Thelma
the golden midnight" he saw her, like a rose refreshed by rain, raise
her bright head in renewed strength and beauty, with the old joyous
lustre dancing in her eyes, and the smile of a perfect happiness like
summer sunshine on her fair face. Lord Winsleigh thought so;--he was
spending the winter in Rome with his wife and son,--and there among the
shadows of the Caesars, his long, social martyrdom ended, and he
regained what he had once believed lost for ever--his wife's affection.
Clara gentle, wistful, with the softening shadow of a great sorrow and a
great repentance in her once too-brilliant eyes, was a very different
Clara to the dashing "beauty" who had figured so conspicuously in London
society. She clung to her husband with an almost timid eagerness as
though she dreaded losing him--and when he was not with her, she seemed
to rely entirely on her son, whom she watched with a fond, almost
melancholy pride, and who responded to her tenderness though proffered
so late, with the full-hearted frankness of his impulsive, ardent
nature. She wrote to Thelma asking her pardon, and in return received
such a sweet, forgiving, generous letter as caused her to weep for an
hour or more. But she felt she could never again meet the clear regard
of those beautiful, earnest, truthful eyes--never again could she stand
in Thelma's presence, or call her friend--that was all over. Still Love
remained,--a Love, chastened and sad, with drooping wings and a somewhat
doubting smile,--yet it was Love--
"Love, that keeps all the choir of lives in chime--
Love, that is blood--within the veins of time."
And Love, no matter how abused and maltreated, is a very patient god,
and even while suffering from undeserved wounds, still works on, doing
magical things. So that poor Edward Neville, the forsaken husband of
Violet Vere, when he heard that that popular actress had died suddenly
in America from a fit of delirium tremens brought on by excessive
drinking, was able, by some gentle method known only to Love and
himself, to forget all her frailties--to obliterate from his memory the
fact that he ever saw her on the boards of the Brilliant Theatre,--and
to think of her henceforth only as the wife he had once adored, and who,
he decided in vague, dreamy fashion, must have died young. Love also
laid a firm hand on the vivacious Pierre Duprez--he who had long scoffed
at the _jeu d'amour_, played it at last in grave earnest,--and one bright
season he introduced his bride into Parisian society,--a charming little
woman, with very sparkling eyes and white teeth, who spoke French
perfectly, though not with the ''haccent' recommended by Briggs. It was
difficult to recognize Britta in the _petite elegante_ who laughed and
danced and chattered her way through some of the best _salons_ in Paris,
captivating everybody as she went,--but there she was, all the same,
holding her own as usual. Her husband was extremely proud of her--he was
fond of pointing her out to people as something excessively precious and
unique--and saying--"See her! That is my wife! From Norway! Yes--from
the very utmost north of Norway! I love my country--certainly!--but I
will tell you this much--if I had been obliged to choose a wife among
French women--_ma foi!_ I should never have married!"
And what of George Lorimer?--the idle, somewhat careless man of "modern"
type, in whose heart, notwithstanding the supposed deterioration of the
age, all the best and bravest codes of old-world chivalry were written?
Had Love no fair thing to offer _him_? Was he destined to live out his
life in the silent heroism of faithful, unuttered, unrequited, unselfish
devotion? Were the heavens, as Sigurd had said, always to be empty?
Apparently not,--for when he was verging towards middle age, a young
lady besieged him with her affections, and boldly offered to be his wife
any day he chose to name. She was a small person, not quite five years
old, with great blue eyes and a glittering tangle of golden curls. She
made her proposal one summer afternoon on the lawn at Errington Manor,
in the presence of Beau Lovelace, on whose knee sat her little brother
Olaf, a fine boy a year younger than herself. She had placed her dimpled
arms round Lorimer's neck,--and when she so confidingly suggested
marriage to her "Zordie," as she called him, she was rubbing her rosy,
velvety cheek against his moustache with much sweet consideration and
tenderness. Lovelace, hearing her, laughed aloud, whereat the little
lady was extremely offended.
"I don't tare!" she said, with pretty defiance. "I do love oo, Zordie,
and I will marry oo!"
George held her fondly to his breast as though she were some precious
fragile flower of which not a petal must be injured.
"All right!" he answered gaily, though his voice trembled somewhat, "I
accept! You shall be my little wife, Thelma. Consider it settled!"
Apparently she did so consider it, for from that day, whenever she was
asked her name, she announced herself proudly as "Zordie's 'ittle wife,
Thelma"--to the great amusement of her father, Sir Philip, and that
other Thelma, on whom the glory of motherhood had fallen like a new
charm, investing both face and form with superior beauty and an almost
divine serenity. But "Zordie's wife" took her _sobriquet_ very
seriously,--so much so, indeed, that by-and-by "Zordie" began to take it
rather seriously himself--and to wonder whether, after all, marriages,
unequal in point of age, might not occasionally turn out well. He
condemned himself severely for the romanticism of thinking such
thoughts, even while he indulged in them, and called himself "an old
fool," though he was in the actual prime of manhood, and an exceedingly
handsome fellow withal.
But when the younger Thelma came back at the age of sixteen from her
convent school at Arles,--the same school where her mother had been
before her,--she looked so like her mother, so very like, that his heart
began to ache with the old, wistful, passionate longing he fancied he
had stilled for ever. He struggled against this feeling for a while,
till at last it became too strong for him,--and then, though he told
himself it was absurd,--that a man past forty had no right to expect to
win a girl's first love, he grew so reckless that he determined to risk
his fate with her. One day, therefore, he spoke out, scarcely knowing
what he said, and only conscious that his pulses were beating with
abnormal rapidity. She listened to his tremulous, rather hesitating
proposal with exceeding gravity, and appeared more surprised than
displeased. Raising her glorious blue eyes--eyes in which her mother's
noble, fearless look was faithfully reflected, she said simply, just in
her mother's own quaint way--
"I do not know why you talk about this at all. I thought it was all
settled long ago!"
"Settled!" faltered Lorimer astonished,--he was generally
self-possessed, but this fair young lady's perfect equanimity far
surpassed his at that moment--"Settled! My darling! my child--I am so
much older than you are--"
"I don't like _boys_!" she declared, with stately disdain. "I was your
wife when I was little--and I thought it was to be the same thing now I
am big! I told mother so, and she was quite pleased. But of course, if
you don't want me--"
She was not allowed to finish her sentence, for Lorimer, with a sudden
rush of joy that almost overpowered him, caught her in his arms and
pressed the first lover's kiss on her pure, innocently smiling lips.
"Want you!" he murmured passionately, with a strange sweet mingling of
the past and present in his words. "I have always wanted--Thelma!"