CHAPTER V.—THE WORKING OF THE CHARM.
The theatre was crowded with an assemblage of fashion and beauty, and many were the glances directed towards the boxes, and numerous the comments of those who came to see rather than to hear, on the beauties who shone there like so many stars striving to outsparkle each other.
In one of the side-boxes Eliza was seated with her husband. Passionately fond of music, she seemed to have forgotten her sorrows, till, on turning to Charles to make some observation, she perceived that some young men, acquaintances of his, had entered and were conversing with him. One of them was directing his attention to a particular box. Following their eyes, she observed a young lady, all in fleecy white and pale blue, with pearls glimmering in her dark hair. A most radiant beauty, her eyes sparkling with extraordinary brilliancy, and seeming to far outshine the lustre of the diamonds that gleamed around; the rich damask of her cheek putting to shame the roses she held in her hand. Several gentlemen stood around her, attentive to every word and look, each striving to win her special regard. She appeared in buoyant spirits, and conversed with great animation, smiling often with singular sweetness. But her smiles, though so bewitching, were distributed carelessly, and she never distinguished any one of those about her above the rest.
Eliza, struck with admiration, gazed at her earnestly. The young lady looked in that direction. Their eyes met. A thrill passed through Eliza's frame. All at once the gay assemblage seemed to vanish from her sight, the lights burned dim and lurid, and the air grew heavy as if with death. The voices of the singers retreated far away. She heard the murmur of mountain rivulets, and the soughing of the wind over a wide space. Before her eyes uprose a lonely field, with the moonbeams shimmering over its dark ridges. She saw herself, and fronting her a shadowy white face and form, like the dim reflection in a stream, of a human figure. Then, mingling with the distant music, the words 'Doomed, doomed!' smote on her ears like a wailing cry of agony, or the scornful laugh of a mocking fiend.
With this scene before her, with these words ringing around her, she sat on, as if in a dream. Had she looked towards her husband, she would have seen a dark cloud on his forehead and a moody look in his eye. Could she have seen into his mind, it would have troubled her more.
'How lovely!' he thought. 'What grace, what ease and animation! And she might have been my wife. What a fool I was! Eliza is pretty enough still, but compared to her'—he turned, that he might make the comparison, but she was unconscious of it. 'Ah! mere country prettiness, which loses half its charm out of its place. Vivacity was her attraction, and that gone, what has she? She looks now as if she did not know what was going on around her. And for her I gave up the beauty that brings all Paris to its feet, lost a handsome fortune, alienated my family, and endangered my prospects from them. Yet that is not the worst. I see now that my marriage with Eliza was a mistake in every way. I was mad to throw away my prospects and happiness thus; to forsake her whom I really loved, and who loved me—then at least. Blind fool that I was!'
There was a stir in that box towards which so many glances were directed. The young lady had risen, and pale as death, leaning heavily on the arm of a middle-aged lady, prepared to leave the theatre. 'She is fainting; the heat is too much for her,' was whispered around. A dozen gentlemen sprang forward to wrap her in her mantle and call her carriage; she thanked them with a faint sweet smile, but uttered no word. When the carriage had driven away and all were out of sight, she cast herself sobbing on her companion's breast, and trembled from head to foot.
'Oh, do not bring me to these scenes any more!' she cried; 'I cannot bear it; indeed I cannot; they are torture to me. I know you meant it kindly, dear friend—thought to rouse and cheer me; but it will not do; I cannot be gay like others while my heart is breaking. Oh, take me far away to some quiet spot, where I may pass the short time that remains to me in peace and seclusion!'
'Darling, we shall leave Paris to-morrow, if you really wish it,' returned the middle-aged lady; and her tone betrayed alarm, as if she feared for the result of so much emotion.
'Eliza!' said Charles, somewhat roughly; 'don't you see all is over and everybody is going away? Are you dreaming?'
She started and looked up with a bewildered air; then she saw how dark his brow was, and the cause puzzled her.
All that night Eliza lay awake tossing feverishly; she made an effort to dispel the thoughts that distracted her and compose herself to sleep; but when she closed her eyes, faces seemed to press close up to hers, familiar faces, that she used to see every day. It was useless to think of sleep, and she lay watching wearily till dawn.
In the morning, Eliza was so feverish and ill that she felt unable to rise. A doctor was sent for. Before he arrived, she had become delirious, and raved pitifully about her old home and her father. Another name too was often on her lips. The doctor, who was an Englishman, as he stood by her bedside, supposed it might be that of her husband. 'Will! Will!' she repeated over and over, sometimes in tender loving accents, then in tones of wild despair. When the physician took her hand she seemed to become conscious of who he was and of her own illness.
'I shall die,' she said in a sad quiet tone. 'I know I shall. There's no use in your coming to me. You may be the greatest doctor in Europe, but all your skill won't save me. I am doomed, doomed!'
He thought her still raving, in spite of her calm tone; but in reality she was not so now. Her youth and beauty, joined to her piteous look and tones, moved him. Some of her wanderings seemed to shew that she had once been accustomed to a sphere of life far beneath that in which he found her. He thought some sorrow or trouble weighed on her mind, and tried to discover if such were the case. But in answer to his kind questioning she only shook her head or moaned feebly.
On leaving his patient, the doctor sought Crofton. He found him lounging, with a very gloomy brow, over a late breakfast.
'I have seen Mrs Crofton,' he said. 'I do not apprehend any danger at present. It is a touch of fever, which will pass. But I wish to mention that change of air and scene are absolutely necessary for her. I was told by her maid that she has been in the habit of remaining very much within doors of late, and that she has been depressed in spirits.'
'She need not have remained within doors if she did not choose,' returned Charles coldly; 'and if she was depressed, it was totally without cause.'
The other looked at him. It was a strange tone for the husband of one so young and beautiful; and not long wedded, as he had been given to understand.
'Well,' he replied after a pause, 'I recommend that she should be removed to a quiet country place as soon as possible—to-morrow, if she is able to bear the journey.'
'As you say so, of course it shall be done. My own arrangements do not permit of my leaving Paris at present, but that need make no difference; Mrs Crofton can go accompanied by her maid.'
Again the doctor looked at him, the tone was so indifferent, as if he wished to dispose of the matter at once, and be troubled no more. Merely mentioning the place he thought most suitable for his patient, a quiet little town in the south of France, he bowed coldly, and withdrew.
Charles rose and sauntered to the mantel-piece. 'She acts the fine lady well,' he muttered to himself. 'Ill and out of spirits! She has no cause to be so. As much as I lost she has gained. Yet she acts and speaks sometimes as if she had made a sacrifice for me. I could almost fancy that she regrets that clodhopping fellow. It is a pity, after all, she was so ready to jilt him. She can't expect that I will coop myself up in a wretched dreary place. We are not so very devoted now, either of us, that we require no other company than that of the other.'
In the evening Eliza was better; the feverishness had passed, and it was thought she would be able to leave next day; so Charles went to her room to inform her of the doctor's command, and the fact that the journey was to be made without him.
'I have arranged to remain here yet, and can't alter my plans,' he said. 'But my presence could do you no good; and when you are better you can join me; that is, if you wish to do so.'
If she wished to do so! He would not then care if she did not join him! His words and manner implied that she had become a burden to him, which he would willingly cast off, were it possible; since it was not possible, absent himself from her as much as he could. She turned, sighing, away; and Charles left the room without another word, without a kiss.
It had come now that he was actually estranged from her! He could let her go from him alone, ill as she was, and in a foreign land, the land he had brought her to! It was not with any wild passionate pang, such as she would have felt had she loved him, that she thought this; but a dead cold weight pressed on her heart, and a sense of utter desolation came over her.
'Alone, alone!' she murmured. 'Father, lover, friends, home—I abandoned them all, and for what?—for what?'