Vera Nevill Part 40

You don't think I look very much like a blighted being, do you? and yet I did not marry the man I loved. I could not; he was poor, and my parents would not allow it. I thought I should die, but you see I did not. I took up my life bravely, and I married a most estimable man; I lived an active and healthy life, so that by degrees it became a happy one. Now, Vera, why should you not do the same? Your people have a right to expect that you should marry; they cannot afford to support you for always. Because you are disappointed in one thing, why are you not to make the best you can of your life?"

"I do mean to marry--in time," said Vera, brokenly, with tears in her eyes.

"Then why not marry John?"

There was a minute's silence. Was it possible that Lady Kynaston did not know? Vera asked herself. Was it possible that she could, in cold blood, advise her to marry one son whilst the other one loved her! That was what was so terrible to her mind. To marry was simple enough, but to marry Sir John Kynaston! She thought of what such an action might bring upon them all. The daily meetings, the struggles with temptation, the awful tampering with deadly sin. Could any one so const.i.tuted as she was walk deliberately and with open eyes into such a situation?

She shuddered.

"I cannot do it," she said, wringing her hands together; "don't ask me; I cannot do it!"

Lady Kynaston got up, and went and stood by her chair.

"Vera, I entreat you not to let any false pride stand in the way of this. Do not imagine that I ask you to do anything that would wound your vanity, or humble you in your own eyes. It would be so easy for me to arrange a meeting between you and John; it shall all come about simply and naturally. As soon as he sees you again, he will speak to you."

"It is not that, it is not that!" she murmured, distractedly; but Lady Kynaston went on as if she had not heard her.

"You must know that I should not plead like this with you if I were not deeply concerned. For myself, I had sooner that John remained unmarried.

I had sooner that Maurice's children came into Kynaston. It is wrong, I know, but it is the case, because Maurice is my favourite. But when we hear of John shutting himself up, of his refusing to see any of his friends, and of his talking of going to Australia, why, then we all feel that it is you only who can help us; that is why I have promised Maurice to plead with you."

She looked up quickly.

"You promised Maurice! It is _Maurice_ who wants me to marry his brother." She turned very pale.

"Certainly he does. You don't suppose Maurice likes to see his brother so unhappy."

The darkened room, the spindle-legged furniture, Lady Kynaston's little figure, in her black dress and soft white tulle cap, the bright garden outside, the belt of trees beyond the lawn, all swam together before her eyes.

She drew a long breath; then she rose slowly from her place, a little unsteadily, perhaps, and walked across the Persian rug to the empty fireplace. She stood there half a minute leaning with both hands upon the mantelshelf, her head bent forwards.

_Maurice wished it!_ To him, then, there were no fears, and no dangers.

He could look forward calmly to meeting her constantly as his brother's wife; it would be nothing to him, that temptation that she dreaded so much; nothing that an abyss which death itself could never bridge over would be between them to all eternity!

And then the woman's pride, without which, G.o.d help us, so many of us would break our hearts and die, came to her aid.

Very well, then, if he was strong, she would learn to be strong too; if the danger to him was so slight that he could contemplate it with calmness and with indifference, then she, too, would show him that it was nothing to her. Only, then, what a poor thing was this love of his! And surely the man she had loved so fatally was not Maurice Kynaston at all, but only some creature of her own imagination, whom she had invested with things that the man himself had not lost because he had never possessed them.

If this was so, then why, indeed, listen to the voice of her heart when everything urged her to stifle it? Why not make Sir John Kynaston happy and herself prosperous and rich, as everybody round her seemed to consider it her duty to do?

It pa.s.sed rapidly through her mind what a fine place Kynaston was; how dear everything that wealth can bring had always been to her, what a wise and prudent match it was in every way for her, and what a good indulgent husband Sir John would be.

Who in the wide world would blame her for going back to him? Would not everybody, on the contrary, praise her for reconsidering her folly, and for becoming Lady Kynaston, of Kynaston? The errors of the successful in this world's race are leniently treated; it is only when we are unfortunate and our lives become failures that our friends turn their backs upon our misdeeds in righteous condemnation.

"So long as thou doest well unto thyself men will speak good of thee."

Surely, surely, it was the best and the wisest thing she could do. And yet even at that moment Eustace Daintree's pale, earnest face came for one instant before her. What side in all this would he take--he of the pure heart, of the stainless life? If he knew all, what would he say?

Pooh! he was a dreamer--an idealist, a man of impossible aims; his theories, indeed, were beautiful, but impracticable. Vera knew that he expected better things of her; but she had striven to be what he would have desired, and if she had failed, was it her fault? was it not rather the fault of the world and the generation in which her life had been cast?

She had struggled, and she had failed; henceforth let her life be as fate should ordain for her.

"What is it you wish me to say, Lady Kynaston?" she asked, turning suddenly towards Maurice's mother.

"My dear child, I only want you to say that if John asks you again to be his wife, you will consent, or say only, if you like it better, that you will agree to meet him here. There shall be nothing unpleasant for you; I will write to him and settle everything."

"If you write to him, I will come," she said, briefly, and then Lady Kynaston came up to her and kissed her, taking her hands within her own, and drawing her to her with motherly tenderness. "My dear, everybody will think well of you for this."

And the words ran so nearly in the current of her own bitter thoughts that Vera laughed, shortly and disdainfully, a low laugh of scorn at the world, whose mandates she was prepared to obey, even though she despised herself for doing so.

"You will be glad by-and-by that you were so sensible and so reasonable,"

said Lady Kynaston.

"Yes--I dare say I shall be glad by-and-by; and now I am going, dear Lady Kynaston; I have a hansom waiting all this time, and Mrs. Hazeldine will be wondering what has become of me."

At this moment they both heard the sound of a carriage driving up to the door.

"It must be some visitors," said Lady Kynaston; "wait a minute, or you will meet them in the hall. Oh, stay, go through this door into the dining-room, and you can get through the dining-room window by the garden round to the front of the house; I dare say you would rather not meet anybody--you might know them."

"Thank you--yes, I should much prefer to get away quickly and quietly--I will go through the dining-room; do not come with me, I can easily find my way."

She gathered up her gloves and her veil and opened the door which communicated between the morning-room and the dining-room. She heard the chatter of women's voices and the fluttering of women's garments in the hall; it seemed as though they were about to be ushered into the room she was leaving.

She did not want to be seen; besides, she wanted to get away quickly and return to London. She closed the morning-room door behind her, and took a couple of steps across the dining-room towards the windows.

Then she stopped suddenly short; Maurice sat before her at the table. He lifted his eyes and looked at her; he did not seem surprised to see her, but there was a whole world of grief and despair in his face. It was as though he had lived through half a lifetime since she had last seen him.

Pride, anger, wounded affection, all died away within her--only the woman was left, the woman who loved him. Little by little she saw him only through the blinding mist of her own tears.

Not one single word was spoken between them. What was there that they could say to each other? Then suddenly she turned away, and went swiftly back into the room she had just left, closing the door behind her.

It was empty. Lady Kynaston was gone. Vera stooped over the writing-table, and, taking up a sheet of paper, she wrote in pencil:--

"Do not write to Sir John--it is beyond my strength--forgive me and forget me. Vera." And then she went out through the other door, and got herself away from the place in her hansom.

Twenty minutes later, when her bevy of chattering visitors had left her, Lady Kynaston came back into her morning-room and found the little pencil note left upon her writing-table. Wondering, perplexed and puzzled beyond measure, she turned it over and over in her fingers.

What had happened? Why had Vera so suddenly altered her mind again? What had influenced her? Half by accident, half, perhaps, with an instinct of what was the truth, she softly opened the door of communication between the morning-room and the dining-room, opened it for one instant, and then drew back again, scared and shocked, closing it quickly and noiselessly.

What she had seen in the room was this--

Maurice, half stretched across the table, his face downwards upon his arm, whilst those tearless, voiceless sobs, which are so terrible to witness in a man, sobs which are the gasps of a despairing heart, shook the strong broad shoulders and the down-bent head that was hidden from her sight.

And then the mother knew at last the secret of her son's heart. It was Vera whom Maurice loved.

CHAPTER XXV.

ST. PAUL'S, KNIGHTSBRIDGE.