CHAPTER XVI.
“THE ALDEN PRIDE.”
Time did not bring comfort to Sir Ronald Alden; the blow he had received was too heavy and too cruel. He felt not only annoyed, but aggrieved, that Clarice knew his secret.
“Lady Hermione must have said something to her about it. Most probably all young ladies boast to each other how many men they cause to suffer; yet one would have thought her as far above that kind of feeling as the clouds are above the earth.”
It was some relief to him to know that no one else appeared to guess the story. The “Alden pride” was strong in him. It was hard enough to bear; it would have been doubly hard if the world had known it.
Lord and Lady Lorriston continued for some time to send him invitations, to wonder that he did not call, to express that wonder to him.
It so happened that an eminent writer paid a visit to Leeholme, one whose acquaintance all men were proud and honored to make. Lord Lorriston immediately issued invitations for a large dinner party.
“I consider myself a public benefactor,” he said, laughingly, “in giving men the opportunity of seeing that great genius of the age. Perhaps I have been mistaken over Sir Ronald. Send him cards; he will be sure to come.”
But, to his surprise, among all the letters of acceptance was a note from Sir Ronald, short and cold, declining, with thanks, the invitation, but giving no reason why.
Lord Lorriston handed it to his wife. They were at breakfast, and Lady Hermione, usually silent and grave, was with them.
“Sir Ronald declines, you see. What can be the matter with him? I have known him ever since he was a child, and he chooses to treat me with distant, scant courtesy. I cannot understand it.”
Suddenly an idea seemed to occur to him.
“Hermione,” he said, “have you given Sir Ronald any cause for his strange conduct?”
She blushed crimson, and turned her face, lest he should read something she did not wish him to see.
“I do not know that I have given him any cause of offense,” she replied.
Lord Lorriston looked earnestly at his daughter, then said no more.
“I am very sorry,” said Lady Hermione. “There is no one I like better than Sir Ronald.”
Lord Lorriston did not make any further attempt at continuing the friendship of Sir Ronald.
“He evidently avoids me—wishes to cease all acquaintance—he has his reasons for it, even though I know nothing at all about them.”
And so, in course of time, the acquaintance gradually died out.
If by accident Sir Ronald saw any of the Leeholme Park people, he simply bowed, raised his hat, and rode on. If he found himself in the same room, he was courteous, calm and cold, as he would have been to any stranger. It was so gradually done that it escaped all notice and observation.
But if, on the one hand, all intimacy with Leeholme Park died away, Sir Ronald accepted several invitations to Mrs. Severn’s. He remembered how kind Clarice had been to him, how her eyes had rained down kindness and affection upon him. There was something soothing to the Alden pride in remembering that, if one beautiful woman had rejected him, another was kind and gentle to him—thought more of him than all the world besides. Of that much he was sure. It was pleasant to ride over to Mount Severn in the warm summer sunlight to meet with a welcome from the stately, kindly mistress, to read a warmer welcome still in the passionate, beautiful face that seemed only to brighten in his presence.
Yet all the time, while he tried to find comfort in bright smiles and in every pursuit to which he could possibly devote himself, he knew that, day by day, he loved with a deeper and more passionate love.
He left Aldenmere for a time and went up to London. On this part of his life Sir Ronald never afterward liked to reflect. He did nothing, perhaps, unbecoming to a gentleman—he did not seek oblivion in low society—but he lived a life of incessant gayety. He went to balls, operas, theatres, soirées; he seldom saw home before daylight, and he spent money as though it had been so much dross.
Surely, amid this glitter and dazzle, amid this turmoil of pleasure, leaving him no time for thought, he would forget her. Fair faces smiled upon him, siren voices spoke in honeyed accents. Sometimes in the morning dawn, when the sky was full of pearly tints and faint rose-clouds, he would go home and look at his haggard wistful face in the glass.
“I am forgetting her,” he would say, exultingly; and then, Heaven be merciful to him! when his tired eyes were closed in slumber, her face, so fresh, so sweet and pure, would be there, looking at him, and he would cry out with a voice full of anguish, that he was haunted and could not escape her.
The Aldens never did anything by halves. If they loved, it was with passionate love; if they hated—well, Heaven help us all from being the victims of such hate.
There was something pitiful in the way this strong man struggled against his fate, in the way he fought against the passion that had half maddened him. When the unflagging round of gayety had tired him he returned home. He was then but the shadow of the young and handsome lord of Aldenmere.
“As well be haunted at home as elsewhere,” he said to himself; “I cannot escape my fate.”
Sometimes a wild impulse came over him, urging him to go to her again, to plead his cause with her, to tell her all the passionate, desolate anguish of the past few months, to pray to her as men pray for their lives.
But he remembered what he had said to her, that if she sent him away he should not return to pray his prayer again. All the pride of his proud race came to his aid. She had accepted his loving words, she had taken a kiss that was sacred as a betrothal from his lips, and she had rejected him.
He would not plead to her again; let his ruin and misery lie at her door; it should never be told that he had stooped as no Alden before him had done.
Yet had she but smiled upon him, he would have knelt like the humblest of slaves at her feet.