IN TWO BOATS.
Early next morning our tourists remounted the car and jogged slowly
over that lovely stretch of country which lies between Glengariff and
Killarney.
Their places were as on the day before--Sir Victor in the possession
of Trix, Charley with Edith. But the baronet's gloom was gone--hope
filled his heart. She did _not_ love her cousin,--of that he had
convinced himself,--and one day he might call her wife.
Sir Victor Catheron was that _rara avis_, a modest young man. That
this American girl, penniless and pedigreeless, was beneath him, he
never thought--of his own rank and wealth, as motives to influence
her, he never once dreamed. Nothing base or mercenary could find a
place in so fair a creature; so noble and beautiful a face must surely
be emblematic of a still more noble and beautiful soul. Alas! for the
blindness of people in love.
It was a day of delight, a day of cloudless skies, sparkling sunshine,
fresh mountain breezes, sublime scenery. Wild, bleak valleys, frowning
Kerry rocks, roaring torrents, bare-footed, ragged children, pigs and
people beneath the same thatched roof, such squalor and utter poverty
as in their dreams they had never imagined.
"Good Heaven!" Edith said, with a shudder, "how can life be worth
living in such horrible poverty as this?"
"The bugbear of your life seems to be poverty, Edith," Charley
answered. "I daresay these people eat and sleep, fall in love, marry,
and are happy even here."
"My dear Mr. Stuart, what a sentimental speech, and sillier even than
it is sentimental. Marry and are happy! They marry no doubt, and the
pig lives in the corner, and every cabin swarms with children,
but--_happy_! Charley, I used to think you had one or two grains of
common-sense, at least--now I begin to doubt it."
"I begin to doubt it myself, since I have had the pleasure of knowing
Edith Darrell. I defy mortal man to keep common-sense, or
uncommon-sense, long in her company. Poverty and misery, in your
lexicon, mean the same thing."
"The same thing. There is no earthly evil that can equal poverty."
They reached Killarney late in the evening, and drove to the
"Victoria." The perfect weather still continued, the moon that had lit
their last night at sea, on the wane now, lifted its silver light over
the matchless Lakes of Killarney, lying like sheets of crystal light
beneath.
"Oh, how lovely!" Trix exclaimed. The rest stood silent. There is a
beauty so intense as to be beyond words of praise--so sweet, so solemn,
as to hush the very beating of our hearts. It was such beauty as this
they looked upon now.
They stood on the velvety sward--Sir Victor with Trixy on his arm,
Charley and Edith side by side. A glowing mass of soft, scarlet
drapery wrapped Miss Darrell, a coquettish hat, with a long, black
ostrich plume, set off her Spanish face and eyes. They had dined--and
when is moonlight half so poetical as after an excellent dinner?
"I see two or three boats," remarked Sir Victor. "I propose a row on
the lakes."
"Of all things," seconded Beatrix, "a sail on the Lakes of Killarney!
Edith, do you realize it? Let us go at once, Sir Victor."
"Will you come with me, Edith?" Charley asked, "or would you rather go
with them?"
She looked at him in surprise. How grave his face--how quiet his tone!
He had been like this all day, silent, preoccupied, grave.
"My very dear Charley, how polite we grow! how considerate of others'
feelings! Quite a new phase of your interesting character. I'll go
with you, certainly--Mr. Charles Stuart, in a state of lamblike
meekness, is a study worth contemplating."
He smiled slightly, and drew her hand within his arm.
"Come, then," he said, "let us have this last evening together; who
knows when we shall have another?"
Miss Darrell's brown eyes opened to their widest extent.
"'This last evening! Who knows when we shall have another!' Charley,
if you're meditating flight or suicide, say so at once--anything is
better than suspense. I once saw a picture of 'The Knight of the Woful
Countenance'--the K. of the W. C. looked exactly as you look now! If
you're thinking of strychnine, say so--no one shall oppose you. My
only regret is, that I shall have to wear black, and hideous is a mild
word to describe Edith Darrell in black."
"Hideous!" Charley repeated, "you! I wonder if you could possibly look
ugly in anything? I wonder if you know how pretty you are to-night in
that charming hat and that scarlet drapery?"
"Certainly I know, and charming I undoubtedly must look to wring a
word of praise from you. It's the first time in all your life, sir,
you ever paid me a compliment. Hitherto you have done nothing but find
fault with my looks and everything else."
"There is a time for everything," he answers, a little sadly--sadly!
and Charley Stuart! "The time for all that is past. Here is our boat.
You will steer, Edith? Yes--then I'll row."
The baronet and Trix were already several yards off, out upon the
shining water. Another party--a large boat containing half-a-dozen,
Captain Hammond among them, was farther off still. In this boat sat a
girl with a guitar; her sweet voice as she sang came romantically over
the lake, and the mountain echoes, taking it up, sang the refrain
enchantingly over and over again. Edith lifted up her face to the
starry sky, the moonlight bathing it in a glory.
"Oh, what a night!" she sighed. "What a bright, beautiful world it is,
and how perfectly happy one could be, if--"
"One had thirty thousand a year!" Charley suggested.
"Yes, exactly. Why can't life be all like this--moonlight, capital
dinners, lots of friends and new dresses, a nice boat, and--yes--I
will say it--somebody one likes very much for one's companion."
"Somebody one likes very much, Edith? I wonder sometimes if you like
me at all--if it is in you to like any one but yourself."
"Thanks! I like myself, certainly, and first best I will admit. After
that--"
"After that?" he repeats.
"I like _you_. No--keep quiet, Charley, please, you'll upset the boat.
Of course I like you--aren't you my cousin--haven't you been awfully
kind--don't I owe all this to you? Charley, I bless that night in the
snow--it has been the luckiest in my life."
"And the unluckiest of mine."
"Sir!"
"O Edith, let us speak for once--let us understand one another, and
then part forever, if we must. Only why need we part at all?"
She turns pale--she averts her face from him, and looks out over the
radiant water. Sooner or later she has known this must come--it has
come to-night.
"Why need we part at all?" He is leaning on his oars, and they are
floating rightly with the stream. "I don't need to tell you how I love
you; you know it well enough; and I think--I hope--you care for me. Be
true to yourself, Edith--you belong to me--come to me; be my wife."
There is passion in his tone, in his eyes, but his voice is quiet, and
he sits with the oars in his hands. Even in this supreme moment of his
life Mr. Stuart is true to his "principles," and will make no scene.
"You know I love you," he repeats, "as the man in the Cork theatre
said the other night: 'I'll go down on my knees if you like, but I can
love you just as well standing up.' Edith, speak to me. How can you
ever marry any one but me--but me, whose life you saved. My darling,
forget your cynicism--it is but lip-deep--you don't really mean it--and
say you will be my wife."
"Your wife!" She laughs, but her heart thrills as she says it. "Your
wife! It would be pleasant, Charley; but, like most of the pleasant
things of life, it can never be."
"Edith!"
"Charley, all this is nonsense, and you know it. We are cousins--we
are good friends and stanch comrades, and always will be, I hope; but
lovers--no, no, no!"
"And why?" he asks.
"Have I not told you already--told you over and over again? If you
don't despise me, and think me heartless and base, the fault has not
been my want of candor. My cynicisms I mean, every word. If you had
your father's wealth, the fortune he means to leave you, I would marry
you to-morrow, and be," her lips trembled a little, "the happiest girl
on earth."
"You don't care for me at all, then?" he calmly asks.
"Care for you! O Charley! can't you see? I am not _all_ selfish. I
care for you so much that I would sooner die than marry you. For you
a marriage with me means ruin--nothing else."
"My father is fond of me. I am his only son. He would relent."
"He never would," she answered firmly, "and you know it. Charley, the
day he spoke to you in Cork, I was behind the window-curtains reading.
I heard every word. My first impulse was to come out and confront
him--to throw back his favors and patronage, and demand to be sent
home. A horrid bad temper is numbered among the list of my failings.
But I did not. I heard your calm reply--the 'soft answer that turneth
away wrath,' and it fell like oil on my troubled spirit.
"'Don't lose your temper,' you said; 'Fred Darrell's daughter and I
won't marry, if that's what you mean.'
"I admire your prudence and truth. I took the lesson home, and--stayed
behind the curtains. And we will keep to that--you and Fred Darrell's
daughter will never marry."
"But, Edith, you know what I meant. Good Heavens! you don't for a
second suppose--"
"I don't for a second suppose anything but what is good and generous
of you, Charley. I know you would face your father like a--like a
'griffin rampant,' to quote Trix, and brave all consequences, if I
would let you. But I won't let you. You can't afford to defy your
father. I can't afford to marry a poor man."
"I am young--I am strong--I can work. I have my hands and my head, a
tolerable education, and many friends. We would not starve."
"We would not starve--perhaps," Edith says, and laughs again, rather
drearily. "We would only grub along, wanting everything that makes
life endurable, and be miserable beyond all telling before the first
year ended. We don't want to hate each other--we don't want to marry.
You couldn't work, Charley--you were never born for drudgery. And I--I
can't forget the training of my life even for you."
"You can't, indeed--you do your training credit," he answered bitterly.
"And so," she goes on, her face drooping, "don't be angry; you'll
thank me for this some day. Let it be all over and done with to-night,
and never be spoken of more. Oh, Charley, my brother, don't you see we
could not be happy together--don't you see it is better we should
part?"
"It shall be exactly as you wish. I am but a poor special pleader, and
your worldly wisdom is so clear, the dullest intellect might
comprehend it. You, throw me over without a pang, and you mean to
marry the baronet. Only--as you are not yet his exclusive property,
bought with a price--answer me this: You love me?"
Her head drooped lower, her eyes were full of passionate tears, her
heart full of passionate pain. Throw him over without a pang! In her
heart of hearts Edith Darrell knew what it cost her to be heartless
to-night.
"Answer me!" he said imperiously, his eyes kindling. "Answer me! That
much, at least, I claim as my right. Do you love me or do you not?"
And the answer comes very humbly and low.
"Charley! what need to ask? You know only too well--I do."
And then silence falls. He takes up the oars again--their soft dip,
and the singing of the girl in the distant boat, the only sounds.
White moonlight and black shadows, islands overrun with arbutus, that
"myrtle of Killarney," and frowning mountains on every hand. The words
of the girl's gay song come over the water:
"The time I've lost in wooing,
In watching and pursuing,
The light that lies
In woman's eyes
Has been my heart's undoing.
"Though wisdom oft has sought me,
I scorned the lore she brought me;
My only books
Were woman's looks,
And folly's all they've taught me."
"And folly's all they've taught me!" Charley says at length. "Come
what may, it is better that I should have spoken and you should have
answered. Come what may--though you marry Sir Victor to-morrow--I
would not have the past changed if I could."
"And you will not blame me too much--you will not quite despise me?"
she pleads, her voice broken, her face hidden in her hands. "I can't
help it, Charley. I would rather die than be poor."
He knows she is crying; her tears move him strangely. They are in the
shadow of Torc Mountain. He stops rowing for a moment, takes her hand,
and lifts it to his lips.
"I will love you all my life," is his answer.
* * * * *
This is how two of the water-party were enjoying themselves. A quarter
of a mile farther off, another interesting little scene was going on
in another boat.
Trixy had been rattling on volubly. It was one of Trixy's fixed ideas
that to entertain and fascinate anybody her tongue must go like a
windmill. Sir Victor sat and listened rather absently, replied rather
dreamily, and as if his mind were a hundred miles away. Miss Stuart
took no notice, but kept on all the harder, endeavoring to be
fascinating. But there is a limit even to the power of a woman's
tongue. That limit was reached; there came a lull and a pause.
"The time I've lost in wooing," began the English girl in the third
boat. The idea was suggestive; Trixy drew a deep breath, and made a
fresh spurt--this time on the subject of the late Thomas Moore and his
melodies. But the young baronet suddenly interposed.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Stuart," he began hastily, and in a somewhat
nervous voice; "but there is a subject very near to my heart on which
I should like to speak to you this evening."
Trix sat straight up in the stern of the boat, as if she had been
galvanized. Her heart gave one great ecstatic thump. "Oh," thought
Miss Stuart, "he's going to pop!" I grieve to relate it, but that was
the identical way the young lady thought it. "He's going to pop, as
sure as I live!"
There was a pause--unspeakably painful to Miss Stuart. "Yes, Sir
Victor," she faltered in her most dulcet and encouraging accents.
"I had made up my mind not to speak of it at all," went on Sir Victor,
looking embarrassed and rather at a loss for words, "until we reached
England. I don't wish to be premature. I--I dread a refusal so
unspeakably, that I almost fear to speak at all."
What was Miss Stuart to say to this? What could any well-trained young
lady say?
"Good gracious me!" (this is what she thought,) "why don't he speak
out, and not go beating about the bush in this ridiculous manner!
What's he afraid of? Refusal, indeed! Stuff and nonsense!"
"It is only of late," pursued Sir Victor Catheron, "that I have quite
realized my own feelings, and then when I saw the attention paid by
another, and received with evident pleasure, it was my jealousy first
taught me that I loved."
"He means Captain Hammond," thought Trixy; "he's jealous of him, as
sure as a gun. How lucky we met him at Macroom."
"And yet," again resumed the baronet, with a faint smile, "I don't
quite despair. I am sure, Miss Stuart, I have no real cause."
"No-o-o, I think not," faltered Miss Stuart.
"And when I address myself to your father and mother--as I shall very
soon--you think, Miss Stuart, _they_ will also favor my suit?"
"_They_ favor his suit?" thought Trix, "good Heaven above! was ever
earthly modesty like this young man's?" But aloud, still in the
trembling tones befitting the occasion, "I--think so--I _know_ so,
Sir Victor. It will be only too much honor, I'm sure."
"And--oh, Miss Stuart--Beatrix--if you will allow me to call you
so--you think that when I speak--when I ask--I will be accepted?"
"He's a fool!" thought Beatrix, with an inward burst. "A bashful,
ridiculous fool! Why, in the name of all that's namby-pamby, doesn't
he pop the question, like a man, and have done with it? Bashfulness is
all very well--nobody likes a little of it better than I do; but there
is no use running it into the ground."
"You are silent," pursued Sir Victor. "Miss Stuart, it is not possible
that I am too late, that there is a previous engagement?"
Miss Stuart straightened herself up, lifted her head, and smiled. She
smiled in a way that would have driven a lover straight out of his
senses.
"Call me Beatrix, Sir Victor; I like it best from my friends--from--from
_you_. No, there is no previous engagement, and" (archly, this) "I am
quite sure Sir Victor Catheron need never fear a refusal."
"Thanks." And precisely as another young gentleman was doing in the
shadow of the "Torc," Sir Victor did in the shadow of the "Eagle's
Nest." He lifted his fair companion's hand to his lips, and kissed it.
After that of course there was silence. Trixy's heart was full of
joy--pure, unadulterated joy, to bursting. Oh, to be out of this, and
able to tell pa and ma, and Charley, and Edith, and everybody! Lady
Catheron! "Beatrix--Lady Catheron!" No--I can't describe Trixy's
feelings. There are some joys too intense and too sacred for the
Queen's English. She shut her eyes and drifted along in that blessed
little boat in a speechless, ecstatic trance.
An hour later, and, as the clocks of Killarney were striking ten, Sir
Victor Catheron helped Miss Stuart out of the boat, and had led her
up--still silently--to the hotel. At the entrance he paused, and said
the only disagreeable thing he had uttered to-night. "One last favor,
Beatrix," taking her hand and gazing at her tenderly, "I must ask. Let
what has passed between us remain between us for a few days longer. I
had rather you did not speak of it even to your parents. My aunt, who
has been more than a mother to me, is ignorant still of my feelings--it
is her right that I inform her first. Only a few days more, and then
all the world may know."
"Very well, Sir Victor," Beatrix answered demurely; "as you please, of
course. I shan't speak to pa or ma. Goodnight, Sir Victor, good night!"
May I tell it, Miss Stuart actually gave the baronet's hand a little
squeeze? But were they not engaged lovers, or as good? and isn't it
permitted engaged lovers to squeeze each other's right hands? So they
parted. Sir Victor strolled away to smoke a cigar in the moonlight,
and Miss Stuart, with a beatified face, swept upstairs, her high-heeled
New York gaiters click-clicking over the ground. Lady Catheron, Lady
Catheron! Oh, what would all Fifth Avenue say to this?
Sleep was out of the question--it was open to debate whether she
would _ever_ sleep again. She would go and see Edith. Yes, Edith
and Charley had got home before her--she would go and see Edith.
She opened the door and went in with a swish of silk and patchouli.
The candles were unlit. Miss Darrell, still wearing her hat and
scarlet wrap, sat at the window contemplating the heavenly bodies.
"All in the dark, Dithy, and thinking by the 'sweet silver light of
the moon?' O Edie! isn't it just the heavenliest night?"
"Is that what you came in to say, Miss Stuart?"
"Don't be impatient, there's a dear! I wanted to tell you how happy I
am, and what a delicious--de-li-ci-ous," said Trix, dragging out the
sweet syllables, "sail I've had. O Edie! _how_ I've enjoyed myself!
Did you?"
"Immensely!" Edith answered, with brief bitterness, and something in
her tone made Trixy look at her more closely.
"Why, Edith, I do believe you've been crying!"
"Crying! Bosh! I never cry. I'm stupid--I'm sleepy--my head aches.
Excuse me, Trix, but I'm going to bed."
"Wait just one moment. O Edith," with a great burst, "I _can't_ keep
it! I'll die if I don't tell somebody. O Edith, Edith! wish me joy,
Sir Victor has proposed!"
"Trix!"
She could just say that one word--then she sat dumb.
"O yes, Edith--out in the boat to-night. O Edith! I'm so happy--I want
to jump--I want to dance--I feel wild with delight! Just think of
it--_think_ of it! Trixy Stuart will be My Lady Catheron!"
She turned of a dead white from brow to chin. She sat speechless with
the shock--looking at Trixy--unable to speak or move.
"He's most awfully and aggravatingly modest," pursued Beatrix.
"Couldn't say plump, like a man and brother, 'Trixy Stuart, will you
marry me?' but beat about the bush, and talked of being refused, and
fearing a rival, and speaking to ma and pa and Lady Helena when we got
to England. But perhaps that's the way the British aristocracy make
love. He asked me if there was any previous engagement, and any fear
of a refusal, and that rubbish. I don't see," exclaimed Trixy, growing
suddenly aggrieved, "_why_ he couldn't speak out like a hero, and be
done with it? He's had encouragement enough, goodness knows!"
Something ludicrous in the last words struck Edith--she burst out
laughing. But somehow the laugh sounded unnatural, and her lips felt
stiff and strange.
"You're as hoarse as a raven and as pale as a ghost," said Trix.
"That's what comes of sitting in draughts, and looking at the
moonshine. I'm awfully happy, Edith; and when I'm Lady Catheron, you
shall come and live with me always--always, you dear old darling, just
like a sister. And some day you'll be my sister in reality, and
Charley's wife."
She flung her arms around Edith's neck, and gave her a rapturous hug.
Edith Darrell unclasped her arms and pushed her away.
"I'm tired, Trix; I'm cold." She shivered from head to foot. "I want
to go to bed."
"But won't you say something, Dithy? Won't you wish me joy?"
"I--wish--you joy."
Her lips kept that strange feeling of stiffness--her face had lost
every trace of color. Oh, to be alone and free from Trix!
"You say it as if you didn't mean it," said Trix indignantly, getting
up and moving to the door. "You look half-frozen, and as white as a
sheet. I should advise you to shut the window and go to bed."
She was gone. Edith drew a long breath--a long, tired, heavy sigh. So!
that was over--and it was Trix, after all.
Trix, after all! How strangely it sounded--it stunned her. Trix, after
all and she had made sure it was to be herself. He had looked at her,
he had spoken to her, as he had never looked or spoken to Trix. His
color had risen like a girl's at her coming--she had felt his heart
bound as she leaned on his arm. And it was Trix, after all!
She laid her arm upon the window-sill, and her face down upon it,
feeling sick--sick--that I should have to write it!--with anger and
envy. She was Edith Darrell, the poor relation, still--and Trix was to
be Lady Catheron.
"A pretty heroine!" cries some, "gentle reader," looking angrily up;
"a nasty, envious, selfish creature. Not the sort, of a heroine
_we're_ used to." Ah! I know that--none better; but then pure and
perfect beings, who are ready to resign their lovers and husbands to
make other women happy, are to be found in--books, and nowhere else.
And thinking it over and putting yourself in her place--honestly,
now!--wouldn't you have been envious yourself?