CHAPTER 3 “MY GOD! ALL IS AT AN END.”
Sir Harold Annesley was the most envied of men among his kind. He was young, wealthy and famous; possessed of a splendid physique, and the representative of an old and honorable line. There was no blot on the escutcheon of the Annesleys; the men had ever been noble and brave, and the women good and virtuous.
In addition to these splendid attributes and honors, Sir Harold had won the fairest and loveliest woman in all England. Dukes and princes had sighed vainly at her feet. She had been the beauty of two seasons, and had nearly turned the brains of a score of men, but to one and all was Lady Elaine the same. Kindly and gracious, but as cold as an icicle when there was the danger of an avowal.
Some of these disappointed lovers declared that she was a coquette; others that she had no human passions—no heart.
At last her father, my lord of Seabright, spoke to her seriously upon the subject of marriage.
“It must come some day, Elaine. Surely among all your acquaintances you must have some preference?”
“No,” the girl replied. “All men are alike. It is dreadful that they must all pretend to fall in love with me.” Her lips curled with scorn. “I do not think,” she added, “that one man in a hundred knows anything of the professions he makes use of so glibly.”
The earl stared at her in surprise. “Why should you think so, Elaine?”
“They are passionately in love to-day, and speaking unkindly of me to-morrow. Is that love?”
The earl did not feel competent to argue the point, so he wisely evaded the question by saying:
“Well, let us hope that you will be able to return the affection of some one before many months are past—Viscount Rivington, for instance. He is young, handsome, and comes of a great family. He will be a duke some day, and is very much in love with you.”
“So that these men are of ancient lineage, papa, it does not seem to concern you whether it is possible for me to love them or not,” Lady Elaine replied.
“My dear, I sincerely hope that you could not bring yourself to care for what is termed a man of the people,” the earl exclaimed, in alarm.
“And why not, if he were a gentleman?” laughed Elaine. “There, papa, why should we talk of these things? I like Viscount Rivington better than any one else, because he does not rave about broken hearts and suicide; but as for the love that poets sing about, I fear that I am incapable of experiencing it. In my early girlhood it was a beautiful dream that lay before me like an enchanted garden. Now I am becoming worldly and skeptical. I have not met my prince, and fear that my ideal lives only in my dreams.”
“What nonsense these poets put into the heads of girls!” my lord remarked. “Their trash does an incalculable amount of harm, and ought to be made a bonfire of. However, I am glad that you are beginning to see the value of it, my child. Try and think well of Rivington. He is a capital fellow.”
After that Lady Elaine treated the viscount kindly, and he at once fancied that he was her favored suitor. Then Sir Harold Annesley appeared, and the beautiful Elaine knew that her prince had come at last! With one glance Sir Harold won this peerless creature, and to all his other honors was added this victory. And yet he was not happy!
No sooner was the prize assured than he began to make himself and Elaine miserable by his quixotic notions of the love of twin souls. The words of the Earl of Seabright haunted him when he spoke of Viscount Rivington in connection with Lady Elaine, and while congratulating him, his cousin Margaret had expressed astonishment that the earl’s daughter could so quickly transfer her affections from one to the other.
“But it is not true,” Sir Harold had said; “she never cared for the viscount.”
“Everybody thought that there was a tacit engagement at least,” Margaret said, “and, of course,” she added, brightly, “everybody may have been mistaken! People are always ready to take an interest in other people’s love affairs. Hundreds of engagements are made in this way, which really have no foundation in fact.”
“It is a great pity that such busybodies have nothing better with which to employ themselves.”
“It will always be the same,” his cousin replied, indifferently, “so long as unscrupulous society papers are permitted to print the items sent in to them by vicious-minded people who make money out of their news. Still, there is rarely smoke without fire, Harold, and I was certainly under the impression that Lady Elaine favored the viscount.”
Sir Harold felt vexed and irritable, and after this he was never weary of hearing Elaine declare that she had given him her first enduring love.
“Suppose that you had never seen me?” he would say; “what then?”
The bare possibility, even in imagination, of the woman he loved ever caring for another troubled him.
His persistence became painful to Lady Elaine. It seemed that he had not implicit trust in her. She who had been so cold and haughty to others—the spoiled child of an indulgent father, the pet of society—became almost a slave to the caprices of her lover.
But my lady became indignant at last, and after their interview in the summer arbor she sent for Margaret Nugent—she sent for the cousin who knew Sir Harold’s moods, and would perhaps be able to advise her.
Miss Nugent listened, and there was a well-assumed sympathy in her eyes, in her voice—while her heart was throbbing with triumph.
“You must not let him have his way in all things, Lady Elaine,” she said. “Time enough for that after marriage. You will lose your self-respect, and he will not value you any the more for that!”
“I think that you are right, Margaret, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. He shall not find me so childish in the future. In my great love for him I may have acted weakly. I am the daughter of an earl,” she added, proudly.
There was a resolute ring in her tones, and her head resumed its haughty pose.
So when Sir Harold came to the Hall next day, an expectant smile upon his lips, a resolve in his heart to beg Elaine’s pardon, and to promise never to offend her again, he was informed by a servant that my lady had gone for a ride, and that she was accompanied by Viscount Rivington.
His face turned so white that the man noticed it, and asked:
“Are you ill, Sir Harold?”
“No,” he returned, shortly. “Which way did her ladyship go?”
“In the direction of Ashbourne, Sir Harold.”
The baronet rode away, and as he galloped through the park, he saw Viscount Rivington and Lady Elaine crossing a distant hill on their return home.
His brain was on fire. He dared not meet them now, and continued on his way—anywhere.
For three days he nursed his jealous wrath, and heard no word of Elaine. Then news came to him of a garden party at Seabright Hall, to be followed by a ball.
He could bear it no longer. He was consumed with love and wounded pride.
“I have given her all,” he told himself; “and get but half a heart in return. She must be everything to me, or nothing!”
He rode over to the Hall, but it was not the happy lover; it was a man with a stern, white face.
He left his horse in charge of a groom, and asked for Lady Elaine.
“I will wait in the west drawing-room,” he told the footman. “Let her ladyship know that I am here as soon as possible.”
He paced the floor impatiently, until he saw a vision of loveliness crossing the lawn toward the house. It was Lady Elaine, attired in a diaphanous dress of snowy white. She wore a broad-brimmed straw hat, and in her hands were bunches of wild flowers.
“My darling!” he murmured. “Oh, what a brute I am. If she is weak and frail, then Heaven itself is false!”
In a little while she came into the room, and his words of welcome died on his lips, for in the eyes of Elaine there was no answering smile.
“Sweetheart,” he whispered, hoarsely, “is this the best greeting you have for me?”
“Why have you absented yourself, Sir Harold, without one word of explanation?” she asked, with studied coldness.
He instantly resented this by saying: “Absented myself? The last time I called you appeared to be enjoying more congenial society.”
“It is a relief to be beyond range of your unreasonable temper sometimes,” Lady Elaine said.
“Oh, my love, this is terrible for me to bear!”
“You think only of yourself, Sir Harold.” Her lips quivered. “You think only of yourself. I have been too childish and yielding.”
“It is the duty of woman to yield,” he retorted.
“I beg to differ with you. I do not propose to be your slave,” Lady Elaine responded, bitterly.
There was silence for a little while—a silence that neither ever forgot.
“We must have an understanding, Elaine,” Sir Harold said, at last. “Do not let false pride stand between us, my darling. I was angry when I heard that you were out with Rivington. I saw you together, and it maddened me. I do not think it right for an engaged woman to listen to the flattery of any man.”
She laughed musically.
“No? I suppose that you consider me your slave? I object to being any man’s slave, Sir Harold.”
“Listen to me, my dear love,” he pleaded. “Who speaks of slavery! Oh, why will you misunderstand me? Have I not lavished upon you the whole wealth of my affection? Are you not my ideal of all that is good and beautiful in woman?”
“And yet you do not trust me. I cannot understand such love as that,” Elaine said.
He held out his arms, and she was not proof against this, but her determination to maintain her independence remained unshaken. Had she not already scored a victory?
For a few minutes he caressed her fondly, his face rapturously happy.
“There is only one thing now,” he told her, “that stands between us and heaven itself. Can you guess what it is, darling?”
“No,” she replied. “How should I know?”
“Then I will tell you, dear.” He held her away from him at arm’s length. “I want you to promise me that you will not ride out with Viscount Rivington again?”
She drew away from him, her head erect.
“It is impossible, Sir Harold; I am not your wife yet, remember!”
“Impossible!” he echoed. “Why, may I ask?”
“I decline to answer. If the Viscount desires my society I cannot very well refuse it. He is an old friend and neighbor. As your wife you may command me, but again I repeat I am not yet your wife.”
“And never will be,” Sir Harold replied, with terrible calmness, “unless you respect my wishes now.”
She endeavored to slip his ring from her finger, but was seized with an awful faintness.
“I believe that it will kill me if I lose you, Elaine,” he went on, “but I cannot marry a woman who accepts the attentions of other men. I will leave you to think it over, and to decide between me and Rivington. Bah! how I loathe his name! If you love me as I love you my happiness is safe. If you will not give me your promise, I swear that I will never willingly look upon your face again.”
He sprang toward her and pressed her passionately to his heart; he showered a hundred kisses on her face mingled with tears that seemed scalding hot.
“Good-by, Elaine! I can stand this no longer,” he groaned.
He rushed from the room, and for a long time Lady Elaine Seabright was like one in a dark dream.
Her first impulse when she recovered her numbed senses was to cry:
“Oh, my darling, my darling, come back to me!”
Then Margaret Nugent was announced, and Lady Elaine told her all.
“You have nearly conquered him,” smiled Margaret. “He is merely trying to frighten you. How well I know him of old! He was always a wayward, headstrong, loving boy. As children we had our little quarrels through his overbearing temper, but he always acknowledged at last that he was in the wrong; I will say that for him, and it will be the same with you, Lady Elaine. He will come back to you and confess his faults; he will be so humble when he realizes that you refuse to encourage his caprices, and let us hope that the lesson will be a wholesome one.”
“But there was a strange look in his eyes that I have never seen there before,” Lady Elaine said, piteously. “Oh, Margaret, are you sure that your counsel is good? Are you sure that you understand this strange jealousy that has come between me and my lover?”
Miss Nugent replied confidently, and for a time her words carried consolation to the suffering heart.
“I know Sir Harold far better than I know myself,” she said. “I know the mood he is in exactly. Long, long ago, when we were children, he left one of his pet birds for me to feed and care for. Let me confess that I neglected it, and it died—poor, little thing. When my cousin came home his rage was terrible. I thought then that I should never be forgiven. He declared that he would never look upon me again—that he hated me. His passions are violent always. But he apologized a few days later, Lady Elaine, and he will come back to you in the same way. I am sure of it.”
Miss Nugent went away thinking, “I shall win Harold yet—I, who have loved him for years, and have the greatest right to him!”
The next morning’s post brought a letter to Sir Harold—a letter bearing the Seabright crest.
At sight of it his haggard face lighted up with sudden hope, and he kissed the dear writing tenderly; then he broke the seal and read:
Dear Harold—Much as I love you, I cannot sacrifice my self-respect by making the foolish promise you requested.
Elaine.
“My God!” he gasped, a stony glare in his eyes. “And so it has come to this! All is at an end!”
He retired to his study, and his valet kept watch at the door. He feared that Sir Harold meant to end his life.
