CHAPTER XXVI.
AFTER NIGHT, MORNING.
From that time Sir Ronald Alden changed so completely that he was hardly to be recognized as the same man. He ceased to struggle for content; he said to himself that a curse was upon him, and he must live under it while it pleased Heaven that he should live at all; but the happiest moment that life held in store for him would be the one that held death—the moment that would bring the woman he loved to his side to look at him for the last time. He was young, and life ran full, warm and rich in his veins, yet he would have gladly laid it down to have brought her for only one moment to his side, so great and passionate was his love for her.
Lady Clarice could not fail to notice the change. She comforted herself by thinking that the Aldens were a strange race, not governed by the same laws as other men, subject to moods and passions that required indulgence. She never dreamed that he had met Lady Hermione, and that his new sorrow was caused by the constant smart of knowing that life might have been different for him.
“Ronald,” she said to him one day, “has life any interest for you?”
“No,” he replied; “I cannot, in truth, say that it has.”
Her face flushed warmly.
“Then, if I were you, I should be ashamed to say so. You are the first Alden who has found life empty, I should imagine.”
“I did not say it was empty, Clarice; I merely say nothing in it interests me.”
She knelt down by his side, and clasped her white hands round his arm.
“You must unsay that, Ronald. There is one interest left—you love me. You cannot turn from me and say no. You could not be so cruel. Love must win love, and, my husband, I love you.”
He made no reply, and she kissed his hands as they lay listless in her warm clasp. If he had told her the truth, it would have been that her love for him was one of his greatest burdens; but he had the grace to keep silent.
“Will you give up Aldenmere for a time?” she asked. “Let us go abroad.”
“No; I am tired of the Continent,” he replied.
“And you do not care for the sea. London has no charm for you. Oh, Ronald, what can I do for you to make your life brighter?”
He looked at her beautiful face, and hated himself with fierce loathing for the word that rose to his lips. It was “Die!” She could do nothing for him but that—die, and leave him free to marry his only love. Then quick, keen remorse seized him, and he kissed her white brow.
“You are very patient with me, Clarice,” he said humbly, “and I do not deserve your love.”
He wondered to himself at times if the old stories he had read of men being given over to the power of a demon were true. Could it be that he was so given over? Was this perverse demon of unhappy love sent to him as a scourge? He brooded over such thoughts and ideas until the wonder is he did not go mad.
He did not meet Lady Hermione again. She was careful; and he had no wish to renew the terrible pain of parting. He dwelt upon one thought—she would come to him when he lay dying, and not before.
So time passed, day after day finding him more gloomy, more wretched and unhappy. Then came the tragedy that startled all England—the murder of the beautiful and unfortunate Lady Clarice—the murder that was in itself a mystery, and remained one.
After that Sir Ronald shut himself up in seclusion and retirement. Many people thought he would leave the scene of the tragedy, and go from Aldenmere, but he did not. He was the ghost of his former self, the wreck of the proud, handsome man, who but a few short years since, had been the bravest wooer in the countryside. People said he would never survive his wife’s death; that the shock of it would be fatal to him. Those who loved him best had no more cheerful prophesy than that he would in all probability linger in his gloomy seclusion a few months longer, then die.
Even Kenelm Eyrle, who had never pardoned him for his marriage, who believed that he had deliberately won Clarice from him, relented now. It was no common grief that brought so proud a man low; no common sorrow that prostrated him.
Kenelm, from the depths of his noble and generous heart, forgave him.
“You did wrong me, Ronald,” he said to him one day; “but you have suffered so cruelly I forget the wrong in remembering the suffering,” and from that day they were again like brothers.
“There is one thing that grieves me,” said Sir Ronald, despondingly, to his friend, “when I die the title will be extinct, and the estates will pass to one who is a perfect stranger to me.”
“You will marry again,” said Kenelm. “You are young, and there is a broad stretch of life before you. You loved Clarice—I do not doubt it—but your heart is not buried with her, as mine is. You will marry, and make the old house glad with bright faces.”
“Never,” he said, moodily. “My one short dream of happiness faded long ago; it cannot revive.”
Mr. Eyrle wondered much.
“For my own part,” he said, musingly, “I live for but one object—to find out who did that deed, and bring them to justice. When that is done my life work is ended. Why, Ronald, I cannot understand your reason for not re-marrying.”
The white, haggard face was raised to his—the thin, worn hands.
“Do I look much like a man whose thoughts run upon marriage?” he asked, mournfully; and Kenelm was obliged to answer “No.”
But one spring morning (the grass had grown green on Clarice’s grave) there came to him a messenger of comfort—a little note containing only a few lines, but to that unhappy man they opened the gates of Paradise.
“Dear Sir Ronald,” so it ran, “I am sorry to hear of your continued ill-health. I only returned home yesterday, or I should have written to express my sympathy sooner. Try to rouse yourself. They tell me you are very ill. From your sincere friend,
“Hermione Lorriston.”
He bowed his head over the paper and wept aloud.
“The dove with the olive leaf!” he said. “Shall I refuse it? Heaven’s gates open. Shall I close them and die in this outer darkness—this utter despair? Or, rather, shall I take the comfort Heaven sends me, and make her my own?”