CHAPTER XXII
Paul consigned his beloved to Mrs. Herbert and went up to town. Mrs. Cooper and Sylvia were useless. The former wept over the disgrace and made speeches beginning with “if”—the latter said “everyone was unfortunate and miserable.” Paul felt as if everyone were happy, beginning with himself and including Launa. Her cry to him had not been the cry of disappointment and sorrow; it had been what? He could not define it. Relief was too mild, joy too great a name.
Mr. Wainbridge found a certain amount of awkwardness in the interview with his uncle, which had to take place at once on account of the approaching marriage, which was now broken off. It was so difficult to explain what had transpired and to do it with a due regard for his own feelings.
Lord Wainbridge expressed much disappointment at his nephew’s engagement being broken off. He had received an announcement thereof by telegraph.
“Why! why! why!” he exclaimed. “My temper is very much upset to-day. Your aunt is most trying.”
“We have disagreed about settlements,” said the nephew.
“Damn settlements. That is rubbish. What else?”
“There is,” said his nephew slowly, “only one insurmountable barrier and she knows it.”
“Well? Can’t you do away with it?”
“I am married already.”
“Married? What a fool! You mean that you have had an establishment which you will give up now, of course, and she will not forgive this. She will naturally in time. Things will come right, do not be alarmed.”
“No, this will never come right for I am really married.”
“Yet you love Launa, and you meant to marry her and to live with her as your wife?”
“Yes.”
“To commit bigamy—in spite of the insurmountable barrier?”
“Yes,” replied Wainbridge.
His uncle stared at him aghast. Admiration, blended with contempt, showed in his countenance—admiration for the audacity of the plan, contempt for its failure.
“I thought, when I did think,” said the nephew, “that if we were once married, if she were only bound to me by indissoluble ties, she could not leave me, and if at any time she heard rumours, well, she would have kept quiet about it. The other woman does not know my name.”
“It is dreadful,” said Lord Wainbridge. “Now there is no heir and your aunt—” he sighed. “I wish you had not told me. I should have preferred your being reticent with me. It is most unfortunate. I wish I did not know it.”
His was the hopeless lament of the aged.
“How old you are,” thought his nephew, who was more than sorry; but he did not groan—that was of no avail.
“There is an heir,” he said.
“You are a greater fool than I thought you. What will you tell your aunt?”
“Nothing—or the settlement story? which you prefer.”
He regretted being found out. His god had been the fear of discovery; he worshipped it, and to it he had made many sacrifices. But it was all over.
“He is quiet, and bears it well,” thought Lord Wainbridge; but then we should always bear the result of our own wrong-doing with philosophy. No one—Lord Wainbridge least of all—would have pitied him had he not endured it with patience. Inwardly Hugh Wainbridge was raging—raging with a wild longing to possess Launa—to have held her in his arms alone, while she was his—to have kissed the life and breath out of her. It was intolerable to think that it was over, that she was not his, and never would be. All through his own stupidity, which he cursed, he felt a mad wild beast, just an animal longing to kill anyone in his way, and to possess the one object of his passion. How he wished he had not told his uncle. Lord Wainbridge was so disappointed.
Mr. Wainbridge sat and meditated on the unsatisfactoriness, the dreariness of all things. His one desire was withheld from him, the desire which now threatened to become madness. He was hardly aware of his uncle’s departure—he seemed to see Launa with a smile of triumph, of victory, on her face, and he could not get to her; she eluded him. How he loved her!—loved her, would, must have her.
Paul wrote to Launa; then he waited and did not go down to see her, much as he longed to do so.
One afternoon he met Sylvia alone. She greeted him with joy. She looked different.
“You look wicked,” he said; and she laughed.
“When are you going to Launa? Go soon. One woman may as well think she is going to be happy in this world. As for me, I have learned that there is no happiness anywhere. I have vanquished my illusions.”
“How is Launa?”
“Alone down there in this dreary weather,” she replied. “She sent us all away—got rid of us very cleverly, even of Mrs. Herbert, and is there by herself.”
“Where are you going?” asked Paul.
“Home—I am wretched. I am so lonely and so weary of—virtue. I think it is very dull. My thoughts annoy me, and they continue so incessantly.”
“Come and have some tea with me,” he said.
For he was glad to be able to talk to her. He could not well rush down to Shelton at five o’clock, and he doubted the expediency of doing so.
“Launa took it quietly,” said Sylvia, as she drank her tea. “After we were alone she was so different—so glad. I rejoice when I remember how she said, ‘Paul!’ Did you hear the sound in her voice when she called you?—as if she could not be relieved and grateful enough. I am thinking of marriage—serious, uncomfortable marriage myself.”
“You are? I thought—”
“You thought me broken-hearted. So I am; I am wretched—tired of waiting, of longing, and of thinking what a fool I have been. He loved me, and it is too late. I long for love until I feel nearly mad, so I am going to marry. I shall be bound, tied up, and there will be no escape, and so I must feel peaceful.”
“You will not.”
“Ah, but I shall. Why did I not go with him? Why did I not love him while I could?”
“Who are you going to marry?”
“A man who knows it all. I am not going to deceive him. He says the heart of a woman cannot remain in a man’s grave for ever. But . . . when he is with me I see . . . the other. It is ghastly.”
“So I should think, and it will be worse. Don’t do it, Sylvia. You will regret it always.”
“No, I think you are mistaken. Let us talk of Launa.”
That night Paul wrote to her. He waited with impatience for her answer.
When it came, she said she was leaving for Canada and the letter was posted at Liverpool.