Chapter VII: Bold Stroke for a Lover

Ah, cruel! tu m'as trop entendue!
Je t'en ai dit assez pour te tirer d'erreur.
Eh bien! connois donc Phèdre en toute sa fureur
Je t'aime!
RACINE.--_Phèdre._

"Do you never sing, Mrs. Vyner?" asked Mrs. St. John, as she saw her beating time with her head (and curious time it was!) to Violet's singing.

"No; I have so little voice."

"That surprises me; I should have thought you must sing well, your speaking voice is so soft."

Mrs. Meredith Vyner smiled her acknowledgments, and redoubled the energy of her impossible time-beating. Marmaduke, charmed by the magic of Violet's singing, was gradually overcoming his anger, and was slowly admitting to himself what a divine creature she was.

She ceased, and Marmaduke prayed so earnestly for her to continue, that she again sat down, and while her rich contralto notes were making every chord in his heart vibrate, he suddenly encountered the savage gaze of his former "tiger-eyed" mistress. She rapidly closed and then opened her eyes, with that manner peculiar to her, and which I have mentioned before, and a smile dethroned the look of hate which the previous instant had usurped her face; but he marked the change, and smiled scornfully.

"What a beautiful voice she has!" said Mrs. St. John.

"Yes," replied Mrs. Vyner; "but we prefer Blanche's singing--she has so much _feeling_. Violet, you know, has more of the professional mechanism; but Blanche has a soul in her singing."

As Blanche was a rival out of the way, it was safe to cry up her attraction, especially at the expense of one of the other girls. Violet was perfectly aware of what her mother meant, but she was not the less nettled. As she was about to commence another song, Mrs. Vyner said,

"There, my dear, that will do; you have displayed your accomplishments quite enough, and it is unnecessary for Mr. Ashley to listen to any more songs sung out of tune, however curious the ornaments may be."

Mrs. Vyner must have been very irritated, to have made a remark so plainly and directly disparaging and unkind!

"Did you notice that I sang out of tune, Mr. Ashley?" Violet quietly asked.

"Not at all. In fact, as far as I may be allowed an opinion, I should say your intonation is remarkably perfect."

"Well, I am glad you are not so severe a critic as mama," replied Violet, with a calmness which was horribly exasperating, "because, as she cannot distinguish one tune from another, her ears are so delicate that it is difficult to keep in tune to them."

This sarcasm, in answer to the petty spiteful remark which called it forth, produced an uncomfortable silence, which Violet broke by beginning Paisiello's magnificent _Ho perduto il bel sembiante_, which she sang with triumphant energy and steadiness, showing how little the ignoble squabble had disturbed her.

Mrs. Meredith Vyner was pale with hate, but the twilight covered her paleness. In her rage at Violet's haughty sarcasm, and jealousy at seeing Marmaduke so enraptured with her, she resolved upon a diabolical resolve: she would regain Marmaduke's love, and break Violet's heart!

Meanwhile Julius was in the study writing this epistle:--

"Dearest Rose, I can no longer restrain myself, I can no longer hesitate and live in doubt. I love you. You must know it; and what you said not an hour ago makes me bold. Do you remember your words, 'As for me, I would as soon marry a hunchback as a guardsman, so far as beauty is concerned.' They were sincerely spoken, were they not? At any rate 'upon that hint I speak,' and conscious of my own unattractiveness dare to hope my ugliness will not be a barrier to your affection. Do not ridicule my presumption, I entreat; look on it as an unhappy passion, which your own confession has urged me to declare. Even now I dare not tell you to your face I love you; partly because I still fear the avowal might distress you, and partly because the courage I shall need to bear with a refusal, would desert me.

"Examine your own heart calmly, and if it tells you that you could be happy with me--if it tells you that the devotion of my life would make up for all the superior attractions, mental and physical, in which I am deficient--then, as you come down to dinner to-day, bring in your hand the volume of Leopardi, and place it on the table. By that token, which can have no significance to others, I shall learn that I am not scorned. If your heart does not speak in my favour, the mere omission of this will tell me too plainly, but in the least cruel manner, that I have made a sad mistake."

This was folded up into a tiny note, and with it Julius marched into the drawing-room to seek some means of delivering it. He found Rose playing with Shot, and stooping down to join her in that play, he easily contrived to slip it into her hand, just as the lamp was brought in. She blushed deeply, and her little bosom panted with hurrying feelings; but making an effort she ran out of the room, declaring it was time to dress for dinner.

She read the letter with intense eagerness, and finished it twice before she could make out distinctly anything beyond the delightful fact that Julius had at last declared himself. On calming her agitation a little, and deliberately reading the letter once more, she felt a certain impatience at that passage which attributed the declaration to what she had said during their ride. For the first time, it then struck her that she had given him too broad a hint. Aware of his backwardness, and of his exaggerated notion of woman's desire for beauty, she was anxious to undeceive him on that point, and now saw that she had, perhaps, overstepped the bounds of maidenly reserve.

Now Rose, though a darling little girl, was not without her imperfections; and wilfulness was among them. She would do and say strange things, because she chose to do and say them; but you were not to draw any absolute conclusions from them, you were not to hold her to her words unless she also chose to be held to them; she called that taking an advantage of her. In the present case she was very anxious to tell Julius that she loved him; she had gone so far as to tell him that his want of beauty would be no disqualification; yet when he availed himself of her words, and "spake upon that hint," she rebelled, and was impatient at such an advantage being taken of her "unguarded language."

Meanwhile, the dressing-bell had rung, and no one was in the drawing-room except Marmaduke and Mrs. Meredith Vyner, who were in the midst of a somewhat bitter and mutually reproachful conversation respecting the honesty and constancy of the two sexes.

"Men are so brutal," she said; "they always demand undying constancy from us--"

"And never get it----"

"And even when perhaps jealousy, anger, or despair have driven us into seeking elsewhere for relief from our outraged affections, they sneer and talk of our frivolity and incapacity for an enduring passion."

"Well, well, it is easy to talk of jealousy driving a woman to extremity, but there must be shown some cause for that jealousy. Mere _absence_, mere inferiority in position, is sometimes enough to suggest ample cause for jealousy. An absent lover thinks incessantly of his mistress; a rich old lover makes his appearance; whereupon the engaged lady suddenly becomes jealous of her absent swain, and, _driven to desperation_, marries the rich old lover!"

Nothing could better please Mrs. Vyner than the turn taken by the conversation, which, in its generality of expression and covert significance, best answered her purpose of justification, without seeming to justify herself.

"I agree with you. There must be ampler cause shown. But if the absent lover suddenly ceases to write, and reports arise that he is very assiduous in his attentions elsewhere, if to this silence, confirmed by these reports--if to the jealous rage, which those who love ardently must feel when they are betrayed, be added the temptation of vengeance in the shape of a brilliant match, then, I think, we should not blame a woman's inconstancy, so much as we should pity her fate. Were she to marry a young and handsome man, she might be supposed to love him; but if, as in the case supposed by you, the new lover be old, then it is a proof that whatever wild motives may have prompted her wild act, inconstancy in her affections had nothing to do with it."

Marmaduke was a good deal shaken by this artful speech, but he rather felt than saw its falsehood. A shrug of the shoulders, and a slight incredulous laugh was all the answer he vouchsafed.

"There is this further difference," she pursued, "between the sexes. When a man has quarrelled with a woman--when he has deserted her or been deserted by her, he tramples down in his heart all former love, and replaces adoration with hate, or, at the least, with indifference."

"Very right too."

"Yes, you men think so. But how differently a woman feels! Under the same circumstances, whatever may have been prompted by her rage or her despair, the act upon which she had resolved once performed, her love returns with all its former force--returns and lives in her heart throughout the rest of her life. This is what I mean by our superiority in constancy. When once we love, it is for ever. No neglect, no ill-usage, no inconstancy can kill it. Weak and wayward, reckless and passionate as we are, we rush into wretched extremes, we do rash things when blinded by our tears, but do what we will, we cannot stifle the love that is in our hearts."

The little creature had risen and thrown back her golden locks with the graceful fury of a Pythoness, her eyes sparkled with an unwonted light, her nostrils were dilated, her whole frame seemed animated with passion, as she declaimed, rather than spoke, that vindication of herself in her sex.

I have said before that she had the nature of an actress. The present scene, therefore, was not only adapted to her histrionic display, but gave her such keen delight, that she could have pursued it for a long while, quite independent of any ulterior purpose, had not Marmaduke suddenly arrested her eloquence, by asking in a tone of subdued irony,--

"And am I expected to believe all this?"

She paused to fix a passionate look at him. Then, slowly drawing from her bosom a small locket, held it up to him, and said scornfully,--

"Do you recognise _this_?"

Before he had recovered from his astonishment, she had left the room.

"Good God!" he exclaimed. "It is my hair!"

_It was her father's._