Cruel as the grave
"I will tell _you_, Lyon; but mind, you must keep the secret."
"Oh! inviolably," said Mr. Berners, with a laugh.
"Oh! I mean only that you must not speak of it outside the family,
because, you see, it is such a perfectly original character that if it
was known it would be taken by half a dozen people at least."
"I will never breathe its name," laughed Lyon.
"Then the character I shall take is--"
"What?"
"Fire!"
"Fire?"
"Fire."
"Ha! ha! ha! it will suit you admirably, my little Berners of the
Burning Heart. But how on earth will you contrive to costume and
impersonate the consuming element?"
"It would take me a week to tell you, and then you would not understand.
But you shall see."
"I hope you will not set all your company in a flame; that is all, my
dear."
"But I shall _try_ to do so. And now, dear Lyon, if you wish to help me,
sit down at my writing-table there, and fill out and direct the
invitations, you will find the visiting list, printed cards, and blank
envelopes all in a parcel in the desk."
"But is it not early to send them?" inquired Mr. Berners, as he seated
himself at the table.
"No; not for a mask ball. This is the tenth. The ball is to come off on
the thirty-first. If the cards are sent to-day, our friends will have
just three weeks to get ready, which will not be too long to select
their characters and contrive their costumes."
"I suppose you know best, my dear," said Mr. Berners, as he referred to
the visiting list and began to prepare for his task.
Sybil went to her dressing-glass and began to arrange her somewhat
disordered hair. While she stood there, she suddenly inquired:
"Where did you leave Mrs. Blondelle?"
"I did not leave her anywhere. She left me. She excused herself, and
went--to her room, I suppose."
"Ah!" sighed Sybil. She did not like this answer. She was sorry to know
that her husband had remained with the beauty until the beauty had left
him. She tortured herself with the thought that, if Mrs. Blondelle had
remained in the morning room, Mr. Berners would have been there at her
side.
So morbid was now the condition of Sybil that a word was enough to
arouse her jealousy, a caress sufficient to allay it. _She_ would not
leave Lyon to himself, she thought. He should know the difference
between his wife and his guest in that particular. So the guest, being
now in her own room, where her hostess heartily wished she might spend
the greater portion of the day, Sybil felt free from the pressing duties
of hospitality, at least for the time being; and so she drew a chair to
the corner of the same table occupied by her husband, and she began to
help him in his task by directing the envelopes, while he filled out
the cards. Thus sitting together, working in unison, and conversing
occasionally, they passed the morning--a happier morning than Sybil had
seen for several days.
But of course they met their guest again at dinner, where Rosa Blondelle
was as fascinating and Lyon Berners as much fascinated as before, and
where Sybil's mental malady returned in full force.
Oh, these transient fascinations, what eternal miseries they sometimes
bring!
But a greater trial awaited the jealous wife in the evening, when they
were all gathered in the drawing-room, and Rosa Blondelle, beautifully
dressed, seated herself at the grand piano, and began to sing and play
some of the impassioned songs from the Italian operas; and Lyon Berners,
a very great enthusiast in music, hung over the siren, doubly entranced
by her beauty and her voice. Sybil, too, stood with the little group at
the piano; but she stood back in the shade, where the expression of her
agonized face could not be seen by the other two, even if they had been
at leisure to observe her. She was suffering the fiercest tortures of
jealousy.
Sybil's education had been neglected, as I have told you. She had a fine
contralto voice and a perfect ear, but these were both uncultivated; and
so she could only sing and play the simplest ballads in the language.
She had often regretted her want of power to please the fastidious
musical taste of her husband; but never so bitterly as now, when she saw
that power in the possession of another, and that other a beauty, a
rival, and an inmate of her house. Oh, how deeply she now deplored her
short-sightedness in bringing this siren to her home!
At the most impassioned, most expressive passages of the music, Rosa
Blondelle would lift her eloquent blue eyes to those of Lyon Berners,
who responded to their language.
And Sybil stood in the shadow near them, with pallid cheeks, compressed
lips, and glittering eyes--mute, still, full of repressed anguish and
restrained fury.
Ah, Rosa Blondelle, take heed! Better that you should come between the
lioness and her young than between Sybil Berners and her love!
Yet again, on this evening, this jealous wife, this strange young
creature, so full of contradictions and inconsistencies; so strong, yet
so weak; so confiding, yet so suspicious; so magnanimous, yet so
vindictive; once again, I say, successfully exerted her wonderful powers
of self-control, and endured the ordeal of that evening in silence, and
at its close bade her guest good-night without betraying the anguish of
her heart.
When she found herself alone with her husband in their chamber, her
fortitude nearly forsook her, especially as he himself immediately
opened the subject of their beautiful guest.
"She is perfectly charming," said Mr. Berners. "Every day develops some
new gift or grace of hers! My dear Sybil, you never did a better deed
than in asking this lovely lady to our house. She will be an invaluable
acquisition to our lonely fireside this winter."
"You did not use to think our fireside was lonely! You used to be very
jealous of our domestic privacy!" Sybil _thought_ to herself; but she
gave no expression to this thought. On the contrary, controlling
herself, and steadying her voice with an effort, she said smilingly:
"If you had met this 'lovely lady' before you married me, and had found
her also free, you would have made her your wife."
"I! No, indeed!" impulsively and most sincerely answered Lyon Berners,
as he raised his eyes in astonishment to the face of Sybil. But he could
see nothing there. Her face was in deep shadow, where she purposely kept
it to conceal its pallor and its tremor.
"But why, if you had met her before you married me, and found her free,
why should you not have made her your wife?" persisted Sybil.
"'Why?'--what a question! Because, in the first place dear Sybil, I
loved _you, you only_, long before I ever married you!" said Lyon
Berners in increasing surprise.
"But--if you had met her before you had ever seen me, you would have
loved and married her."
"No! On my honor, Sybil!"
"Yet you admire her so much!"
"Dear Sybil! I admire all things beautiful in nature and art, but I
don't want to marry all!"
"And are you sure that this beautiful Rosa Blondelle would not make you
a more suitable companion than I do?" she inquired.
His whole manner now changed. Turning towards her, he took both her
hands in his own, and looking gravely and sweetly in her face, he
answered:
"My wife! such questions between you and me ought never to arise, even
in jest. I hold the marriage relation always too sacred for such
trifling! And _our_ relations towards each other seem to me dearer,
sweeter, more sacred even, than those of most other married couples! No,
my own Sybil! Soul of my soul! there is no woman that I ever did, or
ever could prefer to you!" And he drew her to his bosom, and pressed her
there in all good faith and true love. And his grave and tender rebuke
did even more to tranquilize her jealousy than all his caresses had
done.
"I know it! I know it, my dear husband! But it is only when I feel how
imperfect, how unworthy of you, I am, that I ever have doubts!" she
murmured with a sigh of infinite relief.
CHAPTER XI.
LOVE AND JEALOUSY.
There was a time when bliss
Shone o'er her heart from every look of his;
When but to see him, hear him, breathe the air
In which he dwelt, was her soul's fondest prayer;
When round him hung such a perpetual spell,
Whate'er he did none ever did so well;
Yet now he comes, brighter than ever, far,
He beamed before; but ah! not bright for her.--MOORE.
Fortunately for the fascinated husband and the jealous wife, the Circuit
Court was now sitting at Blackville, and the lawyer's professional
duties demanded all Mr. Berner's time.
Only one year before this, when the struggling young lawyer depended
upon his work for his bread, he could hardly get a paying client; now
that he was entirely independent of his profession, he was overwhelmed
with business. As the wealthy master of the Black Valley manor, with its
rich dependencies of farms, quarries, mills, and hamlets, he might have
led the easy life of a country gentleman. But in Lyon Berners'
apprehension, work was duty; and so to work he went, as if he had had to
get his living by it.
Every day he left home at nine o'clock in the morning, in order to be
present at the opening of the court at ten. He reached home again at
four in the afternoon, and dined with Sybil and Rosa. After dinner he
retired to his study, and spent the evening in working up his briefs and
preparing for the next day's business.
Thus he was entirely separated from his guest, who never saw him except
at the table, with the breadth of the board between them, and almost
entirely from his wife, who only had his company to herself at night.
Yet Sybil was content. Her love, if, in some of its phases, it was a
jealous and exacting passion, in others was a noble and generous
principle. She would not spare a glance, a smile, a caress of his, to
any other woman; yet she would give him wholly up to his duty, his
profession, his country, or to any grand _impersonal_ object. And the
few hours out of the twenty-four when she could enjoy his society apart
from her dreaded rival, compensated her for the many when he was absent
or engaged upon his professional duties.
But ah! this could not last!
It happened, very naturally, that while Mr. Lyon Berners spent his
mornings in the court-house, Mrs. Lyon Berners spent hers in receiving
the calls and congratulations of her friends, to whom she always
presented her permanent visitor, Mrs. Blondelle.
At length two unconnected events happened at the same time. The court
adjourned, and the last visit of ceremony was paid.
Sybil, at the instance of Mr. Berners, gave a dinner-party, and they
entertained the judges and barristers of the court. And upon that
occasion, Mrs. Blondelle of course was introduced, and equally of
course, her beauty made a very great sensation. And Sybil was well
pleased. She was perfectly willing that her protege should outshine her
in every company, if only she did not outrival her in her husband's
admiration.
But ah! whether it was that the long interruption of his conversations
with the beautiful blonde had given a new zest to the pleasure he
enjoyed in her society, or whether his admiration for her had been ever,
under all circumstances, on the increase, or whether both these causes
combined to influence his conduct, is not known; but it is certain that
from this time, Lyon Berners became more and more blindly devoted to
Rosa Blondelle. And yet, under and over and through all this, the
husband loved his wife as he never did or could love any other woman.
But Rosa Blondelle was one of those vain and shallow women who must and
will have a sentimental flirtation or a platonic friendship with some