April's Lady Part 63

"You will not go," returns she, trying to speak with conviction, but looking very anxious.

"I certainly shall. There is nothing else left for me to do. Life here is intolerable."

"There is one thing," says she, her voice trembling. "You might make it up with her."

"Do you think I haven't tried," says he, with a harsh laugh "I'm tired of making advances. I have done all that man can do. No, I shall not try again. My one regret in leaving England will be that I shall not see you again!"

"Don't!" says she, hoa.r.s.ely.

"I believe on my soul," says he, hurriedly, "that you do care for me.

That it is only because of her that you will not listen to me."

"You are right!" (in a low tone)--"I--" Her voice fails her, she presses her hands together. "I confess," says she, with terrible abandonment, "that I might have listened to you--had I not liked her so well."

"Better than me, apparently," says he, bitterly. "She has had the best of it all through."

"There we are quits, then," says she, quite as bitterly. "Because you like her better than me."

"If so--do you think I would speak to you as I have spoken?"

"Yes. I think that. A man is always more or less of a baby. Years of discretion he seldom reaches. You are angry with your wife, and would be revenged upon her, and your way to revenge yourself is to make a second woman hate you."

"A second?"

"I should probably hate you in six months," says she, with a touch of pa.s.sion. "I am not sure that I do not hate you now."

Her nerve is fast failing her. If she had a doubt about it before, the certainty now that Baltimore's feeling for her is merely friends.h.i.+p--the desire of a lonely man for some sympathetic companion--anything but love, has entered into her and crushed her. He would devote the rest of his life to her. She is sure of that--but always it would be a life filled with an unavailing regret. A horror of the whole situation has seized upon her. She will never be any more to him than a pleasant memory, while he to her must be an ever-growing pain. Oh! to be able to wrench herself free, to be able to forget him to blot him out of her mind forever.

"A second woman!" repeats he, as if struck by this thought to the exclusion of all others.

"Yes!"

"You think, then," gazing at her, "that she--hates me?"

Lady Swansdown breaks into a low but mirthless laugh. The most poignant anguish rings through it.

"She! she!" cries she, as if unable to control herself, and then stops suddenly placing her hand to her forehead. "Oh, no, she doesn't hate you," she says. "But how you betray yourself! Do you wonder I laugh? Did ever any man so give himself away? You have been declaring to me for months that she hates you, yet when I put it into words, or you think I do, it seems as though some fresh new evil had befallen you. Ah! give up this role of Don Juan, Baltimore. It doesn't suit you."

"I have had no desire to play the part," says he, with a frown.

"No? And yet you ask a woman for whom you scarcely bear a pa.s.sing affection to run away with you, to defy public opinion for your sake, and so forth. You should advise her to count the world well lost for love--such love as yours! You pour every bit of the old rubbish into one's ears, and yet--" She stops abruptly. A very storm of anger and grief and despair is shaking her to her heart's core.

"Well?" says he, still frowning.

"What have you to offer me in exchange for all you ask me to give? A heart filled with thoughts of another! No more!----"

"If you persist in thinking----"

"Why should I not think it? When I tell you there is danger of my hating you, as your wife might--perhaps--hate you--your first thought is for her! 'You think then that she hates me'?" (She imitates the anxiety of his tone with angry truthfulness.) "Not one word of horror at the thought that I might hate you six months hence."

"Perhaps I did not believe you would," says he, with some embarra.s.sment.

"Ah! That is so like a man! You think, don't you, that you were made to be loved? There, go! Leave me!"

He would have spoken to her again, but she rejects the idea with such bitterness that he is necessarily silent. She has covered her face with her hands. Presently she is alone.

CHAPTER XLVII.

"But there are griefs, ay, griefs as deep; The friends.h.i.+p turned to hate.

And deeper still, and deeper still Repentance come too late, too late!"

Joyce, on the whole, had not enjoyed last night's dance at the Court.

Barbara had been there, and she had gone home with her and Monkton after it, and on waking this morning a sense of unreality, of dissatisfaction, is all that comes to her. No pleasant flavor is on her mental palate; there is only a vague feeling of failure and a dislike to looking into things--to a.n.a.lyze matters as they stand.

Yet where the failure came in she would have found it difficult to explain even to herself. Everybody, so far as she was concerned, had behaved perfectly; that is, as she, if she had been compelled to say it out loud, would have desired them to behave. Mr. Beauclerk had been polite enough; not too polite; and Lady Baltimore had made a great deal of her, and Barbara had said she looked lovely, and Freddy had said something, oh! absurd of course, and not worth repeating, but still flattering; and those men from the barracks at Clonbree had been a perfect nuisance, they were so pressing with their horrid attentions, and so eager to get a dance. And Mr. Dysart----

Well? That fault could not be laid to his charge, therefore, of course, he was all that could be desired. He was circ.u.mspect to the last degree.

He had not been pressing with his attentions; he had, indeed, been so kind and nice that he had only asked her for one dance, and during the short quarter of an hour that that took to get through he had been so admirably conducted as to restrain his conversation to the most commonplace, and had not suggested that the conservatory was a capital place to get cool in between the dances.

The comb she was doing her hair with at the time caught in her hair as she came to this point, and she flung it angrily from her, and a.s.sured herself that the tears that had suddenly come into her eyes arose from the pain that that hateful instrument of torture had caused her.

Yes, Felix had taken the right course; he had at least learned that she could never be anything to him--could never--forgive him. It showed great dignity in him, great strength of mind. She had told him, at least given him to understand when in London, that he should forget her, and--he had forgotten. He had obeyed her. The comb must have hurt her again, and worse this time, because now the tears are running down her cheeks. How horrible it is to be unforgiving! People who don't forgive never go to heaven. There seems to be some sort of vicious consolation in this thought.

In truth, Dysart's behavior to her since his return has been all she had led him to understand it ought to be. He it so changed toward her in every way that sometimes she has wondered if he has forgotten all the strange, unhappy past, and is now entirely emanc.i.p.ated from the torture of love unrequited that once had been his.

It is a train of thought she has up to this shrank from pursuing, yet which, she being strong in certain ways, should have been pursued by her to the bitter end. One small fact, however, had rendered her doubtful.

She could not fail to notice that whenever he and she are together in the morning room, ballroom, or at luncheon or dinner, or breakfast, though he will not approach or voluntarily address her unless she first makes an advance toward him, a rare occurrence; still, if she raises her eyes to his, anywhere, at any moment, it is to find his on her!

And what sad eyes! Searching, longing, despairing, angry, but always full of an indescribable tenderness.

Last night she had specially noticed this--but then last night he had specially held aloof from her. No, no! It was no use dwelling upon it.

He would not forgive. That chapter in her life was closed. To attempt to open it again would be to court defeat.

Joyce, however, had not been the only one to whom last night had been a disappointment. Beauclerk's determination to propose to her--to put his fortune to the touch and to gain hers--failed. Either the fates were against him, or else she herself was in a willful mood. She had refused to leave the dancing room with him on any pretext whatever, unless to gain the coolness of the crowded hall outside, or the still more inhabited supper room.

He was not dismayed, however, and there was no need to do things precipitately. There was plenty of time. There could be no doubt about the fact that she preferred him to any of the other men of her acquaintance; he had discovered that she had refused Dysart not only once, but twice. This he had drawn out of Isabel by a mild and apparently meaningless but nevertheless incessant and abstruse cross-examination. Naturally! He could see at once the reason for that.

No girl who had been once honored by his attentions could possibly give her heart to another. No girl ever yet refused an honest offer unless her mind was filled with the image of another fellow. Mr. Beauclerk found no difficulty about placing "the other fellow" in this case.

Norman Beauclerk was his name! What woman in her senses would prefer that tiresome Dysart with his "downright honesty" business so gloomily developed, to him, Beauclerk? Answer? Not one.

Well, she shall be rewarded now, dear little girl! He will make her happy for life by laying his name and prospective fortune at her feet.

To-day he will end his happy bachelor state and sacrifice himself on the altar of love.

Thus resolved, he walks up through the lands of the Court, through the valley filled with opening fronds of ferns, and through the spinney beyond that again, until he comes to where the Monktons live. The house seems very silent. Knocking at the door, the maid comes to tell him that Mr. and Mrs. Monkton and the children are out, but that Miss Kavanagh is within.