A Mad Love by Charlotte Mary Brame (online e book reading TXT) 📖

than battle through it like a human being. Perhaps for her the battle had to come. In figure she had developed, she looked taller and more stately, but the same beautiful lines and gracious curves were there. As she sits in her morning-dress, the palest blue, trimmed with the most delicate cream color, a pretty, coquettish cap on her golden head, the bloom and freshness of early youth on her face, she looks the loveliest picture of lovely and blooming womanhood, the perfection of elegance, the type of a patrician. Her white hands are covered with shining gems--Lady Chandos has a taste for rings. She is altogether a proper wife for a man to have to trust, to place his life and honor in her, a wife to be esteemed, appreciated and revered, but not worshiped with a mad passion. In the serene, pure atmosphere in which she lived no passion could come, no madness; she did not understand them, she never went out of the common grooves of life, but she was most amiable and sweet in them.

Nor had Lord Chandos altered much in these three years; he had grown handsomer, more manly; the strong, graceful figure, the erect, easy carriage, were just the same; his face had bronzed with travel, and the mustache that shaded his beautiful lips was darker in hue.

Had they been happy, these three years of married life? Ask Lady Chandos, and she will say, "Happy as a dream." She has not known a shadow of care or fear, she has been unutterably happy; she is the queen of blondes, one of the most popular queens of society, the chosen and intimate friend of more than one royal princess, one of the most powerful ladies at court; no royal ball, or concert, or garden-party is ever given without her name being on the list; she is at the head of half the charities in London; she lays foundation stones; she opens the new wings of hospitals; she interests herself in convalescent homes; she influences, and in a great many instances leads the fashions. "Hats _a la_ Chandos," "the Marion costume," are tributes to her influence. To know her, to be known to be on her visiting list, is a passport everywhere. She has the finest diamonds and the finest rubies in London; her horses are the envy and admiration of all who see them; her mansion in Belgravia is the wonder of all who see it--every corner of the earth has been racked to add to its luxury and comfort. She has more money--just as pin-money--than many a peer has for the keeping up of title and estate. She has a husband who is all kindness and indulgence to her; who has never denied her the gratification of a single wish; who has never spoken one cross word to her; who is always devoted to her service. What could any one wish for more? She would tell you, with a charming, placid smile on her sweet face, that she is perfectly happy. If there be higher bliss than hers she does not know it yet; if there is a love, as there is genius, akin to madness, she has never felt it. Passion does not enter her life, it is all serene and calm.

In those three years Lord Chandos had made for himself a wonderful name. The Duke of Lester had done all that he could for him, but his own talents and energy had done more. He had proved himself to be what the leading journals said of him, "a man of the times." Just the man wanted--full of life, activity, energy, talent, and power. He had made himself famous as an orator; when Lord Chandos rose to speak, the house listened and the nation applauded; his speeches were eagerly read. He was the rising man of the day, and people predicted for him that he would be prime minister before he was thirty. His mother's heart rejoiced in him--all her most sanguine hopes were fulfilled. Ask him if he is happy. He would laugh carelessly, and answer, "I am as happy as other men, I imagine." Ask him if his ambition and pride are gratified, and he will tell you "Yes." Ask him if ambition and pride can fill his life to the exclusion of all else; he will tell you "No." Ask him again if he has a thousand vague, passionate desires unfulfilled, and his handsome face will cloud and his eyes droop.

They are very popular. Lord Chandos gives grand dinners, which are considered among the best in London, Lady Chandos gives balls, and people intrigue in every possible way for invitations. She gives quiet dances and _soirees_, which are welcomed. She is "at home" every Wednesday, and no royal drawing-room is better attended than her "at home." She has select little teas at five o'clock, when some of the most exclusive people in London drink orange pekoe out of the finest Rose du Barri china. They are essentially popular; no ball is considered complete unless it is graced by the presence of the queen of blondes. As the Belgravian matrons all say, "Dear Lady Chandos is so happy in her marriage." Her husband was always in attendance on her. Other husbands had various ways; some went to their clubs, some smoked, some drank, some gambled, others flirted. Lord Chandos was irreproachable; he did none of these things.

There had never been the least cloud between them. If this perfect wife of his had any little weakness, it was a tendency to slight jealousies, so slight as to be nameless, yet she allowed them at times to ruffle her calm, serene repose. Her husband was very handsome--there was a picturesque, manly beauty about his dark head and face, a grandeur in his grand, easy figure that was irresistible. Women followed him wherever he went with admiring eyes. As he walked along the streets they said to each other, with smiling eyes, what a handsome man he was. If they went to strange hotels all the maids courtesied with blushing faces to the handsome young lord. At Naples one of the flower-girls had disturbed Lady Marion's peace--a girl with a face darkly beautiful as one of Raphael's women, with eyes that were like liquid fire, and this girl always stood waiting for them with a basket of flowers. Lord Chandos, in his generous, princely fashion, flung her pieces of gold or silver; once my lady saw the girl lift the money he threw to her from the ground, kiss it with a passionate kiss, and put it in the bodice of her dress. In vain after that did Carina offer Parma violets and lilies from Sorrento, Lady Chandos would have no more, and Carina was requested soon afterward by the master of the hotel to take her stand with her flowers elsewhere.

Lord Chandos never made any remark upon it--every lady has some foible, some little peculiarity. She was a perfect wife, and this little feeling of small jealousies was not worth mentioning. If they went to a ball and he danced three times with the same lady, he knew he would hear something in faint dispraise. If he admired any one as a good rider or a good dancer, out would come some little criticism; he smiled as he heard, but said nothing--it was not worth while. Like a kind-hearted man he bore this little failing in mind, and, if ever he praised one woman, he took care to add something complimentary to his wife. So the three years had passed and this was the spring-tide of the fourth, the showery, sparkling month of April; violets and primroses were growing, the birds beginning to sing, the leaves springing, the chestnuts budding, the fair earth reviving after its long swoon in the arms of winter. The London season of this year was one of the best known, no cloud of either sorrow or adversity hung over the throne or the country; trade was good, everything seemed bright and prosperous; but the great event of the season was most certainly the first appearance in England of the new singer, Madame Vanira, whose marvelous beauty and wonderful voice were said to drive people mad with excitement and delight.

It was to see her that Lord and Lady Chandos went to the Royal Italian Opera on that night in April on which our story is continued.


CHAPTER XXXVII.


A MEETING OF EYES.

The newspapers had already given many details of Madame Vanira. For many long years there had been nothing seen like her. They said her passion and power, her dramatic instinct, her intensity were so great, that she was like electric fire. One critic quoted of her what was so prettily said of another great actress:

"She has a soul of fire in a body of gauze."

No one who saw her ever forgot her; even if they only saw her once, her face lived clear, distinct, and vivid in their memory forever afterward. No one knew which to admire most, her face or her voice. Her face was the most wondrously beautiful ever seen on the stage, and her voice was the most marvelous ever heard--it thrilled you, it made you tremble; its grand pathos, its unutterable sadness, its marvelous sweetness; those clear, passionate tones reached every heart, no matter how cold, how hardened it might be--one felt that in listening to it that it was the voice of a grand, passionate soul. It was full, too, of a kind of electricity; when Madame Vanira sung she could sway the minds and hearts of her hearers as the winter winds sway the strong boughs. She drew all hearts to herself and opened them. When she sung, it was as though she sung the secret of each heart to its owner.

They said that her soul was of fire and that the fire caught her listeners; she had power, genius, dramatic force enough in her to electrify a whole theater full of people, to lift them out of the commonplace, to take them with her into the fairyland of romance and genius, to make them forget everything and anything except herself.

Such a woman comes once in a century, not oftener. They called her a siren, a Circe. She was a woman with a passionate soul full of poetry; a genius with a soul full of power; a woman made to attract souls as the magnet attracts the needle.

She made her _debut_ in the theater of San Carlo, in Naples, and the people had gone wild over her; they serenaded her through the long starlit night; they cried out her name with every epithet of praise that could be lavished on her; they raved about her beautiful eyes, her glorious face, her voice, her acting, her attitudes.

Then a royal request took her to Russia; a still warmer welcome met her there; royal hands crowned her with diamonds, royal voices swelled her triumph; there was no one like La Vanira. She was invited to court and all honors were lavished on her.

From there she went to Vienna, where her success was as great; to Paris, where it was greater, and now she was to make her _debut_ before the most critical, calm, appreciative audience in Europe. The papers for weeks had been full of her; they could describe her grand, queenly beauty, her wonderful acting, her genius, which was alone in the world, her jewels, her dresses, her attitudes; but there was nothing to say about her life.

Even the society journals, usually so well informed, had nothing to say about Madame Vanira. Whether she were single, or married, or a widow, none of them knew; of what town, of what nation, even of what family, none of