"I have a great disadvantage," he said, "since I do not know how best to
please an English lady when I pay her my addresses. Yet I am bold, for
I come to-day to ask you to forget I am a stranger, and to help me to
become truly an Englishman. Of all ladies, you are to me the most
beautiful, the most beloved. Can you grant my wish--my prayer? Can I
have the happiness to please you--Virginia?"
Virginia's heart beat so fast that she could not speak, the large eyes
flashed up for a moment into his, then dropped as the tears dimmed them.
"Ah! do I make you shed tears?" cried Alvar. "How shall I tell you how
I will be your slave? _Mi dona, mi reyna_!--nay, I must find English
words to say you are the queen of my life!" and he knelt on one knee
beside her, and took her hand.
Perhaps it was all the more enchanting that it was unlike a modern
English girl's ideal of a likely lover.
"Please don't do that," said Virginia, controlling her emotion with a
great effort. "I want to say something, if you would sit down."
With ready tact Alvar rose at once, and drew a chair near her.
"It is my privilege to listen," he said.
"It is that I am afraid I must be very different from the girls whom you
have known. My ways, my thoughts, you might not like them; you might
wish me to be different from myself--or I might not understand you," she
added very timidly.
"In asking a lady to be my wife, I think of no other woman," said Alvar.
"In my eyes you are all that is charming."
"This would not have occurred to me," said Virginia; "but since I came
home I have not been very happy, because it is so hard to accommodate
oneself to people who think of everything differently from oneself. If
that was so with us--with you--"
"My thoughts shall be your thoughts," said Alvar. "You shall teach me
to be what you wish--what my brother is. I know well," and he rose to
his feet again and stood before her, "I am not clever, I do not know how
to do those things the English admire; my face, my speech, is strange.
Is that my fault; is it my fault that my father has hated and shunned
his son? Miss Seyton, I can but offer you myself. If I displease
you--"
Alvar paused. Virginia had been pleading against herself, and before
his powerful attraction her misgivings melted away. She rose too, and
came a step towards him.
"I will trust you," she said; and Alvar, more moved than he could
himself have anticipated, poured forth a torrent of loving words and
vows to be, and to do all she could wish. But he did not know, he did
not understand, what she asked of him, or what he promised.
"But we must be our _true_ selves to each other," she said afterwards,
as they stood together, when he had won her to tell him that his foreign
face and tones were not displeasing to her--not at all. No, she did not
wish that he was more like his brothers.
"I will be always your true lover and your slave," said Alvar, kissing
the hand that she had laid on his. "And now must I not present myself
to your father? He will not, I hope, think the foreigner too
presuming."
"There is papa," said Virginia, glancing out of the window; "he is
walking on the terrace. Look, you can go out by this glass door." And
leaving Alvar to encounter this far from formidable interview, she ran
away up to the little oak room in search of her cousin.
There were tears in Ruth's great velvety eyes as she turned to meet her,
but she was smiling, too, and even while she held out her arms to
Virginia, she thought--"What, jealous of the smooth course of _her_
little childish love! I would not give up one atom of what I feel for
all the easy consent and prosperity in the world." But none the less
was she interested and sympathetic as she listened to the outpourings of
Virginia's first excitement, and to the recital of feelings that were
like, and yet unlike, her own.
"You see, Ruthie, I could not help caring about him, he was so gentle
and kind, and he never seemed angry with the others for misunderstanding
him. But then I thought that our lives had been so wide apart that he
_might_ be quite different from what he seemed; and one has always
heard, too, that foreigners pay compliments, and don't mean what they
say."
"I should have despised you, Queenie, if you had thrown over the man you
love because he was half a foreigner."
"Oh, no, not for _that_. But I didn't--I hadn't begun to--like him very
much _then_, you see, Ruth. And if he had not been good--"
"And how have you satisfied yourself that he is what you call `good'
now?" said Ruth curiously.
"Of course," replied Virginia, "it is not as if he had been brought up
in England. He cannot have the same notions. But then he cannot talk
enough of Cherry's goodness, and seemed so grateful because he was kind
to him. Cherry _is_ a very good, kind sort of fellow of course; but
don't you think there is something beautiful in the humility that makes
so much of a little kindness, and recognises good qualities so
ungrudgingly?"
Ruth laughed a little. Perhaps she thought Alvar's "bonny black eyes"
had something to do with the force of these arguments.
"Since you love each other," she said, "that is a proof that you are
intended for each other. What does it matter `what he is like,' as you
say?"
"But `what he is like' made all the difference in the first instance, I
suppose?" said Virginia.
"Perhaps," said Ruth, with a little shrug. "But now you have once
chosen, Virginia, _nothing_ ought to make you change, not if he were
ever so wicked--not if he were a murderer!"
"Ruth," exclaimed Virginia, "how can you be so absurd! A murderer!"
"A murderer, a gambler, or a--well, I'm not quite sure about a thief,"
said Ruth, cooling down a little; and then the girls both laughed, and
Virginia sank into a dreamy silence. She did not even yet know the
story of her mother's married life, or she could not have laughed at the
thought of a gambler for her husband; but she did know enough of her
family history to give definiteness to the natural desire of a
high-principled girl to find perfection in her lover. Virginia's nature
inclined to hero-worship; reverence was a necessary part to her of a
happy love. She had thought often to herself that she would never marry
a man of whose good principles she was not satisfied. And since Alvar's
offer had not entirely taken her by surprise--his gallantry having been
tenderer than he knew--she had considered the point with an effort at
impartiality, and had justified the conclusion to which her heart
pointed by Alvar's admiration for the brother, whom, in Virginia's
opinion, he idealised considerably. Of course, if she had chosen
wisely, it was instinct, and not knowledge, that led her aright. She
knew absolutely nothing of Alvar; and just as from insufficient grounds
she now gave him credit for many virtues, it might be that, when the
differing natures jarred, a little failure, a little defectiveness,
might make her judgment cruelly hard, at whatever cost to her own
happiness.
It might come to a struggle between the girl's ideal and the woman's
love--and in such a struggle compromises and forgivenesses and new
knowledge on either side would lead to final comprehension and peace.
But it comes sometimes to a fight between heart and soul, between the
higher self and the love that seems stronger than self. To this
extremity Alvar Lester was not likely to drive any woman; but impatience
and inexperience sometimes mistake the one contest for the other.
Virginia would have something to bear, he much to learn, before mutual
criticism ceased, as they became indeed part of each other's existence,
before Virginia's flutter of startled joy subsided into unquestioning
content.
"You talk, Ruthie," exclaimed Virginia, after a little more confidential
chatter, "but you cannot make up your own mind. You cannot decide
whether you will have poor Captain Lester."
"Hark! hark!" cried Ruth, "they are calling you! Every one is not so
lucky as you." And as Virginia obeyed her father's summons, and she was
left alone, she pulled out the locket that contained Rupert's portrait,
kissed it passionately, and exclaimed, half-aloud,--
"Not make up my mind! Do _I_ doubt and hesitate? What do I care `what
you are like,' my darling? I love you with all my heart and soul! I
love you--I love you! What would life be without love?"
The congratulations of Virginia's family on the occasion were
characteristic. Her father had but a nominal consent to give. Virginia
was of age, and besides, the trustees of her fortune could not of course
take any exception to such an engagement; but he rejoiced exceedingly,
as at the first good and happy thing that had happened in his family for
long enough.
"And so you have got a husband, though you are a Seyton?" said her aunt.
"Well, Roland's a long way off, and I don't suppose Dick and Harry can
create scandal enough to put an end to it before next October."
"But you'll give me a kiss, auntie?" said Virginia; and in the warmth of
her embrace she tried to show the sympathy for that long past wrong
which she never would have dared to utter.
Miss Seyton was silent for a moment, and patted her soft hair; then
suddenly, with an expression indescribably _malin_ and elfish, she said,
"And all those poor little neglected children, whose souls you were
going to save, what will become of them when you are married? Do you
think your uncle will teach them himself?"
"And I shouldn't be surprised if he did, Aunt Julia," interposed Ruth
briskly, "now Virginia has shown him the way." Parson Seyton's remark
was somewhat to the same effect, though made in a more genial spirit.
"Well, my lass, so you've caught the Frenchman? Why didn't you set your
cap at Cherry? He's worth a dozen of him."
"Cherry didn't set his cap at me, uncle," said Virginia, laughing.
"And all the little lads and lasses? Ha, ha, I must set about learning
the catechism myself. What's to be done, my queen?--what's to be done?
Send away Monsieur Alvar; we can't do without you." Virginia had not
forgotten the children; but as her marriage was not to take place till
the late autumn, there was no immediate question of her leaving them.
Mr Lester thought that it would be far better that Alvar should see
something of England before his marriage, and Alvar acquiesced readily
in his father's wish; and he very shortly left Oakby for London, after
receiving congratulations from his brothers, in which astonishment was
the prevailing ingredient, though Cheriton softened his surprise with
many expressions of satisfaction.
He was glad that Alvar had chosen an English wife; still more glad that
he had no disposition to choose Ruth.