AN IMPETUOUS AVOWAL.
"I love you!"
Leslie draws her hands from his grasp, and stands with averted face,
her bosom heaving, her breath coming with difficulty.
It is so sudden, so swift, this declaration, that she is overwhelmed.
The heart of a pure-minded, innocent girl is not unlike a fortress. It
withstands many an attack, and is able to repulse the besiegers until
the one comes who cries "Surrender!" and at the sound of his voice,
before some nameless magic in his presence, her strength goes, the
gate is thrown wide open, and the conqueror marches in.
Leslie had been calm and self-possessed enough when Ralph Duncombe was
pleading his passionate love, and was able to withstand his urgent
prayer, but to Yorke she can find nothing to say; she can only stand
with downcast eyes, her heart beating fast, and the gates beginning to
open!
He takes her hand, but again she draws it from him, and sinking on to
the trunk of a fallen tree, keeps her face, her eyes, from him.
"You are angry?" he says, his usually light and careless voice deep
and earnest enough now. "Well, I deserve that. I--I ought not to have
told you so suddenly. But----," he leans against a tree close beside
her, and looks down at her--"but--well, I couldn't help it. I was going
away this morning." His heart gives a little quiver. "I was going away
from Portmaris--and from you. I've been thinking of you all night, and
I'd decided that that was the best thing to do. It's sudden and--and
startling to you, Leslie--Miss Lisle--but it doesn't seem so to me. You
see, I suppose I have been getting to love you ever since I saw you on
the beach; that's not long ago, I dare say you'll say, but it seems a
long time to me--months, ages."
It is almost as if her own heart were speaking, it is just as she has
felt. She listens in a kind of amazement at the subtle sympathy between
them.
"I have thought of nothing else but you since I saw you. I know that
I shall be the happiest man in the world if--if you'll let me go
on loving you, and try to love me a little in return, and the most
wretched beggar in existence if--if you can't."
He waits a moment, for a strange sensation comes in his throat and
stops his speech, usually so fluent and so free. Then, she still
remaining silent, he goes on with the same grave, earnest tone, and
with the same half-eager, half-hesitating tremor in his voice.
"I've never seen any one like you; I know plenty of women, but none
like you, Leslie--I beg your pardon! You see, I always think of you as
Leslie. If I were to try and tell you how I feel, I should make a mess
of it. I can only say that I love you, I love you!"
With all his ignorance and lack of eloquence he is wise. "I love you,"
sums up all a woman wants or cares to hear.
"Of course," he goes on in a lower voice, daunted by her silence, her
motionless, downcast face, her hidden eyes. "Of course, I can't expect,
don't expect you to understand or--or to care for me even a little. You
haven't known me long enough or--or--anything about me. All I want is
a little hope. If you don't dislike me, right down dislike me, I'll be
glad enough, and I'll try and get you to love me a little. You can't
love me as I love you; that isn't to be thought of!"
"Is it not?" she thinks, but she says nothing.
Up above their heads a thrush is singing melodiously, and the liquid
notes seem to say quite plainly, "I love you." The sun, as it shines
between the leaves of the old oak, and touches Yorke's brave, and
eager face, is surely smiling, "He loves you!" The stream rippling
in a hollow behind them, as it runs laughing down to the sea, is as
certainly murmuring, "Love, love, love!"
"You are angry and--and offended," he says, after a pause, during which
she has been listening to this harmony of nature's voices. "Well, I
deserve it! I ought to have waited until you knew more of me--but
you see, as I said, I could not keep it. I had been thinking of you,
dreaming of you, all night, and then I saw you suddenly, and I felt
as if I must speak, happen what might. If I hadn't seen you, I dare
say I could have found heart enough to clear out, and--and hold my
tongue; but when I saw you with that little one in your arms, looking
so beautiful and so good, just the Leslie I love so dearly, the words
rushed out almost before I knew it--and--and----," he squares his
broad chest, and tilts his hat back with a gesture which, unlike most
gestures, fits him like a glove, "there it is!"
She does not lift her face, does not open the lips that are
trembling--if he could only see it; and he waits a moment before he
says, sadly, with the lover's despairing note audible through an
affected cheerfulness:
"I'm--I'm sorry that I've made a nuisance of myself, and--and worried
you. Don't be upset and think anything of it. I ought not to have
spoken. I couldn't help loving you, but I might have had the sense
to hold my tongue, and taken myself off without distressing you.
Don't--don't think any more of it. I'm not worthy of you, not worth a
thought from such as you, and--well, I'll say good-by, Miss Lisle."
He puts his hat straight, and braces himself together, so to speak, for
the parting; then he bends down and takes her hand, the hand that lies
in the lap of the pretty morning frock like a white flower.
She does not draw it away now, and as he holds it, the passion which
raises men to a level with the gods, takes possession of him.
"Leslie!" he says, almost hoarsely. "I can't let you go! I love you too
much. Look at me, speak to me! Unless you hate me, I must stay and try
and make you love me! I can't lose you! You are the only woman I have
ever seen or known that I wanted badly! And I do want you! I can't live
without you! I can't leave you, knowing that I may never see you again.
I can't. Look up, Leslie--dearest--dearest! Tell me straight, once and
for all--I will never come back to worry you--once and for all, will
you try and love me?"
He takes her other hand--he has got both now, and lifts her, actually
lifts her from the tree. She does not resist him, but lets her hands,
trembling, remain willing prisoners, and when her face is on a level
with his, she raises her eyes and looks at him.
There must be something in the dark gray eyes, something under the
shadow of the black lashes, which contains a potent magic; for at sight
of it his heart leaps and the blood rushes to his face, then leaves it
pale with the intensity of a supreme emotion, an incredible joy, an
amazed delight.
"Leslie!" breaks from him, "Leslie!"
Her eyes meet his, steadily, yet shyly, o'er-brimming with the secret
which a maiden keeps, hugs closely, while she can. A secret which she
is loth to part with, but which the loved one's eyes read so quickly.
"Leslie--do you--ah, dearest, dearest, you do love me!"
She tries to withstand him, to draw away from him, even now; but his
passion is too much for her, and the next instant she is folded in his
arms and her head lies on his breast.
Sing on happy thrush; but no music even your velvet throat can make
shall compare with the music ringing through these two human hearts. A
music which shall not die though these same hearts may be torn apart
and wrung with anguish; a music which for joy or pain, weal or woe,
shall echo through their lives till Death comes with its great silence.
But it is of life and love and joy, and not death or parting, that they
are thinking now.
He draws her arm within his as if she had belonged to him for years,
or rather as if he wanted to assure himself that she belonged to him,
and they pace slowly along the meadow in the shadow of the trees; her
hat swings on her hand, her eyes lift, heavy with love, to his face, as
he bends down to her his own, eloquent with the devotion and adoration
which fill his heart to overflowing. And yet through all the storm of
passion that tosses in his breast, he has sense enough to notice how
beautiful she is, how lightly and gracefully she walks by his side, how
delicious is the pose of the slender neck, the half averted face. This
flower that he has found and plucked to wear in his breast is no common
weed, but a rare blossom of which an emperor might be proud.
And she--well, she scarcely realizes yet what this is that has happened
to her; she only knows that a supreme happiness, a novel joy, so
intense as to be almost pain, is thrilling through her; that at one
moment she feels inclined to cry and the next to laugh. He is hers!
She is to be his wife!--his wife! Oh, what a singular dream! Shall she
wake soon? Wake to find that he has gone, and that all that is now
happening is but a phantasy, a vision that will fade and leave her
desolate.
She starts presently and looks up at him.
"Papa! He--will miss me--wonder where I have gone," she says. "How long
have we been here?" and she looks round as if she expected to see the
shades of night falling.
He laughs softly, the laugh of a man so completely happy that time has
ceased to be of consequence.
"I don't know. What does it matter? Your father will know you are all
right. He will think you have gone to the beach, that you are playing
with the children--how fond you are of children, dearest."
"Yes, yes," she murmurs.
"I never saw any one go on with them as you do. No wonder they love
you; but I suppose everything and every one does. By the way----." He
stops, and a faint shadow falls on his face. "I suppose there have been
ever so many fellows who've been in love with you?"
She makes a little gesture of indifference, as if the thought was too
trivial to be entertained or spoken of. What does it matter who loved
her, now?
"That--that letter and the ring?" he says, inquiringly.
She raises her clear eyes to his.
"Do you want me to tell you about them?" she says, in a low voice, as
if he had the right to search her soul, and she were wishing that he
should do so.
"No, no," he rejoins.
"But I will. He--he who wrote the letter and gave me the ring----."
His face grows cloudier.
"No, no tell me just this. He is nothing to you, you never cared----."
"Never," she says simply. "He has gone--I will tell you."
He presses her face to his to silence her, and a wave of remorse, of
self-reproach, sweeps over him.
"No, no, not a word. That is enough for me. You are mine now and always
and forever."
"Forever!" she breathes.
"And--and," he hurries on. "I have no right to ask you about the
past--the past that did not belong to me. Besides, if I did you would
have the right to ask me, and----." He stops suddenly, pale, and
trembled.
She looks up at him.
"I ask nothing," she says, in a low voice. "You shall tell me all you
want to tell me; just that, and no more."
"My darling, my dearest!" he says, but the trouble still rings in his
voice. Shall he tell her? Now is the time. She would forgive him, love
him none the less, if he told her all now. Shall he throw himself upon
her great love and mercy?
For a moment Yorke's guardian angel hovers near him and whispers, "Tell
her, trust her!" but he thrusts the angel aside and silences her.
"I am not worthy of you, dearest," he says; "I can tell you that much:
no man is worthy of you! But the best of us couldn't love you better
than I do, Leslie. Leslie! Do you know that when I heard your name it
seemed to me the prettiest I had ever heard, and as if it belonged to
some one I had loved for years? Have you any other name?"
She shakes her head.
"Isn't one enough?" she says, laughing, softly. "I am not big enough
for more than one of two syllables. Why, see, yours is only one, or
have you got more names? Tell me them? How strange; oh, how strange! I
do not know rightly what you are called, and yet----."
"Yet you love me, and promise to be my wife--why don't you say it right
out?" he says.
She shakes her head.
"But your names?"
"Oh," he says, carelessly. "There's a string of 'em. Yorke, Clarence,
Fitzhardinge Auchester--"
"And Rothbury," she says, with sudden gravity.
He starts slightly, and colors. This foolish whim of the duke's! What
is to be done about it now?
"Duke of Rothbury," she goes on, gravely, and with an almost troubled
smile. "I--I had forgotten----."
"Go on forgetting!" he says, drawing her arm closer.
"Yes! I--you will not be angry?"
"At nothing you can say, unless it were, 'I do not love you!'"
"I was going to say that I wish I could--that I wish you were not a
duke, and had no title of any kind!"
"So do I if you wish it," he says. "What does it matter?"
"But will it not matter?" she asks, her brows coming together. "Will
not the people--your people, all those great folks who belong to you,
your relations--be angry with me for--for----."
"Stooping to love such a worthless, useless creature as I? Why should
they?"
"I--I don't know. Yes I do. It is not girls like me, girls with no
title or anything, poor girls who know nothing of the fashionable
world, and have no relations above a plain 'Mr.' who ought to marry
noblemen. I know enough for that. They will be right to be angry
and--and disappointed!"
"Not they!" he says, lightly, but inwardly chafing against the bonds
which his promise to the duke has woven round him. "Let them mind their
own business!"
"But it is their business!" she says. "What a duke, a well-known
nobleman, does, must be everybody's business, and everybody will be
astonished and--sorry."
"Wait until they see you!" he says, confidently.
She looks up at him with eyes dewy with gratitude.
"Do you think everybody will see me with your eyes?" she says, in a low
voice.
"I think every man will envy me and wish himself in my place!" he
responds, promptly.
She shakes her head.
"No no! They will say when they hear of it that you have done wrong,
and say it still more decidedly when they see me. Why, I shall not know
what to do." She laughs half light-heartedly, half-anxiously. "I shall
not know how to begin, even, to play the great lady; I shall make all
sorts of mistakes, and call persons by their wrong names and titles.
Why, I did not know how to address you, your grace!" And she looks up
at him, with parted lips that smile but tremble a little.
He kisses them tenderly, reassuringly.
"You are only chaffing me," he says. "I can see that. You are the last
girl in the world to be frightened by anybody. You'd just take your
place in any set as naturally as if you'd known it and been in it all
your life. Why, do you think I don't know how proud you are?"
"Am I?" she says, self-questioningly. "Yes; I think I was
yesterday--until--until now. But now my pride seems to have melted into
thin air, and I am only anxious. Do you know what I should do if I were
to see that you were even the least bit ashamed of me?"
"What would you do? Something terrible?"
"I should die of shame for your sake!" she says, slowly.
"If you wait till you die of that complaint you'll live to be as old
as--what's his name, Methuselah!" and he laughs. "Why, I feel so proud
of winning you that I'm trying all I know not to swagger."
She gives his arm just the faintest pressure.
"Oh how foolish, how foolish!" she murmurs. "To be proud of me!"
"I dare say, but I am, you see! I know I've got one of the loveliest
women in the world for a wife, and I shall get beastly conceited, I
expect, and perfectly unendurable. It isn't every man who wins the love
of an angel."
"Ah, don't," she says. "An angel! They will not think me that, but only
a commonplace girl, who knows nothing, and is not fit to be--a duchess!"
She utters the word as if he did not like it, and he colors again.
"Tell me," she says, after a moment. "Tell me whom I shall have to fear
most. You see, I don't know even if you have a mother--a father. I
don't know anything!"
He is silent a moment, mentally execrating the chain of circumstances
which compel him, force him, to--yes, deceive her!
"They are both dead," he says, truthfully. "I haven't any near
relations--no brother and sister, I mean. I've an uncle, a Lord Eustace
and his two sons who's the next to the dukedom--he and they."
"After you?" she says. "I don't understand--how should I?"
"It does not matter," he says, hurriedly.
"Tell me about him then--them. Is he nice? Will he be very angry?"
He laughs.
"No, he's not very nice. He's the miser of the family--you see, and
you'll have cause to be ashamed of some of us, dearest! And he won't
care the snap of his fingers whom I marry, or what becomes of me."
This would sound singularly improbable to Leslie if she were worldly
wise; but she is not. As she says, she simply does not understand or
realize.
"I am sorry," she says. "But I don't think it is true."
"You think they are all so proud and fond of me?" he laughs, with a
faint tinge of bitterness. "Well, then I've other cousins----."
"Mr. Temple?" she says.
"Yes, Mr.--Mr. Temple," he mutters.
"And what will he say?" she asks, with a smile.
"He? Oh----." He stops. Yes, what will the duke say when he hears that
Leslie "has made love," as he will put it, to the supposed duke?
"Look here, dearest," he says, after a pause.
"Why should you or I care a brass farthing what any one thinks or says!
The only one I care about is your father."
"Ah, papa!" she murmurs; and she pictures to herself Mr. Lisle's
amazement and distress at what he will regard as a "fuss" and
disturbance of his placid "artistic" life.
"Are you afraid, Leslie?" Yorke asks.
"I--I don't know. I am all in all to him; and--I do not know what he
will say. He will not be pleased; I mean he will see more plainly than
I do that I am not fit to be your wife, that I am not suitable for a
duchess. And he will say it is so sudden--and it is, is it not? If he
had had a little time to--to get used to it----."
"Let us give him time," he says. "I was going to him now straight away
to ask him to give you to me; but if you think it better, if you wish
it, it shall be exactly as you think and wish, dearest. I will wait for
a little while, until he knows me better, and has got used to me. I
suppose it would startle and upset him if I were to go now."
"Oh, yes, yes!" she says. "You do not know how nervous he is, and how
easily upset."
"I think I can guess," he responds, thoughtfully.
As he has said, it was his intention to go straight to Mr. Lisle and
tell him to go to the duke and announce the engagement; but if Leslie
wishes the announcement delayed--well, it will be as well! Will it
not be better that he should clear up sundry matters in London before
the world hears of his betrothal? Besides, how can he go to Mr.
Lisle without confessing that he has been masquerading as a duke and
explaining why? Before he can do that he must get the duke to release
him from this foolish agreement, which, foolish as it is, still binds
him.
"What shall we do, dearest?" he asks, looking down at her.
"Let us wait," she murmurs. "Let us wait for a day or two, till my
father knows you better, and--and you have had time to think whether it
is well that you should stoop so low----." Her voice dies away. The mere
thought of losing him is an agony.
"Yes," he says, almost solemnly, "we will wait, but not for that
reason, Leslie. I don't want to think about anything of that kind.
As to stooping--well, you will learn some day how I love you, and
how infinitely above me you are. God grant you will not repent having
stooped to me, dearest! Yes, we will wait. After all, it may seem
sudden to them, and we will give them a little time to get used to it."
"And meanwhile," she says, with a smile, which is half a sigh of
regret, "I will try and realize that I am to be a great lady. It will
seem rather hard at first. There ought to be a school at which one
could learn how to behave. They used to teach girls how to enter a
room, and bow, and courtesy, so that they might not disgrace their
belongings."
He holds her at arm's length, and laughs at her, his eyes alight with
admiration, and love, and worship.
"I've seen you walk down the street and cross the beach, Leslie," he
says. "You don't want any lessons in deportment. I'm thinking you'll
give some of 'em points, and beat them easily. Don't you ever look in
the glass? Don't you know that you are the loveliest, sweetest woman
man ever went mad over?"
"Oh, hush, hush!" she says, putting her finger lightly on his lips,
and hiding her crimson face against his breast. "You must be blind!
But--oh, stay so, dearest, and never, never see me as I really am!"