Chapter XVI: 'jealousy Cruel as the Grave.'

He could gather from the manner of Ida nothing of what was passing in her mind during dinner. He observed, however, that she wore on this occasion a flower in her auburn hair, the first with which she had appeared since the time of her mourning--a simple white rose. He remembered that he had admired the simple decoration long ago, and that she had been wont to wear it to please him ere she had worn flowers to please another, so hope grew stronger in the heart of Vane.

She chatted away with Desmond and joined in the general conversation with more gaiety than usual, but not without showing a little abstraction at times, as if her thoughts wandered. She accorded little more than an occasional glance to Vane, with a soft smile on her sweet face, though there was the old languor in all her actions and manner, while she gave a programme of the forthcoming Christmas festivities at Carnaby Court, to which he, and some of the others present, were invited.

At last the ladies left the room, and the last glance, as she retired, rested on _him_. Jerry's heart beat like lightning. The hands of the clock above the mantel-piece were close upon the hour of eight when--after having to linger over a glass or two of wine--he quitted the table, and the house unperceived, and hastening through the garden, where the few flowers of autumn were lingering yet, he reached the appointed place, the long vista of which he could see in the twilight, bordered by gigantic rhododendron bushes, intermingled with lilac trees and Portugal laurels.

She had not yet come, and with a heart in which much of joyous happiness was blended with hope and anxiety, Jerry walked slowly to and fro, as he knew not at which end of the alley she might appear. The sun had set more than an hour and a half; there was a deep crimson flush in the west, against which the great trees of the chase stood up still, motionless, and dark as bronze, for the night was calm, without a breath of wind, and the garden was so lonely and still, that Jerry thought he could actually hear the beating of his heart.

Time stole on; the twilight passed away, and the shadows and shapes became lost and blended in darkness. The clock in the central gable of the court struck quarter after quarter, till Jerry, peevish with impatience now, and alone, too, found the hour of nine was nigh, and that Ida had not appeared.

Could he have mistaken the place, or she the time? Had sudden illness come upon her, as her health was so uncertain now? Had she been interrupted by some of their numerous guests? To forget, or omit to come, were surely impossible!

A distant step on the ground made his pulses quicken.

'At last, dearest, dearest Ida!' he muttered aloud.

But no; that could not be the step of Ida, hastening lightly and quickly to keep her appointment. It was a slow and heavy one--that of a man; and Major Desmond came sauntering along, in full evening costume, with his hands in his coat-pockets, and the red glowing end of a cigar projecting from his bushy moustache. He was chuckling, laughing to himself, and evidently much amused by something.

Vane would gladly have avoided him and quitted the rhododendron walk, but to do so might be to lose the last chance of seeing whether Ida kept her appointment; while, if she came, it might indicate that one had been made.

He could but hope that the tall guardsman would pass and leave him; but it was not to be so. He had partaken freely of wine, and he was disposed to be jocular, confidential, and particularly friendly, so he passed his arm through Vane's, saying:

'As I passed into the garden a few minutes ago, just to enjoy a soothing weed, I made the funniest discovery in the world--by Jove I did!'

'You discovered what?' asked Vane, intensely annoyed.

'Well--ah--that, with all her grief for our friend Beverley, I don't think the fair Ida is quite beyond being consoled. Do you take?'

'Not in the least,' was the curt response.

'She has an admirer.'

'Many, I should think,' replied Jerry, becoming more and more amazed and nettled by the tone and laughter of the guardsman.

'But she has one in particular, I tell you.'

'Who do you mean?' asked Vane, colouring, as he thought the reference was to himself.

'By Jove, that is more than I can tell you!' said Desmond, with another quiet laugh, as he tossed his cigar away; 'I only know that as I lounged slowly past the arbour where the marble statue stands, about ten minutes ago, I saw her in close proximity--quite a confabulation--with a fellow, though I did not hear their voices; doubtless they were "low and sweet," like that of Annie Laurie.'

Was this assertion a piece of Desmond's impudence, or the result of the baronet's champagne? his idea of wit, fun, or what?

Jerry Vane felt his face first redden and then grow pale with fury in the dark.

'You must be mistaken,' he said, sternly--almost imperiously.

'Not at all, Vane,' replied the other; 'I passed on without affecting to perceive them; but I could make out that the fellow who hung over her as she sat at the table was not one of the guests--very pale, with a black, lanky moustache.'

'Oh, it is impossible!' urged Vane in a very strange voice.

'Not at all, I tell you,' replied Desmond, in a somewhat nettled tone. 'I simply amused myself with the fun of the thing. I heard a sound, and on looking up saw her start up, look at her watch, and then hurry--almost rush----'

'This way?'

'Oh, no!'

'Whither, then?'

'Straight into the house by the back drawing-room window.' And the tall dandy stroked his long moustache, and uttered one of his quiet laughs again.

Vane, past making any comment, remained silent and in utter bewilderment. His heart seemed to stand still; and he felt a more deadly jealousy, a more sickening and permanent pang in it, than he had ever endured before. He remembered what he himself had seen in that bower, and recalled the eavesdropper in the conservatory, who was seen by another, and whose personal appearance tallied exactly with what Desmond had said, and an emotion of heart-sick misery--of bitter, bitter disappointment and hopeless desolation, came upon him.

Great was the mental torture he endured for some moments. While he had been awaiting her in that walk, with such emotions in his soul as were known only to heaven and himself, she had been in dalliance with another--an unknown man--in that accursed bower _again_! 'Violent passions,' he knew, 'are formed in solitude. In the bustle of the world no object has time to make deep impression.' So are deep emotions formed in solitude; but where had she learned to love this unknown, if love she did? and if she did not, what was the object of their secret meetings, and whence the power he seemed to have over her?

All these ideas and many more flashed through the mind of Jerry Vane, whose lips became dry as dust. His tongue, though parched, seemed cleaving to the roof of his mouth, whilst a rush of blood seemed mounting to his brain, and a giddiness came upon him. He heard the drawling and 'chaffing' remarks upon the arbour scene, which Desmond had resumed, but knew not a word he said, while arm-and-arm he mechanically promenaded to and fro with him.

He had but one idea--Ida false, and _thus_!

He knew not what to think, in whom to believe, or in whom to trust now, if it were so. Heaven, could such falsehood be, and within a few brief hours! he thought.

Then for the first time there began to creep into the heart of Vane something of that hatred which in the end becomes so fierce, cruel, and bitter--the hate that is born of baffled or unrequited love!

Anon, his heart wavered again; the unwonted emotion began to die away; it seemed too strange and unnatural and the passion he had for Ida vanquished him once more, by suggestions of utter unbelief, or there being an unexplainable, but dreadful, mistake somewhere.

It could not be that all along she had been deceiving him and others by playing a double game of dissimulation, while acting outwardly such gravity and grief! The soft and sad expression of the chaste and sweetly pretty face that seemed before him even then forbade the idea, yet the galling fear, the stinging suspicion, remained behind.

'She refused Jerningham, of ours, who was foolish enough to propose in the first flush of her widowhood, and she refused Jack Rakes of the Coldstreams last month, and sent him off to the Continent to console himself,' Desmond was saying; 'she has vowed, they say, that she would never, never marry, after the death of that fellow in the line--what's his name?--Beverley, don't you know, and here I find her billing and cooing most picturesquely in an arbour! It is right good fun, by Jove! I only wonder who the party is that was receiving "the outpouring of an enamoured heart, secluded in moral widowhood;" and I might have discovered, if I had only pretended to blunder into the arbour; but then I hate to make a scene, and it's deuced bad form to spoil sport.'

Vane felt it in his heart to knock the laughing plunger down, when hearing him run on thus.

It began to seem painfully evident that all this episode could not be falsification. Major Desmond had no particular interest in Ida, though piqued, as much as it was in his lazy nature to be, at Clare, for refusing the lounging offer he had made her.

For the other he had neither liking nor disliking; but, in all he told Vane, he seemed inspired only by that love of gossipy chit-chat in which even men of the best position will indulge by the hour at their club or elsewhere, together, perhaps, with the desire, so invariable, to quiz the grief of a widow, especially if she is young and handsome.

'There is,' says a writer, 'no weakness of which men are so ashamed of being convicted as credulity, and there is none so natural to an honest nature.'

But to the storm that gathered in the honest heart of Jerry were added rage, astonishment, and an overwhelming sense of utter disappointment.

Where had this unknown come from, and whither did he go? Where had she met him, and how long had this mysterious, and, to all appearance, secret intimacy lasted? What manner of man was he, that she was ashamed to have him introduced to her family? He had heard--he had certainly _read_--of ladies, even of the highest, most delicate nurture and tender culture, by some madness, inversion of the mind, or by temptation of the devil, taking wild fancies for valets and grooms, and even marrying them in secret, and thus at times all manner of horrible speculations crowded into the now giddy brain of Jerry.

Ida! wildly as he loved her he would rather she were dead than less or not what he supposed and believed her to be; but he thought bitterly, 'Alas! where was there ever man or woman who reached the spiritualised standard of idealistic love?'

So, in spite of himself--it was not in human nature that it could be otherwise--his old jealousy, that barbarous yet just leaven which he had felt in the past time, when she preferred Jack Beverley to himself, grew in his heart again.

He marvelled much how she would look when he joined her among other guests in the drawing-room; but the face he had looked for so anxiously was not there when he and Desmond entered it; and he was actually somewhat relieved when he was informed by Clare that Ida was unable to appear, and had retired to her room 'with a crushing headache.'

He expressed some well-bred sorrow to hear this, very mechanically and quietly, adding that he was the more sorry to hear it as he believed he would have to leave for town early on the morrow.

Clare heard this sudden announcement with surprise, and regarded Jerry's face earnestly.