_ CHAPTER XXIII. LONG HAVE I BEEN TRUE TO YOU, NOW I'M TRUE NO LONGER
Far away from the blue skies, and bracing breezes of Lower Canada, the twilight of a dull April day was closing down over the din and tumult of London.
It had been a wretched day--a day of sopping rain and enervating mist. The newly-lighted street-lamps blinked dismally through the wet fog, and the pedestrians hurried along, poising umbrellas, and buttoned up to the chin.
At the window of a shabby-genteel London lodging-house a young woman sat, this dreary April evening, looking out at the cheering prospect of dripping roofs and muddy pavement. She sat with her chin resting on her hands, staring vacantly at the passers-by, with eyes that took no interest in what she saw. She was quite young, and had been very pretty, for the loose, unkempt hair was of brightest auburn, the dull eyes of hazel brown, and the features pretty and delicate. But the look of intense sulkiness the girl's face wore would have spoiled a far more beautiful countenance, and there were traces of sickness and trouble, all too visible. She was dressed in a soiled silk, arabesqued with stains, and a general air of neglect and disorder characterized her and her surroundings. The carpet was littered and unswept, the chairs were at sixes and sevens, and a baby's crib, wherein a very new and pink infant reposed, stood in the middle of the room.
The young woman sat at the window gazing sullenly out at the dismal night for upwards of an hour, in all that time hardly moving. Presently there was a tap at the door, and an instant after, it opened, and a smart young person entered and began briskly laying the cloth for supper. The young person was the landlady's daughter, and the girl at the window only gave her one glance, and then turned unsocially away.
"Ain't you lonesome here, Mrs. Stanford, all alone by yourself?" asked the young person, as she lit the lamp. "Mother says it must be awful dull for you, with Mr. Stanford away all the time."
"I am pretty well used to it," answered Mrs. Stanford, bitterly. "I ought to be reconciled to it by this time. Is it after seven?"
"Yes, ma'am. Mr. Stanford comes home at seven, don't he? He ought to be here soon, now. Mother says she wishes you would come down to the parlour and sit with us of a day, instead of being moped up here."
Mrs. Stanford made no reply whatever to this good-natured speech, and the sulky expression seemed to deepen on her face. The young person, finished setting the table, and was briskly departing, when Mrs. Stanford's voice arrested her.
"If Mr. Stanford is not here in half an hour, you can bring up dinner."
As Mrs. Stanford spoke, the pink infant in the crib awoke and set up a dismal wail. The young mother arose, with an impatient sigh, lifted the babe, and sat down in a low nurse-chair, to soothe it to sleep again. But the baby was fretful, and cried and moaned drearily, and resisted every effort to be soothed to sleep.
"Oh, dear, dear!" Rose cried, impatiently, giving it an irritated shake. "What a torment you are! What a trouble and wretchedness everything is!"
She swayed to and fro in her rocking-chair, humming drearily some melancholy air, until, by-and-by, baby, worn out, wailingly dropped off asleep again in her arms.
As it did so, the door opened a second time, and the brisk young person entered with the first course. Mrs. Stanford placed her first-born back in the crib, and sat down to her solitary dinner. She ate very little. The lodging-house soups and roasts had never been so distasteful before. She pushed the things away, with a feeling of loathing, and went back to her low chair, and fell into a train of dismal misery. Her thoughts went back to Canada to her happy home at Danton Hall.
Only one little year ago she had given the world for love, and thought it well lost--and now! Love's young dream, splendid in theory, is not always quite so splendid in practice. Love's young dream had wound up after eleven months, in poverty, privation, sickness and trouble, a neglectful husband, and a crying baby! How happy she had been in that bright girlhood, gone forever! Life had been one long summer holiday, and she dressed in silks and jewels, one of the queen-bees in the great human hive. The silks and the jewels had gone to the pawnbroker long ago, and here she sat, alone, in a miserable lodging-house, subsisting on unpalatable food, sleeping on a hard mattress, sick and wretched, with that whimpering infant's wails in her ears all day and all night. Oh! how long ago it seemed since she had been bright, and beautiful, and happy, and free--hundreds of years ago at the very least! She sighed in bitter sorrow, as she thought of the past--the irredeemable past.
"Oh, what a fool I was!" she thought, bursting into hysterical tears. "If I had only married Jules La Touche, how happy I might have been! He loved me, poor fellow, and would have been true always, and I would have been rich, and happy, and honoured. Now I am poor, and sick, and neglected, and despised, and I wish I were dead, and all the trouble over!"
Mrs. Stanford sat in her low chair, brooding over such dismal thoughts as these, while the slow hours dragged on. The baby slept, for a wonder. A neighbouring church clock struck the hours solemnly one after another--ten, eleven, twelve! No Mr. Stanford yet, but that was nothing new. As midnight, struck, Rose got up, secured the door, and going into an inner room, flung herself, dressed as she was, on the bed, and fell into the heavy, dreamless sleep of exhaustion.
She slept so soundly that she never heard a key turn in the lock, about three in the morning, or a man's unsteady step crossing the floor. The lamp still burning on the table, enabled Mr. Reginald Stanford to see what he was about, otherwise, serious consequences might have ensued. For Mr. Stanford was not quite steady on his legs, and lurched as he walked, as if his wife's sitting-room had been the deck of a storm-tossed vessel.
"I s'pose she's gone to bed," muttered Mr. Stanford, hiccoughing. "Don't want to wake her--makes a devil of a row! I ain't drunk, but I don't want to wake her."
Mr. Stanford lurched unsteadily across the parlour, and reconnoitred the bedroom. He nodded sagaciously, seeing his wife there asleep, and after making one or two futile efforts to remove his boots, stretched himself, boots and all, on a lounge in the sitting-room, and in two minutes was as sound as one of the Seven Sleepers.
It was late next morning before either of the happy pair awoke. A vague idea that there was a noise in the air aroused the gentleman about nine o'clock. The dense fog in his brain, that a too liberal allowance of rosy wine is too apt to engender, took some time to clear away; but when it did, he became conscious that the noise was not part of his dreams, but some one knocking loudly at the door.
Mr. Stanford staggered sleepily across the apartment, unlocked the door, and admitted the brisk young woman who brought them their meals.
Mr. Stanford, yawning very much, proceeded to make his toilet. Twelve months of matrimony had changed the handsome ex-lieutenant, and not for the better. He looked thinner and paler; his eyes were sunken, and encircled by dark halos, telling of night revels and morning headaches. But that wonderful beauty that had magnetized Rose Danton was there still; the features as perfect as ever; the black eyes as lustrous; all the old graceful ease and nonchalance of manner characterized him yet. But the beauty that had blinded and dazzled her had lost its power to charm. She had been married to him a year--quite long enough to be disenchanted. That handsome face might fascinate other foolish moths; it had lost its power to dazzle her long, long ago. Perhaps the disenchantment was mutual; for the pretty, rose-cheeked, starry-eyed girl who had captivated his idle fancy had become a dream of the past, and his wife was a pale, sickly, peevish invalid, with frowsy hair and slipshod feet.
The clattering of the cups and saucers awoke the baby, who began squalling dismally; and the baby's cries awoke the baby's mamma. Rose got up, feeling cramped and unrefreshed, and came out into the parlour with the infant in her arms. Her husband turned from a dreary contemplation of the sun trying to force its way through a dull, yellow fog, and dropped the curtain.
"Good-morning, my dear," said Mr. Stanford, pouring out a cup of tea. "How are you to-day? Can't you make that disagreeable youngster hold his confounded tongue?"
"What time did you get home last night?" demanded Mrs. Stanford, with flashing eyes.
"It wasn't last night, my dear," replied Mr. Stanford, serenely, buttering his roll; "it was sometime this morning, I believe."
"And of course you were drunk as usual!"
"My love, pray don't speak so loudly; they'll hear you down stairs," remonstrated the gentleman. "Really, I believe I had been imbibing a little too freely. I hope I did not disturb you. I made as little noise as possible on purpose, I assure you. I even slept in my boots, not being in a condition to take them off. Wash your face, my dear, and comb your hair--they both need it very much--and come take some breakfast. If that baby of yours won't hold its tongue, please to throw it out of the window."
Mrs. Stanford's reply was to sink into the rocking-chair and burst into a passion of tears.
"Don't, pray!" remonstrated Mr. Stanford; "one's enough to cry at a time. Do come and have some breakfast. You're hysterical this morning, that is evident, and a cup of tea will do you good."
"I wish I were dead!" burst out Rose, passionately. "I wish I had been dead before I ever saw your face!"
"I dare say, my love. I can understand your feelings, and sympathize with them perfectly."
"Oh, what a fool I was!" cried Rose, rocking violently backward and forward; "to leave my happy home, my indulgent father, my true and devoted lover, for you! To leave wealth and happiness for poverty, and privation, and neglect, and misery! Oh, fool! fool! fool! that I was!"
"Very true, my dear," murmured Mr. Stanford sympathetically. "I don't mind confessing that I was a fool myself. You cannot regret your marriage any more than I do mine."
This was a little too much. Rose sprang up, flinging the baby into the cradle, and faced her lord and master with cheeks of flame and eyes of fire.
"You villain!" she cried. "You cruel, cold-blooded villain, I hate you! Do you hear, Reginald Stanford, I hate you! You have deceived me as shamefully as ever man deceived woman! Do you think I don't know where you were last night, or whom you were with? Don't I know it was with that miserable, degraded Frenchwoman--that disgusting Madame Millefleur--whom I would have whipped through the streets of London, if I could."
"I don't doubt it, my dear," murmured Mr. Stanford, still unruffled by his wife's storm of passion. "Your gentle sex are famous for the mercy they always show to their fairer sisters. Your penetration does you infinite credit, Mrs. Stanford. I was with Madame Millefleur."
Rose stood glaring at him, white and panting with rage too intense for words. Reginald Stanford stood up, meeting her fierce regards with wonderful coolness.
"You're not going to tear my hair out, are you, Rose? You see the way of it was this: Coming from the office where I have the honour to be clerk--thanks to my marriage--I met Madame Millefleur, that most bewitching and wealthy of French widows. She is in love with me, my dear. It may seem unaccountable to you how any one can be in love with me, but the fact is so. She is in love with me almost as much as pretty Rose Danton was once upon a time, and gave me an invitation to accompany her to the opera last night. Of course I was enchanted. The opera is a rare luxury now, and la Millefleur is all the fashion. I had the happiness of bending over her chair all the evening--don't glare so, my love, it makes you quite hideous--and accepted a seat beside her in the carriage when it was all over. A delicious
petit souper awaited us in Madame's bijou of a boudoir; and I don't mind owning I was a little disguised by sparkling Moselle when I came home. Open confessions are good for the soul--there is one for you, my dear."
Her face was livid as she listened, and he smiled up at her with a smile that nearly drove her mad.
"I hate you, Reginald Stanford!" was all she could say. "I hate you! I hate you!"
"Quite likely, my love; but I dare say I shall survive that. You would rather I didn't come here any more, I suppose, Mrs. Stanford?"
"I never want to see your hateful, wicked face again. I wish I had been dead before I ever saw it."
"And I wish whatever you wish, dearest and best," he said, with a sneering laugh; "if you ever see my wicked, hateful face again, it shall be no fault of mine. Perhaps you had better go back to Canada. M. La Touche was very much in love with you last year, and may overlook this little episode in your life, and take you to his bosom yet. Good morning, Mrs. Stanford. I am going to call on Madame Millefleur."
He took his hat and left the room, and Rose dropped down in her chair and covered her face with her hands.
If Kate Danton and Jules La Touche ever wished for revenge, they should have seen the woman who so cruelly wronged them at that moment. Vengeance more bitter, more terrible than her worst enemy could wish, had overtaken and crushed her to the earth.
How that long, miserable day passed, the poor child never knew. It came to an end, and the longer, more miserable night followed. Another morning, another day of unutterable wretchedness, and a second night of tears and sleeplessness. The third day came and passed, and still Reginald Stanford never returned. The evening of the third day brought her a letter, with Napoleon's head on the corner.
"Hotel Du Louvre, Paris, April 10.
My Dear Mrs. Stanford:--For you have still the unhappiness of bearing that odious name, although I have no doubt Captain Danton will shortly take the proper steps to relieve you of it. According to promise, I have rid you of my hateful presence, and forever. You see I am in brilliant Paris, in a palatial hotel, enjoying all the luxuries wealth can procure, and Madame Millefleur is my companion. The contrast between my life this week and my life last is somewhat striking. The frowning countenance of Mrs. Stanford is replaced by the ever-smiling face of my dark-eyed Adèle, and the shabby lodgings in Crown street, Strand, are exchanged for this chamber of Eastern gorgeousness. I am happy, and so, no doubt, are you. Go back to Canada, my dear Mrs. Stanford. Papa will receive his little runaway with open arms, and kill the fatted calf to welcome her. The dear Jules may still be faithful, and you may yet be thrice blessed as Madame La Touche. Ah, I forget--you belong to the Church, and so does he, that does not believe in divorce. What a pity!
"I beg you will feel no uneasiness upon pecuniary matters, my dear Rose. I write by this post to our good landlady, inclosing the next six months' rent, and in this you will find a check for all present wants.
"I believe this is all I have to say, and Adèle is waiting for me to escort her on a shopping expedition. Adieu, my Rose; believe me, with the best wishes for your future happiness, to be Ever your friend,
"Reginald Reinecourt Stanford."
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