CHAPTER XXXI.
A LAUREL WREATH.
The spirit of unrest did not leave Kenelm Eyrle. When he met Sir Ronald and Lady Hermione at lunch he looked very pale, ill, and determined. He held Lady Hermione’s soft, white hand in his. “I must ask you to pardon me,” he said. “I have no right to let my troubles cloud your happy home.”
“I have nothing to pardon, but, oh! Kenelm!” she said, “you have been true to your love for her, true to her memory for so long, could you not take a new interest in life? Even she, herself, could ask no greater sacrifice than you have already made.”
Sir Ronald had not yet entered the dining-room, and they were standing before the long, open windows. She went to him with tears in her beautiful eyes.
“You do not know,” she said, “how I mourn for your wasted life, Kenelm. They tell me there is no estate in the country neglected like yours. That your tenantry are poor and neglected, your dependents the least prosperous of any; that over everything belonging to you there seems to have fallen a blight. Is it so?”
“Yes. I cannot speak falsely to you, Hermione; it is so, and I do not care to set it right.”
“Ah, if you knew,” she continued, earnestly, “how wrong it is, how hateful to God and man are those neglected duties, you would renounce this mania—it is but a mania after all—and begin to live in earnest. Oh, Kenelm, be persuaded, be influenced.”
The darkest look she had ever seen in his face came over it now. He laid his hand in hers. There was warning, not gratitude, in the light touch.
“Hermione,” he said, “you are good and earnest. I thank you, because you mean well; but when Clarice died I swore to do nothing else in life until I had traced and punished the one who slew her. You are a happy wife, a happy mother, the honored mistress of a happy home! She lies in her grave, forgotten almost, save by me. I am her avenger!”
A bright flush crimsoned her face.
“Do you not think the task belongs to Ronald rather than to you?”
“No,” he replied, frankly. “There are no secrets between us, Hermione; we both know that, although he was kind to her, although he did his best to avenge her, yet Sir Ronald did not love her as I did. She was the very core of my heart, she was the life of my soul.”
“And yet,” pleaded the gentle voice, “she was another man’s wife.”
“I know it. Were she living I should never come near her. I should never utter her name! I should, to the best of my power, trample every thought of her remorselessly down! But she is dead, Hermione, and love for the dead can never be a sin. She calls to me from her grave with a voice no one else can hear; she comes to me in the silent hours of the night when no one else on earth thinks of her, and she reproaches me that she is yet unavenged.”
“Dear Kenelm, it is but a morbid fancy. I do not believe the dead can wish for vengeance.”
“Justice is a mighty attribute,” he said, and there came to his face a light she had never seen there before. “Her fair, sweet life was cut short. She was slain even with a smile on her lips. She was young, fair, loving and happy. She had for her own all the fairest gifts of earth, and one foul stroke deprived her of all, and sent her without time for one prayer into the presence of her God. Hermione, if a man stole from you money, jewels, or worldly goods, you would cry out that justice demanded punishment! Who so stole from her her sweet life, with its full measure of great gifts, deserves punishment in proportion to his crime. If word or deed of mine can bring him to it, I pray the great God to nerve my right arm, and let no weakness come between me and my duty.”
She looked at him with something of fear and awe—this stern avenger, this man in whose eyes there came no light, was not in the least like the kindly Kenelm, with whom she had played and danced as a girl.
“We will always be dear friends, true friends, but Hermione do not seek again to turn me from the purpose of my life! When that is accomplished, when life has been given for life—I will atone to all those whom I now neglect; until then I live for but one object. We will say no more.”
Sir Ronald entered then with some visitors, and the subject dropped, but it was strange for all the rest of the day how those words haunted her. “When a life has been paid for a life I shall be content.” They filled her with a strange, nervous dread and fear, a vague terror that she could not account for nor describe. It was something of a relief to both of them when Kenelm declared that he must leave Aldenmere that evening. He did not tell his errand. It was that he had heard from London of the apprehension of a tramp who was suspected of murder, and he thought it within the bounds of possibility that he might from him obtain some clue. It was a fruitless errand, nevertheless it occupied his mind and gave him something to do. When he was working for her, even though the work were vain, he was happier for it. Three months passed, and looking back upon the gay, sweet summer, Lady Hermione pronounced it the happiest of her life. She had vowed to herself to win her husband from his gloom and melancholy, to fill his life with new and varied interests, to help him make his name famous, and she had most nobly kept her vow. It was September now; the fruits hung ripe in the orchards, the golden wheat had been gathered in huge sheaves, a clear autumn light lay over land and sea; the leaves of the tall trees were falling and lay golden, brown and scarlet under foot. Sir Ronald sat in his study alone, the haggard, pained expression that had once marred the dark beauty of his face had given place to a pleased, bright look that betokened a mind fully occupied. Sir Ronald had indeed grown famous, thanks to his wife, to her bright, cheerful intelligence, her unwearied activity, her loving, tender sympathy with his pursuits. He had written a book on the principal African plants. Botany had always been his favorite study, and she had shared it with him. Directly after their marriage she had set herself, like the true and loving wife she was, to find out his inclinations and tastes. He was no model farmer; the improvement of soil, the qualities of crops, the rearing of prize cattle had no attraction for him—he left all such matters to his dependents—but of plants and flowers he was enamored.
“I should have been a botanist if I had not been a baronet,” he had said to her one day, with a smile, and she had mentally resolved that he should be both. So she studied with him, she praised, she encouraged as only good and wise women can do. Every new work she saw advertised she sent for; she let no opportunity escape of helping and encouraging him. His taste took a strange turn—it was no longer confined to English flowers, the wild, sweet blossoms of the fields and the gems of the garden. He studied with incredible ardor the history of African plants—those ardent flowers that neither burn nor shrivel under the warmest kisses of the African sun—flowers watered only at rare intervals and living in tropical splendor where others would die. This African flora had a strange, weird charm for him. He read, he wrote, he studied, he made glowing dreams to himself of the lives of those brilliant flowers. And then he wrote a book about them—a book that left its mark on the age, that was written in such glowing, fiery, poetical language men and women read it with wonder, read and reread it, wondering why they had never thought before of those curious facts and fancies, wondering why a man in whose soul the light of genius burned so fiercely had never shown the world that light before. Then scientific men read and argued about it until the name of Sir Ronald Alden of Aldenmere became famous throughout the land. There arose between these learned men a wonderful discussion over some of the plants—a discussion that created great interest and attention. The result was that a party of scientific men who were about starting to Africa on an exploring expedition wrote and earnestly implored Sir Ronald Alden to join them.