'My Love.'

Front matter

a NEW NOVELS AT EVERY LIBRARY. THE BLACK ROBE. By Wilkie Collins. Three Vols. Second Edition. THE CHAPLAIN OF THE FLEET. By Besant and Kice. Three Vols. FROM EXILE. By James Payn. Three Vols. A VILLAGE COMMUNE. By Ouida. Two Vols. A ROMANCE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. By W. H. Mallock. Two Vols. CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY, W. "MY LOVE!'' "MY LOVE!" BY E. LYNN LINTON AUTHOR OF "PATRICIA KEMBALL," " THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS, "UNDER WHICH LORD?" "THE REBEL OF THE FAMILY," ETC. IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. III. ILorisJon CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1881 [The right of translation is resa ved ] PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. CONTENTS OF VOL. Ill CHAPTER PAGE I. On the Brink ... ... ... 1 II. Tested for Truth ... ... 22 III. Turning the Knife ... ... ... 42 IV. Taking Breath ... ... ... 64 V. By the Seaside ... ... ... 84 VI.

The Loyee's Leap ... ... 100 VII. Cousin Ethel ... ... ... 119 VIII. The Crimson Bars of Evening ... 135 IX. The Weaving Web ... ... ... 157 X. Under Pressure ... ... ... 180 XL At the Rebound ... ... ... 193 XII. Love's Shadow — Hate ... ... 208 XIII. As High as his Heart ... ... 227 XIV. No Worse than the Best ... ... 248 XV. The New Ordering ... ... ... 262 XVI. At the Breakfast Table ... ... "MY LOVE!"

Chapter I. Ox The Brink

Here ! — of all places in the world, this ! The widow started at the sound of Colonel Money penny's voice as if he had been a spirit called from out the infinite by the spell of her desire. She looked up with a frightened and bewildered face. The guard which she usually maintained with so much care was suddenly broken down, and she was as confused and overcome as any other woman might have been. Had she been a mere school-girl met out of bounds, or caught in the act of stealing sacred apples, she could not have been more abashed for the moment than now, when Colonel Money penny woke her from her dreaming wrath and took her hand to lead her to his house for shelter. VOL. III. B " MY LOVE! " That shelter was typical. She felt the secret correspondence of her unspoken thoughts with this translated action, and shivered as if the snow-flakes, falling fast, had touched her heart as well as her pallid face.

" You are quite pale ! The weather is too much for you. You ought not to be out in such a storm," said Colonel Moneypenny with all his best courtesy — his finest mingling of the gentle man's dignity with the lover's tenderness. " Let us make haste up the avenue," he con tinued. " We shall soon reach the house." " Thank you," said Augusta mechanically. As mechanically she let him take her hand on his arm, and hold it for a moment closely clasped, as they walked rapidly between the leafless chestnuts which swayed and creaked in the wind and caught the snow as it fell in their branches like a net. The wind beat in their faces, and the large densely-frozen flakes stung her soft flesh as they were driven with almost the force of hail. She knew how strange it must seem to the Colonel that she should be out on such a day ; stranger still that she should have been met just at his gate.

But it was pleasant to feel that she had this shelter before her— that she might, if she would, escape once and for ever from all the present storms ON THE BBINK. 3 of her life — both from this in the midst of which she walked and from that other yet more difficult to bear at home. She walked up the avenue with a strange sense of possible drifting out of present pain into temporary safety and future danger. She felt like a person slipping down a smooth and pleasant decline instead of continuing on a rugged, toilsome ascent. The motion was soothing and she shut her eyes to the rest. The storm raged without and her mother's house was even more inhospitable than the elements ; she was on the Colonel's arm, making for the shelter of his home ; and she knew that it rested only with her to hold that shelter as her own for ever if she would.

Nothing was said between them as they went up the avenue. Like a wise man who knows how to take care of himself, the Colonel ob jected to opening his mouth in such weather as this. He suffered not infrequently from neuralgia ; and he and the dentist at Lingston knew a few secrets which the world at large did not even suspect. But when they came to the house, he led her in with the same fine mingling of courtesy and tenderness as before ; checked only by the presence of his man from showing perhaps too openly what pleasure her "MY LOVE!" crossing his threshold thus gave him. He did really love her, as much as a man naturally selfish and arbitrary, a little mean and very irritable, can love any one outside himself; and his hesitation, both before her marriage and now when she was again free, was but the ordinary hesitation of a man who has stiffened in his widower's groove, and who has more things to think of than one before he finally resolves to break the spell and renew his past in a second marriage.

He looked on this odd meeting at his own gates as a kind of sign — a correspondence — what some would call " a leading ; " and he was excited and elated. That fellow whose presumption had so disturbed him had suddenly slipped like a snake out of his path, and he was master of the situation. There was no one else in Highwood or any other place who, so far as he knew, disputed with him the ground which he had marked out for his own. Sandro Kemp off the field, he had the course to himself. As for Mrs. Morshead's ferocious con stancy to the dead, that was a simple absurdity — a brutum fulmen which hurt no one. If Augusta loved him he had almost resolved that he would marry her. And he had money enough to secure her future, though she ON TEE BRINK. 5 would not perhaps be quite so well off as if she inherited from her mother.

The old woman lived on about half her income, if so much, and invested the other. He lived up to the last farthing of his. There was too, this little son of his dead rival to be thought of; and perhaps others whose claims would be greater and their share larger. He would not make his heir of the Professor's son, if he had his own to endow ; but he could give the lad a good education and see him through the first sterile years of his profession. Pecuniarily it would not be so good for Augusta to marry him and be disin herited by her mother, as to remain where she was, waiting for that weary wearing of the dead woman's shoes. Still it would not be poverty ; and she would make him happy. Even at this moment of a lover's exaltation and a lover's keen appraisement of the value of the thing he wants, Colonel Moneypenny did not say to himself that he would make Augusta happy.

That came as of course — as the corol lary, the reflection, the inevitable sequence to his own state of content. Or rather it did not enter into his calculations at all, one way or the other. When we hire a servant or buy a horse we do not think of the servant's happiness under our mastership, of the horse's pleasure "MT LOVE!" under our guidance. If we give sufficient wages to the one, good food to the other, we are quit of all obligation ; but our own ad vantage remains, as the rope on which the whole value of the transaction depends. The Colonel was not the only man in England who, courting a woman with delicate devotion while she holds herself mistress of the situation, free to grant and able to withhold, keeps her as a caged creature, fairly caught and trapped, when once she has come down from her height to his lure ; and in keeping her thus forgets to ask if she likes her fate — and would not stop for the answer if she did.

The drawing-room at Bellevue was, as is so often the case in the houses of unmarried men, reserved for state social occasions when there were dinner-parties on hand, or one of those pleasant little dances with supper to follow, for which the Colonel was famous. He himself lived in the dining-room and library, both of which were comfortable enough ; and now, as he and Augusta came in from the wind and the snow outside, the bright blazing fire and not ungraceful litter of occupancy were as a wel come to Home. Without doubt the library was essentially masculine in its circumstances, and wanted the graceful touch of a woman's hand, ON THE BRLNE. the fringe of pretty nothings which she always adds. But it was full of the substantial luxury which a man finds pleasanter to his senses than those spots of colour and sparkle which are known by the general term of ornaments.

And if the books were not what is called drawing room books, they were handsome and solid and gave one the impression of stores of latent learning in the Colonel's mind, and a kind of colossal literary digestion. It was all very warm and strong and ample ; and the Colonel himself seemed to gain in breadth from the comfortable stability of his surroundings. By this time Augusta had recovered herself. The question had formed itself clearly in her mind : — Should she ? or : — Should she not ? He had enough to make her future safe if not brilliant — enough for her son, who must be the only heir. And she could if she would. The house was full of capabilities if once she put her hand to it ; her social position as his wife would be unexceptionable ; she might even in time win her mother over to forgiveness ; and this fire was so comforting !

It was with a sense of real bien-etre that she sank down in the easy chair which he pulled up for her close to the fender. It was not his own special chair. That was sacred even against Augusta "MT LOVE!" Latrobe ; for Colonel Moneypenny was a man who understood the whole theory of self-respect and practised the whole art of self-indulgence. In her present state of moral destitution, the mere physical enjoyment of this rest and fire, the material sufficiency of the Colonel's home, had a curiously soothing effect on her. As she sank back in the long low curved chair, and put up her pretty feet on the fender — had she given herself time to think she would have been ashamed of the extent to which these purely physical pleasures touched her. The Colonel rang the bell for cake and wine. Unmarried men always give their lady visitors wine.

Where a woman would show her baby the man brings out his port and sherry. Augusta laughed a little and blushed a little more, as she said : " No ; she did not want any wine. She never took it before dinner, and very little even then." " But," insisted the Colonel ; " you must, indeed, Mrs. Latrobe ! The first time you have been to my house — like this — you must have a glass of wine for good luck ! " He could not say that it was the first time she had been to his house at all ; for he 2-ave parties, as has been said, like any other decent citizen ; but " like this " meant her coming here ON TEE BRINK. 9 alone — coming out of the storm and inclemency of the day — out of the wretchedness and humili ation of her home — coming in now as the favoured guest to be made the future mistress should his humour finally decide that way.

" I shall be glad to do anything for good luck ! " said Augusta rashly, with a little laugh to hide the bitter spring-head of her words. The Colonel looked at her with an odd ex pression in his face. She was quick-witted, but she could not quite read that look. " Do you want good luck in your life ? " he asked slowly. " Oh, no ! not much ! Not more than one always wants something which one has not got ! " she answered lightly. "It is only a foolish way we all have of making ourselves out ill-treated by fortune ! " She thought that, if anything had to come to her from this side, it must not be coloured with compassion. If she herself knew that she was simply selling herself for peace, the Colonel must never believe but that she gave herself grandly, to bless and be blessed. At this moment the servant brought in the wine, and with his own hand the Colonel poured out a glassful and gave it to Augusta.

It was that soft, silky, insidious, old brown "MT LOVE!" sherry, which, in" defiance of gout, some people still drink. All the fire of the alcohol which had once inflamed it had burnt itself out by time, leaving only strength and disguising the presence of what it left. Soft as cream and strong as brandy, it completed the sense of bien-etre which the pretty widow felt ; and, after she had drunk half her glassful, she said with a smile : " What excellent wine ! I am no great judge of sherry, but this seems to me superb." " I am glad you like it," said the Colonel with supreme satisfaction. " And — pardon me — you are a good judge ! This wine is indeed excellent. It is no hyperbole to call it superb. Ah ! " he added, as he held up his glass between him and the light, and lovingly noted its merits of body, bouquet and colour ; " this is not to be had in the market now for love or money ! — Unique ! — quite unique !

And you like it ! I am so glad ! " He almost laughed as he said this ; for naturally a man does not like to throw his wine away on an unappi .ciative palate ; and women are so stupid as to the value of brands and bins ! " Let me fill up your glass," he then said,. advancing towards his guest, decanter in hand. ON THE BRLNK. She drew her glass away, covering it with her pretty black-gloved fingers, and laughing in her nice bright way as she looked up into his eyes. " No ! no ! " she said. " I am so little used to wine at this time of the day ; and this is so strong. I should be afraid." How friendly they were getting ! To see them there in this familiar, laughing, half playful kind of domesticity, no one would have thought that for years the Colonel had cherished against Augusta Latrobe a chronic resentment which only so lately had taken so acute a form — a form which had done her so much irre parable mischief at home and had dealt the man, whom in her heart she loved, a blow that she knew would be to him like death.

" Well, finish that. It will do you good after your cold walk," said the Colonel ; and Augusta obeyed. " Yes, it is very good," she said, drinking it frankly ; not with the timid little sips of a woman half afraid of what she is about, or as if she expected to find a spider or a newt at the bottom of the glass. The fair widow had just her right share of healthy, natural sen sualism — not a line in excess — just her right and fitting share. "MT LOVE!" How warm and pleasant it was ! The two sat over the fire in an easy, sociable, con fidential way that had its charms and warmed their souls as the soft brown sherry warmed their blood. The snow was falling fast, and The Laurels looked so far off! This interior was so pleasant, and it composed so naturally ! " How delightful it would be to have you alwa}-s here !

" said Colonel Moneypenny abruptly. She laughed in her light easy way. " I am not so sure of that," she said with a little mocking accent — patently artificial ; but the colour deepened under her bonnet. " I am," said the Colonel. " My life is so lonely ! " he added pathetically. She moved her chair a few inches from the fire, and took a newspaper from the table as a screen for her face. " Better lonely than uncongenial," she said. " The fire catches one's face so dreadfully after a walk in the cold wind ! " she added, as if apologizing for the ruddy glow that had come into hers, and for the improvised screen made out of the newspaper. " It is a melancholy look-out to live and die _one," began the Colonel again. This little break had somewhat baffled him ; ON TEE BRINE. but he had tenacity and could always begin where he left off.

" One gets used to it," said Augusta, fluttering through the leaves of her paper. " After a time one gets used to everything," was her philosophic addendum. " Not to happiness — at least not in the sense of satiety," blundered the Colonel. " Is there any real happiness in the world ? " asked Augusta lightly. " You need not ask this," he replied. " Capable of giving so njuch as you are, you must be capable of receiving in the same pro portion." He brought his chair a couple of inches nearer to hers, and looked into her face with a certain agitation, a certain tenderness in his eyes which betokened danger. The incline was very smooth and she was slipping down it pleasantly. After all, the Colonel was really not a bad man. He was irritable and arbitrary, jealous and selfish, but he was honourable and a gentleman ; and every woman thinks that if an unmarried man, who is now cross-cornered and disagreeable, were but married to her, he would be all right, and everything would go on velvet.

She could manage him if she were his wife. And the "MT LOVE!" Colonel could not be harsher to her boy, Augusta went on thinking, than was her own mother. Probably he would be far less harsh and, by the sympathy of sex, would take an interest in him and help to make him the honourable gentleman of her ambition. Yes ; the incline was pleasant ; and surely that was a firm green sward at the bottom? It was not a treacherous bit of swamp covered over Avith a lying growth of superficial herbage ? She raised her pretty eyes to his with a soft and yielding look. " A woman's best happiness," she said gently, " is in that which she gives. What she gives she receives back twenty-fold." " Ah, how true ! How beautiful ! " he said, with the deep-drawn breath of a man violently moved. He rose from his seat and went over to her ; but just as he took her hand in both of his and bent his head to speak, the man-servant came into the room to tell him that he was wanted, if he would please to come ; the constable was in the Justice-room, and had come to sj^eak to him now at once.

It was the most annoying, the most mistimed interruption that could be imagined ; and the Colonel had only just time to let Augusta's hand fall on her lap, while he made believe to take a book from the table. How much the man saw, and how much he suspected, remained his own secret. His manner showed nothing, and the Colonel was in a sense his prisoner and the constable's — waiting for him in the Justice-room. He made a stately kind of bow to Augusta and muttered a few formal words of apology for his absence ; then left the room with his man whom, if it had been policy and good manners, he could have kicked with hearty goodwill. Augusta on her side, drew a deep breath when he had gone. She raised herself from her lounging position in the easy-chair, and walked to the window, looking out on the fast falling snow, which however fell more quietly than before.

The wind had fallen and the more active energy of the storm had passed. She still held the paper in her hand. Partly to relieve the awkward suspense of the moment with its sense of check and discovery in one, partly to divert her thoughts from the dis comfort of the home that she had and the doubtful security of the home that she might have if she would, she looked through the items "MT LOVE!" of news, scarcely knowing what she saw. Sud denly a name caught her eye. Her flushed face paled to the whiteness of that snowdrift against the leafless rose-trees, as she read a short ab stract of the will of Henry Kemp, given as a quotation from the paper which does this special business. The personalty was sworn under sixty thousand pounds ; and with the exception of a few insignificant legacies, the whole was left to his brother Sandro, the sole executor and residuary legatee.

The time of poverty then had passed for him, and he Avas now rich like his brothers, as he should always have been ! And as nothing comes alone in this odd life of ours — as, Avhen fate gives one blow, fortune adds a second and chance follows up with a third — so, when fortune grants one boon, others fall from the skies at every point and the golden shower multiplies as it rains down ; — thus, now Avhen Sandro Kemp had come into this sufficient inheritance, free of work, his work was now made of supreme value. A few paragraphs from this extract stood one which Augusta also read, stating how Mr. Sandro Kemp's designs for that important cathedral had been accepted by the committee appointed to judge the work of the competitors ; and hoAV grand the writer, who was reviewing their several merits while stating this fact, held these special designs to be.

He was then rich and famous at a blow ; and she would not marry the Colonel. And yet, had she not chilled and shocked, perhaps for ever, the man whom she knew in her own heart she loved, and who loved her ? How could she undo that fatal past ? — how make him understand that she had acted under coercion, and that what she had done had been for her child's sake and not by her own desire ? She could not write to him even to congratulate him. She could not fling herself in his way now that fortune had so richly endowed him, seeing that she had thrust him aside when he was still under the lash of fate. She had done what she believed right at the time. And yet, haunting thoughts of the sacredness of Love — of Love the best thing in life — of Love at any price and all the rest let go for him — of Love before riches — of Love even before duty ; had she not counselled this to Stella ? — of Love as the Great God, with every other virtue, every other affection, standing simply as his hench man — haunting thoughts of all this divine sacredness and of her adverse decision, came across her brain like the echoes of a triumphal VOL. in. c "MY LOVE!" march drowned by the mournful strain of a funeral dirge.

If only she had clung to Love and had abjured fear and the future ! If only she had ! And yet ; she had done for the best. She had plucked her own breast bare and bleeding that her child might be kept safe and warm. It had turned out ill ; but ever and ever she came round to that one constant point — she had done for the best. And she would not marry the Colonel. When Colonel Moneypenny came back from that troublesome bit of magisterial business which had taken him to the room he called his Justice's-room, and the constable waiting for that magical bit of paper duly signed and delivered, he was made to feel, he did not know how, that the favourable moment had passed, that the fire had burned down into ashes, that the vane of the pretty widow's humour was set to another wind, and that everything was changed.

She was her old self again — clear, candid and inscrutable ; soft to the touch and unyielding at the core ; sweet, sympathetic, womanly, pure womanly in manner, but, when probed, apparently destitute of all feeling, all romance, all passion, all pleasant feminine weakness ; eminently her old reasonable, well-controlled self, whom no one could soften or warm or deflect beyond the limits which she had marked out for herself. The tender darkness had gone out of her eyes ; the drooping curve had left her lips ; her face showed no gentle indecision, her figure no yielding lines of graceful self abandonment. She had gone back to her old shape of waxen smoothness and adamantine hardness — of crystalline clearness and crystal line inflexibility. She was still standing by the window as he came in, but she had laid the paper on the table — the page doubled inward where she had read about Sandro Kemp.

" I think the storm is passing now," she said cheerily, her voice as clear as a silver bell and about as soulless. " I hope not," said Colonel Moneypenny, making an attempt to return to his interrupted gallantries. He spoke with a grave kind of tenderness sufficiently obvious. She laughed in her plea sant, light, superficial way. " We shall all be snowed up if it lasts much longer ! " she said. " There might be a worse fate in store for me than to be snowed up with you as my guest," said the Colonel. "MT LOVE!" She gave an affected little shiver and looked at him with eyes exasperatingly clear. " What an awful idea ! " she said with well acted gaiety. "As that would never do, and may be possible, I think I had better set out at once. The wind has quite fallen, and a quiet snow-shower bursts soon."

She gave a pull at her bonnet-strings which were not untied, and smoothed down her gloves which she had not withdrawn. These actions were " survivals," and expressed her feeling of " dressing to go out." " You cannot go out while this lasts," said Colonel Moneypenny as gravely as before, but with a certain latent heat and eagerness which he had not the power to control, though he felt that it was bad policy to show too much feeling at the moment. "Why this sudden haste?" he asked, forcing a smile. " Come back to the fire and make yourself comfortable again." " It is getting late," she said, glancing at the clock. " It will soon be quite dusk." " You have a full half-hour of daylight yet, and I will see that you are taken care of," said the Colonel. " Come ! It really is too bad for you to think of going yet !

" As he spoke the door-bell rang sharply. A trampling of feet in the hall ; a sound as of many huge dogs shaking themselves and of at least half a dozen men stamping themselves clear of something that would cling ; bursts of loud laughter ; shrill cries of high-pitched voices ; all these were heard. And then the library door was flung open and Georgie and Pattie Pennefather, in light drab coachman's coats, with soft felt unornamented hats and blue bird's eye neckties came streaming into the room ; the two multiplied into a small crowd by the noise and tumult and " go " of their entrance. "MT LOVE!"

Chapter II. Tested For Truth

" Upon my word ! " shouted Pip as they came into the room and took in the situation at a glance — the two easy-chairs drawn close up to the fire ; the wine and cake on the table ; the look of home and domesticity in the whole arrangements. " Well I never ! — upon my word ! " she repeated. " Oh, you sly-boots, Augusta ! " vociferated Gip. " And who would have thought it ? " cried both these chartered tormentors in a breath. "Who would have thought what, girls?" asked the widow, with smiling unconsciousness of possible evil. " Oh, I say, that is coming it too strong I ' Who would have thought what ? ' when we find you sitting here like Darby and Joan, you and the Colonel, as cozy and comfortable as you please." " Oh ! that is what you mean. Yes ; is it not shocking ? " returned the widow, still smiling, in her pleasant, frank, unconscious way, as if there were no evil possible in the world of man and no suspicion in the mind of woman.