Loving and being Loved

Front matter

■ I I I I I ■ ■ I ■ ■ Loving and being Loved By ANNETTE MARIE MAILLARD, AUTHORESS OF " THE COMPULSORY MARRIAGE," " ZINGRA, THE GIPSY, "ADRIEN," "MILES TREMENHERE," " GIL TALBOT," etc., etc. " So doubly lone, Lone — aa the corse within its shroud. Lone — as a solitary cloud, A single cloud on a sunny day, While all the rest of heaven is clear, A frown upon the atmosphere." — Btbon. IN TWO VOLS.— VOL. I. LONDON: SAUNDERS, OTLEY, AND CO., 66, BROOK. STREET, HANOVER SQUARE, W. l86l. {The Right os Translation is reserved^ LONDON: PRINTED BY 1VOODFAU. AND KINDER, ANGEL COTJJJTy-SftKSNER STREET. TO GEORGE RAPHAEL WARD, ESQ., THIS WORK IS, BY KIND PERMISSION, GRATEFULLY OFFERED. LOVING AND BEING LOVED.

Chapter I

"I don't think hev handsome — there's something peculiar in her style, I admit. That's the charm with all you fellows, but she is decidedly not hand some." There was an outcry from half-a-dozen different voices. '•Well, it's a matter of opinion," resumed the first speaker. " I don't admire her, yet I admit her great power of attracting. She is original." "What do you object to in her face ?" "Firstly, her eyes, though fine, seem to dare you not to love her, or at least admire, and when she bends them upon you, from beneath the arched eyebrows which meet above those dark orbs, and the lip half smiles, it seems to me more like the triumph of a battle gained, than the supplication of VOL. I. B a prisoner of war. Such should a woman be, to my mind." " A thing to keep in chains," uttered a young voice contemptuously.

" Oh, you boys," responded the first speaker, " always want to be Mark Antonys ; for my part, I hate your Cleopatras who enchain and enslave. I love a prisoner fluttering in my grasp like a timid bird." "Oh, you old fellows," said the young voice again • " you cannot understand the equality of love — that sweet giving and receiving in full con fidence, without fear, without restraint ; no, you must have chained prisoners and fluttering birds. I would have no chains but my arms, while Love locked our lips with two kisses meeting." A loud shout of laughter greeted the rhapsody of the romantic youth, who had flung all the sen timent of a young heart among the sceptics round that club-room window. " ' Love laughs at locksmiths,' so I've heard," said one of the first to recover his seriousness, " but Laurence makes him out one of the very best, I must own, I ever met with."

" 'Tis a quaint and fanciful idea," responded the one who had been finding fault with the beauty of the lady in question, "and I should not mind trying it myself, if she would only close her eyes, for they never could soften with love. Their fire would dissolve me; and all that would remain to speak of my whereabouts — a monument to her honour, would be my empty clothing, with a hat on the top of it ! " "A wide-awake ?" queried one. "No, not much of that, to venture within Mrs. Kenyerd's power." " You seem all to forget," exclaimed young Lau rence, indignantly, "that you are speaking some what lightly of a most virtuous wife. / did not presume to think of her in my strictures on loving." As might naturally be expected, this speech was greeted by those around with renewed laughter, to banter and annoy the boy, who stood looking out of window, trying to seem very indifferent to it ; but every word was a dagger, with a poisoned tip, eating into his heart.

One of the fashionable clubs of London ! Reader ! just fancy the favourite star of the hour, whether man or woman, being handled there. Tarnished indeed must be the brightest after that. How much better to be one of the very least of constel lations, one in a crowd, spoken of in numbers, than this bright Hesperus, on whom all eyes were turned. While the conversation still continued in the b same bantering, dissecting tone — for the poor woman was cut up, heart, body, and even the spirit intruded upon, in all its sacred thoughts — a fresh comer appeared on the stage. Now this C Club is in one of the noisiest thoroughfares at the West End, and as the party were at the open window chatting, no one heard the gentle tread over that carpeted room, until the new man stood beside — amongst them. "* I have been ten minutes " He got no further in his speech, before all turned round hastily, some in not a little trepidation • they had been talking freely, and for a moment expected to see another person in the owner of that voice — an in quisitive husband.

"Hollo ! why, where did you spring from?" "What, Rus Templar?" "What, old boy!" Were the varied exclamations, as all shook the new comer warmly by the hand, all except Laurence, who only stared a fashionable stare at one he had often heard named, but never seen before. **' I have been ten minutes at that door, behind you all," the one called Rus Templar resumed, without replying to the various questions addressed to him, " and have heard nothing but she — she — she. May a fellow who has been living out of the world the last year inquire who the admirable she is, capable of engrossing the attention of all you fellows, especially yours, Middleton ?" he continued, addressing the one Laurence had classed under the head of " you old fellows" — and as he spoke he laid a hand familiarly on the other's shoulder — " you who never troubled your head about any of that subtle sex ?"

"* You may well designate them thus," answered Middleton • " and I believe the one we were speak ing of one of the subtlest, unless countenances belie sadly." Laurence turned indignantly away to the window. " By the way, Templar," said another of the group, " you who have travelled over every rood of earth, I believe — been down into the deep in diving-bells, and up to the clouds in balloons — you must have met this fair she in question somewhere ; for, despite Middleton's antipathy, she is fair." "Who is she? — what's her name?" inquired Templar, in an indifferent tone, as if scarcely con descending to listen to that which his own question had provoked. He had the weary look of a man thoroughly sick of himself and all besides; and, the question asked, this most sad expression again spread over his fine countenance.

" A Mrs. Kenyerd," answered Middleton. I don't suppose any of my readers ever trod upon a scorpion, or some other interesting thing of that species ; if they have, or ever seen another do so, they may form an idea of Rus Templar's look — his start, the sudden shiver which passed over his strong frame — and then all became still. " What a deuce of a climate ours is ! " he said, moving from the window. " If a fellow walks fast, and then stands still a moment, he 's chilled from head to foot. What was it you said, Middle ton?" " Why, what an insensible, blase wretch you are ! " exclaimed the one appealed to, smiling, as if in perfect fellowship of feeling with his unsen timental friend, — "to talk of, or feel the extremes of any climate, whether hot or cold, when the star of the hour is called down from its exalted sphere for your notice !

We are talking of such a creature as the world never before produced; and Nature trampled on the mould, when she came forth, so you ne'er will see the like again — Mrs. Kenyerd, the M.P.'s wife ! " At that moment Laurence hastily quitted the window, out of which he had been leaning, and the room also. "Who's that?" inquired the one they had called Rus Templar, looking after the youth, apparently more interested in him than in the lady in question. " That's young Laurence. He's in the Guards, and the last entrapment of this same Mrs. Kenyerd ; and, very conveniently, a protege of her husband. He has fled ; he could not bear to hear her lightly spoken of." " 'Tis a pity if any one entrap him — a design ing woman, I mean. I like his face; it pleases me. A woman, good or bad, too often makes or mars a man at the outset of life."

" That's why I don't like Mrs. Kenyerd," said Middleton, as he and his friend turned again towards the group in the window ; " that's why her beauty chills me ; for, despite my criticisms, she is hand some ; but beauty loses its spell, when displayed for unworthy purposes. Mrs. Kenyerd is, I believe, the coldest, most heartless woman in the world, and uses her charms merely to enslave — to draw around her a phalanx of adorers." " You must have met her somewhere, Templar," surmised one of the listeners. " She seems to have travelled everywhere. She is a bride of last year. Kenyerd picked her up in his rambles abroad." " Oh, aye ! " responded Templar, as if suddenly aroused to some recollection; "I have met her. She was lionizing abroad with an antiquated aunt. I met her in one of the Pyramids at Cairo, and so did Kenyerd.

I was poor then, and she scarcely noticed me ; but Kenyerd was rich ; and they went out together one day, fishing for crocodiles on the banks of the Nile, and, charmed by his prowess — some ill-natured people said by his wealth — she accepted him, and a crocodile, writhing on his hook, was witness to the contract. It was thought omi nous for Kenyerd — he'd caught a troublesome customer !" There was a laugh. Some believed, some won dered whether it was a jest. " By Jove ! " exclaimed Middleton, " our tale has an illustration — look ! " There stood some few yards distant a well-appointed brougham, dark green liveries to match, and a splendid pair of bays, and from the window looked forth a face. Prejudiced, envious, hopelessly in love, or in some other painful state, must have been the man who would not have called that face lovely.

The skin was soft and delicately fair, colourless, yet rose-tinted, showing the rich young life within. Hair of the richest, darkest chestnut; black until you saw black beside it, and then the richer tint came forth, waving over a brow of intellect and thought ; and then the eyes, those deep-set eyes of the richest, purest hazel, the long-fringed lashes, the small delicate nose, and lips, full, red, and pouting, when the short upper one permitted them to meet. Now they were parted, and a smile, if a little sad, yet one of the sweetest and most witching, played over the lovely face as it leant from that brougham window to greet young Laurence, who approached ; and then it drew back into the shade a little, else had his face been too near, for he was leaning on the window, speaking earnestly to that gentle-looking being.

That fair creation was Mrs. Kenyerd, the M.P.'s wife. " She's a bride, you say ? " uttered Templar in terrogatively, as an exclamation proclaimed her name. rt Why, I thought you knew her ? " said one of the club-loungers, looking up in the face above him. "I?— no," fell from Templar. "I jested. I never saw Mrs. Kenyerd in my life." To those men who only trouble themselves to listen to mere words, Templar's said nothing; to those who attend to tone, his spoke volumes. Middleton was one of these ; and he looked up curiously in his friend's face, that pale face leaning against the window-frame, out of sight from with out, and yet so intently fixed upon the occupant of the brougham and her companion. b io Loving and being Loved. " They have met before ! " thought Middleton. "And you say," dropped word by word from Templar's lips, more as if thinking aloud than speaking, "you say Kenyerd has brought home this mysterious bride from no one knows where ?

" " The strange thing is," answered one of the listeners, not heeding what Middleton at once noticed, the absence of manner of the speaker, " the strange thing is, that, in Kenyerd's position as an M.P., his wife should be known to no one — her antecedents, I mean — many odd tales are current about her ; folks will talk, you know." What scandal in the world is more heartless than that of a model and fashionable club ? Talk of an old-maid's tea-table ! 'tis nothing to it. The fairer the gem, the more severely is it tried by that fierce fire. Few would have looked out of that window on the beautiful face beneath, with some thing so sad in its smile, and not have felt pity as the heart breathed forth — " If to her share some female errors fall, Look in her face, and you'll forget them all." Rus Templar knew not that Middleton was so closely scanning him, or else he would probably have smothered that sigh which struggled through his lip, as he turned away from the window ; and the eyes momentarily closed, as if to check almost a woman's weakness.

The small hand, in its delicate fawn-coloured glove, peeped from the window of that brougham, to shake Laurence's extended palm, and then the owner of it drew back in a corner of her carriage as it drove off. There was no glancing at the, windows of that club-room, to seek looks of admiration ; no posture making on those soft cushions : no, she drew back into a corner, as into her own thoughts, as if Laurence and she had been alone in the world, and yet there was nothing of the coquette in her manner when they had talked together. The club thought there was, because it wished to do so — 'twas a jest before dinner — a tonic, that woman dissected body and soul. Mrs. Kenyerd's carriagewheels resounded no more, her turn for awhile was past. Oh, 'tis a beautiful place for excitement and quick circulation of the sluggish blood, the window of any club, but especially a fashionable one !

The passing and repassing, the rapid succession of dramatis personæ. No one need be jealous of the attention his neighbour excites; he may rest fully assured that his own time will come. Half an hour passed — much had been said in that time, and the breath of the club-room had as effectually tarnished many a fair reputation by a nod and a sneer, as sea-air rusts steel. Half an hour elapsed; some one looked behind him, round that room, and then mysteriously drawing his chair into the centre of that snug remaining cluster of regu lar club window old hands, whispered — " Who is Rus Templar ? How did he become so suddenly wealthy ? I remember him some two years since, merely a poor captain in a lancer regi ment, living on his pay, or a trifle more." " My dear fellow," was the response, " when a man is rich, spends his money well, and owes no man anything, too many questions should not be asked."

" Come, come," interrupted another, deprecatingly, " I believe all is straightforward enough with Templar ; I never heard anything to the contrary, except that he was poor, and is rich." " A natural son," whispered a voice, " on dit says. "Why?" " Well, some old fellow, never heard of out of his count}*, died suddenly, and left large estates to this Templar. Templar, so I hear, had never seen him in his life, which made the thing very strange in the world's eye; and the go-between was a lawyer named Bellfont, a friend of both old Janson's and Templar's ; and then this millionaire was an Israelite, so they say, and Templar's odd name makes the link between them, in my opinion, beyond a doubt." " What is his name ? " " He is called Rus, an abbreviation of Ahasue rus. Did ever a Christian man bear such a name before ?

" Reader, there was about the same amount of truth in all this as there usually is in everything of the sort ; a kin d of net-work of facts, through which many errors crept, dust-like. Rus Templar's father was a quiet country gentle man, respected by every one around him, good and kind to all, but quiet. He never brought himself into notice in any way ; he toddled through life at a baby pace of innocency, and then died, leaving one son, an officer in a lancer regiment, the subject of the conversation above detailed. We have spoken of his father as he appeared to the world, as the world, so wicked often, portrayed him, as a quiet, inoffensive man. So he was in many things, yet he broke the heart of one of the best of women, his wife, and Rus's mother. None suspected it, but one knew it — her son, and, placed in judgment between the parents whom he equally loved, the severe trial gave the first tinge of early gloom to a heart full of passionate feeling.

When he stood an orphan beside the grave of his last parent many and bitter were his thoughts, and perhaps he allowed too stern a view of error to take possession of his heart. We are all such poor frail creatures, Rus Templar forgot in much to be charitable. He dearly loved his profession, and left his solitary home resolved to be ever a soldier ; a mere soldier, rigid, and full of the duties of one, and nothing more. His regiment became his home ; he would live and die in it. All this he had determined upon. What made him so suddenly change his resolution ? None could say. One day Captain Templar sent in his papers to sell out. No entreaties — for he was much loved in his regiment — could change his resolution. He would assign no motive except that he was tired of it. Yet his profession was necessary to him ; he was a poor man, possessing at most, five hundred a-year.

There were many bets about him. The general opinion was, that disgusted at the regiment remain ing at home, when others were away fighting in the Crimea, he would pop up suddenly somewhere as a volunteer, covered with glory. No one dreamt of him other than as a soldier, no one thought even of a woman as the cause. Rus was not a lady's man. One day (he had not been heard of or seen for three years) he did pop up — not covered with glory, but with gold — sterner than ever, cold, sarcastic, and heir to an immense fortune left him by old Jan son, a stranger to him, so he said. We have seen what many thought. Thus poor Captain Templar became a man of fashion, member of the most fashionable clubs, sought by many, dashing, and everywhere seen and known, but colder, more sar castic than ever, even in his apparently joyous moments.

There were but two to whom he ever unbent, ever warmed — Middleton was one, the friend we have seen welcoming him at the club, yet even he scarcely knew him better than the rest of the world ; and the other was

Chapter II

- It was a beautiful boudoir wherein the lady sat. That lady was Mrs. Kenyerd. The mansion, as house-agents call those huge masses of bricks and mortar, looked into Hyde Park, and the boudoir, where sat the queen of the hour, was worthy of the situation — worthy, too, of the fair specimen of frail mortality who sat there at the open window, leaning on the palm of her hand— now looking across the expanse of park before her, and then dropping her eyes listlessly on the clustering flowers in her balcony, midst which a soft white finger strayed, to break off a withering leaf or stem ; but her thoughts were not in her acts, and of the two they seemed far more devoid of all the sap of green young existence, than were the scattered and dying leaves. Those who said the previous day that she was not handsome, surely never had seen her in such an hour as this, when there was no one to captivate, no one from whom to conceal a blemish, in face or figure, had she possessed such a thing.

The woman was herself, natural and exquisitely beautiful. Her rich dark hair resting in so much glossy luxuriance on that fair, rounded cheek, nestling closely to it ; the full, sweeping morning wrapper of white muslin richly trimmed with lace, open in front, just allow ing the mazarine blue petticoat of quilted silk to appear. The tip of the kid slipper, the repose of the whole figure, save when the finger just drew the arm forward from its folds of lace. Beautiful portrait ! Oh, the world never saw her thus ! She was at rest, in herself, even if in sorrow. The lock of the door stirred. She turned quickly round, and a faint colour rose in her cheek. A footman entered, from the door behind her back, with a salver, on which lay a card. She took it listlessly, still wondering who her early visitor could be : it was scarcely noon.

Tlie man stood behind, or he would have greatly wondered at the sudden pallor and emotion visible on his mistress's face ; her fingers, her whole small hand was closed upon the card, as if to hide it from all, and blot it out from her own sight. Convul sively her eyelids closed, and then opened wildly, as the fingers relaxed their grasp, and she gazed upon the name. " Where is ? " She paused. She had been going to ask a foolish question, a very imprudent one. " Where is your master ? " but the man mistook the interrupted phrase, and replied — "The gentleman ." He, too, stopped — " waits below," he intended saying. The circumstance forced him to change the assertion, and sub stitute "is here, ma'am." For behind him stood Rus Templar. " Pardon my intrusion, madam," he said, advancing, as the surprised footman drew back, " but the purport of my visit is important."

Mrs. Kenyerd waved him towards the chair, which the man brought forward and then with drew. Mrs. Kenyerd slid gently down on a couch. She could scarcely accomplish even that, so much she trembled ; yet she endeavoured to conceal it from her visitor, but well he saw how the ruddy lip grew blue and cold, and how the tongue endeavoured to moisten it, for she could not speak, she was so parched with the fever of those few moments. He was, in outward seeming, perfectly at ease ; he drew off his gloves, threw them in his hat, and, placing that on a small table beside him, passed a hand through his abundant curls. So cool was he that he even took up the small Idol off the table which he had been obliged to remove to lay down his hat, and, looking at it with the eye of a connoisseur, said, " Very curious ; I never saw one so good."

Her tongue was unloosed. "Captain Templar!" she exclaimed, starting up, as if preparing to fly, "in Heaven's name why are you here ? What can be the motive of this visit ? If Kenyerd should enter ! " And the terri fied woman, with starting eyeballs, gazed at the door which had just closed upon them, and then pressed her hands wildly to her brow. "Don't alarm yourself, madam," he answered, calmly turning round on his seat, and looking at her with a smile of perfect ease ; " Mr. Kenyerd is on a committee at his club, that will detain him some time, thence he will go to the House. I have made myself master of these facts : we are safe. Pray be seated. I wish to speak seriously to you." But she did not move. She stood in the middle of the room like a timid antelope ready to fly, her head half turned towards the door.

" Well, then, this will be the safer way," her strange visitor said, rising, and going to the door. "I presume Mr. Kenyerd won't burst open the lock." Turning the key, he withdrew it, and once more waved his hand for her to be seated. " Gracious Heaven ! " she cried, " what are you doing ? " and she walked about like one half mad. but under some dominion which she could not shake off. "Well, I thought it unwise, myself," he said, and, quietly replacing the key, he turned it back. " You grow nervous, Mrs. Kenyerd," and a sarcastic smile chased away the calm one of the previous moment. " You, the woman of strong nerve and resolution— luxury has unstrung you." He advanced, as if he would have led her to a seat ; his hand was even stretched forth to do so, and then withdrawn and clenched, as if the strong muscles of his frame had contracted it — as if all were at war within him.

She too, hastily drew back, and the eye gazed strangely, half in sorrow, half wildly at him, and then she quickly seated herself. Rus Templar coughed — a short nervous cough — as if to conceal a heaving of the heart ; his voice was lower than before — sure sign of emotion — and he looked straight before him for a moment out of the window, anywhere but at her. " Mrs. Kenyerd," he began. Again he stopped, and rising suddenly, looked with apparent interest out of the window up Park Lane. " Oh, pray don't ! should any one see you ! You are so well known. Kenyerd might " Her visitor's object was attained. In those few moments he had cooled his throbbing brow, quelled his heart's beating— he could speak calmly to her. " I thought," he uttered in an indifferent tone, " that some one had passed whom I met recently — ay, so strange is locomotion now— at Suez ; but I was mistaken."

He dropped into his chair, and wheeled it round facing the couch where that pale woman sat. She made no attempt to conceal her emotion ; it would, indeed, have been a vain one. "Mrs. Kenyerd," he said, in a clear, sonorous tone, " I have called, simply because I love and honour your sex, pity those who are weak and faulty, despise none — no, not even those who seem most vile — for 'tis we who have made them so. To me — stay— I had a mother whom I worshipped, for her sake all women are as holy things to me. So I came — just to implore you, you of all others, not to desecrate so fair a creation asyourself by acts unworthy an honest woman." " Captain Templar ! " and the statue-like woman stood upright, breathing indignation upon her accuser through those thin dilating nostrils, like a sea-shell in colouring.

" I should not have credited mere scandal," he said, without seeming to notice the lady's movement of indignation ; " but on my return yester day from a lengthened absence abroad, I found you — you who of all others, from motives of delicacy, should least court notoriety methinks — the com mon talk of the town and clubs ; and I, from the window of one, witnessed your more than friendly meeting with ' ** the last man entrapped,' as the victim was styled." " Young Laurence ! " she exclaimed, her momen tary indignation lost sight of in some other feeling; "what! even his name brought in question? and heaven knows how good my thought has been in accepting his friendship ; a good one, I do assure you." There was something painfully deprecating in the tone of her voice. " Where," she asked suddenly, as if the ques tion were linked to her immediate thoughts, "where is Gabriella?"

" With me, of course," he curtly said. " I should much, much like to see her. Will she not sometimes come to me?" Oh, what earnest prayer there was in that speech ! Truly-glorious prayer is comprised in few words; it is not the much speaking which makes it great. "No," he answered, sternly, "Gabriella would not come." " Nor speak if we met ?" " You are strangers. She knows you not." " God help me ! " cried the queen of fashion — the woman of cold, heartless flirtation, as the world called her. And the beautiful brown eyes looked down on the ground, dimmed with tears. " This is a splendid cage ! " said Rus Templar, looking round the room, anywhere, and everywhere, but at that woman. " The bird in it must be very happy — gilding and gems — golden harps — a piano, Erard's best, doubtless. Do you play?

What a silly question," and he laughed harshly — •" of course you do, else why have the means of melody here, if no hand could awaken it ? I do remember," he continued, once more looking at that silent woman, who had sunk on her couch, and sat gazing in deep thought on the ground, her brow on her palm, and her elbow on the arm of the couch ; " I do remember a beautiful picture I once saw, Mrs. Kenyerd — it might make an admirable pendant to this luxurious abode, were this one too limned. It was a scene in a foreign land, a scene of vine yards and flowers — not the poor stunted things we term vines here, tardily yielding a few half ripened grapes ; but a view from a cottage window of fields and plantations, of rich purple clusters, with their paler companions intermingled, and in that cottage — it was but a simple home — there was no gold nor gems, but a fair young creature dwelt, of humble birth, and little taught, save in the homely arts of reading and writing; and nature, if it had not endowed her with the gift of loving, had taught her, well taught her, how to win others.