My mother drew me closer and closer to her bosom, as his footsteps died on the still air. I remember no more, only that in the morning I awoke in her arms with the shawl folded around me. She had not been in bed all night.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE OLD ESCRITOIR.
After this night I never remember to have seen that rich, fruity smile upon my mother’s lips again. Bear in mind, there had been no quarrel between her and Lord Clare; not even a hard word; but she loved him so deeply, so fatally. She who had no world, no thought, no existence that did not partake of him, and her trust in him had been like the faith of a devotee. All at once she felt that he had secrets, thoughts, memories, many things long buried in his heart, of which she had no knowledge. She had gathered it only from a look; but if all the angels of heaven had written it out in fire before her eyes, the revelation could not have been more perfect.
And now the proud tranquillity of her life, the rich contentment of her love departed forever. The gipsy blood fired up again; she was restless as a wild bird. Her care of me relaxed. I ran about the park recklessly, like the deer that inhabited it. She rode out sometimes alone, and always at full speed. I saw her often talking with old Turner, and observed that he looked anxious and distressed after their conversations.
She was a proud creature, that young gipsy mother, but it was a pride of the soul, that which blends with genius as platina strengthens and beautifies gold. All the sweet trusting fondness of manner which had made her love so luxurious and dreamy, changed to gentle sadness. She met Lord Clare meekly and with a certain degree of grateful submission, but without warmth. It was the humility which springs from excess of pride. In the whole range of human feelings there is not a sensation that approaches so near to meekness, as the pride of a woman who feels a wrong but gives it no utterance.
Lord Clare saw and understood this. You could see it in his air; in his slow step as he approached the house; in the anxious look with which he always regarded my mother on their first meetings. He grew more tender, more solicitous to divine her wishes, but never asked an explanation of the change that had come over her. What was the reason of this? Why did Lord Clare remain silent on a subject that filled both their thoughts? Those who know the human heart well can best answer.
Lord Clare had reached that point in life when we shrink from new sources of excitement. I have said that he was young only in years. The romance of suffering had long since passed away. He was capable of feeling the pain, nothing more.
Close by Lord Clare’s estate, and visible through the trees in winter, when no foliage intervened, was an old mansion that had once been castellated, but modern art had transformed it into a noble dwelling, leaving the old keep and some prominent towers merely for their picturesque effect. A large estate surrounded it, sweeping down, on the north, to that of Lord Clare’s, and extending as far as the eye could reach toward the mountain ridges that terminated the view.
The estate had belonged to a wealthy banker of London, one of those city men who sometimes, by their energies, sweep the possessions of the peerage into their coffers with a sort of ruthless magic. This man had married a distant relative of Lord Clare—a lady who at one time had been an inmate of his father’s family. She had married the banker suddenly, most people supposed for his wealth, for she carried nothing but high birth and connections to her city bridegroom.
The dwelling, of which I speak, had been purchased before the marriage, as a surprise for the lady. Close to the estate of her young relative, almost regal in its splendor, what gift could be more acceptable to the bride? It was purchased, renovated, furnished, and settled upon her. On her bridal morning only she became aware of the fact. Those who witnessed the ceremony saw that the bride turned pale, and that a strange look came into her face as she acknowledged the magnificent kindness of her bridegroom; but one brief visit was all that she made to the estate, and it became a matter of comment that Lord Clare should have started on his foreign travels the day before the bridal party arrived in the neighborhood.