven help me! – perhaps as your wife has told you she will not go with you, your duty is to stay with her."

"My duty," he repeated; "who shall say what a man's duty is? Do you think I have no duty toward you?"

"Your first thought should be – must be – your wife. If she would have countenanced our friendship, it would have been our greatest pride and pleasure; if she opposes it, we must yield. She has the first right to your time. After all, Lance, what can it matter? We shall have to part; what can it matter whether it is now or in three months to come? The more we see of each other the harder it will be."

A flush as of fire came over his face.

"Why must we part?" he cried. "Oh, Heaven, what a price I pay for my folly!"

"Here is Highgate Hill," said Leone; "you go no further, Lord Chandos."

Only the silent stars were looking on; he stood for a few minutes at the carriage door.

"Shall I go to Berlin?" he whispered, as he left her, and her answer was a low, sad:

"Yes."