Molly Bawn Part 68

Tell me how I have been so unfortunate."

"I hate you," she says, with almost childish cruelty, sobbing afresh.

"I wish you had died before I came to this place. You have come between me and the only man I love. Yes,"--smiting her hands together in a very agony of sorrow,--"he may doubt it if he will, but I _do_ love him; and now we are separated forever. Even my ring"--with a sad glance at it--"is broken, and so is--my heart."

"You are alluding to--Luttrell?" asks he,--his earliest suspicions at last confirmed,--speaking with difficulty, so dry his lips have grown.

"I am."

"And how have I interfered between you and--him?"

"Why did you speak to me of love again last night," retorts she, "when you must know how detestable a subject it is to me? He saw you put your arm around me; he saw--ah! why did I not tell you then the truth (from which through a mistaken feeling of pity I refrained), that your mere touch _sickened_ me? Then you stooped, and he thought--you know what he thought--and yet," cries Molly, with a gesture of aversion, "how could he have thought it possible that I should allow _you_ of _all men_ to--kiss me?"

"Why speak of what I so well know?" interrupts he hoa.r.s.ely, with bent head and averted eyes. "You seldom spare me. You are angered, and for what? Because you still hanker after a man who flung you away,--you, for whose slightest wish I would risk my all. For a mere chimera, a fancy, a fear only half developed, he renounced you."

"Say nothing more," says Molly, with pale lips and eyes large and dark through regretful sorrow; "not another word. I think he acted rightly.

He thought I was false, and so thinking he was right to renounce. I do not say this in his defense or because--or for any reason only----" She pauses.

"Why not continue? Because you--love him still."

"Well, and why not?" says Molly. "Why should I deny my love for him?

Can any shame be connected with it? Yes," murmurs she, her sweet eyes filling with tears, her small clasped hands trembling, "though he and I can never be more to each other than we now are, I tell you I love him as I never have and never shall love again."

"It is a pity that such love as yours should have no better return,"

says he, with an unlovely laugh. "Luttrell appears to bear his fate with admirable equanimity."

"You are incapable of judging such a nature as his," returns she, disdainfully. "He is all that is gentle, and true, and n.o.ble: while you----" She stops abruptly, causing a pause that is more eloquent than words, and, with a distant bow, hurries from the room.

Philip's star to-day is not in the ascendant. Even as he stands crushed by Molly's bitter reproaches, Marcia, with her heart full of a settled revenge toward him, is waiting outside her grandfather's door for permission to enter.

That unlucky shadow of a kiss last night has done as much mischief as half a dozen real kisses. It has convinced Marcia of the truth of that which for weeks she has been vainly struggling to disbelieve, namely, Philip's mad infatuation for Molly.

Now all doubt is at an end, and in its place has fallen a despair more terrible than any uncertainty.

All the anguish of a heart rejected, that is still compelled to live on loving its rejector, has been hers for the past two months, and it has told upon her slowly but surely. She is strangely altered. Dark hollows lay beneath her eyes, that have grown almost unearthly in expression, so large are they, and so sombre is the fire that burns within them.

There is a compression about the lips that has grown habitual; small lines mar the whiteness of her forehead, while among her raven tresses, did any one mark them closely enough, fine threads of silver may be traced.

Pacing up and down her room the night before, with widely-opened eyes, gazing upon the solemn blackness that surrounds her, all the wrongs and slights she has endured come to her with startling distinctness. No sense of weariness, no thought of a necessity for sleep, disturbs her reverie or breaks in upon the monotonous misery of her musings. She is past all that. Already her death has come to her,--a death to her hope, and joy, and peace,--even to that poor calm that goes so far to deceive the outer world.

Oh, the cold, quiet night, when speech is not and sleep has forgotten us! when all the doubts and fears and jealousies that in the blessed daylight slumber, rise up to torture us when even the half-suspected sneer, the covert neglect, that some hours ago were but as faintest pin-p.r.i.c.ks, now gall and madden as a poisoned thrust!

A wild thirst for revenge grows within her breast as one by one she calls to mind all the many injuries she has received. Strangely enough,--and unlike a woman,--her anger is concentrated on Philip, rather than on the one he loves, instinct telling her he is not beloved in return.

She broods upon her wrongs until, as the first bright streak of yellow day illumes the room, flinging its glories profusely upon the wall and ceiling, pretty knickknacks that return its greeting, and angry, unthankful creature alike, a thought comes to her that promises to amply satisfy her vengeful craving. As she ponders on it a curious light breaks upon her face, a smile half triumph, half despair.

Now, standing before her grandfather's room, with a folded letter crushed within her palm, and a heart that beats almost to suffocation, she hears him bid her enter.

Fatigued by the unusual exertions of a ball, Mr. Amherst is seated at his table in a lounging-chair, clad in his dressing-gown, and looking older, feebler, than is his wont.

He merely glances at his visitor as she approaches, without comment of any description.

"I have had something on my mind for some time, grandpapa," begins Marcia, who is pale and worn, through agitation and the effects of a long and hopeless vigil. "I think it only right to let you know. I have suppressed it all this time, because I feared distressing you; but now--now--will you read this?"

She hands him, as she speaks, the letter received by Philip two months before relative to his unlucky dealings with some London Jews.

In silence Mr. Amherst reads it, in silence re-reads it, and finally, folding it up again, places it within his desk.

"You and Philip have quarreled?" he says, presently, in a quiet tone.

"No, there has been no quarrel."

"Your engagement is at an end?"

"Yes."

"And is this the result of last night's vaunted pleasures?" asks he, keenly. "Have you s.n.a.t.c.hed only pain and a sense of failure from its fleeting hours? And Eleanor, too,--she was pale at luncheon, and for once silent,--has she too found her coveted fruit rotten at its core?

It is the universal law," says the old man, grimly, consoling himself with a pinch of snuff, taken with much deliberation from an exquisite Louis Quinze box that rests at his elbow, and leaning back languidly in his chair. "Life is made up of hopes false as the _ignis-fatuus_.

When with the greatest sense of security and promise of enjoyment we raise and seek to drain the cup of pleasure, while yet we gaze with longing eyes upon its sparkling bubbles, and, stooping thirstily, suffer our expectant lips at length to touch it, lo! it is then, just as we have attained to the summit of our bliss, we find our sweetest draught has turned to ashes in our mouth."

He stops and drums softly on the table for a moment or two, while Marcia stands before him silently pondering.

"So Philip is already counting on my death," he goes on, meditatively, still softly tapping the table. "How securely he rests in the belief of his succession! His father's son could scarcely fail to be a spendthrift, and I will have--no--prodigal at Herst--to hew--and cut--and scatter. A goodly heritage, truly, as Buscarlet called it. Be satisfied, Marcia: your revenge is complete. Philip shall not inherit Herst."

"I do not seek revenge," says Marcia, unsteadily, now her wish is fulfilled and Philip hopelessly crushed, a cold, troubled faintness creeping round her heart. An awful sense of despair, a fruitless longing to recall her action, makes her tremble. "Only I could not bear to see you longer deceived,--you, after all the care--the trouble--you bestowed upon him. My conscience compelled me to tell you all."

"And you, Marcia,"--with an odd smile she is puzzled to explain,--"_you_ have never deceived me, have you? All your pretty speeches and tender cares have been quite sincere?"

"Dear grandpapa, yes."

"You have not wished me dead, or spoken or thought evilly of the old tyrant at Herst, who has so often crossed and thwarted you?"

"Never, dear: how could I--when I remember----"

"Ay, quite so. When one remembers! And grat.i.tude is so common a thing.

Will you oblige me by sending a line to Mr. Buscarlet, asking him to come to me without delay?"

"You are going to alter your will?" she asks, faintly, shocked at the speedy success of her scheme.

"Yes," coolly. "I am going to cut Philip out of it."

"Grandpapa, do not be too hard on him," she says, putting her hand across her throat, and almost gasping. "He is young. Young men sometimes----"

"I was once a young man myself, you seem to forget, and I know all about it. Why did you give me that letter?" he asks, grimly. "Are you chicken-hearted, now you have done the deed, like all women? It is too late for remorse to be of use: you _have_ done it. Let it be your portion to remember how you have willfully ruined his prospects."

A choking sigh escapes her as she quits the room. Truly she has bought her revenge dearly. Not the poorest trace of sweetness lingers in it.