FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE.
“I have to see Dr. Netherbridge on business,” said Stella, while the
doctor’s wife peered out with disapproval at her matutinal visitor’s
fresh young face.
“Oh!” said Mrs. Netherbridge, dryly. “Are you ill?”
“No.”
“My husband, Dr. Netherbridge, is not accustomed to receive visitors
who do not come about illness at seven o’clock in the morning. He
isn’t down yet. If you want to see him, you had better call again.”
And with that, Dr. Netherbridge’s helpmeet was shutting the door in
Stella’s face, when a man’s voice from the floor above was heard
inquiring who the visitor was.
“I am Miss Cranstoun, from the Chase, Dr. Netherbridge, and I shall be
grateful if you can spare me a few minutes’ conversation.”
“Certainly--certainly. I will be down immediately. Letitia, show Miss
Cranstoun into the drawing-room.”
The top-spinning boy, finding time hanging heavily on his hands, had
followed Stella to the doctor’s house, and remained near, staring,
while the young lady, holding Black Bess’ bridle, stood parleying with
Mrs. Netherbridge by the open door. Stella caught sight of him now,
and addressed him, with one of her charming smiles.
“Are you clever enough to hold this horse for me while I go inside the
house for a few minutes?” she inquired. “You shall have sixpence for
your trouble.”
The boy nodded, and Stella followed Mrs. Netherbridge, who, with
frosty civility, showed her into a prim and old-maidish drawing-room,
where she was soon joined by Dr. Netherbridge.
“Forgive me for disturbing you so early,” Stella began. The little
doctor’s face inspired in her exactly the same feeling of confidence
and friendliness which her mother had felt toward him years ago.
“I have come,” she continued, “because I think you are the only person
who can and will tell me the truth on a most important point.
Yesterday, when you saw me for the first time, you said you recognized
me by my likeness to my mother. The present Lady Cranstoun and I are
totally dissimilar; you cannot, therefore, have meant _her_.”
Her brilliant dark-blue eyes were fixed searchingly, imploringly upon
his face. Dr. Netherbridge was too sincere not to change color and
show some slight sign of embarrassment.
“Family likenesses are unaccountable things,” he was beginning, when
she cut him short.
“There is no longer any need for concealment,” she said, eagerly.
“Last night Sir Philip Cranstoun told me I was born in a hovel, and
daughter of a gypsy. Are those things true?”
“You were certainly born in a small cottage on your father’s property
in this neighborhood,” the doctor answered; “and your mother was of
gypsy extraction.”
“Tell me all you can about her.”
“She must have been extremely beautiful when in good health. At the
time when I first met her, she was very little older than you are now,
but she was deliberately starving herself to death, and her beauty was
necessarily impaired.”
“How did you come to know her?” she asked, hanging upon his words in
deep anxiety. “Was she--was she allowed to come to the Chase?”
“Allowed to come? Surely. Lady Cranstoun lived there until a few weeks
before your birth, when, presumably after a quarrel with your father,
she fled from her home at night, and went back to her own people.”
Stella sank into a chair, her hands tightly clasped together. Dr.
Netherbridge saw the unmistakable relief in her face, and hastened to
remove any doubt which might still trouble her as to her position.
“Your mother’s maiden name was Clare Carewe. She herself told me her
history. As a very little girl, she ran away from the caravan in which
she was brought up, and her beauty having attracted the attention of a
very rich lady, who was Sir Philip Cranstoun’s sister, she was
educated and adopted by her; and from her house at Torquay, Sir Philip
secretly married her. Their first child died, and, so far as I could
judge, it was a most unhappy marriage. Finally, one night, when some
of your mother’s relations made their way into the plantation to speak
to her, they were savagely attacked by gamekeepers as poachers; one of
the gypsies, who was unhappily Lady Cranstoun’s father, was
accidentally shot, and her brother was sentenced to five years’
imprisonment, in spite of Sir Philip’s efforts to save him.”
“How terrible!” burst from Stella’s lips. “How she must have
suffered!”
“She did indeed. Very soon after your birth, I was sent for by a gypsy
lad, and on the following day I accompanied two nursewomen to your
father’s house. Your mother, meanwhile, had died, and the gypsies had
removed her body. I broke the news to Sir Philip, but as soon as he
heard that the child was a girl, he flew into a furious passion, and
ordered the women to take you away; nor could I do more than insist
that he should know the address in London to which you were taken and
provide some money for your maintenance. From that day I never met you
until yesterday. But I shall never forget your mother’s face, and at
first sight of you the likeness impressed me so strongly that I spoke
without thinking.”
“Thank you,” she said, after a pause, rising and giving him her hand.
“Thank you for your kindness to my mother, and to me also. I must be
getting back now.”
She paused a minute. Then she asked curiously:
“What were they like, these gypsy people, my mother’s relations?”
“Very big, handsome men, from what I remember, and evidently of very
strong family affections. There was an old woman, too, reputed to be a
witch. I believe she is still alive, and that the peasants about here
actually go to her to have illnesses or scars and moles charmed away.
I hope I have told you nothing to distress you,” he added, kindly.
“No; I am grateful to you,” she answered, rewarding him with a smile
as she passed from the room, almost colliding with Mrs. Netherbridge,
who was fluttering about in the passage outside suspiciously near the
keyhole.
Stella threw a shilling to the boy who held Black Bess, and with very
slight assistance from him, vaulted into the saddle and turned the
mare’s head in the direction where her master lay. Black Bess flew
like an arrow from a bow, and the journey occupied even less time than
in coming. The blood rushed over Stella’s face and neck as she saw,
standing in the courtyard of the inn, watching her ride up, the tall,
massive figure of Hilary Pritchard, with one arm in a sling, the sun
shining on his yellow curls.
Without a word, he helped her to dismount, and entered the coffee-room
with her. It was but a little after eight o’clock, and no one was
there except a servant, bustling in and out, laying the breakfast
things. To her Hilary turned, and begged her not to trouble, as he
should not want the meal for a long while yet, and the girl, with a
demure nod that was almost a wink, left the room, and contented
herself with peeping through the glass upper portion of the door.
Hilary led Stella to a seat and sat beside her, looking down into her
lowered face. Until now she had been self-possessed and buoyed up by a
determination to carry her mission through. Now she faltered and
trembled, hardly daring to look into her lover’s face.
“You will forgive me for borrowing Black Bess?” she said at last.
“Forgive you! What a request! She has never carried a lady before, and
never will again any other than you. But won’t your parents be angry
with you for coming off here like this? It was my friend the hostler
who woke me up to tell me that Miss Cranstoun had borrowed my mare to
go into Grayling, and that at the pace she was going she would soon be
back. I got up at once--there is nothing the matter with me to-day.”
“You look certainly better than you did yesterday night,” she said,
and then stopped short, blushing deeply.
“I know about your goodness in coming to see how I was,” he said,
lifting her hand to his lips. “Our good genius the hostler told me of
it this morning. But, my dear girl, are you wise in coming this
morning? It is all so hopeless. Look at the difference between us. It
was the height of presumption on my part to dare to fall in love with
you; and, indeed, nothing was farther from my intention.”
“I loved you the moment you laid your hand on Zephyr’s bridle and
looked up into my face,” she murmured, nestling closer to him, and
letting her hand steal into his. “I really wanted to obey you as soon
as you spoke to me, but I suppose a spirit of perversity urged me the
other way. When you were wounded, I was in an agony of anxiety and
remorse; otherwise, I should never have dared to bring you to the
house. But all that about our not being equals is done away with now.
It is true that I am Sir Philip Cranstoun’s daughter, but my mother
was his first wife, and she was nothing more than a beautiful gypsy,
brought up on charity by a rich lady. So you see,” she added,
triumphantly, “it is all the other way round, and _I_ am not good
enough for _you_!”
He was silent for a few moments.
“Have you told Lord Carthew what you have told me?” he asked at
length.
“No. But I mean to. He will soon take back his offer, then.”
“His offer?” he repeated, in surprise. “Has he made you an offer,
then?”
“Yes. Didn’t you know? Oh, of course, I have never had an opportunity
of telling you. Lord Carthew asked me to marry him while we were out
riding yesterday morning.”
“What did you say?”
“I--oh--I said I would think about it, or something of that sort.”
“You did not say ‘No’ outright?”--in a disappointed tone. “Stella, was
all that before, or _after_, I woke up and saw you?”
“Oh, how can you ask me? It was _before_, of course?”
“And you were ready to marry Carthew at the time?”
“Don’t--don’t--be hard on me, and don’t look so stern and cold. How
can I make you understand? You had said things against me that I had
overheard. I believed, I really and truly believed, that you couldn’t
bear me. And it made me mad with myself to find that I couldn’t keep
you out of my thoughts for one minute. It seemed so dreadful--so
forward and unwomanly--to be always thinking of a man who cared
nothing for me. Then, too, you must remember that I longed with all my
heart to escape from the Chase. You don’t know what our lives have
been, poor mamma’s and mine, ever since I can remember. Lord Carthew
knows----”
“Oh, Lord Carthew knows?” interrupting her, jealously. “You could
confide in _him_, but not in me.”
She looked at him very sweetly for a moment, and then burst out
laughing.
“Dear Hilary,” she said, “remember that it is only two days since we
first met, and that this is the first chance of a real talk we have
had together. Whereas Lord Carthew and I----”
“You have had many interesting talks, I have no doubt,” he said,
morosely, his handsome face clouding. “He is far cleverer than I, and
can talk well on any subject. The wonder is that you don’t prefer him
to me.”
“Isn’t it?” she assented, demurely, rubbing her cheeks softly against
his coat-sleeve. “But there is no accounting for tastes, and--it may
be my mad gypsy origin--but I decidedly prefer _you_.”
He raised one of her little hands to his lips and covered the
finger-tips with kisses, smiling in spite of himself at the coquetry
which had come so naturally to her in so short a time.
“Go on with what you were saying about the sadness of your life,” he
said. “I want to know everything that you told Carthew.”
Stella had had hardly any experience of men; but she was a true woman,
and her keen feminine instinct taught her that this man she loved was
of a totally different temperament from the man who loved her.
Hilary’s mind was of a direct, practical, common-sense order. In all
his life he had thought but little of love for women, and now that the
feeling overmastered him, he was inclined to question its authority,
as well as to fly into paroxysms of jealousy without sufficient
reason. He was not in the least conceited, and rather overrated Lord
Carthew’s higher mental endowments, together with his eloquent tongue,
high rank and wealth, when pitted against his own dower from nature of
bone, and muscle, and manly beauty. He knew that Carthew loved Stella,
and it would have seemed very natural to him that his passion should
be returned. Above all, he did not wish to act toward his friend in a
dishonorable and disloyal manner. Against his will, his blood leaped
in his veins, as the young girl leaned toward him, lifting her
beautiful, innocent eyes, with the light of love shining in them, to
his face. Against his will, he clasped his arm about her waist, and
felt that the world before him, with all its hopes, was well lost for
the sake of a kiss from her soft, red lips.
“I can’t talk to you if you stop me like that,” Stella remonstrated,
with a happy little laugh; “and do, pray, remember that that door is
partly of glass, and people can see through it. Another moment and
they will be having breakfast at the Chase. If my father finds out
where I have been, he will half kill me.”
“Is he so bad as that?” he asked, wonderingly.
“He is, indeed. You haven’t even seen him, and you cannot, therefore,
understand. Hilary, he _hates_ me, and until this morning I have never
been able to understand why, or why, try as I might to like him, and
to feel dutifully toward him, a cold shudder of dislike creeps over me
when he comes near. Last night he grew furiously angry with me because
I refused to marry Lord Carthew, and he told me then for the first
time, with the idea, I suppose, of humiliating me, that my dear mamma
was not my mother at all, but that I was really the daughter of an
ignorant gypsy woman. It seemed too strange to be believed, but it was
all true. This morning at six o’clock I climbed out of my bedroom
window, as he had locked me into my room, and came here to borrow a
horse with which to find out Dr. Netherbridge at Grayling. He
confirmed Sir Philip’s words. The first Lady Cranstoun was a lovely
gypsy girl, brought up on charity by Sir Philip’s sister, with whom he
fell in love, and made a most wretched marriage. Not many days before
I was born, my mother, heart-broken at the treatment she received, ran
back to her own people, and among them, in a tumble-down little
cottage not far from here, I was born, eighteen and a half years ago.
So now you understand,” she concluded, triumphantly, “that so far from
being a great lady, I come from the class of people who are driven
from town to town by the police, branded as thieves and poachers, with
the band of every respectable man and woman against them.”
She spoke bitterly, and something in her words and tone shocked Hilary
a little. He had none of the love for the original and the unexpected
in woman which had probably come to Lord Carthew from his brilliant
little American mother. Hilary’s mother was the pretty and graceful
daughter of a country clergyman, who had in her youth revelled in
lawn-tennis and crewel-work, and whose ideas on all subjects were
equally orthodox and limited. Hilary was fond of his mother, and she
had heretofore supplied his ideal of femininity; he had not yet had
time to adjust his aspirations toward a different standard.
“Do you quite realize what you are doing, I wonder?” he asked her
suddenly, turning and taking her face into his hand while he
scrutinized it closely, with a half-angry, half-hungry look. “What you
are doing, I mean, in throwing over a man like Carthew for the sake of
a man like me? He is heir to an earldom; his father is well off, and
in a very brilliant position; his mother is extremely wealthy; he
distinguished himself so greatly at college that people expect great
things of him. While, as for me, the higher education was wasted on
me; I was never good for anything but athletics. I am leaving England
to rough it in Canada, trying to make a farm pay. I can keep a wife,
certainly, upon what I have, but not such a wife as you.”
“Don’t you want me?” she asked, simply, looking him straight in the
eyes.
“Want you? Good heavens! I would give my soul for you! But I won’t be
played with. By some magic of your own you have made me love you, and
you must take the consequences. Stella, I love you, and if you plight
me your troth now, I _must_ marry you. If you now, in the face of what
I have put before you and what you know, still choose to cling to me,
I swear to you that I will marry no woman but you, and that you shall
marry no man but me!”
She looked into his face, flushed and excited as it was, his brown
eyes shining like her own.
“On my honor, I swear,” she said, solemnly, “that whatever pressure is
brought to bear upon me, I will marry no one but you, Hilary
Pritchard.”
Their lips met in that interminably long kiss of first love, given and
returned, the kiss which comes once in a lifetime to a chosen few, and
to many comes never at all--a kiss in which time and space are
obliterated, and in which two spirits seem to meet in regions far
beyond this work-a-day world of ours.
Moved out of herself, in an ecstasy of emotion, perhaps at the
happiest, certainly at the first perfectly happy moment of her life,
Stella felt rather than heard a harsh, low-pitched voice, asking for
Miss Cranstoun in the hall immediately outside the coffee-room.
She turned instinctively toward Hilary for protection as she
whispered:
“It is my father!”
He flung his arm round her and held her to him a moment. The next, the
door was burst open, and Sir Philip Cranstoun stood before them, white
and quivering with rage. For a moment he stared at the pair before
him, taking in every detail of Hilary’s appearance. Then he addressed
his daughter in tones of withering scorn.
“May I ask who is this person with whom you appear to be on such
extremely familiar terms?”
Stella slipped her hand within Hilary’s and gained strength from the
contact.
“It is Mr. Hilary Pritchard,” she said, “the gentleman I have promised
to marry.”