Wyllard's Weird/Chapter 20
CHAPTER XX.
TWO WOMEN.
They stood face to face in the evening light, Bothwell and Valeria; those two who had loved each other, who had once been wont to meet with smiles and gladness, hand clasped in hand—they stood pale and silent, each waiting for the other to speak.
"How could you do so mad a thing as to come here, Lady Valeria?" Bothwell asked, at last.
His heart was beating passionately, not with love, but with anger. He was indignant at the unfeminine feeling shown by this pursuit of him, this persecution of a man who had frankly owned a new and wiser attachment.
"It is not the first madness I have been guilty of for your sake," she answered. "There was the madness of loving you, in the first instance; and the still greater madness of being constant to you; even when I suspected that you had grown tired of me. But it was not weariness of me that influenced you, was it, Bothwell? It was the false position which grew irksome; the falsehood towards that good, brave man. It was that which made you desert me, was it not? That is all over now. My bondage is over. I am my own mistress, answerable to no one for my conduct; and I am here to remind you of old vows made three years ago beside the fountain at Simla."
"Those old vows have been cancelled, Lady Valeria," said Bothwell coldly. "Surely you have not forgotten our last parting, and the old love-token which you threw away."
"I was beside myself with anger," she answered hurriedly. "You could not have meant all you said that day, Bothwell. You wanted to escape from a false position; you could not guess that my release was to come so soon, that in less than a month I should be free, that in a year I might be your wife."
"Stop!" he cried; "for pity's sake not another word. I am engaged to marry another woman—bound heart and soul to another. I have no other purpose in life but to win her, and to be happy with her."
Lady Valeria looked at him in silence for some moments. She had thrown back her veil when she first addressed him. Her face was almost as white as the crape border of her widow's bonnet, but on each cheek there was one spot of hectic—a spot that looked like flame—and in her eyes, there was the light of anger.
"It is true, then! You are in love with another woman!"
"It is true. I am in love with her; and I am bound to her by all those feelings which are sweetest and most sacred in the mind of a man—by gratitude, by love, by respect, by admiration for her noble qualities. I am to be married to her almost immediately. You can understand, therefore, Lady Valeria, that as I hope always to be your friend—your champion and defender, if need of championship should ever arise—I am justified in remonstrating with you for your folly in coming here alone, upon the day after your husband's funeral."
"My champion, my friend!" she repeated mockingly. "What amazing generosity, what sublime chivalry! You offer me your friendship—you who swore to be my husband, to give me the devotion of your life, whenever it pleased God to set me free from an unnatural union. You who were bound to me by the most sacred vows."
"You released me from those vows when you threw away the love-token. I asked you for my freedom, and you told me that I was free. You cannot recall that release, Lady Valeria."
"I released you from a false position. That is over now: and your alleged motive—your compunction, your remorse of conscience—must be over too."
Bothwell was silent. He had said all that could be said. He stood before Lady Valeria motionless, dumb, ready to bear the brunt of her anger and submit meekly to her reproaches, were they never so ungenerous.
"Do you know what you have done for me?" she demanded passionately. "Do you know what you have cost me—you who pretended to be my slave, who pretended to worship me, and whose flimsy passion could not stand the wear and tear of three short years? You have blighted my life; you have ruined my good name."
"That last charge cannot be true, Lady Valeria. You were much too careful of your reputation—you knew much too well how to keep your slave at a proper distance," answered Bothwell, with a touch of scorn.
"But I did not know how to hide my love for you. There were eyes keen enough to read that. Do you know that my husband assaulted Sir George Varney in his own house on my account?"
"Ah, then the story was true," muttered Bothwell.
"You have heard about it, I see. Did you hear the nature of the insult which provoked that punishment?"
"No."
"It was the mention of your name—your name flung in my face like an accusation—cast at me as if my position were notorious—as if all society knew that I had been guilty of an intrigue."
"Sir George is a blackguard, and no act of his would surprise me; but Sir George is not society. You need not be unhappy about any speech of his. If you want me to call him out, I am quite willing to go over to Blankenberghe and ask him to meet me there."
"You know that such an act as that would intensify the scandal. No, Bothwell, there is only one way in which you can set me right, a year hence, when my year of widowhood is over, when I can marry again without disrespect to my husband's memory. That is the only way of setting me right with the world, Bothwell; and it is the only way of setting me right in my own self-esteem."
"My dear Lady Valeria, I wonder that you have not learnt to understand society better—you, who are essentially a woman of society. Do you think the world would applaud you or respect you for making a very poor marriage—for uniting yourself to a man without pursuit or means or position? You, who with beauty, rank, and wealth, might marry almost any one you pleased. The world does not smile on such marriages, Lady Valeria. The world worships the star which mounts higher in the social firmament, not the star which bends earthward. You have your future before you, free and unfettered. You have wealth, which in this age means power. You can have nothing to regret in a foolish love of the past, love that drooped and died for want of a congenial atmosphere."
"Is that your last word upon this subject?" asked Valeria, looking at him intently with those angry eyes.
They were beautiful even in anger, those violet-dark eyes; but the light in them was a diabolical light, as of an evil spirit.
"My very last."
"Then we will say no more; and we will enter upon a new phase of our existence—the period of friendship. Perhaps you will be kind enough to take me back to the inn where I left my carriage, and order some tea for me?"
"I shall be very happy," said Bothwell quietly; and they walked off towards the inn, which was less than half a mile from the cottage.
"May I ask what you were doing in that deserted garden?" inquired Lady Valeria.
"I have been planning the improvement of my future home."
"Indeed! You are going to live in that desolate spot, with nothing but the sea and the sky to look at?"
"The sea and the sky, and some of the finest coast-scenery in England—the sands and the rocks and the wild hills. Don't you think that ought to be enough for any man to look at?"
"For a hermit, no doubt, not for a man. A man should have the city and the Forum. Ah, Bothwell, if you were my husband, there would be no limit to my ambition for you! And you are going to vegetate in a place like this?"
"I am going to work here, and to be useful in my generation, I hope. I shall help to make the soldiers of the future;" and then he told Lady Valeria his plans.
"What a drudgery!" she exclaimed; "what a wearisome monotonous round, from year's end to year's end! I would as soon be a horse in a mill. O Bothwell, the very idea is an absurdity. You a schoolmaster! You!"
She measured him from head to foot with a scornful laugh; trying to humiliate him, to make him ashamed of his modest hopes. But she failed utterly in this endeavour. Bothwell was too happy to be easily put out of conceit with his prospects. Even that opprobrious name of "schoolmaster" had no terrors for him.
"Tell me about my friend's last illness," he said presently, gravely, gently, anxious to bring Lady Valeria to a more womanly frame of mind.
He thought that she must surely have some touch of tenderness, some regret for the husband who had been so good and loyal in his treatment of her; the man to whom she had been as an indulged and idolised daughter rather than as a wife; escaping all wifely servitude, seeking her own pleasure in all things, allowed to live her own life.
Lady Valeria told Bothwell about those last sad days: how the strong frame had been burnt up with fever, the broad chest racked with pain; how patiently weakness and suffering had been endured.
"He was a brave, good man," she said; "noble, unselfish to the last. His parting words were full of love and generosity. 'You will marry again,' he said. 'I have left no fetter upon your life. My latest prayer will be for your happiness.'"
"I wish we had both been worthier of his regard," said Bothwell gloomily.
He wondered at the supreme egotism of a nature which could be so little moved by this good man's death.
"That is past wishing now. Nothing that you or I can do will cancel the past. No, Bothwell," she said, looking at him steadily, "nothing will cancel the past."
They were at the hotel by this time. Bothwell ordered tea, then went out to the stables to order the carriage. He left Lady Valeria to take her tea in mournful solitude, while he walked up and down in front of the hotel, waiting to hand her into her carriage. He was indignant with her for the unwomanly step she had taken. He wondered that he could ever have cared for such a woman, a woman who could assume the dignity of an empress, and yet stoop to follies at which a dressmaker's apprentice might have hesitated; a creature of caprice and impulse, governed by no higher law than her own whim.
He walked up and down in the autumn darkness, listening to the murmur of the waves, seeing the stars shine out, pale and far apart in the calm gray, glancing now and then at the window of the sitting-room, where Lady Valeria was seated in the glow of the fire, a tall slim figure in densest black.
She came out after the carriage had been waiting some time.
"O, you are there, are you?" she exclaimed, seeing Bothwell by the hotel-door. "I thought you had gone."
"I waited to hand you to your carriage."
"You are vastly polite. I hardly expected so much attention."
"There is a train from Bodmin Road a few minutes after nine. You will be in time for it if your coachman drives pretty fast."
"The road is not the safest in the world for fast driving, but you can tell him to catch the train, if you please. Good-night."
Bothwell told the coachman not to waste his time when he had a level road; and as the habit of Cornish coachmen is to spring their horses up-hill and canter them gaily down-hill, there was every chance that Lady Valeria would be in time.
The carriage drove off, and Bothwell went back to his lodgings, wondering whether he had seen the last of the lady. Her coming had introduced a new element of doubt and fear into his mind. A woman capable of such foolishness might stop at no desperate act. All the serenity of Bothwell's sky had become clouded over.
He turned his face in the direction of Penmorval, and looked across the hills, through the cool, dark night. O, what a different nature that was, the nature of the girl who was to be his wife! What rest, what comfort in the very thought of her love!
"God bless you, my darling," he said to himself. "I send my love and blessing to you, dearest, over the quiet hills, under the silent stars."