"I am fortunate in finding you at home, Lady Mitford," said Alsager.
She answered by a smile They had got beyond the talking of commonplaces to each other, these two, in general; but there was a sense of oppression over them both to-day, and each was conscious that it weighed upon the other. The remembrance of the talk to which he had listened at the Club, of the light discussion of Sir Charles's conduct, of the flippant censure of the woman who had won him from his wife, was very strong upon Alsager; while she,--of what was she thinking? Who could undertake to tell that? who could categorize the medley which must occupy the mind of a woman so situated? Was she suffering the sharp pangs of outraged love? or was she enduring the hardly less keen torture of discovering that that which she had believed to be love, had cherished in her breast as the true deity, had given, in that belief, to her husband, was not love, but only a skilful (and innocent) counterfeit, only a mock jewel which she had offered in good faith for the flawless pearl of price? Who can tell? She could hardly have answered such a question truly, if she had put it to herself at the close of the interview which began after so commonplace a fashion.
"I have not seen you since your father's death," said Lady Mitford, gently; and in a tone which lent the simple words all the effect of a formal condolence. "You have not been long in town, I'm sure?"
"No, indeed," he said; "I have but just returned. There is so much to be done on these occasions; there are so many forms to be gone through; there is so much immediate business to be transacted, in the interests of the living, that--that,"--he hesitated; for he had neared that precipice so dreaded by all now-a-days, the exhibition of natural emotion.
"That one has to wait for leisure to mourn for the dead," said Lady Mitford. "Ah, yes, I understand that. But you remain in town now, do you not?"
There was a tone of anxiety in the question which struck on Alsager's ear with a sound of music. She had missed him, then,--she would miss him if he went away again! He loved her well, ay, and worthily, contradictory though that may seem; but his heart was stirred with a joy which he dared not analyze, but could not deny, at the thought. He answered hurriedly, "Yes, I remain here now." And then he changed his tone, and said eagerly,
"Tell me something of yourself. How has it been with you since we met last?"
"Of myself!" she replied sadly; and her colour flushed and faded as she spoke, and her restless fingers trifled with the ornaments of her dress. "Myself is an unprofitable subject, and one I am weary of. I have nothing new to tell,--nothing you would care to hear."
He dissented by an eager gesture; but she appeared not to perceive it, and went on, with attempted gaiety:
"We have missed you dreadfully, of course. I need not tell you what a void your absence must necessarily make. We all know you are beyond spoiling."
She looked at him, and something in his face warned her not to pursue this tone. She felt vaguely that the position was unreal, and must be changed. He knew, as she supposed, what she was thinking of; she knew, as he fancied, what he was thinking of; and though, as it happened, each was wrong, it was manifestly absurd to carry on false pretences any longer. Woman-like, she was the first to brave the difficulty of the situation.
"You have come to me," she said steadily, and looking at him with the clear upheld gaze peculiar to her, "because you have heard something which concerns me nearly, and because, man of the world,--of this heartless world around us,--as you are, and accustomed to such things, still you feel for me; because you would have prevented this thing if you could; because you tried to prevent it, and failed; because you knew--yes, Sir Laurence Alsager, because you knew the extent and the power of the danger that menaced me, and my helplessness: say, am I right?--for these reasons you are here to-day."
The composure of her voice was gone, but not its sweetness; her colour had faded to a marble paleness; and her hands were firmly clasped together. Alsager had risen as she spoke, and was standing now, leaning against the low velvet-covered mantelpiece. He answered hurriedly, and with scant composure:
"Yes, Lady Mitford, for these reasons, and for others."
"For what others?"
This almost in a whisper.
"Never mind them now," he said impetuously; and then the superficial restraint which he had imposed upon himself gave way, broke down before that strongest and most terrible of temptations, the sight of the sorrow and the silent confidence of the woman one loves, granted at the moment when a hope, a guilty hope, that that love may not be vain, begins to stir, like life, at one's heart. She shrank a little back in the chair, but she looked at him as earnestly as before.
"It's all true, then," he said,--and there was a tone of deep and bitter hatred in his voice,--"all true. The prophecy I heard among those fellows the first time I ever heard your name--the coarse language, the cynical foresight,--all true. That heartless demon has caught his shallow nature in her shallow lure, and worked the woe of an angel!"
His voice rang with a passionate tremor, his eyes deepened and darkened with the passionate fervour which glowed in them. His impetuous feeling mastered her. She had no power to arrest him by a conventional phrase, though he had overstepped more than conventionality by invading the sacred secrecy of her domestic grief.
"Yes, Lady Mitford," he went on; "I have returned to find that all I feared,--more than I feared,--has befallen you. It was an unequal contest; you had only innocence and purity, an old-fashioned belief in the stability of human relations and the sanctity of plighted faith; and what weapons were these in such a fight? No wonder you are vanquished. No wonder she is triumphant--shameless as she is heartless. I wound you," he said, for she cowered and trembled at his words; "but I cannot keep silence. I have seen shameful things,--I am no stranger to the dark passages of life; but this is worse than all. Good God! to think that a man like Mitford should have had such a chance and have thrown it away! To think that--"
"Hush, Sir Laurence!" she said, and stretched her hand appealingly towards him; "I must not hear you. I cannot, I will not affect to misunderstand you; but there must be no more of this. I am an unhappy woman--a most wretched wife; all the world--all the little world we think so great, and suffer to torment us so cruelly--knows that. Pretence between us would be idle; but confidence is impossible. I cannot discuss Sir Charles Mitford's conduct with any one, least of all with you." She seemed to have spoken the last words unawares, or at least involuntarily, for a painful blush, rose on her face and throat.
"And why," he eagerly asked,--"why least of all with me? I have been honoured by your friendship,--I have not forfeited it, have I? I know that conventionality, which is a systematic liar and a transparent hypocrite, would condemn in theory a woman to keep her garments folded decorously over such mortal heart-wounds; I know that poets snivel rhymes which tell us how grand and great, how high and mighty, it is 'to suffer and be strong.' I know how easy some people find it to see others suffer, and be perfectly strong in the process; but such rubbish is not for you nor for me. I cannot return to London and hear all that I have heard; I cannot come here and look upon you--" his voice faltered, but he forced it into the same hurried composure with which he had been speaking. "I cannot see you as I see you now, and talk to you as an ordinary morning visitor might talk, or even as we have talked together, when these things were coming indeed, but had not yet come."
She was leaning forward now, her face turned towards him, but hidden in her hands. He gazed at her with a kindling glance, and strode fiercely backward and forward across the wide space which lay before the window.
"I am not a good man," he went on, "according to your standard of goodness, Lady Mitford; but I am not a bad man according to my own. I have had rough tussles with life, and some heavy falls; but I swear there is a dastardly, cold, heartless ingratitude in this business which I cannot bear; and in the sight of you there is something terrible to me. Men know this man's history; we know from what degradation you raised him; we are not so blind and coarse that we cannot guess with what fidelity and patience you loved him when it was at its deepest. And now, to see him return to it; to see him, without any excuse of poverty or struggle, in the enjoyment of all that fate and fortune have blindly given him; to see him play the part of a liar and a villain to you--to you--to see you left unprotected, openly neglected and betrayed, to run the gauntlet of society such as ours! I cannot see all this, Lady Mitford, and pretend that I do not see it; and what is more, you do not wish that I could. You are too true, too womanly to form such a wish; and you are too honest to express it, in obedience to any laws of cant."
He went near to her; he bent down, he lowered his voice, he gently drew away the hands that hid her face from him; they dropped into her lap, nerveless and idle; the first tears he had ever seen in her eyes dimmed them now.
"You mean kindly, as you have always meant to me, Sir Laurence," she said; "but we cannot discuss this matter,--indeed we cannot. I am weaker than I ought to be,--I should not listen to this; but oh, God help me, I have no friends; I am all alone, all alone!"
If she had been beautiful in the pride and dignity of her sorrowful composure, if his strong heart had quailed and his firm nerve had shrunk at the sight of her pale and placid grief, how far more beautiful was she now, when the restraint had fallen from her, when the eyes looked at him from the shadow of wet lashes, and the perfect lips trembled with irrepressible emotion.
"No!" he said vehemently; and as he spoke he stood close before her, and stretched his hands towards her, but without taking hers; the gesture was one of mingled denial and appeal, and had no touch of boldness in it; "no, you are not alone; yes, you have friends,--at least you have one friend. Listen to me,--do not fear to hear me; let us at least venture to tell and listen to the truth. This man, to whom you were given as a guardian angel, is quite unworthy of you. You know it; your keen intellect accepts a fact and all its consequences, however terrible to your woman's heart, and does not palter with the truth. Are you to be always miserable because you have been once mistaken? If you had known, if you had been able to comprehend the real nature of this man, would you, could you ever have loved him?"
She put up her hand with a faint gesture of protest; but he impetuously waved it away, and went on, once more striding up and down.
"No, no; I must speak! There can be more reticence now. You would not, you could not have loved him, this heartless, ungrateful profligate, as tasteless and low as he is faithless and vicious,--this scoundrel, who, holding good in his grasp, has deliberately chosen evil. Ay, I will say it, Lady Mitford! You could not have loved him, and you know it well; you have admitted it to yourself before now, when you little dreamed that anyone--that I--would ever dare to put your thought in form and shape before you. What did you love? A girl's fancy,--a shadow, a dream! It was no reality, it had no foundation, and it has vanished. Your imagination drew a picture of an injured victim of circumstances,--a weak being, to be pitied and admired, to be restored and loved! The truth was a selfish scoundrel, who has returned in wealth with fresh zest to the miserable pleasures for which he lived in poverty; a mean-hearted wretch, who could care for your beauty while it was new to him indeed, but to whose perception you, your heart and soul, your intellect and motives, were mysteries as high and as far off as heaven. Are you breaking your heart, Lady Mitford, under the kindly scrutiny of the world, because the thistle has not borne figs and the thorn has not given you purple grapes? Are you sitting down in solitary grief because the animal has done according to its kind, because effect has resulted from cause, because the wisdom of the world, wise in the ways of such men, has verified itself? Do you love this man now? Are you suffering the pangs of jealousy, of despair? No, you do not love him; you are suffering no such pangs. You are truth itself,--the truest and the bravest, as you are the most beautiful of women; and you cannot, you dare not tell me that you love this man still, knowing him as you know him now." He stopped close beside her, and looked at her with an eager, almost a fierce glance.
"Why do you ask me?" she gasped out faintly. There was a sudden avoidance of him in her expression, a shadow of fear. "Why do you speak to me thus? Oh, Sir Laurence, this--this is the worst of all." She was not conscious of the effect of the tone in which these words were spoken, of the pathos, the helplessness, the pleading tenderness it implied. But he heard them, and they were enough. They were faint as the murmur of a brook in summer, but mighty as an Alpine storm; and the barriers of conventional restriction, the scruples of conscience, the timidity of a real love, were swept away like straws before their power.
"Why?" he repeated, "because I love you!"
She uttered a faint exclamation; she half rose from her chair, but he caught her hands and stopped her.
"Hush!" he said; "I implore you not to speak till you have heard me! Do not wrong me by supposing that I have come here to urge on your unwilling ear a tale of passion, to take advantage of your husband's crime, your husband's cowardice, to extenuate crime and cowardice in myself. Before God, I have no such meaning! But I love you--I love you as I never even fancied I loved any woman before; though I am no stranger to the reality or the mockery of passion, though I have received deep and smarting wounds in my time. I wish to make myself no better in your eyes than I am. And I love you--love you so much better than myself; that I would fain see you happy with this man, even with him, if it could be. But it cannot, and you know it. You know in your true heart, that if he came back to his allegiance to you now--poor bond of custom as it is--you could not love him, any more than you could return to the toys of your childhood. I read you aright; I know you with the intuitive knowledge which love, and love only, lends to a man, when he would learn the mystery of a woman's nature. You are too noble, too true, to be bound by the petty rules, to be governed by the small scruples, which dominate nine-tenths of the women who win the suffrages of society. You have the courage of your truthfulness."
He stood before her, looking steadfastly down upon her, his arms tightly folded across his chest, his breath coming quickly in hurried gasps. She had shrunken into the recesses of her velvet chair, and she looked up at him with parted lips and wild eyes, her hands holding the cushions tightly, the fingers hidden in the purple fringes. Was it that she could not speak, or that she would not? However that may have been, she did not, and he went on.
"Yes, yes, I love you. I think you knew it before?" She made no reply. "I think I have loved you from the first,--from the moment when, callous and blasé as I had come to believe myself--as, God knows, I had good right to be, if human nature may ever claim such a right--I could not bear to see the way your fate was drifting, or to hear the chances for and against you calculated, as men calculate such odds. I think I loved you from the moment I perceived how completely you had mistaken your own heart, and how beautifully, how innocently loyal you were to the error. While your delusion lasted, Lady Mitford, you were safe with me and from me, for in that delusion there was security. While you loved Mitford, and believed that he returned your love, you would never have perceived that any other man loved you. But you are a woman who cannot be partially deceived or undeceived; therefore I tell you now, when your delusion is wholly at an end, when it can come no more to blind your eyes, and rend your heart with the removal of the bandage, that I love you,--devotedly, changelessly, eternally. You must take this fact into account when you meditate upon your future; you must number this among the component parts of your life. Hush! not yet. I am not speaking thus through reckless audacity, availing itself of your position; you know I am not, and you must hear me to the end."
She had made a movement as if about to speak, but he had again checked her; and they maintained their relative positions, he looking down at her, she looking up at him.
"We are facing facts, Lady Mitford. I love you, not as the man who left you, in your first year of marriage, for the worthless woman who forsook me for a richer lover, and would have wronged the fool who bought her without a scruple, could she have got me into her power again--not as he loved you, even when he came nearest to the truth of love. That woman, your enemy, your rival,"--he spoke the word with a stringent scorn which would have been the keenest punishment in human power to have inflicted on the woman it designated,--"she knows I love you, and she has struck at me through you; struck at me, poor fool--for she is fool as well as fiend--a blow which has recoiled upon herself. She has taught me how much, how well, how devotedly I love you, and learned the lesson herself thereby, for the intuition of hate is no less keen than that of love. But why do I speak of her? Only to make you understand that I am a portion of your fate,--only to lay the whole truth before you; only to make it clear to you that mine is no chance contact, no mere intrusion. I am not a presumptuous fool, who has dared to use a generously-granted friendship as a cover for an illicit passion. Have patience with me a little longer. Let me tell you all the truth. You cannot dismiss me from your presence as you might another who had dared to love you, and dared to tell you so; you cannot do this."
"Why?" she asked faintly, but with an angry sparkle in her eyes. For the second time she said that one word.
"Because I have injured you, Lady Mitford,--injured you unconsciously, unintentionally; and that is a plea which cannot fail, addressed to such as you. Had I never crossed your path, the woman for whom your husband has wronged you would never have crossed it either. I am the object, you are the victim, of the hatred of a she-devil. You don't suppose she cares for Mitford, do you?"
"Not if she ever loved you," was the reply.
Alsager passed it over, but a sudden light flashed into his face.
"Of course she does not. She has played her ruthless game skilfully according to her lights, and your happiness has been staked and lost. Indirectly, I am the cause of this. Was the feeling which came over me the first time I saw you a presentiment, I wonder? Well, no matter; you see now that I am a portion of your fate. You see now that a hidden tie binds us together, and the folly, the delusion of my youth, and the mistaken love of your girlhood, have borne mysterious common fruit."
She sat like one enthralled, entranced, and listened to him; she bent her head for a moment as he took an instant's breath, but she did not attempt to speak. His manner changed, grew softer, and his voice fell to almost a whisper:
"May not this mysterious tie of misfortune mean more to us?" he said. "May not the consolation come, as the curse has come, and all the designs of our enemies be disconcerted? I do not say my love is worthy of your acceptance,--I am too much travel-stained in my wanderings in the world's ways to make any such pretension; but it is yours, such as it is--faulty, imperfect, but loyal and eternal. I love you, Lady Mitford, and I ask nothing of you but permission to love you freely and fully; I ask your leave to give you all the devotion of my heart, all the loyalty of my life. I know how the world would hold such a demand; but I care nothing for the world, and I fancy you know it too well to care much for it now. You cherished a delusion long and sacredly; it was at least a noble one, but it is gone, and the world can neither satisfy you for its loss nor substitute another. Dearest--" he paused; she shivered, but she said not a word,--"dearest, what remains? Inexpressible tenderness was in his voice, in his bending figure, in his moistened eyes. There was a moment's silence, and then she spoke, replying to his last words:
"Duty, Sir Laurence,--duty, the only thing which is not a delusion; that remains."
He drew back a little, looking at her. She raised herself in her chair, and pointed to a seat at a little distance from her own. She was deadly pale, but she did not tremble, and her voice was firm and low as she said:
"Sit down, and listen to me."
He obeyed, silent and wondering. Perhaps he had not told himself exactly what he had expected,--perhaps no one ever does, when the emotions of the heart are called into evidence; but he knew that it was not this. Had he more to learn of this woman whom he had so closely studied; had her nature heights which he had not seen, and depths which he had not comprehended? Breathless he waited for her words. In an agony of suspense he looked at her averted face, which appeared to address itself to something in the distance,--which had settled into a wondrous composure at the command of the strong will. He had not estimated that strength of will aright; he had made the common mistake of overlooking a quality because he had not seen it in active employment. There was neither confusion nor weakness in the manner of the woman to whom he had just spoken such words as no woman could hear unmoved; and there mingled strangely with his love something of wonder and of awe.
After a little interval, which seemed endless to him, she turned her face towards him again, laid her hand heavily upon her breast, and spoke:
"You have been cruel to me, Sir Laurence, in all that you have said; but men, I believe, are always cruel to women if they love them, or have loved them. I acquit you of intentional cruelty, and I accept all you say of the necessity for the truth being spoken between us in the new phase of our relation which you have brought about to-day."
The intensity of her face deepened, and the pressure of her hand grew heavier. He muttered a few words of protest, but she went on as if she had not heard him.
"You have spoken words to me, Sir Laurence, which I should not have heard; but they have been spoken, and the wrong cannot be undone. It may be atoned for, and it must. Neither these words nor any other must be spoken between us henceforth--"
He started up.
"You cannot mean this," he said; "it is impossible; I do not believe it.--I will not bear it."
"Be still and hear me," she replied; "I kept silence at your desire,--you will not, I am sure, do less at mine. I too must speak to you, uninterrupted, in the spirit of that truth of which you have spoken so eloquently and with such sophistry--yes, with such sophistry."
Once more she paused and sighed.
"Speak to me, then," he said; and there was true, real anguish in his tone. "Say what you will, but do not be too hard on me. I am only a mortal man; if I have offended you, it is because you are an angel."
"You have not offended me," she said very slowly: "perhaps I ought to be offended, but I am not. I think you judge me aright when you say that truth holds the foremost place in and for me: therefore I tell you truth. You have grieved me; you have added a heavy burden to a load which is not very easy to bear, though the world, which you exhort me to despise and to deny, cannot lay a feather's weight upon it. Your friendship was very dear to me,--very precious; I did not know how dear, I think, until to-day."
How eagerly he listened to the thrilling voice! how ardently he gazed into the dreamy beautiful eyes! how breathlessly he kept the silence so hard to maintain!
"If I could use any further disguise with myself, Sir Laurence, if self-deception could have any further power over me, I might terminate this interview here, and tell you, and tell myself, that it should be forgotten. But I have done with self-deception."
"For God's sake, don't speak in that bitter tone!" Alsager said entreatingly; "spare me, if you will not spare yourself."
"No," she replied; "I will spare neither you nor myself. Why should I? The world has spared neither of us--will spare neither of us; only it will tell lies, and I will tell truths,--that's all."
Her colour was heightened, and her eyes were flashing now; but the pressure of her hand upon her bosom was steady.
"You have read my story aright: I know not by what art or science--but you have read it. If, as you say, you have an involuntary share, an unconscious responsibility in my heavy trial, it is a misfortune, which I put away from my thoughts; I hold you in no way accountable. My sorrow is my own; my delusion is over; my duty remains."
"Do you speak of duty to Sir Charles Mitford?" asked Alsager with a sneer.
"Yes," she said gently; "I do. Your tone is unworthy of you, Sir Laurence; but I pass it by; for it is the tone of a man of the world, to whom inclination is a law. Can my husband's faithlessness absolve me from fidelity? Is his sin any excuse for my defection from my duty? You say truly, I cannot love him now as I loved him when I did not know him as he is; but I can do my duty to him still--a hard duty, but imperative. The time will come when this woman will weary of him, of her vain and futile vengeance; and then--"
"Well, Lady Mitford, and then--?" asked Alsager in a cold hard voice.
She looked at him with eyes in which a holy calm had succeeded to her transient passion, and replied:
"Then he will return to me, and I must be ready to meet him without a shade upon my conscience, without a blush upon my cheek."
He started up angrily, and exclaimed:
"You pass all comprehension! What! You are no longer in error about this man; the glamour has passed. You know him for the cold cynical profligate he is; and you talk of welcoming him like a repentant prodigal; only yourself it is you are prepared to kill--your own pride, your own delicacy, your own heart! Good God! what are good women made of, that they set such monstrous codes up for themselves, and adhere to them so mercilessly!"
"He is my husband," she faltered out; and for a moment her courage seemed to fail. The next she rose, and standing by the mantelpiece, where he had stood before, she went on, with hurry and agitation in her voice: "Don't mistake me. Love is dead and gone for me. But this world is not the be-all and the end-all; there is an inheritance beyond it, reserved for those who have 'overcome.' Duty is hard, but it is never intolerable to a steadfast will, and a mind, fixed on the truth. Time is long, and the round of wrong is tedious; but the day wears through best to those who subdue impatience, and wrong loses half its bitterness when self is conquered. I have learned my lesson, Sir Laurence, and chosen my part."
"And what is to be mine?" he said with angry impatience,--"what is to be mine? You moralize charmingly, Lady Mitford; and your system is perfect, with one little exception--and what is that? A mere nothing, a trifle--only a man's heart, only a love that is true! You are all alike, I believe, bad or good, in this,--you will pine after, you will endure anything for, a man who is false to you, and you will tread upon the heart of one who is true. What do you care? We do not square with the moral code of the good among you, nor with the caprice and devilment of the bad; and so away with us! I am 'cruel' to you, forsooth, because I tell you that you no longer love a worthless profligate, who sports with your peace and your honour at the bidding of a wanton! I am 'cruel' because I tell you that I, who have innocently wronged you, love you with every pulse of my heart and every impulse of my will! Is there any cruelty on your side, do you think, when you talk, not puling sentiment--I could more easily pardon that; it would be mere conventional silliness--but these chilly, chilling moralities, which are fine in copy-books, but which men and women abandon with their writing-lessons?"
"Do they?" she said with imperturbable gentleness; "I think not. You are angry and unjust, Sir Laurence,--angry with me, unjust to me!"
The keen pathos of her tone, its innocent pleading, utterly overcame him.
"Yes," he cried; "I am unjust, and you are an angel of goodness; but--I love you,--ah, how I love you!--and you reject me, utterly, utterly. You reject me, and for him! You give her a double triumph; you lay my life waste once more."
He stopped in his hurried walk close to her. She laid her hand upon his arm, and they looked at one another in silence for a little. She broke it first.
"And if I did not reject you, as you say--if I accepted this love, this compensating truth and loyalty, which you offer me, what should I be, Laurence Alsager, but her compeer? Have you thought of that? Have you remembered that there is a law in marriage apart from and above all feeling? Have you considered what she who breaks that law is, in the sight of God, in the unquenchable light of her own conscience, though her conduct were as pure from stain as the ermine of a royal robe? I am speaking, not chilly, chilling moralities, but immortal, immutable truth. In the time to come you will remember it, and believe it; and then there will be no bitterness in your heart when you recollect how I bade you farewell!"
The lustrous eyes looked into his with a gaze as pure as an infant's, as earnest as a sibyl's, and the gentle hand lay motionless upon his arm.
"How you bade me farewell!" he repeated in a hoarse voice. "What do you mean? Are you sending me from you?"
"Yes," she answered; "I am sending you from me. We have met once too often, and we must meet no more. You say you love me;" she shrunk and shivered again,--"and--and I believe you. Therefore you will obey me."
"No," he said resolutely; "I will not obey you! I will see you,--I must. What is there in my love to frighten or to harm you? I ask for nothing which even your scrupulous conscience might hesitate to give; I seek no change in the relation that has subsisted between us for some time now."
"Dreams, dreams," she said, sadly; "unworthy of your sense,--unworthy of your knowledge of the world. Nothing can ever replace us on our old footing. The words you have spoken to me can never be unsaid. They are words I never ought to have heard--and--" In a moment her firmness deserted her, her voice failed; she sank into a chair, and burst into passionate tears.
"You would not have them unsaid!" he cried; "tell me that you would not! Tell me that the coldness and the calm which those streaming tears deny are not true, are not real! Tell me that I am something in your life,--that I might have been more! Dearest, I reverence as much as I love you; but give me that one gleam of comfort. It cannot make your heavenly rectitude and purity poorer, while to me it will be boundless riches. Tell me that you could love me if you would; tell me that the sacred barrier of your conscience is the only one between us! I swear I will submit to that! I will not try to shake or to remove it. Nay, more, I will leave you,--if indeed you persist in commanding my absence,--if only you will tell me that under other circumstances you would have loved me. Tell me this! I ask a great, a priceless boon; but I do ask it. Dearest, will you not answer me?" Her agitation, her tears, had reassured him, had broken the spell which her calmness had imposed. The hope that had come to him once or twice during their interview came again now, and stayed.
There was no sound for a while but that of her low rapid sobs. The clocks upon the mantelpieces in the suite of rooms ticked loudly, and their irritating metallic voices mingled strangely with the rushing pulses of Alsager's frame, as he leant over her,--one arm round the back of her chair, the other hand upon its velvet arm. His face was bent above her drooping head; his thick moustache almost touched the waved ridges of her scented hair. He implored her to speak to him; he poured out protestation and entreaty with all the ardour of his strong and fiery nature, with all the eloquence which slumbered in him, unsuspected even by himself. Little by little she ceased to weep, and at length she allowed him to see her face. Again he renewed his entreaties, and she answered him.
"You try me too far, and I am weak. Yes, I would love you, if I might!"
"Then you do love me!" he exclaimed. "You and I are no dreaming boy and girl, no Knight and Dame of old romance, but man and woman; and we know that these shades of difference are merest imagination. We love each other, and we know it. We love each other, and the acknowledgment makes the truth no truer. I am ungenerous, you would say; I am breaking the promise I have just made. Yes, I am; but I love you--and you love me!" He had dropped on one knee beside her chair now, and as he spoke he caught her hand in his. Without any sign of anger or prudery, she withdrew her hand quietly, but resolutely, and signed to him to rise and be seated. He obeyed her; but exultation shone out from every line and feature of his face.
"You are ungenerous," she said,--"very ungenerous, and very cruel; but I will not the less be true in these the last words I shall say to you. If I have dreamed of a life other than mine, of love well bestowed and faithfully returned, it was only in the most passing, transient visions. My lot is cast; my mind is made up; my heart is fixed. I linger here for a few moments longer because they are the last I shall ever pass alone with you. Do not interrupt me, or I terminate this interview on the instant. This subject must never be renewed,--indeed it never can be; for you know my resolution, and I know you will respect it. The past remains with us; but the future has no common history for you and me. When I have ceased speaking, and that door has closed behind you, you must remember me, if you do not see me, and regard me if you do, as a woman wholly devoted to her wifely duty, of whom to think otherwise is to do a deadly wrong."
He stood before her as pale as she had been; something wrathful and something reverential contended in his expression. She waved her hand with a slight gesture, and went on "Now I have done with myself; there is no more question of me. But of you, Sir Laurence, there is much and serious question. Your life is aimless and unreal. Give it an object and an aim; invest it with truth, occupy it with duty. I am speaking with you face to face for the last time, and I go back to the old relation which you have destroyed for a few minutes. In that relation I speak to you of your father's death-bed request. Fulfil it; and by doing so, end this vain and sinful strife,--quell this demon which deludes you."
"You mean that I should marry my father's ex-ward, I presume?" said Alsager, coldly.
"I do."
"Thank you, Lady Mitford. Your proposition is full of wisdom, however it may lack feeling. But there are sundry objections to my carrying it into effect. The lady does not love me, nor do I love the lady."
"You hardly know her," Lady Mitford said with a timid smile; "you have not given yourself any opportunity of testing your power of obedience to your father's dying wish. You cannot judge of how she would be disposed towards you." Once more she smiled timidly and sadly. "You would have little cause to fear ill-success, I should think."
"Except that in this case, Lady Mitford, the lady's affections are pre?ngaged, and she is doubtless a miracle of constancy."
"You speak bitterly, Sir Laurence, but your bitterness will pass, and your better nature will assert itself."
"Is this all you intend to say to me, Lady Mitford?"
"This is all. My words will supplement themselves in silence and reflection, and you will acknowledge that I have spoken the truth--that I am as true as you believe me."
"And are we to part thus?" he asked in a slightly softened tone.
A quick spasm crossed her face, but she answered him at once, and looked at him as she spoke, "Yes!"
He bowed profoundly. She held out her hand, On the third finger was a heavy-looking seal-ring, which she constantly were. As he coldly took the hand in his, his eyes fell upon this ring. She marked the look, and when he released her hand, she drew off the ring and offered it to him.
"You are angry with me now," she said; "but your anger will pass away. When no shade of it remains, wear this for my sake, and make its motto, which is mine, yours."
He took the ring, and without looking at it, dropped it into his waistcoat-pocket. Then he stood quite still as she passed him with her usual graceful step, and watched the sweep of her soft black robe as she walked down the long room, and disappeared through a door which opened into her boudoir.
Late that night Alsager, angry still, dark and wrathful, tossed the ring with a contemptuous frown into a jewel-case; but he first took an impression of it in wax, and read, the motto thus: "Fortiter--Fideliter--Feliciter."