Read Online Textbook Lunchtime Chronicles Mai Tai Amarie Avant Lunchtime Chronicles Ebook All Chapter PDF
Read Online Textbook Lunchtime Chronicles Mai Tai Amarie Avant Lunchtime Chronicles Ebook All Chapter PDF
Read Online Textbook Lunchtime Chronicles Mai Tai Amarie Avant Lunchtime Chronicles Ebook All Chapter PDF
So during all the wedding festivities with which the whole country
rang the Lorristons were away; there was not even the civility of a
letter exchanged between them. People did not quite know what the
difference was about; but a quiet understanding soon came about
that the Lorristons and the Aldens should never be invited together.
For Sir Ronald the second phase of his life began when, as the
husband of another woman, it was more than ever his duty to
trample under foot the passion that marred his life. Then, in sober
earnest, he had to take up the duties of life and make the best of
them.
He was kind and attentive to his beautiful young wife; he was
careful in the fulfillment of his duties; but in the silent depths of his
own heart there was no moment, night or day, in which he did not,
with the most bitter words, curse his own fate. So the remainder of
that summer passed. Winter brought its usual round of country
gayeties. In this season Sir Ronald and Lady Clarice went to
London, where her beauty and fascination created a perfect furore.
There, for the first time, he heard that the Lorristons had not come to
town because Lady Hermione had been long out of health. She was
not ill—that is, not ill enough to alarm her friends, but she was unfit
to encounter the fatigues of a London season.
When it was over Sir Ronald and his wife returned to Aldenmere.
One day toward the end of the month of June, Sir Ronald went
out into the Holme Woods. The morning was fine, the sun shining,
and the air filled with the fragrance of wild flowers. Holme Woods
had never looked so beautiful. The trees wore their richest foliage,
great sheets of blue hyacinths spread out far and wide, bright-
winged butterflies hovered over them, bees hummed for very joy at
the rich feast spread before them. Sir Ronald had not noticed the
path he was taking. The faint, wild perfume of the harebells was
grateful to him. Body, mind, heart and soul, he was tired, and he had
come to the woods, loving the solitude he found there.
You know, reader, what face was before him. Imagine his surprise
when his thoughts suddenly seemed embodied; for there, seated on
a bank, with the pretty harebells nodding around her, was Lady
Hermione Lorriston.
He would have turned and fled, but the manhood within him
rebelled against flight. He stood looking helplessly at her, too
bewildered for words. When he was capable of coherent thought he
saw how white her face grew. She rose and stood before him, like
some bright, strange, frightened bird, dreading to stay, yet dreading
to go.
And then the past months, with their untold agony, faded from
him. He remembered nothing save that it was summer time and he
loved her—save that for him it was heaven where she was, and a
dreary blank where she was not.
“Hermione!” he cried, going up to her, and holding out his hand,
all his proud resolves, all his hauteur, all his indignant anger melted
into thin air.
She gave him no hand in return. The pale, sweet face was graver
than he had ever seen it before.
“I did not think to see you here, Sir Ronald,” she said, coldly.
He had only seen her once since the night when he had kissed
her among the flowers, and everything save the memory of that night
seemed to die from him.
“How cruel you have been to me, Hermione; how you lured me
on to my ruin and my doom; how false you are despite the fairness
of that most fair face! If you had stabbed me, and trampled my dead
body under foot, you would have been less cruel. What did I ever do,
Hermione, that I deserved so cruel a fate?”
She looked up at him proudly.
“You have no right to speak to me,” she said. “You are married,
and the kindness or cruelty of no other woman but your wife should
concern you. Then I have not been cruel to you, Ronald, and you
know it.”
There was something inexpressibly sad and pitiful in the whole
scene. These two, who loved each other so dearly, who in the whole
world cared only for each other, parted more completely than if death
had separated them.
“I know that you did me the greatest wrong woman could do to
man,” he replied.
“What was it?” she asked, the proud flush deepening on her face.
“You led me to believe you cared for me—you gave to me looks
and words such as you gave to no other man—you let me kiss your
lips and did not say me nay; then, when I had grown bold through
your kindness, and prayed the prayer that for long months had been
on my lips, you slew me with cruel, scornful words.”
“I do not understand you,” she said, quietly.
“You will not, rather. I say again, Hermione, that you have played
with me more cruelly than a cat plays with a mouse. You have
laughed at my torture.”
“You are speaking most falsely,” she said.
“Let God judge between us. I lay the ruin of my life upon you. I
say you deliberately deceived me.”
“I deny it,” she replied. “How could I be cruel or false to you. I
have had no opportunity of being either. I have never heard of you or
seen you but once since the evening of my birthday!”
“You have written to me, and it is of your written words I
complain.”
“I have never in all my life written one line to you,” she said,
earnestly.
“You have never written to me, Hermione? Ah, do not stain those
lips with a lie!”
“I never have,” she repeated, with a deep-drawn sob. “Listen! I
swear it before the most high God.”
And then for some minutes they stood looking bewildered and
wonderingly at each other.
CHAPTER XXIII.
BAD MADE WORSE.
Sir Ronald came nearer to Lady Hermione; his face was white
and stern, his eyes gleamed with an angry light.
“Let me ask you a plain question, Lady Hermione. Perhaps this
conversation had been better left alone. Having commenced it, I
must know more than you have said. You must not refuse to answer
me. Either you are deceiving me now, or I have been tricked more
foully than man ever was before. I must know which it is.”
“I am not deceiving you; why should I? Deceit is foreign to me; I
abhor it. I repeat what I have said. It is possible that I may have
addressed cards of invitation to you; but in my whole life I have
never written to you one single letter.”
Looking into her pale, sweet face, where all truth, purity and
goodness reigned, it was not possible to doubt her.
“Hermione,” he said, more gently, “you remember the evening of
the ball?”
“Yes,” she said, sadly, “I remember it well.”
“We stood among the roses, you and I, the moon shining, the
distant sound of music floating near us. You did not chide me when I
kissed your lips, and I—oh, blind fool that I was!—I looked upon that
kiss as a solemn betrothal.”
She shrank from the passionate tones of his voice, then looked at
him.
“I made the same mistake,” she said, simply, “and I have paid
very dearly for it.”
“Then, for a whole week afterward, Hermione, I went to Leeholme
every day. I tried hard to find an opportunity of speaking to you; you
were always surrounded by people. There were times, even, when I
imagined you felt a delight in baffling what you must have known to
be my heart’s desire.”
“It was but a girlish delight in mischief,” she interrupted; “and, ah
me! the bitter price I have paid.”
“I wrote to you,” he continued, “finding that there was no chance
of speaking. I wrote and told you how most dearly I loved you, and
prayed you to be my wife. What was your answer to that prayer?”
He looked into her face as he asked the question; it was so
sweet, sad and sorrowful, but there was no untruth to mar its beauty.
The wind stirred the bluebells faintly, and a deep, soft sigh shivered
through them.
“What was your answer to my prayer?” he repeated.
“None,” she replied. “I never received such a letter; therefore, I
could not answer it.”
“Say that again,” he gasped, in a thick, hoarse voice.
“I never received it, Ronald. This is the first word I have ever
heard of it.”
He reeled as though one had struck him a sudden, mortal blow.
The sweet, soft voice continued sadly:
“You have not thought more hardly of me than I of you. I believed
that night you loved me, and I was—well, it does not matter how
happy; then you came and went without saying one word. Suddenly
you absented yourself altogether; you never came near me. I met
you, and you avoided me. I knew no more until I heard and knew
that you were going to Mount Severn.”
His face was not pleasant to look upon as she uttered these
words.
“Then you never read it, Hermione, or knew of my writing at all?”
“Not one word,” she said, earnestly.
There were a few moments of silence, unbroken save by the
wind among the harebells.
“Answer me only one more question, and I have done,” he said.
“If you had received my letter, what would your answer have been?”
The light he remembered so well came into her face; for a few
moments she forgot the barrier between them that could never be
passed.
“You know what it would have been, Ronald. I—I should have
said ‘Yes,’ because I have loved you, and you alone, all my life.”
Then the words died on her lips, for, strong and brave as he was,
he had flung himself face downward among the harebells, and lay
there, sobbing like a child.
A strong man’s tears are terrible to see. Women weep, and,
though one pities them, it seems but natural. When a proud, self-
controlled, high-spirited man breaks down and weeps, the grief is
terrible to witness.
So she thought who bent over him now with soothing words.
“Ronald, you will break my heart if you do this. There has been a
terrible mistake, but it will be made right for us in another world. We
have one comfort—we did love each other. God knows what has
parted us; it is not untruth or falsity. Oh, Ronald! does it not comfort
you to know this?”
All that answered her was the deep-drawn, bitter sobs that shook
his strong frame, and the sweet, rustling sound of the bells in the
breeze.
“If I had been false to you, as you believed, Ronald, the memory
of me would have been a lifelong pain. If you had been false to me,
the very thought of you would have been a perpetual sorrow; but
now we may remember without sin that we once loved each other in
all truth.”
She was startled when he raised his face to her, and clutched her
hand in his strong grasp.
“Oh, my lost love, my lost, dearest, only love! what has parted
us? Tell me! I must know—I will know!”
“I cannot tell,” she replied, gently laying her white, cool, soft hand
on his hot brow. “I cannot even imagine. All I am certain of is that I
never until this morning even heard of such a letter.”
“Who has done it?” he cried, wildly. “Oh, Hermione, do you know
I have been mad for love of you, and for the loss of you? Do you
know that, after I believed you rejected me, I have lived like a man
without reason, without soul? My days and nights have been one
long dream of anguish, one long madness. I hate the sun that
shines, the night that succeeds day, for no time will ever bring you
back to me, and without you life is death.”
“You forget,” she interrupted, gently. “You have your wife, Clarice,
who loves you.”
“I do not forget. Poor Clarice!—God pity her and pity me! I do not
love her, Hermione. I have tried as hard to love her as I have to
forget you, but cannot. I pray Heaven to pardon me the wrong I did in
marrying her; I was blind enough to think it for the best. Oh, my lost
love, I am going mad! Lay your cool hands on my brow again; fight
down the demons who master me, my angel, my loadstar, my
treasure! And you would have married me, Hermione? You would
have made my life heaven instead of what it is. I might have been
the happiest, even as I am the most wretched, of men.”
“It might have been so; but, Ronald, you must not talk so to me. I
am so glad I have seen you—glad to know you were not fickle in
love and fancy, as I thought; but now we must part, and we must not
meet again.”
“I know; but before you leave me, Hermione, tell me how it
happened?”
“I cannot; how did you send that letter to me, Ronald?”
“By my groom. He had orders to deliver it into your own hands,
but you were away. He waited some hours, and, as you did not
return, he gave it to your maid. I asked him every particular.”
“To my maid! She never gave me any letter from you, Ronald.
When did you send it?”
“It was exactly one week after the ball,” he replied.
“I remember,” said Lady Hermione. “We had all been over to
Thringston, and it was late when we returned. My maid told me there
was an envelope on the toilet-table that Sir Ronald’s groom had
brought.”
“That was it,” he said, eagerly.
“No,” she said; “there is some mistake. I opened it, and there was
nothing inside but a white rose, carefully folded. I laughed at what
seemed to me a romantic idea.”
“Was the envelope addressed to you?” he asked, quickly.
“Yes, and in your handwriting. I knew it at once.”
“There must have been foul play,” he said.
“But how, Ronald? You spoke of a letter from me; tell me of that.”
“It was an answer to mine; it came by post a day afterward. It was
in your handwriting, I swear, and it—rejected me.”
“I cannot understand it,” she cried.
“Nor I. But if it takes the whole of my life to find it out, it shall not
remain a mystery,” he said; and then he stood erect and silent before
her.
CHAPTER XXIV.
FAREWELL.
While she lived Lady Hermione never forgot the look of anguish
that he gave her; a long, lingering, steady gaze such as a dying man
fixes at times on the face of a beloved wife or child. Then he came a
step nearer to her.
“I did not know, Hermione,” he said, “that life could be harder than
I have hitherto found it. It will be harder now.”
“Why?” she asked, gently.
“Because I shall ever have before my mind what I have lost. Until
now existence has been tolerable, because I have tried to fill it with
bitter thoughts of you. In my own mind a hundred times a day I have
called you treacherous, false, cruel, and now my angel stands in her
place again, the truest and dearest of women, the woman I have
loved, and who has loved me! Hermione, my life will be so hard to
bear that, if it please Heaven, I could fain die standing here before
you now.”
“Brave men do not seek refuge in death,” she replied, “rather in
active duties of life.”
“Some men. You see, I have thrown my whole existence on one
stake; that stake was you, and I have lost you! Now I have to gather
up the broken threads of my life and do with them as best I can.”
She was weeping silently. He saw the teardrops falling, and a
mad impulse seized him to clasp her in his arms and kiss them
away. That he trampled the impulse under foot showed how dearly
he loved her.
“I am glad that we have met. Once more the sun of pure
womanhood shines for me. While I thought you false, Hermione, all
heaven and earth seemed false, too. But there is one thing more—
you may speak freely to me, Hermione; it is but as though one or the
other of us was dying—was there no truth in the rumor that you were
engaged to Kenelm Eyrle?”
“No; none. Mr. Eyrle has never loved or cared for me in his life.”
“Clarice believed it,” he said, musingly, and the pale face before
him grew whiter.
“She was deceived,” said Lady Hermione, briefly; “and now,
Ronald, it seems to me that we must say farewell; it must be for the
last time. We cannot meet as friends. Honor is dearer than life to
both of us; therefore, we must not meet again.”
“Oh, my lost love,” he moaned, stretching out his hands to her,
“how shall I bear it?”
She went up to him, and there was an expression of pity and love
on her face that made it divine. She took both his hands in her own
and held them there.
“You will be brave and true to yourself, Ronald. Do not let me
have the smart all my life long of knowing that love for me has led
you further from heaven; let it, rather, take you nearer. I have some
quaint thoughts, and one is that in another world God makes our
lives complete. Perhaps there, in that land where the gates are of
jasper and the walls of pearl, we may be together—who knows?
Looking to that time, we will forget the darkness and sorrow of this.”
He said to himself, bitterly, that such thoughts might comfort
angels and women; they brought no consolation to him.
“You must remember Clarice,” she pleaded; “Clarice, who loves
you so well.”
“I remember all. Hermione, if I send for you when I am dying,
should it be soon or should it be in twenty years, you will come to
me?”
“Yes,” she replied, with a deep-drawn, bitter sob. “I will come,
Ronald. Now, farewell.”
She was pure and innocent as the white doves that fed from her
hand. She saw no wrong in bending her sweet, sad face over him for
that last, most sorrowful embrace.
Once more his lips touched hers, but the chill upon them was the
chill of death.
“Good-by, my love, my dear, lost love, good-by,” he said, and the
words died away in a moan. Another minute and she had passed out
of sight.
When the hour of death came it was not so bitter for him as that
in which Hermione Lorriston passed out of his sight. He flung himself
on the ground, praying the skies might fall and cover him; that he
might never rise to meet the sunlight again.
From that day he was a changed man; he felt it and knew it
himself. The quiet, resigned content for which he had been trying so
hard was further from him than ever. The resignation arriving from
philosophy had forsaken him. Night and day he brooded over the
one idea that she had loved him, and he had lost her. Day and night
he pondered over the mystery of that letter.
But for his wife’s sake he would have made the whole matter
public and would have insisted on having it thoroughly sifted; but a
“still, small voice” pleaded for Clarice. It would be so hard for her to
see and know that his thoughts were still all of the past.
That did not prevent him from making a private investigation of
the matter. On the first day that he saw Conyers, the groom, he
called him.
“I want you,” he said. “There are some questions I wish to ask
you that, if you answer truthfully, will be of inestimable benefit to me;
if you answer them falsely, I shall be still further deceived. Perhaps
experience has embittered me; I have little faith left in man’s honesty.
I will buy your truth, Conyers, if you swear to me, on your oath, to
say nothing but what is perfectly, strictly correct. I will give you ten
pounds, and, should you be able to discover that which I wish to
know, I will hereafter give you fifty.”
Conyers was an honest man, and Sir Ronald’s words hurt him
more than he cared to own.
“If you offered me twice fifty pounds, Sir Ronald, to tell a willful
lie, I would not do it for you or for any one else. You can please
yourself about believing whether I tell you the truth or not.”
His bluntness did not displease the master of Aldenmere, who
looked at the groom’s face with a grim smile.
“If ever the world does to you what it has done to me,” he said,
quietly, “you will either doubt your own sanity or the truth of your
fellowmen. Come out here a few minutes; I want to talk to you.”
And the groom, laying down the work on which he was engaged,
followed his master out of the stable.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE MYSTERY UNSOLVED.