KENELM EYRLE’S LOVE.
Sir Ronald sang those words to himself as he rode back home, the face
of Lady Hermione before him all the way, her voice in his ears, the
glad sunshine, the whispering leaves, the fragrant flowers, all seemed
part of her.
“The poet’s ideal woman, she is, indeed,” he said to himself; “she has
brought every charming quality of her childhood into her beautiful
womanhood. She is arch, dainty, piquant, tender, earnest; there are
grand qualities in her. Sure as her eyes are stars and her lips roses,
so sure has she a magnificent and noble nature but half developed yet.”
The very glamor and madness of love was on him. It seemed to him that
every leaf on the trees muttered her sweet name as he passed.
“Hermione,” he repeated it. “Perhaps her beautiful, varied, lovely
nature is owing to her name, of all Shakespeare’s heroines to my mind
fairest and best.”
He hardly remembered the existence of Clarice Severn; she was but
Hermione’s friend. He did not even remember her delight at seeing him
again. The proud, passionate beauty of her face had not moved him.
“Strange that I should have loved Hermione best even as a child. I wish
she were a child now, that I could hold her in my arms and kiss her and
call her my own wife.”
It was love, not exactly at first sight, for he had cared for her even
when she was a child, but in the engrossing pursuits of traveling, in
the excitement caused by his uncle’s illness and death, the image of
the charming child had, in some measure, faded from his mind. When he
saw her again the old love revived, and took fresh shape. It was no
longer as a child, but as a woman, that he worshiped her.
When Sir Ronald reached home he found an old friend there awaiting him,
Kenelm Eyrle, of The Towers, with whom he had been both at Eton and
Oxford.
They had been almost like brothers together, coming from the same
neighborhood and knowing the same people, having the same friends,
and, in a great measure, the same tastes. One might have traveled far
on a summer’s day and not have found a fairer-looking, more thoroughly
admirable man than Kenelm Eyrle. He was three years older than his
friend, and had traveled much. He united in himself the polish of a
foreigner with the candor of an Englishman.
I do not know that he was so popular as Sir Ronald, for Kenelm had a
kind of half-haughty grace with him that produced great effect. People
at first sight considered him proud and haughty; they were apt to
take away with them a somewhat disagreeable and untruthful impression
of him; but if in the hour of distress you needed a friend, if in
adversity you needed help, if in trouble you wanted succor, then the
value of Kenelm Eyrle’s sterling character came to light. He was
always, as an old soldier expressed it, to the front. Others might
fail; he never did.
And now the two friends, who had parted youths, met as men, with a
hearty clasp of the hand, an Englishman’s only way of expressing
delight and emotion.
“I only returned from Egypt last week,” said Kenelm. “A sudden fancy
to see the pyramids took possession of me, and I went.”
Sir Ronald laughed.
“I hope such a fancy will never take possession of me,” he said. “I
shall not leave England again. I find no place like it.”
“The dark-eyed daughters of sunny Spain do not charm you, then, Ronald?”
His face flushed slightly.
“No,” he replied; “I like the women of our own land best.”
“You have seen Miss Severn. What do you think of her?”
“She is very beautiful--wonderfully improved,” replied Sir Ronald; and
the great pity was that they did not there and then trust each other.
Sir Ronald took the idea that Kenelm was in love with Lady Hermione;
Kenelm believed his friend to be in love with Miss Severn.
One word more, and our story can resume its course. There was yet
another link in the chain.
Clarice Severn had always preferred Sir Ronald to every one else in the
wide world. In her girlhood she had mistaken his kindness for love. Now
that she was a woman she vowed to herself that that love should by some
means or other be hers. She was no tragedy queen, no woman capable of
poisoning or stabbing or drowning a rival, should one appear; but in
a world-scheming kind of way she was ready to do anything that would
secure his love for herself.
On the morning that she met him at Lord Lorriston’s, Clarice admired
him as much as he, in his turn, admired Lady Hermione. She saw that Sir
Ronald was inclined to admire the earl’s daughter, and she laid many
little plans in her own mind to keep them apart.
“I am more beautiful than Hermione,” she thought to herself, in all
probability; “richer, quite as well born. Why should he prefer her to
me?”
And why? How many thousands of girls have asked themselves that
question? Why, when Clarice loved him, should his whole heart, soul,
mind and fancy be concentrated upon another?
Clarice Severn had many admirers, but the man who loved her with a
life’s love was Kenelm Eyrle. He had made her an offer of marriage and
she refused him; he had told her that living or dead he should be true
to her and care for her alone. She had never flirted or coquetted with
him; she was fond of him from old associations, because for years he
had been kind to her, but she had never deceived him in the least.
Now that Sir Ronald was coming home, she has begun to wonder how she
should best avoid Kenelm.
“I remember Ronald’s chivalrous sense of honor,” she said to herself.
“No matter how much he might care for me, if he thought Kenelm loved me
he would shun and avoid me.”
She did her best to bring Kenelm and Lady Hermione into each other’s
society. She arranged picnics, drives, walks; she exaggerated and
repeated every little complimentary speech they ever made about each
other, but it was all in vain. Kenelm Eyrle used to laugh in her face.
“Oh, Clarice, you think I shall learn to care for Hermione,” he would
say. “As well try to make the needle false to the pole. I care for one
face only, and that is yours; for one love only, and that is you.”
Nor was she more successful with Lady Hermione, who laughingly refused
to believe that Kenelm cared for her at all, and pulled marguerites
apart, leaf by leaf, the last one always ending, “He loves me not.”
“There was a man once who sold his shadow,” said Mr. Eyrle to her one
day. “That was a much easier feat, Clarice, than for you to send me
from you. You cannot, darling! Do not look at me and tell me you may
die. If you did I should always live where I could see your grave, and
I should love the grass upon it better than the fairest color that ever
bloomed on another face. Do you believe me?”
“Yes,” she replied, half sadly; “I do believe you, Kenelm. I--I wish it
were not so.”
And the beautiful girl had looked at him half regretfully.
“I almost wish I did; but you have explained the reason yourself. If
for every one there is what the Germans call an _alter ego_, another
soul--ah, Kenelm, I do not wish to hurt you--but you are not that to
me. It is not my fault.”
He looked long and earnestly at her.
“No,” he said; “God help me. It is not your fault, Clarice; but I shall
hope on until you tell me that you love some one else.”