AN INTERESTING TETE-A-TETE.
"Where have you been, Leone?" asks Farmer Noel.
She had begun a new life. It seemed years since she had left him, while
he sat in the same place, smoking the same pipe, probably thinking the
same thoughts. She came in with the brightness and light of the moon in
her face; dew-drops lay on her dark hair, her beautiful face was flushed
with the wind, so fair, so gracious, so royal, so brilliant. He looked
at her in helpless surprise.
"Where have you been?" he repeated.
She looked at him with a sweet, dreamy smile.
"I have been to the mill-stream." And she added in a lower tone, "I have
been to heaven."
It had been heaven to her--this one hour spent with one refined by
nature and by habit--a gentleman, a man of taste and education. Her
uncle wondered that evening at the light that came on her face, at the
cheerful sound of her voice, the smile that came over her lips. She was
usually so restless and discontented.
It was a break in her life. She wanted something to interrupt the
monotony, and now it had come. She had seen and spoken to not only a
very handsome and distinguished man, but a lord, the son of an earl. He
had admired her, said her face was like a poem; and the words brought a
sweet, musing smile to her face.
When the sun shone in her room the next morning she awoke with a sense
of something new and beautiful in her life; it was a pleasure to hear
the birds sing; a pleasure to bathe in the clear, cold, fresh water; a
pleasure to breathe the sweet, fragrant morning air. There was a half
wonder as to whether she could see him again.
The poetical, dramatic instinct of the girl was all awake; she tried to
make herself as pretty as she could. She put on a dress of pale pink--a
plain print, it is true, but the beautiful head and face rose from it as
a flower from its leaves.
She brushed back the rippling hair and placed a crimson rose in its
depths. Then she smiled at herself. Was it likely she should see him?
What should bring the great son of an earl to the little farm at
Rashleigh? But the blue and white pigeons, the little chickens--all
fared well that morning. Leone was content.
In the afternoon Farmer Noel wanted her to go down to the hay-fields.
The men were busy with the newly mown hay, and he wished her to take
some messages about the stacking of it. She looked like a picture of
summer as she walked through the green, shady lane, a red rose in her
hair and one in her breast, a cluster of woodbine in her hand. She saw
nothing of Lord Chandos, yet she thought of nothing else; every tree,
every field, every lane she passed she expected to see him; but of
course he was not there; and her heart beat fast as she saw him--he was
crossing what people called the Brook Meadow--and she met him face to
face.
They had met for the first time on a moonlight night; they met for the
second time on a sultry summer afternoon, when the whole world seemed
full of love. The birds were singing of love in the trees, the
butterflies were making love to the flowers, the wind was whispering of
love to the trees, the sun was kissing the earth that lay silent in its
embrace.
"Leone," he cried; and then he flushed crimson. "I beg your pardon," he
said, "but I ought to say Miss Noel; but I have been thinking of you all
night as Leone. I did not think of it before I spoke."
She laughed at the long apology.
"Say it all over again," she said. "Begin at 'Good-afternoon, Miss
Noel.'"
He repeated it after her, then added:
"I think my kind and good fortune sent me this way. I was longing for
some one to speak to--and of all happiness to meet you; but perhaps you
are busy."
"No; I have done all that I had to do. I am never busy," she added, with
regal calm.
He smiled again.
"No; I could not fancy you busy," he said, "any more than I could fancy
the goddess Juno in a hurry. To some fair women there belongs by
birthright a calm that is almost divine."
"My calm covers a storm," she replied. "My life has been brief and dull;
neither my heart nor my soul has really lived; but I feel in myself a
capability of power that sometimes frightens me."
He did not doubt it as he looked at the beautiful, passionate face; it
was even more lovely in the gleam of the sunlight than in the soft,
sweet light of the moon.
"You cannot stand in the sunshine," he said. "If you are not busy will
you go with me through Leigh Woods? I shall remember the way this time."
She hesitated one half minute, and he saw it; he raised his hat and
stood bare-headed, waiting for her answer.
"Yes, I will go," she said at length. "Why should I not?"
They went together to Leigh Woods, where the great oak-trees made a
pleasant shade, and the ground was a mass of wild flowers; great streams
of bluebells that stirred so gently in the wind, violets that hid
themselves under their leaves, cowslips like little tips of gold, wild
strawberry blossoms that looked like snow-flakes.
How fair it was. The sunbeams fell through the great green boughs,
throwing long shadows on the grass. It was a beautiful, silent world,
all perfume and light. The poetry of it touched both of them.
Lord Chandos was the first to speak; he had been watching the proud,
beautiful face of Leone; and suddenly he said:
"You look out of place here, Miss Noel; I can hardly tell you why."
"That is what my uncle says; he is always asking me if I cannot make
myself more like the girls of Rashleigh."
"I hope you never will," he cried, warmly.
"I do not know how," she said. "I must always be what God and nature
made me."
"They made you fair enough," he whispered.
And then he owned to himself that she was not like other girls.
She drew back proudly, swiftly; no smile came to her lips, no laughing
light to her eyes.
"Speak to me as you would to one in your own rank, my lord," she said,
haughtily. "Though fate has made me a farmer's niece, nature made
me----"
"A queen," he interrupted.
And she was satisfied with the acknowledgment. They sat down under one
of the great oak-trees, a great carpet of bluebells under their feet.
Leone looked thoughtful; she gathered some sprays of bluebells and held
them in her hands, her white fingers toying with the little flowers,
then she spoke:
"I know," she said, "that no lady--for instance, in your own rank of
life--would walk through this wood with you on a summer's afternoon."
A laugh came over his handsome, happy young face.
"I do not know. I am inclined to think the opposite."
"I do not understand what you would call etiquette; but I am quite sure
you would never ask one."
"I am not sure. If I had met one in what you are pleased to call my rank
of life last night by the mill-stream, looking as you looked, I am quite
sure that I should ask her to walk with me and talk with me at any
time."
"I should like to see your world," she said. "I know the world of the
poor and the middle class, but I do not know yours."
"You will know some day," he said, quietly. "Do not be angry with me if
I tell you that in all my world I have never seen one like you. Do not
be angry, I am not flattering you, I am saying just what I think."
"Why do you think that some day I may see your world?" she asked.
"Because with your face you are sure to marry well," he replied.
"I shall marry where I love," said Leone.
"And you may love where you will," he replied; "no man will ever resist
you."
"I would rather you did not speak to me in that fashion," she said,
gravely; and Lord Chandos found, that seated by this farmer's niece, in
the wood full of bluebells, he was compelled to be more circumspect than
if he were speaking to some countess-elect in a Mayfair drawing-room.
Leone, when she had set him quite straight in his place, as she called
it; when she had taught him that he was to treat her with as much, if
not more courtesy, than he bestowed on those of his own rank; Leone,
when she had done all this, felt quite at home with him. She had never
had an opportunity for exercising her natural talent for conversation;
her uncle was quite incapable of following or understanding her; the
girls who were her companions lost themselves in trying to follow her
flights of fancy.
But now there was some one who understood her; talk as she would, he
appreciated it; he knew her quotations; no matter how original her ideas
were he understood and followed them; it was the first time she had ever
had the opportunity of talking to an educated gentleman.
How she enjoyed it; his wit seemed waiting on hers, and seemed to catch
fire from it; his eyes caught fire from hers. She described her simple
life and its homely surroundings in words that burned.
It was in her simple, sweet, pathetic description of stolid Uncle Robert
that she excelled herself; she painted his character with the most
graphic touches.
"Do you know, Miss Noel," said Lord Chandos at last, "that you are a
genius, that you have a talent truly marvelous: that you can describe a
character or a place better than I have heard any one else?"
"No, I did not know anything about it," she said. "I am so accustomed to
being looked upon as something not to be understood, admired, or
imitated that I can hardly believe that I am clever. Uncle Robert is
really a character; nowadays men and women are very much alike; but he
stands out in bold relief, quite by himself, the slowest, the most
stolid of men, yet with a great heart full of love."
It was so pleasant to talk to him and see his handsome young face full
of admiration; to startle him by showing her talent, so pleasant that
the whole of the summer afternoon had passed before she thought of the
time; and he was equally confused, for Dr. Hervey's dinner-hour was
over. And yet they both agreed it was the most pleasant hour they had
ever spent.