CHAPTER X
The wedding was over. Mrs. Phillips had become Mrs. Herbert. The accounts were in all the papers, the guests were mentioned, and the bride’s attire was described. She wore mauve, a bonnet, and what was not mentioned, a nervous air. The known dangers of matrimony are worse in anticipation, and more true, than the maiden bride’s assurance of eternal bliss.
“Miss Archer, an American beauty,” said the Chronicler, “accompanied her to the altar, and handed her a smelling-bottle.”
Mr. and Mrs. Herbert departed amid no rice and no old slippers. Lily would not have them. They went to hear the nightingales, and to remember Rubinstein’s song:
“The nightingale with fervent song
Doth woo the rose the whole night long.”
For one whole week the weather was glorious and unchangeable.
Launa was alone in Victoria Mansions. Mr. George visited her with frequency, and so did Mr. Wainbridge.
Mr. George often came in the morning.
“I am at my worst early, Launa,” he said, “and then I long for strong measures. You are a strong measure. Your name is so perfect, I could not spoil it with a Miss,” he added apologetically.
All the old women would have called her a bold Canadian had they not remembered her money and success. England conquered and annexed her Colonies; do not their maidens annex her young men?
Launa missed her father; between them there was a perfect relationship; their minds were in tune; she was so certain of his love and care that she feared no diminution thereof. He wrote to her often, and she thought of shutting up the flat and going to join him.
On Lily’s wedding day, Mr. Wainbridge told her he was obliged to travel with his uncle for six weeks. The uncle, Lord Wainbridge, had just constructed a novel; it contained a pinch of all the crazes of the day, and was clever, but not moral. Lord Wainbridge became uneasy, and Lady Wainbridge rampant with rage (designated in this case Christian solicitude about his fall) when she read it. She said the want of morals was his own. She said many things which he did not mind when she only gave utterance to them; but he feared ridicule as he feared nothing else; she said he would be laughed at, so he fled to his nephew, who always had sympathy for him.
Launa received the tidings of Mr. Wainbridge’s departure with indifference, though she did feel it. And he decided that her lack of vanity was her one fault. She really appeared as if she did not care whether she attracted him or not. But she thought very much about him. His interest in her was pleasant. It was more. It was necessary to her, as much as anything can be necessary over which we have no control, and without which we must live if it is withdrawn.
The day of his last visit they spent in reading, when he would have much rather talked. But she had a new book.
“How queer it is that the charm of so few poems lasts,” she said. “What I loved at sixteen I loathe now, and I suppose what I love now I shall hate at thirty-five.”
“We change. You do not love a comic song when your heart aches.”
“I have no heart.”
“Because I said that, you think I meant your heart,” he replied. “I did not.”
“Your own then?”
“Perhaps. Do you believe we are responsible for evil?”
“I do not know. Are we responsible for what we cannot help? I could not condemn any one but myself. The existence of evil is true, but how horrible! And how it spoils our lives.”
“Spoils our lives,” he repeated. “You are quite right! Tell me, can a man or a woman love two people at once? Is it possible to love evil and good?”
Launa grew pale.
“No one can love evil.”
“You are right,” he said, with triumph. “It is not love then. To do right, one should love something, someone.”
“Yes,” she half whispered, “love someone, even if they are beyond one’s reach.”
“You have comforted me. I must say good-bye, now. No, I will see you once again, to-night. In six weeks I shall come back, and I shall be glad—glad. What shall you be?”
She did not answer, but stood up and walked across the room to look at a photograph. She would never go back to Canada, never.
“Where did you get that photograph?” he asked. “Is it new? Who is it?”
It was Paul. She had kept it locked up until now.
“It is no one you know. It is only a picture which reminds me of evil.”
“Take it down—shall I?”
“No, no,” she said sharply. “We are terribly in earnest,” she added, and gave a little laugh.
She went to the window and looked out. The lights were flashing, and the roar of the city came up to her.
“Good-bye,” he said, taking her hand. “Good-bye—Behüt dich Gott.”
That night Launa went to a dance, which lasted until three in the morning. She wore pink, and looked beautiful. The lust for slaughter, for conquest, for admiration entered into her. She could not love any man, she assured herself, while she knew that she thought only of Paul. But she possessed power. She could hurt, and for that one night she gloried in it. This was what the man on the steamer had meant; this was deadening; this was life and din; there was no time to think.
Mr. Wainbridge was there; she gave him one dance only, and he was angry, though he rejoiced when Mr. George said to him:—
“Launa is miserable. Her eyes are unhappy; she is feeling something.”
She had expressed herself as yearning for Norway, and that was all; but Mr. Wainbridge thought she wanted him.
The next morning she slept until it was late; she was very tired; When her letters were brought to her she did not open them. She lazily drank her tea and looked at the post-marks, wondering from whom they were. She sent a wire to her father, saying she would like to join him at once.
While she was dressing her maid brought her a telegram. It might be about her new dress, or Lady Blake’s picnic, or the concert at which she was to play.
This was what she read:—
“Your father accidentally shot. Dying.
Come.
“Stevens.”
Stevens was a friend who had joined her father.
Launa looked at it; dying—not dead. She drank her tea. It was, it must be some detestable, horrible dream.
By twelve o’clock her boxes were packed; and Launa and her maid started on their long, almost useless, journey. To sit still and wait was impossible, it was like watching for someone who never came. The train tore along, and the trees seemed to wave their branches like hungry, relentless demons, as if they would clutch all men; the sea was cruel, and the steamer outrageously slow.
And Launa was too late.
After an absence of one week she came back to London, crushed, weary, and heart-sick. Her life seemed to be over. She had seen him again, but he was dead. There was nothing she could do, it was all over. If only she had Paul! She could have screamed with the torture of fate. She realised the disappointment of life, that nothing could be as it had been. A new life might come to her, but she could never gather the old one together again. Perhaps some day she would be reminded of the past when she had forgotten. To be reminded it is necessary to have forgotten. But now she suffered—now she wanted everything she had not. She felt the torture of the vain longing for the impossible; a blister on her body would have been a relief; there was one on her soul. She wished she had told her father about Paul; she wished she could forget Paul; she wished he were there with her, and then she resolved again to forget him.
She wrote to Mr. Wainbridge and told him of her terrible trouble. It was a relief to pour out her mind to someone who understood, and to whom she could say mad things—whether he sympathised or not she did not care.
She was rich, and inundated with letters of sympathy. Each writer considered herself the one consoler Launa required. Men do not write that kind of letter; they merely leave cards.
Mrs. Carden sent pages of lamentation and exhortation, interspersed with demands for one interview, just one, with her dearest Launa.
Lily Herbert came up to town for the day. She was sorry for Launa when she could remember to be so. It was with great difficulty she could disguise the cheerful grin her countenance had assumed since her marriage. She could not understand Launa’s abandonment to grief. If Sir John had died Lily would have wept, when reflecting on her lonely position, and then have smiled over the patterns of new mourning.
Launa remained dumb to her and with her; Lily realised at last, with a certain sort of awe, that Launa was stricken; that she was full of sorrow which was not easily ended, and that she could not bear attempts at consolation, which were merely, and only could be, attempts. Who can raise the dead? Launa passed through the lonely dark valley of nevermore—of hunger for one face, for one word, which is so intense as to be torture, and to which was added the desire for the presence of a man whom she felt was unfaithful to her. Could she bear another man’s kisses? How could he then kiss another woman?
To stay in London was impossible for her, and so she chose to go to a little village in Derbyshire which her father had loved as a boy. The Black Country, with its barren moors and lonely stonewalled hills, attracted her; the warm valleys full of bracken and alder bushes, through which the rushing mountain streams tore, had a wild beauty and a lulling power. It was very lonely and bleak. She could walk for miles without seeing anyone, and the people she did meet were for the most part only villagers. Much as she longed to see “Solitude” again, she felt the impossibility of going there.
During all these long, long days of sorrow and direful longing, Mr. Wainbridge wrote to her. Almost every day a letter came, and she began to look for them and to answer them. At first she had only sent him scrawls, but he had gradually drifted into an intimate—a most intimate friend.
She often re-read his letters, and there was more in them than the actual words said. She gave him credit for an intuition which he did not possess. He loved her, and he divined that she did not love him; she could almost love him for that. Women usually love men for imaginary qualities. She thought him brave and pure; she fancied he loved what she did, instead of which he loved her. Her personality made life interesting; her playing made music an everlasting joy.
The day after she was settled at Fair View she had a long letter from him in answer to her first coherent one.
“Schweitzerhof, Lucerne,
“July 3rd.
“At last! I was so glad to get your letter this morning. First, I am going to thank you from my heart for telling me everything, and please remember that I can never be bored by anything that concerns you. Just believe that, and you will trust me, and I may be able to help you with my sympathy at any rate. Dear, I do sympathise, and it is as if the trouble were my own. I can dimly guess what a terrible loss you have had, and I know that your relationship with him was a perfect one. I am so sorry that the letters I have written since I left London have been so selfish and full of my own feelings, while you are in such grief; forgive them. I should love to hear that the knowledge of my sympathy and care is something to you. I need not tell you that I would spare no trouble and no thought if I could help you in the smallest degree, or if I could save you one ounce of care or pain. I know the hardness of it appals you. Can I say or do anything to make you happier?
“I have just been reading for the tenth time ‘Andrea del Sarto.’ It is wonderful; but how he longed for a soul in his wife, and yet he loved her for her beauty, and she—‘again the cousin’s whistle.’ It is so sad, but how could she love him when she did not understand him? And I suppose it bored her to sit by the window with him while he talked to her, and all the time she was listening for the cousin’s whistle, and wishing her husband would begin to paint again. Surely ‘a man’s reach does always exceed his grasp.’ If it did not, we should not want a Heaven at all. Browning knew things, didn’t he?
“We are not coming back for some weeks yet, and it makes me sad, for I long to hear your voice again. I love your voice.—
“Yours,
“C. H. W.”
A course of these letters was very comforting. To be necessary to someone is what many women are obliged to be, instead of being loved.
The days were long and full of pain. She did not grow accustomed to it. The wound was as open and sore as at first. It was a relief to be alone, and to be allowed to be sorrowful. There was no peace, no joy anywhere.