Chapter XVII: A Quarrel

But one idea or conviction, prevailed in the mind of Jerry Vane:

'She who was so readily false to me before, may easily be so again!'

If he slept at all that night, his sleep was but a succession of nightmares, with dreams such as might spring from a slumber procured by the mandragora; one aching thought ever recurring amid the darkness of the waking hours, and all the more keenly when morning came, and he knew that he must inexorably see and talk with Ida in the usual commonplace way before others, ere he left her for ever, and quitted Carnaby Court to return no more.

The tortures he had endured he resolved never to endure again. It should never be in the power of Ida or any other woman to place her heel upon his heart and crush it, as she had crushed it twice!

Yet when he saw her at the breakfast-table, in all her fresh morning loveliness, and in the most becoming demi-toilette, with her gorgeous hair so skilfully manipulated by her maid, and her grave, chastely beautiful face rippling with a kind--almost fond--smile, as if greeting him and asking his forgiveness too, he knew not what to think, but strove to steel himself against her for the future.

She had a newly gathered white rose--his flower, she was wont to call it--in her bosom; and that rose was not whiter than the slender neck round which the frills of tulle were clasped by a tiny coral brooch.

At times, when he looked on her, and heard the steadiness of her musical voice and sweet silvery little laugh, and beheld the perfect ease of her manner and the candour of her eyes, he could have imagined the affair in the garden to have been a dream, but for the strange and conscious smile that hovered in the face of Desmond when he addressed Ida, while making a hurried breakfast before his departure for London.

'I would take the same train with you, Desmond,' said Vane, 'but that my things are not packed.'

'Do you leave us so soon?' asked Ida, who overheard him.

'I must,' said Vane, for whom there had been no letters that morning, much to his annoyance, as he wished to plead something like a genuine excuse to Clare for taking an abrupt departure. 'I mean to leave England--perhaps even Europe, if I can.'

'For where?' asked Ida, growing very pale.

'Well, I scarcely know,' replied Vane, with a laugh that certainly had no merriment in it.

'Do you really mean this?'

'Yes,' he replied, curtly.

She was silent, but looked at him pleadingly, and even upbraidingly across the table, while Jerry, becoming, as he thought, grim as Ajax, busied himself with a piece of partridge pie.

'No, no,' thought he; 'I shall not again begin that hazardous play with love, which some one truly calls "the deadly gambling of heart and thought and sense, which casts all stakes in faith upon the venture of another's life."'

He had hoped that by the mere force of his own passionate love for her some tenderness might be reawakened in her heart for him; and now--now, after all, she was actually fooling him--vulgarly fooling him!

By a glance that was exchanged between them they tacitly quitted the room when breakfast was over, and passed together--he following with undisguised reluctance--into the garden, through a window which opened like a folding-door on the back terrace of the mansion.

'What is the meaning of this sudden departure, Jerry?' she asked, when they reached a part of the garden near the very bower Desmond had referred to. 'Do you mean it?'

'I do.'

'How strange you are in your manner, Jerry! Look at me! why, you are quite pale!'

He dared not tell her the cause at first; he felt ashamed of his own folly--ashamed of her and of the accusation he had to make.

'I was in the rhododendron walk last night. You did not come, as you promised.'

'I--I could not,' said she, her pallor increasing, as she cast down her eyes.

'My heart was wrung by your absence, Ida; but still more wrung--ay, tortured nigh unto death--by the cause!'

'_Cause?_' said she, trembling.

'Yes,' he replied, sharply and bitterly.

'Oh, you know not the cause,' she said sadly, as she shook her head.

'I do know, and so do others; but I have no right to question your actions or control your movements--no warrant for--God help me, Ida, I scarcely know what I say.'

'So it seems,' said she, a little haughtily.

'Oh, Ida, what is this man to you?' he asked, huskily.

'To me--who--what man?' she asked, with a bewildered air.

'He who is always hanging about you--he who detained you in that arbour last night, when you promised to meet me, and give me the answer I prayed for in yonder oriel.'

Astonishment, alarm, and anxiety pervaded the delicate coldness of her pure, pale face, and then a flush--the hectic of unwonted anger--crossed it.

'Jerry--Mr. Vane--are you mad?' she exclaimed. 'How dare you address me thus?'

'Mad--I fear so; but for the love of pity, Ida----'

'Well, sir.'

'Tell me, what am I to think?'

'Enough,' said she coldly; 'the words we have exchanged are most painful to us both.'

'They are agony to me, Ida. But say, were you in that arbour last night?'

'On the way to meet you, _I was_,' she replied, but with hesitation in her manner.

'And there you remained?'

'Oh, thrice I endeavoured to leave the arbour and keep my appointment with you, and then--then----'

She paused, and her voice died away upon her quivering lip.

'What? Speak, dearest Ida.'

'That strange magnetic influence, which I told you impels my actions and controls my movements, came over me like a species of drowsy sleep, and I remained till the time to meet you was long since past.'

'And _he_ who had this influence over you--he who detained you,' said Vane, bitterly and incredulously.

'Jerry! this to _me_!' she exclaimed, her eyes expressive now of sad reproach. 'Think of me as you will, I can explain no more.'

Her eyes closed, her little white hands were clenched and pressed upon her bosom, and again, as yesterday in the oriel, she seemed on the point of sinking. She had suddenly become bewildered and confused, and this bewilderment and confusion were but too painfully apparent to the sorrowing and exasperated Vane.

Was she thinking it possible that _that_ of which she had spoken in a moment of confidence to Trevor Chute--the thing or being unseen, but which she felt conscious of being near her--could have been by her side in that dark arbour then, or what caused her emotion? Did a memory of the icy and irrepressible shudder she felt at times, when that dread pang occurred to her, come over her then?

Perhaps so, for the nameless dread that paralysed her tongue made her more tolerant to Jerry. Anon she recovered herself, and pride of heart, dignity of position, and a sense of insult came to her rescue and restored her strength, and she looked Vane steadily, even haughtily, in the face.

'You put my faith to a hard test, Ida,' said he; 'God alone knows how hard.'

'If I could spare you a pang, Mr. Vane, He knows I would,' she replied; 'but when last you spoke to me about a strange gentleman being with me in the arbour, I thought your manner odd and unwarrantable, and now I think it more so. I trust this is the last time the subject will be referred to--and, and--now I wish you good-morning.'

And bowing with gravity and grace, not unmingled with hauteur, she swept away towards the house and left him. Great was the shock this event, and this most unanticipated interview or explanation, gave the heart of Vane, who made not the slightest attempt to detain her, or soothe the indignation he had apparently kindled; but he stood rooted to the spot, motionless as the marble Psyche on its pedestal close by.

If perfidy rendered her unworthy of him, why regret her? Yet it was so hard, so bitter, and so unnatural to deem her so. With all his pride, we have said that Jerry had none with Ida, and the moment the accusation against her escaped him, he repented of it. With all her tenderness and gentleness, he knew how dignified and resolute Ida could be. He recalled all the varying expressions he had seen in her sweet face, great amazement, pain, alarm, and sorrow, culminating in indignation and pride; and though she left him in undisguised anger, he still seemed to hear the pathos of her voice, which seemed filled with unshed tears.

Was he yielding her up in anger now, and not in sorrow as before, to another who would revel in all the spells of her beauty and sweetness, and thus ruining all for himself again?

Then he said through his clenched teeth:

'What matters it? If she is so perfidious, let her go. But I have been too long here playing the moonstruck fool.'

Yet with a pitiful desperation he clung to the faint hope that ere he left, some explanation, other than he had received, might be given him; that another interview might pass between them which would change the present gloomy aspect of their affairs, and place them even on their former vague and unsatisfactory basis. But Major Desmond had taken his departure during the interview in the garden; thus Vane had no opportunity of recurring to what he had related overnight in the garden; and Ida remained studiously aloof, sequestered in her own room, and he saw no more till the moment of his departure, and even then not a word passed between them.

Clare Collingwood heard with genuine concern the announcement of Vane's sudden departure that day; he was the sole link between her and Trevor Chute, and the medium through which she heard of all the wanderer's movements.

It was long past mid-day ere he could leave the Court, and as he passed through the hall he saw the ladies taking their afternoon tea in the morning room, and amid that brilliant group, with their shining silks and rich laces, their perfumed hair and glittering ornaments, he saw only the bright Aurora tresses and sombre dress of Ida, her jet ear-rings and necklet contrasting so powerfully with the paleness of her blonde beauty--the wondrous whiteness of her skin. She was smiling lightly now at Violet, who was coquetting with, or quizzing, old Colonel Rakes.

Why should not Ida smile when the eyes of 'Society' were upon her?

It fretted Vane, however, that she should be doing so on the eve of his departure, and added fuel to the fire that consumed him. He was just in the humour to quarrel with trifles. He simply bade her adieu as he did all the rest, and bowed himself out; but he could not resist making some explanation to Clare, who followed him to the porch, and whose expressive eyes seemed to ask it, for she had detected in a moment that something unusual had passed between him and Ida.

She heard him with pain and bewilderment.

'All this must, and shall, be fully explained,' said Clare, with her dark eyes swimming in tears.

'I doubt it.'

'Doubt not!' said she, firmly, 'and, dear Jerry, promise me that you will forget your quarrel with Ida, and visit us again at Christmas; papa and--and Lady Evelyn will be home long before that. Do you promise?'

'I promise you, Clare--dear Clare, you were ever my friend,' said he, in a broken voice, as he kissed her hand, and would have kissed her cheek, perhaps, but for the servants who stood by; and in half an hour afterwards the train was sweeping him onward to London.

'I had hoped, Ida, that Jerry Vane's visit would have had a different termination than this,' said Clare, the moment she got her sister alone. 'Why, you have actually quarrelled.'

'No, not quarrelled,' urged Ida.

'What then?'

'Parted coldly, certainly.'

'Why did you not keep your appointment with him?'

Again the expression that Vane had seen on her face--pain and embarrassment, sorrow and bewilderment, were all visible to Clare, who had to repeat the question three times; then Ida said:

'As he himself has told you, he accused me--me--of meeting another, and I was almost bluntly accused thus, Clare, when--when I was certainly beginning to feel that I might love him with the emotion that I deemed dead in my heart and impossible to resuscitate.'

'All this seems most inexplicable to me!' said Clare, with the smallest expression of irritation in her tone. 'Poor Jerry! he loves you very truly, Ida, and sorely indeed has that love been tested.'

'He loved me because he believed in me; that regard will cease when he ceases to believe, as he has done, through some insulting suspicion, the source or cause of which is utterly beyond my conception,' said Ida, wearily and sadly. Then she threw an arm round the waist of Clare, and lying on her sister's breast, said in a low voice, 'Another seems to hold me by bonds that will never be unloosed, Clare.'

'_Another_, Ida!'

'Beverley.'

'What madness is this?' asked Clare, regarding her sister's face with great and deep anxiety.

'I loved Beverley as I never loved Jerry; it was, indeed, the passion which Scott describes as given by God alone:

'"It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart and mind to mind
_In body and in soul can bind_."

Beverley's last words were that we should meet again; and we have met again--nay, seem to be always meeting in my thoughts by day and dreams by night; but always the memory of him was most vivid when Jerry Vane was near me or in my mind.'

'How will all this end?' said Clare, in a voice of sorrow. 'I would that papa were here.'

'He had never much sympathy with, or toleration for, my grief, and now that it is passing away, he would have still less with these secret thoughts or strange impressions I have told to you, dear Clare, and even hinted at to Trevor Chute.'

'It is a disease of the mind, Ida; but all this seems so incomprehensible to me. Surely we have power and will over our own acts, and even in these days, when so much is said, thought, written--yes, and practised too, about spiritualism, mysticism, etc., there is the danger of adopting that as an _inevitable law_ to which we must conform, but which we should with all our power resist as the vilest of superstition.'

Ida only shook her head mournfully, and poor Clare's motherly and sisterly heart was stirred within her. She knew not what to think; but she clung to the hope that ultimately a marriage with Jerry Vane would dissipate these morbid impressions with which the mind of Ida had become so singularly and so strongly imbued.

But now, after this, rumours began to spread--though the strange man, if man he was, had disappeared, and was seen no more, but seemed to have taken his departure with Jerry Vane--rumours born of chance, remarks overheard by listening servants, and taken to the still-room, the kitchen, the stable court and gamekeeper's lodge, of spectral appearances in the rhododendron walk, in the arbour where the Psyche stood, and elsewhere about the ancient mansion, till at last, through Major Desmond, they actually reached the ears of Sir Carnaby Collingwood abroad, and though they excited the merriment and languid curiosity of Lady Evelyn, they caused him anger and annoyance, and not a little contempt: 'Such stories are such deuced bad form--get into the local papers, and all that sort of thing, don't you know.'

One fact became pleasantly apparent to Clare ere long, that though Ida regretted the departure of Vane, and still more the inexplicable cause of their mutual coldness, her health for a time improved rapidly: the colour came back to her cheek, and the brightness to her eyes; she loved as of old to take her share in pleasures and amusements; and the chill shiver she had been wont to experience affected her less and less--but for a time only.