Cruel as the grave
man or boy, always on hand. She, like those of her mischievous class,
really meant no harm, while doing a great deal of wrong. Such a woman
will engage a husband's affections and break a wife's heart from mere
vanity, and for mere pastime, without the slightest regard for either of
her victims. And yet, because, they have not been grossly guilty, as
well as deeply sinful, they retain their positions in society.
Rosa Blondelle's whole life lay in these sentimental flirtations and
platonic friendships. Without a lover, she did not care to live at all.
Yet hers was a sham love, though her victims were not often sham lovers.
With her fair and most innocent face, Rosa Blondelle was false and
shallow. And Lyon Berners knew this; and even while yielding himself to
the fascination of her smiles, he could not help comparing her, to her
great disadvantage, with his own true, earnest, deep-hearted wife.
But every morning, while Sybil was engaged in her domestic duties, which
were now greatly increased by the preparations that were going on for
the masquerade ball, Lyon Berners would be walking with Rosa Blondelle,
exploring the romantic glens of the Black Valley, or wandering along the
picturesque banks of the Black River. Or if the weather happened to be
inclement, Mr. Berners and Mrs. Blondelle would sit in the library
together, deep in German mysticism or French sentiment.
Every evening Rosa sat at the grand piano, singing for him the most
impassioned songs from the German and Italian operas; and Lyon hung over
her chair turning her music, and enraptured with her beauty.
Ah! Rosa Blondelle! vain and selfish and shallow coquette! Trifle, if
you must, with any other man's love, with any other woman's peace; but
you had better invade the lair of the lioness, and seize her cubs--you
had better walk blindfold upon the abyss of Hades, than come between
Sybil Berners and her husband!
For Sybil saw it all! and not only as any other woman might have seen
it, just as it was, but as the jealous wife did--with vast exaggerations
and awful forebodings.
They did not suspect how much she knew, or how much more she imagined.
Before them the refined instincts of the lady still kept down the angry
passions of the woman.
Whenever her emotions were about to overcome her, she slipped away, not
to her own room, where she was liable to interruption, but far up into
the empty attics of the old house, where, in some corresponding chamber
of desolation, she gave way to such storms of anguish and despair as
leave the deepest
"Traces on heart and brain."
And after an hour or two she would return to the drawing-room, whence
she had never been missed by the pair of sentimentalists, who had been
too much absorbed in each other, and in Mozart or Beethoven, to notice
her absence.
And while all unconscious of her, they continued their musical
flirtation, she would sit with her back to the light, toying with her
crochet-work and listening to Rosa's songs.
She was still as a volcano before it bursts forth to bury cities under
its burning lava flood!
Why did she not, in the sacred privacy of their mutual apartment appeal
to the better nature of her husband by telling him how much his
flirtation with their guest pained her, his wife? Or else, why had she
not spoken plainly with her guest?
Why? Because Sybil Berners had too much pride and too little faith to do
the one or the other. She could not stoop to plead with her husband for
the love that she thought he had withdrawn from her; still less could
she bend to tell her guest how much his defection troubled her. Nor did
she believe her interference would do any good. For, to Sybil Berners
earnest nature, all things seemed earnest, and this vain and shallow
flirtation wore the aspect of a deep, impassioned attachment. And in her
forbearance she acted from instinct rather than from reason, for she
never even thought of interfering between these platonists. So,
outwardly at least, she was calm. But this calmness could not last. Her
heart was bleeding, burning, breaking! and its prisoned flood of fire
and blood must burst forth at length. The volcano seems quiet; but the
pent up lava in its bosom must at last give forth mutterings of its
impending irruption, and swiftly upon these mutterings must follow
flames and ruin!
It happened thus with Sybil.
One morning, when the weather was too threatening to permit any one to
indulge in an outdoor walk, it chanced that Lyon and Sybil Berners were
sitting together at a centre-table in the parlor--Lyon reading the
morning paper; Sybil _trying_ to read a new magazine--when Rosa
Blondelle, with her flowing, azure-hued robes and her floating golden
locks, and her beaming smiles, entered the room and seated herself at
the table, saying sweetly:
"My dear Mrs. Berners, is it to-morrow that you and I have arranged to
drive out and return the calls that were made upon us?"
"Yes, madam," politely replied Sybil.
"Then, dear Mr. Berners, I shall have to ask you to write a few
visiting-cards for me. I have not an engraved one in the world. But you
write such a beautiful hand, that your writing will look like
copper-plate. You will oblige me?" she inquired, smiling, and placing a
pack of blank cards before him.
"With the greatest pleasure," answered Lyon Berners, promptly putting
aside his paper.
Rosa turned to leave the room.
"Will you not remain with us?" courteously inquired Sybil.
"No, dear; much as I should like to do so," replied Rosa.
"But why?" inquired Lyon Berners, looking disappointed.
"Oh! because I have my dress to see about. We are far from all
fashionable modistes here; but I must try to do honor to madam's
masquerade for all that," laughed Rosa, as she passed gracefully out of
the room.
With a sigh that seemed to his sorrowing wife to betray his regret for
the beauty's departure, Lyon Berners drew the packet of blank cards
before him, scattered them in a loose heap on his left hand, and then
selecting one at a time, began to write. As he carefully wrote upon and
finished each card, he as carefully laid it on his right hand, until a
little heap grew there.
Sybil, who gloried in all her husband's accomplishments, from the
greatest to the least, admired very much his skill in ornamental
chirography. She drew her chair closer to the table, and took up the
topmost card, and began to decipher, rather than to read, the name in
the beautiful old English characters, so tangled in a thicket of
rose-buds and forget-me-nots as to be scarcely legible. She looked
closely and more closely at the name on the card.
What was there in it to drive all the color from her cheeks?
She snatched up and scrutinized a second card, a third, a fourth; then,
springing to her feet, she seized the whole mass, hurled them into the
fire, and turned, and confronted her husband.
Her teeth were clenched upon her bloodless lips, her face seemed marble,
her eyes lambent flames.
He rose to his feet in surprise and dismay.
"SYBIL! what is all this? Why have you destroyed the cards?"
"Why?" she gasped, pressing both hands upon her heart, as if to keep
down its horrible throbbings. "Why? Because they are lies! _lies!_
LIES!"
"SYBIL! have you gone suddenly mad?" he cried, gazing at the "embodied
storm" before him with increasing astonishment and consternation.
"No! I have suddenly come to my senses!" she gasped between the catches
of her breath, for she could scarcely speak.
"You must calm yourself, and tell me what this means, my wife," said
Lyon Berners, exerting a great control over himself, and pushing aside
the last card he had written.
But she snatched up that card, glanced at it fiercely, tore it in two,
and threw the fragments far apart, exclaiming in bitter triumph:
"Not yet! oh! not yet! I am not dead yet! Nor have the halls and acres
of my fathers passed quite away from their daughter to the possession of
a traitor and an ingrate."
He gazed upon her now in amazement and alarm. _Had_ she gone suddenly
mad?
She stood there before him the incarnation of the fiercest and intensest
passion he had ever seen or imagined.
He went and took her in his arms, saying more gently than before:
"Sybil, what is it?"
She tried, harshly and cruelly, to break from him. But he held her in a
fast, loving embrace, murmuring still:
"Sybil, you must tell me what troubles you?"
"What troubles me!" she furiously exclaimed. "Let me go, man! Your touch
is a dishonor to me! Let me go!"
"But, dearest Sybil."
"Let me go, I say! What! will you use your _brute strength to hold me_?"
He dropped his arms, and left her free.
"No; I beg your pardon, Sybil. I thought you were my loving wife," he
said.
"You were mistaken. I am not Rosa Blondelle!" she cried.
"Hush! hush! my dearest Sybil!" he muttered earnestly, as he went and
closed and locked the parlor door, to save her from being seen by the
servants in her present insane passion.
But she swept past him like a storm, and laid her hand on the lock. She
found it fast.
"Open, and let me pass," she cried.
"No, no, my dear Sybil. Remain here until you are calmer, and then tell
me--"
"Let me out, I say!"
"But, dearest Sybil."
"What! would you _keep me a prisoner--by force_?" she cried, with a
cruel sneer.
He unlocked the door and set it wide open.
"No, even though you are a lunatic, as I do believe. Go, and expose your
condition, if you must. I cannot restrain you by fair means, and I will
not by foul."
And Sybil swept from the room, but she did not expose herself. She fled
away to that "chamber of desolation" where she had passed so many
agonizing hours, and threw herself, face downwards, upon the floor, and
lay there in the collapse of utter despair.
Meanwhile Lyon Berners paced up and down the parlor floor.
CHAPTER XII.
"CRUEL AS THE GRAVE."
Go, when the hunter's hand hath wrung
From forest cave her shrieking young,
And calm the raging lioness;
But soothe not--mock not my distress.--BYRON.
Lyon Berners was utterly perplexed and troubled. He could not in any way
explain to himself the sudden and furious passion of his wife.
Suddenly it occurred to him that it was in some way connected with the
cards she had thrown into the fire. They were not all burned up. Some
few had fallen scorched upon the hearth. These he gathered up and
examined; and as he looked at one after another, his face expressed, in
turn, surprise, dismay, and amusement. Then he burst out laughing. He
really could not help doing so, serious as the subject was; for upon
every single card, instead of Rosa Blondelle, he had written:
Mrs. ROSA BERNERS.
"Was there ever such a mischief of a mistake?" he exclaimed, as he
ceased laughing and sat down by his table to consider what was to be
done next.
"Poor Sybil! poor, dear, fiery-hearted child, it is no wonder! And yet,
Heaven truly knows it was because I was thinking of _you_, and not of
the owner of the cards, that I wrote that name upon them unconsciously,"
he said to himself, as he sat with his fine head bowed upon his hand,
gravely reviewing the history of the last few days.
His eyes were opened now--not only to his wife's jealousy, but to his
own thoughtless conduct in doing anything to arouse it.
In the innermost of his own soul he was so sure of the perfect integrity
of his love for his wife, that it had never before occurred to him that
_she_ could doubt it--that any unconscious act or thoughtless gallantry
on his part could cause her to doubt it.
Now, however, he remembered with remorse that, of late, since the rising