Only a Girl's Love
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Lenore nodded.
"Yes; I want to look my best to-night; and if I were not afraid of being thought too pronounced, I would wear my diamonds."
The girl arranged the beautiful hair in its close curls of gold, and fastened the famous pearls upon the white wrists and round the dainty throat; and Lenore surveyed herself in the Venetian mirror. A smile of satisfaction slowly lit up her face.
"Well?" she said, over her shoulder.
"Beautiful," breathed the girl, who was proud of her mistress's loveliness. "Oh, beautiful, my lady! but isn't it a pity to wear it to-night?"
Lenore shook her head.
"I would wear a better if I had it," she said, softly. "Now go down-stairs, and tell me when Lord Leycester returns."
The girl stared and then smiled. After all then they had been worrying themselves about nothing; her ladyship had received a message from him and knew when to expect him! She went down and crowed over them in the servants' hall, and watched for Lord Leycester.
Seven o'clock chimed from the stables, and the carriage that had been sent to meet the guests returned. Lord Beauchamp was a tall, stately old gentleman who hated traveling as he hated anything else that gave him any trouble or inconvenience, and the rest were tired and dusty, and generally pining for soap and water. The earl and countess met them in the hall, and in the bustle and fuss Leycester was not missed.
"Do not hurry, Lord Beauchamp," said the poor countess. "We will make the dinner half-past eight," and she wished in her heart that she could postpone it altogether; for Leycester had not come.
"What shall we do – what shall we do?" she exclaimed, as the earl stood at her dressing-room door with his coat in his hand.
"Do!" he retorted. "Go on without him. This comes of humoring an only son till he develops into a lunatic. Poor Lenore! I pity her!" and he went out frowning.
"He has not come, my lady!" murmured the maid, entering Lenore's room a few minutes afterwards. "Lord Beauchamp's party have arrived, but Lord Leycester has not come."
Lenore was standing by the open window, and she turned with a sudden smile. The sound of horse's feet had struck upon her ear.
"Yes, he has," she said. "He is here now," and she closed the window and sat down calmly.
Leycester rode into the courtyard on the horse that he had borrowed from the doctor, and, throwing the bridle to a groom, ascended the stone steps and made his way through the hall.
Excepting some of the servants, there was no one about, they had all gone to their dressing-rooms, and he went up the stairs in silence and uninterrupted. With bent head and dragging step, for the long vigil and hours of excitement had told upon him, he stood before Lilian's room. It was worthy of notice that in this awful coming back of his he went to her first, as a matter of course, and knocking gently, went in.
It was dark, and the lamp was burning softly, but she, accustomed to the dim light, saw plainly that something had happened.
"Leycester!" she exclaimed. "Why – how is this, dear? Where have you been all day and all last night? You did not come to me and – " she stopped as he sat down beside her and put his hand upon her head. The hand was burning hot, his face was white and haggard and worn, and yet in some way strangely peaceful, with a far-away, dreamy expression upon it – "Leycester, where have you been?"
He bent and kissed her.
"Lil," he said, and there was a great peace in his voice though it was weary and husky, "you will be a brave good girl while I tell you!"
"Ah, Leycester!" was all she murmured.
"Well, Lil, I have found her – I have got her back – my poor Stella."
Her hand closed on his, and her delicate face went white as ivory.
"Got her back!"
"Yes," he said, in low tones. "I have found out the mystery – no, not I. It was solved for me by a mightier hand than any human one – by Death, Lil."
"Death, Leycester! She is not dead! Oh, Stella – Stella!"
"Heaven forbid," he breathed. "No, no; she is alive, though fearfully near death still. I left her lying white and still and weak as a broken lily – my poor, sweet darling! – but she is alive, thank Heaven! – she is alive! And now can you bear to hear what separated us, Lil?"
"Tell me," she said.
Sitting there, with her loving, sympathizing heart beating against his, he told her the strange story. Sobs, low and moving, broke from her as he told of the boy's death, and an awful chill fell on her as he spoke as shortly as he could of the fate that had befallen Jasper Adelstone; but when he came to speak of that short damning note that he had found – that note in the hand-writing of Lenore, and hinted at her share in the conspiracy – the gentle heart grew cold and terrified, and she hid her face for a moment, then she looked up and clasped her hands round his neck.
"Oh, Ley, Ley! deal gently with her! Forgive her! We all need forgiveness! Forgive her; she did it out of her love for you, and has suffered, and will suffer! Deal gently with her!"
He bit his lip, and his brow darkened.
"Ley, Ley!" the gentle creature pleaded, "think of her now waiting for you, think of her who was to be your wife. She loved you. Ley, she loves you still; and that will be her punishment! Ley, you will not be hard with her!"
Her prayer prevailed; he drew a long breath.
"No, Lil," he said, in a low voice, "I will not be hard with her. But as for love! True love does not stand by and see its beloved suffer as I have suffered; not true love. There is a passion which men libel by calling love – that is what she has borne for me. Love! Think of her? Yes; I will think of her; but how am I to forget my beautiful, suffering darling, lying so white and wan and broken," and he hid his face in his hands. Presently he rose and kissed her.
"I am going to her," he said. "Do not fear! I have given you my word; I will deal gently with her."
She let him go without another word, and he went straight to Lenore's sitting-room, travel-stained and haggard, and unrefreshed.
The maid heard his knock, and opened the door, and passed out as he entered and stood in the middle of the room. There was a faint rustle in the adjoining room, and then she came floating toward him in all her loveliness, the faint, ethereal blue making her white skin to shame the rare and costly pearls. She was dazzling in her supreme loveliness, and at any other time he would have been moved, but now it was as if a deadly, venomous serpent, glorious in its scaly beauty, lay coiled before him.
She came forward, her hands outstretched, her eyes glowing with a passionate welcome, and then stopped. Not a word passed for a moment; the two, she in all her costly attire and loveliness, he in his stained cord suit and with his haggard face, confronted each other. She read her doom at a glance, but the proud, haughty spirit did not quail.
"Well?" she said at last.
Chivalrous to the last, even in this moment, he pointed to a seat, but she made a gesture of refusal and stood, her white hands clasped tightly, her head erect, her eyes glowing. "Well? You have come back?"
"Yes, I have come back, Lady Lenore," he said, his voice dry and hoarse.
She smiled bitterly at the "lady."
"You are late," she said. "Was it worth while coming back?"
It was a proud and insolent question, but he bore with her.
"I came back for your sake," he said.
"For mine!" and she smiled incredulously. She could smile still, though an icy hand was closing round her heart, and wringing the life blood out of it.
"For yours. It was not fitting that you should hear from other lips than mine that from this hour you and I are as far apart as pole from pole."
She inclined her head.
"So be it. There is no appeal from such a sentence. But may I ask you to explain; dare I venture so far?" and her lip curled.
"Do you think you dare?" he said, sternly.
She inclined her head, his sternness struck her like a blow.
"You have come to tell me, have you not?" she said. "Where have you been?"
"I have come from Carlyon," he said.
"From whom?"
"From the girl from whom your base scheming separated me," he said, sternly.
"Ah," she breathed, but her eyes opened with a wild stare. "You – you have gone back to her?"
He waved his hand.
"Let there be no word of her between us," he said; "your lips shall not profane her name."
She turned white and her hand went to her heart.
"Forgive me," he said, hoarsely. Had he not promised to deal gently with her? "I have not come to utter reproaches – I came to shield you, if that were possible."
"To shield! – from what?" she demanded, in a low murmur.
"From the consequences of your crime," he said. "What that is, I have only learnt to-night; but for a chance accident the world would know to-morrow that Lady Lenore Beauchamp had stooped so low as to become the accomplice of Jasper Adelstone in a vile conspiracy."
She waved her hand.
"He dare not speak. I defy him!"
Leycester held up his hand.
"He is beyond your defiance," he said – "Jasper Adelstone is dead!"
She made a gesture of contemptuous indifference.
"What is that to me?" she said, hoarsely. "Why do you speak to me of him or any other man? Is it not enough that I have failed? Have you come to gloat over me? What is it that you want?"
He thrust his hand in his breast, and drew forth the note.
"I have come to restore this to you," he said. "I took it from the dead man's bosom – took it to save your reputation. The story it told me I have heard in fact from the lips of the girl you have plotted against and wronged. It is at her bidding that I am here – here to save you from scandal, and to cover if possible your retreat."
"At her's – at Stella Etheridge's?" she breathed, as though the name would choke her.
He waved his hand.
"You will leave this house to-night. I have made all arrangements necessary, and you will start in an hour's time."
She laughed discordantly.
"And if I say I will not?"
He looked at her sternly.
"Then I will tell the story to my mother and you shall hear your dismissal from her lips. Choose!"
She dropped into a chair, and made a gesture of scorn.
"Tell whom you please," she said. "I am your affianced wife, my people are under your roof at this moment; go to them and tell them that you have deserted me for a low-born girl!"
He turned and strode to the door; but ere he had reached it the reaction had come. With a low cry, she flew to him and sank at his feet, her hands clasped on his arm, her face upturned with an awful imploration.
"Leycester, Leycester! Do not leave me! Do not go! Leycester, I was wrong, wicked, base, vile; but it was all for you – for you! Leycester, listen to me! You will not go! Do not fling me from you! Look at me, Leycester!"
He did look at her, lovely in her abandon and despair, and then averted his eyes; it horrified him to see her so low and degraded.
"You will not look at me!" she wailed; "you will not! Oh, Heaven! am I so changed? am I old, ugly, hideous? Leycester, you have called me beautiful a hundred – a thousand times; and now you will not look at me! You will leave me! You shall not; I will hold you like this forever – forever! Ah!" – for he had made a movement to disengage himself – "you will not hurt me! Yes; kill me, kill me here at your feet! I would rather die so than live without you. I cannot, Leycester! Listen, I love you; I love you twenty thousand times better than that wretched girl can do! Leycester, I will give my life for you! See, I am kneeling here at your feet! You will not spurn me, you cannot repel me! Leycester! oh, my darling, my love! do what you will with me, but do not spurn me! Oh, my love, my love!"
It was piteous, it was awful, to see and hear her, and the strong man trembled and turned pale, but his heart was stone and ice toward her; the white, wan face of his darling came between them, and made the flushed, passion-distorted face at his feet seem hideous and repellant.
"Rise!" he said, sternly.
"No, no; I will not," she moaned. "I will die at your feet! Leycester, you will kill me! I have lost all for your sake, pride and honor, and now my fair name, for you cannot shield me; and you will thrust me aside. Leycester, you cannot! you cannot! Oh, my love, my love, do not spurn me from you!" and still on her knees, she bent her head upon his arm, and poured a storm of passionate, broken kisses upon his hand.
That roused him. With an exclamation of abhorrence, he threw her grasp off, and stood with his hand on the door.
She sprang to her feet, and, white and breathless, looked at him as if she would read his soul; then throwing her hands above her head, she fell to the ground.
He stood for a moment or two bending over her, thinking her senseless, but it was simply mental and physical exhaustion, and when he strode to the bell, she opened her eyes and held up her hand to stop him.
"No," she murmured. "Let no one see me. Go now. Go!"
He went to the door, and she rose and supported herself against a chair.
"Good-bye, Leycester," she said. "I have lost you – and all! All!"
It was the last words he heard her utter for many and many a year.
CHAPTER XLII
"After all, there is nothing like English scenery; this is very beautiful. I don't suppose you could get a greater variety of opal tints in one view than lies before us now, but there is something missing. It is all too beautiful, too rich, too gorgeous; one finds one's breath coming too quickly, and one longs for just a dash of English gloom to tone down the brilliant colors and give a relief."
It was Mr. Etheridge who spoke. He was standing beside a low rustic seat which fronted the world-famous view from the Piazza at Nice. The sun was dropping into the horizon like a huge ball of crimson fire, the opal tints of the sky stretched far above their heads and even behind them. It was one blaze of glory in which a slim, girlish figure, leaning far back in the seat, seemed bathed.
She was pale still, was this Stella, this little girl heroine of ours, but the dark look of trouble and leaden sorrow had gone, and the light of youth and youthful joy had come back to the dark eyes; the faint, ever ready smile hovered again about the red, mobile lips. "Sorrow" says Goethe, "is the refining touch to a woman's beauty," and it refined Stella's. She was lovely now, with that soft, ethereal loveliness which poets sing of, and artists paint, and we poor penman so vainly strive to describe.
She looked up with a smile.
"Homesick, uncle?" she murmurs.
The old man strokes his beard, and glances at her.
"I plead guilty," he says. "You cannot make a hermit crab happy if you take him out of his shell, and the cottage is my shell, Stella."
She sighed softly, not with unhappiness, but with that tender reflectiveness which women alone possess.
"I will go back when you please, dear," she says.
"Hem!" he grunts. "There is someone else to consult, mademoiselle; that someone else seems particularly satisfied to remain where we are; but then I suppose he would be contented to remain anywhere so that a certain pale-faced, insignificant chit of a girl were near him."
A faint blush, a happy flush spreads over the pale face, and the long lashes droop over the dark eyes.
"At any rate we must ask him," says the old man; "we owe him that little attention at least, seeing how much long-suffering patience he has and continues to display."
"Don't, uncle," murmurs the half-parted lips.
"It is all very well to say 'don't,'" retorts the old man with a grim smile. "Seriously, don't you think that you are, to use an Americanism, playing it rather low down on the poor fellow?"
"I – I – don't know what you mean," she falters.
"Permit me to explain then," he says, ironically.
"I – I don't want to hear, dear."
"It is fitting that girls should be made to hear sometimes," he says, with a smile. "What I mean is simply this, that, as a man with something approaching a conscience and a fellow feeling for my kind, I feel it my duty to point out to you that, perhaps unconsciously, you are leading Leycester the sort of life that the bear who dances on hot bricks – if any bear ever does – is supposed to lead. Here for months, after no end of suffering – "
"I have suffered too," she murmurs.
"Exactly," he assents, in his gently-grim way; "but that only makes it worse. After months of suffering, you allow him to dangle at your heels, you drag him at your chariot wheels, tied him at your apron strings from France to Italy, from Italy to Switzerland, from Switzerland back to France again, and gave him no more encouragement than a cat does a dog."
The faint flush is a burning crimson now.
"He – he need not come," she murmurs, panting. "He is not obliged."
"The moth – the infuriated moth, is not obliged to hover about the candle, but he does hover, and generally winds up by scorching his wings. I admit that it is foolish and unreasonable, but it is none the less true that Leycester is simply incapable, apparently, of resting outside the radius of your presence, and therefore I say hadn't you better give him the right to remain within that radius and – "
She put up her hand to stop him, her face a deeper crimson still.
"Permit me," he says, obstinately, and puffing at his pipe to emphasize. "Once more the unfortunate wretch is on tenterhooks; he is dying to take possession of you, and afraid to speak up like a man because, possibly, you have had a little illness – "
"Oh, uncle, and you said yourself that you thought I should have died."
He coughs.
"Ahem! One is inclined to exaggerate sometimes. He is afraid to speak because in his utter sensitiveness he will insist upon considering you an invalid still, whereas you are about as strong and healthy now as, to use another Americanism, 'they make 'em.' Now, Stella, if you mean to marry him, say so; if you don't mean to, say so, and for goodness sake let the unfortunate monomaniac go."
"Leycester is not a monomaniac, uncle," she retorts, in a low, indignant voice.
"Yes, he is," he says, "he is possessed by a mania for a little chit of a girl with a pale face and dark eyes and a nose that is nothing to speak of. If he wasn't an utterly lost maniac he would have refused to dangle at your heels any longer, and gone off to someone with some pretension to a regular facial outline." He stops, for there comes the sound of a firm, manly tread upon the smooth gravel path, and the next instant Leycester's tall figure is beside them.
He bends over the slight, slim, graceful figure, a loving, reverential devotion in his handsome face, a faint anxiety in his eyes and in his voice as he says, in that low, musical undertone which has charmed so many women's ears:
"Have you no wrap on, Stella? These evenings are very beautiful but treacherous."
"There isn't a breath of air," says Stella, with a little laugh.
"Yes, yes!" he says, and puts his hand on the arm that rests on the seat, "you must be careful, indeed you must, my darling, I will go and get you a – "
"Blanket and a suit of sables," broke in the old man, with good humorous banter. "Allow me, I am young and full of energy, and you are old and wasted and wearied, watching over a sick and perhaps dying girl, who eats three huge meals a day, and can outwalk Weston. I will go," and he goes and leaves them, Stella's soft laughter following him like music.
Leycester stands beside her looking down at her in silence. For him that rustic seat holds all that is good and worth having in life, and as he looks, the passionate love that burns so steadily in his heart glows in his eyes.
For weeks, for months he has watched her – watched her patiently as now – watched her from the shadow of death, into the world of life; and though his eyes and the tone of his voice have spoken love often and often, he has so tutored his lips as to refrain from open speech. He knows the full measure of the shock which had struck her down, and in his great reverence and unfathomable love for her, he has restrained himself, fearing that a word might bring back that terrible past. But now, to-night, as he sees the faint color tinting the clear cheeks – sees the sunset light reflected in her bright eyes – his heart begins to beat with that throb which tells of long-suppressed passion clamoring for expression.
Maiden-like, she feels something of what is passing through his mind, and a great shyness falls upon her. She can almost hear her heart beat.
"Won't you sit down?" she says, at last, in that little, low, murmuring voice, which is such sweet music in his ears. And she moves her dress to make room for him.
He comes round, and sinks in the seat beside her.
"Can you not feel the breeze now?" he asks. "I wish I had brought a wrap with me, on the chance of your having forgotten it."
She looks round at him, with laughter in her eyes and on her lips.
"Did you not hear what uncle said?" She asks. "Don't you know that he was laughing, actually laughing at me? When will you begin to believe that I am well and strong and ridiculously robust? Don't you see that the people at the hotel are quite amused with your solicitude respecting my delicate state of health?"
"I don't care anything about the people at the hotel," he says, in that frank, simple way which speaks so plainly of his love. "I know that I don't mean you to catch cold if I can help it!"
"You – you are very good to me," she says, and there is a slight tremor in her voice.
He laughs his old short, curt laugh, softened in a singular way.
"Am I? You might say that a man was particularly 'good' because he showed some concern for the safety of a particularly precious stone!"
Her eyes droop, and, perhaps unconsciously, her arm draws a little nearer to him.
"You are good," she says, "but I am not a precious stone, by any means."
"You are all that is rare and precious to me, my darling," he says; "you are all the world to me. Stella! – " he stops, alarmed lest he should be alarming her, but his arm slides round her, and he ventures to draw her nearer to him.
It is the only embrace he has ventured to give her since that night when she fell into his arms at the cottage door at Carlyon, and he half fears that she will shrink from him in the new strange shyness that has fallen upon her; but she does not, instead she lets her head droop until it rests upon his breast, and the strong man's passion leaps full force and masterful in a moment.
"Stella!" he murmurs, his lips pressed to hers, which do not swerve, "may I speak? Will you let me? You will not be angry?"
She does not look angry; her eyes fixed on his have nothing but submissive love in them.
"I have waited, – it seems so long – because I was afraid to trouble you, but I may speak now, Stella?" and he draws her closer to him. "Will you be my wife – soon – soon?"
He waits, his handsome face eloquent in its entreaty and anxiety, and she leans back and looks up at him, then her gaze falters. A little quiver hovers on her lips, and the dark eyes droop.
Is it "Yes"? If so, he alone could have heard it.
"My poor darling!" he murmurs, and he takes her face in his hands and turns it up to him. "Oh, my darling, If you knew how I loved you – how anxiously I have waited! And it shall be soon, Stella! My little wife! My very own!"
"Yes!" she said, and, as in the old time, she raises herself in his arms and kisses him.
"And – and the countess, and all of them!" she murmurs, but with a little quaint smile.
He smiles calmly. "Not to-night, darling, do not let us talk of the outside world to-night. But see if 'all of them,' as you put it, are not exactly of one mind; one of them is," and he takes out a letter from his pocket.
"From Lilian!" she says, guessing instinctively.
Leycester nods.
"Yes, take it and read; you will find your name in every line. Stella, it was this letter that gave me courage to speak to you to-night. A woman knows a woman after all – you will read what she says. 'Are you still afraid, Ley,' she writes, 'ask her!' and I have asked. And now all the past will be buried and we shall be happy at last. At last, Stella, where – where shall it be?"
She is silent, but she lifts the letter to her lips and kisses it.