Verner's Pride

by Mrs. Henry Wood

He quitted the house, and Lady Verner proceeded upstairs to Decima's room—that pretty room, with its blue panels and hangings, where Lionel used to be when he was growing convalescent. Decima and Lucy were in it now. "I wish you to go out with me to make a call," she said to them.

"Both of us, mamma?" inquired Decima.

"Both," repeated Lady Verner. "It is a call of etiquette," she added, a sound of irony mixing in the tone, "and, therefore, you must both make it. It is to Lionel's chosen wife."

A hot flush passed into the face of Lucy Tempest; hot words rose to her lips. Hasty, thoughtless, impulsive words, to the effect that she could not pay a visit to the chosen wife of Lionel Verner.

But she checked them ere they were spoken. She turned to the window, which had been opened to the early spring day, and suffered the cool air to blow on her flushed face, and calmed down her impetuous thoughts. Was this the course of conduct that she had marked out for herself? She looked round at Lady Verner and said, in a gentle tone, that she would be ready at any hour named.

"We will go at once," replied Lady Verner. "I have ordered the carriage. The sooner we make it—as we have to make it—the better."

There was no mistake about it. Lucy had grown to love Lionel Verner. How she loved him, esteemed him, venerated him, none, save her own heart, could tell. Her days had been as one long dream of Eden. The very aspect of the world had changed. The blue sky, the soft-breathing wind, the scent of the budding flowers, had spoken a language to her, never before learned: "Rejoice in us, for we are lovely!" It was the strange bliss in her own heart that threw its rose hues over the face of nature, the sweet, mysterious rapture arising from love's first dream; which can never be described by mortal pen; and never, while it lasts, can be spoken of by living tongue. While it lasts. It never does last. It is the one sole ecstatic phase of life, the solitary romance stealing in once, and but once, amidst the world's hard realities; the "fire filched for us from heaven." Has it to arise yet for you—you, who read this? Do not trust it when it comes, for it will be fleeting as a summer cloud. Enjoy it, revel in it while you hold it; it will lift you out of earth's clay and earth's evil with its angel wings; but trust not to its remaining: even while you are saying, "I will make it mine for ever," it is gone. It had gone for Lucy Tempest. And, oh! better for her, perhaps, that it should go; better, perhaps, for all; for if that sweet glimpse of paradise could take up its abode permanently in the heart, we should never look, or wish, or pray for that better paradise which has to come hereafter.

But who can see this in the sharp flood tide of despair? Not Lucy. In losing Lionel she has lost all; and nothing remained for her but to do battle with her trouble alone. Passionately and truly as Lionel had loved Sibylla; so, in her turn, did Lucy love him.

It is not the fashion now for young ladies to die of broken hearts—as it was in the old days. A little while given to "the grief that kills," and then Lucy strove to arouse herself to better things. She would go upon her way, burying all feelings within her; she would meet him and others with a calm exterior and placid smile; none should see that she suffered; no, though her heart were breaking.

"I will forget him," she murmured to herself ten times in the day. "What a mercy that I did not let him see I loved him! I never should have loved him, but that I thought he—Psha! why do I recall it? I was mistaken; I was stupid—and all that's left to me is to make the best of it."