Chapter I: Love Feigned and Love Concealed

_Fidelia_. You act love, sir! you must but act it indeed after all I have said to you. Think of your honour, sir:--love!

_Manly_. Well, call it revenge, and that is honourable. I'll be revenged on her.

WYCHERLEY.--_The Plain Dealer._

When the Vyners returned to town, and Rose discovered that Julius was in Italy, the grief which had assailed her, in the first remorse at having played with his affection, was crossed with a certain feeling of indignation at the calmness, as she called it, with which he accepted his fate. This was very unreasonable, I allow; very. It was not at all like a heroine; but it was like a woman, I believe; and certainly like Rose.

For you must understand that my little darling, Rose, so exquisitely pretty, so witty, so charming, and so good _au fond_, was by no means faultless. She had her whims and caprices, her faults and her follies, just as if she were an ordinary woman, and not the heroine of a three volume novel. If I were painting women as they _should be_, of course no speck or flaw would I permit upon the radiant loveliness of my picture; but women as they _are_--the darlings!--admit of no such flattery.

Rose reasoned thus:--He must know I love him; or, if he is so blind as not to have seen it, he ought at least to have persevered. Who ever heard of a man giving up a woman in that cool way, because she did not throw herself into his arms, the first moment it pleased him to declare himself? He can't be really in love. He is _rationally_ attached to me; and reason tells him to--go to Italy! Does he expect I am to follow him? does he expect I am to write to him? does he expect I am to be penitent? He is greatly mistaken! I will forget him: I will!

But she could not. She was angry with him; but his image was constantly before her. A spirit naturally high, and fostered into a sort of pugnacity by the experience of her school life, Rose was at all times too apt to rebel against the least opposition, and never learnt to brook what could be construed into an insult. Julius's conduct seemed to her an insult. Either it was dictated by a coolness not akin to genuine love, or it was dictated by a desire to make her repent her refusal. She adopted both suggestions alternately, and both she construed into an offence. Her pride was roused, and the struggle between pride and love had thrown her into that "slight fever" of which she spoke to Blanche.

She went into society with the determination of forgetting Julius, and of finding some one to replace him in her heart--but found no one.

Violet began to suffer the depressing forebodings of jealousy. She loved Marmaduke, and confessed it to herself. His attentions to Mrs. Vyner at first irritated her, because she thought them hypocritical, knowing his opinion of that false woman; and she could not brook the idea of his stooping to conciliate one he despised, although he did so merely to gain a frequent admission to the house. But after a little while she fancied there was more in his attentions, and that they had another aim.

This idea was slow in gaining ground, but it gained it steadily. Unwilling as she must have been to believe it, both on account of Mrs. Vyner being married, and also on account of Marmaduke's very expressive attentions to herself, nevertheless there was no withstanding the horrible suggestions of appearances; and combat them as she might, they gained ground in her mind. Now rising into something like a certainty, now driven back again by some word, look, or act which spoke too plainly of his love for her; but advancing and receding, and advancing and receding again, like the alternating progress of a tide flowing in, this horrible idea gained upon her.

Marmaduke's conduct was indeed calculated to foster that suspicion. He was placed in a strange position. Violet he loved, ardently loved; but his impetuous nature somewhat curbed itself before her equally haughty, and still more powerful mind. Violet had the superiority of moral elevation, and moral firmness. Marmaduke, though firm and dauntless, was more volatile; his organization, was of that nervous and impressionable order, which, although capable of carrying him with indomitable firmness through anything he willed, was nevertheless more easily swayed by the caprice and passion of the moment, than the more self-sustained calm strength of Violet. He instinctively stood in a sort of awe of her. He bowed down to her superior nature, which he admired and worshipped; but he did not feel so much her slave as Mary Hardcastle had made him feel hers.

Perhaps this difference arose from the changes which had taken place in his own nature, since the time when Mary Hardcastle had called him hers. I know not. Certain it is that the tiny sylph-like Mary exercised an almost absolute power over him; while the imperial Violet cowed, but did not master him. Above all, he was repelled by Violet's coldness. If in the country she had sometimes damped his ardour by her haughty reserve, she had, since their arrival in town, scarcely ever unbended, for she was hurt at his attentions to Mrs. Vyner.

From time to time he fancied he discerned in her manner a secret passion for him, and then his devotion to her was such as to irritate Mrs. Vyner with tormenting suspicions. But these were only passing moods; Violet soon relapsed into her old manner, and the baffled indignant Marmaduke turned impatiently again to Mrs. Vyner.

As love seemed denied him, at least he would secure his revenge. To secure that, required immense thought and ingenuity. He bestowed upon it the patience and finesse of a savage. It was a drama which called forth all his faculties, and which, as it might deepen into tragedy at any moment, kept him in a state of intense excitement, and greatly confused his moral perceptions.

The last sentence is one upon which I would lay great stress, because it enables me to explain Marmaduke's actions, which, however inexcusable, are not to be judged as if they were the results of calm deliberation. Passion blinded him, as it blinds all men; confused his judgment while sharpening his instincts; and altogether distorted his sense of moral rectitude.

Nor is this all: the excitement not only confused his moral sense, but also, by a physiological law, the subtle power of sympathy, changed what was originally a pretence into a reality. The love we begin by feigning, we end by feeling; at least so far as the mere sensuousness of the feeling goes. Excitement at all times has a singular power of awakening into life the germs of vague desires. It intensifies a thought into a desire, a desire into a passion.

Marmaduke began by feigning a return of his former love for Mrs. Meredith Vyner. Her artful doubts increased his desire to convince her. His increased eagerness gave greater sharpness, and distinctness to that desire. Carried away by his own acting, he began at last to feel some of the passion of his part. Memory recalled the charms he once adored; and Mrs. Vyner was there in all the fascination of her strange beauty, to make his pulses vibrate as of old. The spell of those tiger eyes; the perfume of that golden hair; the witchery of that fantastic manner, began to move the voluptuousness within him, as before. And the very restraints imposed upon him no less by her position, than by her adroit avoidance of him, irritated him the more. She would not permit him to breathe a word of his passion. She would not suffer him to take her hand; to his ardour she opposed her affectation of moral scruples, and what "was due to her husband!" She kept him at a distance, without forbidding him the house.

The result was, that Desire intensified the passion of Revenge. He not only burned to conquer, in order that he might gratify the dark passion which was rankling in his heart, as it only rankles in those "children of the sun," but also because the woman he hated fascinated him.

This fascination will be incomprehensible to those whose colder temperaments, or more limited experience, have not brought home to them the fact that we may at once despise and admire; that we may have indeed, a positive contempt for a person in whose presence we are as if under a spell.

The secret is, that esteem and respect are founded upon moral sympathies and judgments; but the charm of beauty and manner appeals to the more sensuous and emotional parts of our nature, and these, while the charm continues, triumph.

Thus Marmaduke, when alone, despised Mrs. Meredith Vyner, as one who knew her; but in her presence he was often strangely fascinated. Did he then cease to love Violet? Not he. His heart never wavered; never for an instant did she step from off the pedestal on which his love had placed her. True that, owing to the wide signification in which the word Love is used, he may have been said at times to love Mrs. Vyner, because he certainly often felt for her that desire which is all some men know of love. But, call it by what name you please, it had no affinity to the love he felt for Violet.

And Mrs. Vyner? She was proud, excessively proud, of her triumph. She watched Violet's dawning jealousy, and deepening sadness, with a quiet savageness, horrible to think of; and she noted the increasing entanglement of Marmaduke in her net, with the pride of a coquette regaining her prey, and triumphing over a handsomer younger woman.

She never for an instant doubted Marmaduke's sincerity; and although his attentions to Violet sometimes irritated her, she deceived herself by supposing that he only paid them to excite her jealousy.

I have observed a paradoxical fact in human nature, which I here record, without professing to explain it; and it is this--hypocrites are easily duped by the hypocrisy of another, and liars are always credulous. La Rochefoucauld has also noticed that "quelque défiance que nous ayons de la sincérité de ceux qui nous parlent, nous croyons toujours qu'ils nous disent plus vrai qu'aux autres." I suppose it is in both cases our confidence in our own sagacity which misleads us; but there is the fact, let moralists make what they can of it.

Well, this fact explains to us why that consummate actress, Mrs. Meredith Vyner, was completely duped by the acting of Marmaduke, the truth of whose passion she never thought of doubting. And what was said before respecting the effect of acting upon the mind, and its changing pretence into reality, must also be applied to her: with all the greater force arising from her mind not being in any way disposed against him, as his mind was against her. If he, who hated her, was insensibly led to feel something of the passion which he feigned, how much more likely would she be to admit the same influence, her mind being free from all dislike?

She began to love him, but it was in her way: with the head not the heart, with her senses not her soul!