LOVER'S QUARREL.
They were sitting together, under the great cedar tree, declared lovers;
perhaps not the less happy because some little doubt rested over their
future, so far as the young lady was concerned.
As for Hepworth Closs, he had made up his mind to expect difficulties,
and knew how to conquer them, if human ingenuity could do it. He loved
the bright young creature, and had resolved within himself that no
unreasonable opposition on the part of his former friend should prevent
him marrying her, while there was a possibility of conciliating his
bride, or working upon the love which he had always evinced for his
child.
Hepworth had learned, from conversation with both the ladies, that the
Lord Hope of the present day was a very different person from the rash,
headstrong, audacious young man whom he had almost threatened with
disgrace fourteen years back.
Then he was ready to cast wealth, rank, conscience, everything, aside
for the gratification of any wild passion that beset him. Now he held
the rank to which he was born sacred above all things; was careful, if
not covetous, of wealth, because it added power to rank; and was known
the whole country round as one of the proudest noblemen and most
punctilious magistrates in the three kingdoms.
This man's daughter he--Hepworth Closs--desired to make his wife. Nay,
in spite of fate, meant to make his wife, unless she, in her own self,
cast his love from her. Having settled upon this, he cast off all care,
and gave himself up to the supreme happiness of loving and being
beloved.
So, as the two sat under the cedar tree, that bland autumn day, Clara
thought, in her wilful little heart, that the man looked too confident
and happy. She had no idea of settling down into a commonplace
engagement, sanctioned or unsanctioned. What business had he to look so
supremely contented? Did he not know that girls sometimes changed their
minds?
In short, Lady Clara was in a wilful mood, and could be provoking enough
when the fit came on her. Just now she was embroidering diligently. The
golden stamens of a superb cactus glowed out stitch by stitch, as her
needle flew in and out of its great purplish and crimson leaves.
"Why don't you look up, Clara? I haven't seen your eyes these ten
minutes."
"Indeed! Well, I'm too busy. Pray hand me a thread of that yellow silk."
"Not if I can help it, ladybird. It's very tiresome sitting here, only
to watch your sharp little needle as it drops color into that great
flower. One never gets a sight of your full face."
"Then you don't like the profile?" said Clara, demurely, and her needle
flashed almost into Hepworth's eyes as he bent over her. "That is just
what I expected. It isn't three days since you first pretended to care
for me."
"Pretended! Clara?"
"That was the word," answered Clara, holding her work at arms' length,
and examining it, with her head on one side, like a bird eyeing the
cherry he longs to peck at. "Lovely, isn't it?"
"I have been where you could gather armsful of them from the wayside,"
answered Hepworth. "That is well enough, of course, for silk and
worsted; but you never can get that mixture of crimson, purple and
glittering steel, that makes the flower so regal in the tropics; then
the soft tassel of pale gold, streaming out from the heart, and thrown
into relief by this exquisite combination of colors. Ah, some day I will
show you what a cactus really is, Clara."
"Perhaps," said the provoking girl, searching her work-basket for the
silk she wanted. "Who knows?"
A flash of color flew across Hepworth's forehead. The handsome fellow
never had given himself much to the study of women, and even that pretty
creature had the power to annoy him, mature man as he was. She saw that
he was vexed, and rather liked it; for if the truth must be told, a more
natural coquette never lived than Lady Clara.
"Are you beginning to doubt, Clara?"
"Doubt? Oh! not at all. I don't honestly believe that there ever was a
more perfect flower than that. See how the colors melt into each other;
then the point of that long, prickly leaf coming out behind. I tell you,
Mr. Closs, it's perfect."
She was looking down at her work, and he could not detect all the
mischief that sparkled under her drooping lashes.
"Clara, what does this mean?"
The girl looked up at him so innocently.
"Mean? Why, it means a cactus-flower."
Hepworth Closs had never been a patient man, and the feelings which that
wild girl had awakened in his heart were all too earnest for such
trifling. He rose to leave her. Then she gave him a side glance, half
comic, half repentant.
"Are you going?"
"Yes."
"Dear me, I am so sorry, because I wanted to tell you something."
The girl spoke and acted like a penitent child. Hepworth sat down again,
but his face was clouded.
"You can do anything with mamma Rachael, and I want you to ask a great
favor for me."
"Why not ask yourself? My sister denies you nothing."
"But this is something peculiar, and she may think papa would not like
it. There is to be a new opera brought out in London, and such a lovely
girl is to make her first appearance in it, handsome as the morning, and
with a voice like ten thousand nightingales. Now, I do so want to hear
her on the first night."
"Well, that is easy."
"Yes, yes--if mamma Rachael would only think so. But papa is awful
particular, and she may be afraid to take me. But with you for an
escort, there can't really be any harm; so I want your help."
"But how did you know about this? I have not seen it in the journals."
"No, it hasn't got abroad yet. I will tell you all about it. When I was
a very, very little girl, my poor mother died in America, where she was
travelling among the Indians, I believe, with my father. Well, you see
how hard it was on papa to be left with a poor little girl among the
savages. I do not know just how it was; but when he married mamma
Rachael, ever so long after, of course she got an American nurse in New
York, who has been with me ever since. I call her my maid now, and won't
have any other, French or not--for she's good as gold, and loves me
dearly. You will believe that when I tell you our head gamekeeper wanted
to marry her--she loved him, too, but wouldn't leave me. Margaret left a
sister behind in New York that she was very fond of, and has been pining
to see for years. Just before you came she received a letter from
London, saying that her sister was there, travelling with some lady
connected with the stage, and asking Margaret to come and visit her. Of
course, Margaret went, and has been all this time on a long visit to her
relative, who came to Europe with the great prima donna, Olympia. It is
her adopted daughter that is coming out."
"Olympia. Yes, I saw her in America last year--a wonderfully beautiful
creature, in a certain way; but her style of acting is not exactly what
I should choose for you, Lady Clara, though her voice is wonderful."
"Oh, it isn't her I care about, but the young lady. Margaret says she is
lovely as an angel, with a heavenly voice, but that she is frightened to
death at coming on the stage, and begs and pleads with her mother not to
insist on it; but Olympia is determined. My heart quite aches for this
poor girl. She is about my age, Margaret says, and so beautiful--not a
bit like me. I dare say it's true, for I would give the world to be an
actress, and have the whole world go mad over my singing. By-the-way,
Mr. Closs, do you know that I can sing? Mamma Rachael often says, if I
were not a lady, I might go on the stage and beat half the prima donnas;
besides, she says, I am a natural actress, and that seems to displease
her."
"I think you are a natural actress," said Closs, with a tinge of
sarcasm, for this whole subject displeased him, he scarcely could have
told why.
"Now you mean to be unkind," said Clara, rising, with a warm flush in
her cheeks; "I will not ask another favor of you."
Clara gathered up her embroidery, and prepared to leave the sheltered
seat in which this conversation had been held. She certainly was not
acting now, for Closs saw that her eyes were full of tears.
"Clara," he said, holding out both hands; "Clara, forgive me."
She hesitated a minute, then set down her basket, and crept close to his
side, wiping the tears with one hand, while he clasped the other. Then
she snatched her hand away, and held it behind her.
"No--I won't forgive you."
"Not if I persuade Lady Hope to take you up to London for this
appearance?"
"Ah, then, perhaps."
"And go with you myself?"
"That will be splendid."
"That Olympia is a magnificent creature. I took supper with her once in
New York."
"You, Mr. Closs! You took supper with her?"
"She sang for us that night, divinely."
"And you admire her so much?"
"Very much."
"Mr. Closs, I do not think I care to go. There is no need of your asking
Lady Hope--I decline the whole thing."
"Still, I think we will go, Clara, if it is only to show you how much a
woman can be worshipped, and yet despised. Yes, yes, we will go and hear
Olympia sing."
But Clara was not to be so easily appeased. She gathered up her worsted
and embroidery, huddled them together in her work-basket and went away,
refusing to let Closs carry her basket, or even walk by her side.
While he stood watching the haughty little thing, a voice from the other
side of the cedar tree arrested him. He turned, and saw a face that had
once been familiar, but which he could not at the moment recognize.
The woman came forward with a startled look. She was evidently past
thirty, and had an air of independence, which he had never seen in an
English domestic.
She came closer, their eyes met, and he knew that it was Maggie Casey,
the chambermaid who had led him up to that death-chamber, the last time
he visited it. She had recognized him from the first.
"Mr. Hepworth," she said, in a low voice: "Mr. Hepworth!"
Closs had almost been prepared for this, and did not allow himself to be
taken by surprise.
"You have got half the name right at any rate," he said, quietly;
"Hepworth Closs, and you have it complete. You never could have heard it
in full, when you lived in New York, I fancy."
"Closs, Closs? No, I never heard that name given to you; but it once
belonged to Lady Hope, I remember."
"And of course, naturally belongs to her brother, my good girl," said
Closs, with a quiet smile.
"Her brother? Whose brother? Not the Lady that was--"
The girl broke off, and her voice died in a low whisper.
"No, no!" broke in the man, with sudden impatience; "that was a terrible
thing, which you and I will be all the happier in forgetting. The poor
woman who did it is suffering a hard penalty, if she is not in fact
dead."
"Yes, sir, yes; but how came her grandchild here? How came you there?"
"Hush!" said Hepworth, in a voice of command, that startled the woman;
"who gave you authority to ask such questions? What can you know about
the old woman's grandchild?"
"I know that the young lady who left you ten minutes ago was the little
girl they called her grandchild. I saw the coroner holding the poor
little thing up to look on the dead lady. I think that lady was her
mother."
"And have told her so, perhaps?"
"No; I never did, and I never will. She called the old woman, Yates,
grandmother; but I know better than that, for I know where her
grandchild is this very minute."
"You know her grandchild?"
"Yes, I do, and a prettier creature never lived."
"You know her, and will tell me?"
"Indeed, I will do nothing of the sort," answered Margaret, for she had
thrown off the jaunty abbreviation of her name. "There is something
about all this that puzzles me. People that I never expected to see
again keep crossing my path like ghosts, and somehow most of them have
something to do with that time. Why can't the whole thing rest? I'm sure
that poor old woman, Yates, has had her punishment, and I don't want to
talk about what I don't understand."
"You are wise," said Closs, whose face had lost all its cheerfulness;
"there is no good in even thinking of a dead past, and, as you say, that
poor old woman has her punishment. I am glad you have said nothing of
these things to my sister, or Lady Clara."
"Why should I?" said Margaret, with shrewd good sense: "what good would
it do? In fact, what do I know? I only hope no such trouble will ever
come to this house."
"Heaven forbid!" said Closs, fervently, and the two parted.