Countess Vera 17
After breakfast they organized a riding-party. Captain Lockhart rides
by Miss Montgomery's side, the countess goes with Lord Gordon--poor
Lord Gordon, who has long been waiting for this chance to put his fate
"To the test,
And win or lose it all."
How lovely she was in her sable habit and streaming feather. Though
Captain Lockhart rode attentive by Miss Montgomery's side, he could not
help seeing her beauty and repeating to himself Tennyson's exquisite
lines:
"As she fled fast through sun and shade,
The happy winds upon her played,
Blowing the ringlet from the braid,
She looked so lovely as she swayed
The rein with dainty finger tips,
A man had given all other bliss,
And all his worldly wealth for this;
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips."
"And yet after all, in her quiet, proud way, she must be a flirt," he
thinks to himself, with subdued bitterness. "How bright and gay she
appeared this morning, as if careless of my sorrow, and almost exulting
in it. I thought she had more feeling. And, indeed, she appeared to
smile on my suit, though she was coy and cold at first. See now how
charming she is with Lord Gordon. Poor fellow, he has long been seeking
a chance to propose to her. Well, he will find it to-day, and she will
ruthlessly trample his heart as she did mine yesterday."
Sweet, innocent Vera, how fast the springing hopes of last night and
this morning are turning to dead sea fruit upon thy lips.
Lord Gordon speaks and receives his answer. Lady Vera is very sorry to
pain him, but she has no heart to give.
Captain Lockhart sees the shadow on the fair, English face of the young
lord, and is secretly conscious of a savage satisfaction.
She has refused him, too. She is too cold and proud to love any one, he
tells himself.
"Are you really going to-morrow, Lockhart?" Lord Gordon asks him in the
drawing-room, that evening.
"Yes, I am really going," he answers, and never dreams of the wild
throb Lady Vera's heart gives beneath its silken bodice.
"Why don't you ask me to go with you?" Lord Gordon continues,
good-naturedly. "I have long contemplated a tour of the United States.
I am _ennuyed_ to death. I should like a taste of a different life."
"I shall be glad of your company, and you will be quite likely to have
a taste of something different if you go with me," laughs Captain
Lockhart. "Father writes me that my regiment may be ordered out on the
plains to fight the Indians next month."
"Ugh! those horrid savages!" the ladies cry, all but Lady Vera.
She raises the black satin fan a little higher before her face, and
leans back in her chair, indifferent, to all appearance, but, oh, with
such a deadly pain tearing at her heart-strings.
"To lose him like this," she moans to herself, "it is too dreadful. Oh,
if I had even ten minutes alone with him, I would make him understand
the truth. He should not leave me!"
But Captain Lockhart, stealing a furtive glance at the beautiful face
in its high-bred repose, tells himself sadly:
"She is utterly indifferent to what fate I meet. Beautiful as she is,
she must be utterly heartless."
"Then if you like to have me I will be ready to go with you to-morrow,
Lockhart," Lord Gordon announces, and gives Lady Vera one gloomy glance
and heavy sigh.
It is for her sake he is going. Since she is not for him he means to
try and forget her.
But Lady Vera, in the keen smart of her own pain is oblivious to his.
She rises and slips through the low, French window out upon the
balcony, and sits down in the darkness not heavier than her thoughts.
Presently low voices float out to her from the curtained recesses of
the window--Captain Lockhart's and Lord Gordon's.
"Rather a sudden resolution, isn't it, this trip across the water?" in
Lockhart's clear, full voice.
"Well, yes," in Gordon's voice. "I'm running away from myself, you
understand. I fancy we are sailing in the same boat, eh, old fellow?"
"Yes," Captain Lockhart answers, quietly.
"I thought so. Saw that you were hard hit. What are you going to do
about it?"
"Nothing," Captain Lockhart answers, with grim pleasantry. "I am a
soldier. I look for wounds upon the field of battle."
"Has she really a heart, do you think?" Lord Gordon pursues. "The
fellows raved about her last season in London. She refused Greyhurst
and a score of others as eligible. She must be very cold."
"I fancy so," Captain Lockhart answers, dryly. "A beautiful iceberg."
"Few women would have refused you, Lockhart. There was the beautiful
Clarendon year before last, and now the charming Montgomery ready to
fling herself at your head."
"Spare my modesty, Lord Gordon. You are calling in the aid of your
imagination now. Cannot we have some music to beguile the moments of
our last evening at Sunny Bank?"
They pass away to another portion of the room.
Lady Vera sits silent, brooding over the words she has heard.
"How coolly they discussed their rejection," she thinks. "Lord Gordon
wondered if I had a heart. Captain Lockhart called me a beautiful
iceberg. Perhaps he does not care much. How carelessly he said that he
was a soldier and expected wounds upon the field of battle. Perhaps he
does not mind it, now that it is over. I remember that one of the poets
has written:
"Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence."
The moon comes out and shines upon her, sitting sad and lonely, with
her white hands folded across her black dress. Two quiet tears tremble
upon her lashes, and fall upon her cheeks.
"If I were a fatalist," she thinks, "I should believe that my life is
destined to lie always in the shadow. I have never known an hour of
perfect happiness."
No one seems to miss her. In the drawing-room they are singing. Miss
Montgomery's pretty soprano blends softly with the soldier's superb
tenor.
The pretty, sentimental song dies away into silence presently.
There is some careless talk and laughter. Again the piano keys thrill
under the firm touches of a man, and this time Captain Lockhart sings
alone, sings with such passion and fervor as Lady Vera has never heard
before, sings with his whole heart trembling on his lips, and she feels
within her heart that it is his farewell to her:
"I love thee, I love thee,
Far better than wine;
But the curse is above,
Thou'lt never be mine.
"As the blade wears the scabbard,
The billow the shore,
So sorrow doth fret me
Forevermore.
"Fair beauty, I leave thee
To conquer my heart;
I'll see thee, I'll bless thee,
And then depart.
"Let me take, ere I vanish,
One look of thine eyes--
One smile for remembrance,
For life soon flies.
"And now for the fortune
That hangeth above,
And to bury in battle
My dreams of love."
"Does he know that I am here?" she asks herself. "Perhaps he meant me
to hear what he said just now. A beautiful iceberg, that is what he
thinks me."
Someone misses Lady Vera, perhaps the significance of the soldier's
song recalls her to mind; they go out to seek her, the giddy girls, who
cannot guess how she has stolen out to bear her pain alone.
"Here she is, hiding from us," they cry. "Come, Lady Vera, it is your
turn now to sing."
"I--cannot," she murmurs, faintly.
"No such obstinacy can be tolerated," they reply. "Lord Gordon and
Captain Lockhart leave us to-morrow and everyone must contribute to
their entertainment to-night. Only one song, Lady Vera, then we will
excuse you."
She hesitates for a moment. Then a thought flashes over her mind.
"He sang to me," she thinks. "Why cannot I sing to him? Surely he must
understand me then."
She suffers them to persuade her, and Lord Gordon comes forward to turn
the leaves of the music. She shakes her head.
"I will sing some simple thing from memory," she says, and then he
takes her fan and retains his place near her on that small pretext.
His eyes linger on her beauty, the proud throat and fair face rising
lily-like from the somber black dress.
She touches the white keys softly with her slim, white fingers. A
plaintive melody rises, a mournful, minor chord; she sings with sudden,
passionate fervor, some simple, pathetic words:
"I strove to tear thee from my heart,
The effort was in vain,
The spell was ever on my life,
And I am here again.
"Oh, I have ranged in countries strange,
And vowed no more to meet,
But power was in thy parting glance
To bring me to thy feet.
"We cannot go against love's will
When he has bound us fast;
Forgive the thought that did thee wrong
And be my own at last!"
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