‘FOR WELE OR WO, FOR CAROLE, OR FOR DAUNCE.’
Edgar went back to the ball-room with his heart so penetrated with
bliss, that the whole scene had an unreal look to him in its brightness
and gaiety, as if in the next instant dancers, and lights, and music,
and familiar faces might vanish altogether, and leave him suspended in
empty space, alone with his own deep delight. He was as near Berkeley’s
idea of the universe as a man so solid and substantial in his habits
could be. Thought and feeling to-night made up his world; all the
rest might be nothing but a spectral emanation from his own brain. He
lived, he thought, he felt; and his heart and brain were filled with
one idea, and that was Daphne. The ball-room without Daphne, albeit
the Caledonians were just being danced with considerable spirit, was
all falsehood and hollowness. He saw the spurious complexions, the
scanty draperies, all the artificial graces and meretricious charms,
as he had not seen them while she was there. That little leaven had
leavened the whole lump. His eye, gladdened by her presence, had seen
all things fair. But although he was inclined to look contemptuously
upon the crowd in which she was not, the gladness of his heart made him
good-naturedly disposed to all creation. He would have liked to leave
that gay and festive scene immediately; but finding his mother enjoying
herself very much in a snug corner with three other matrons, all in
after-supper spirits, he consented to wait till Mrs. Turchill had seen
one or two more dances.
‘I like to watch them, Edgar,’ she said, ‘though I feel very thankful
to Providence that we didn’t dance in the same style, or wear such
tight dresses, in my time. I remember reading that they wore scanty
skirts and hardly any bodices in the period of the French Revolution,
and that some of their fashionable women even went so far as to appear
with bare feet, which is almost too revolting to mention. All I can
say is, that I hope the dresses I see to-night are not the signs of an
approaching revolution in England; but I should hardly be surprised
if they were. Do go and get a nice partner and let me see you waltz,
Edgar. You’ve improved wonderfully since the Infirmary Ball last year.’
‘I’m glad you think so, mother, but I shan’t dance any more to-night. I
made no engagements for after supper, except with Daphne, and she has
gone home.’
‘Oh, the South Hill people have gone, have they? Well, if you’re not
going to dance any more perhaps we may as well be going too,’ said
Mrs. Turchill, perceiving that a good many of the county people were
slipping quietly away, and not wishing to be left with the masses.
So Edgar, very glad to escape, gave his mother his arm and assisted
her to the cloak-room, where she completely extinguished herself in a
valuable though somewhat old-fashioned set of sables, which covered her
from head to foot, and made her look like a walking haystack.
How full of happy fancies the young man’s mind was as they drove
through the lanes and cross-country roads to Hawksyard under that
brilliant sky, so peopled with worlds of light—‘gods, or the abodes of
gods;’ he cared to-night no more than Sardanapalus what those stars
might be—with now a view of distant hills, far away towards the famous
Wrekin, a cloudlike spot in the extreme distance, and now vivid gleams
of the nearer river, glittering under those glittering stars.
‘Isn’t it a delicious night, mother?’ he cried, and only a gentle
snore—a snore expressive of the blissfulness of repose after
exertion—breathed from the matronly mass of furred cloak and hood.
He was quite alone—glad to be alone—alone with his new sense of
happiness, and the starry night, and the image of his dear love.
She had spoken him fair; she meant to make him happier than man ever
was upon earth, since the earth could have produced but one Daphne.
She must have meant something by those delicious words, that sweet
spontaneous praise. Unsolicited she had taken his hand and pressed
it with affectionate warmth—she who had been so cold to him—she who
had never evinced one touch of tender feeling before; only a frank,
sisterly kindness, which was more galling than cruelty. And to-night
she had lifted up her eyes and looked at him—eyes so mournfully sweet,
so exquisitely beautiful.
‘My angel, that marble heart is melted at last,’ he said to himself.
‘Who would not be constant, for such a reward?’
He had only been in love with Daphne a little over six months, yet it
seemed to him now that in that half year lay the drama of his life.
All that went before had been only prologue. True that he had fancied
himself in love with Madoline—the lovely and gracious lady of his
youthful dreams—but this was but the false light that comes before
the dawn. He felt some touch of shame at having been so deceived
as to his own feelings. He remembered that afternoon in the meadows
between South Hill and Arden Rectory, when he had poured his woes
into Daphne’s sympathising ears; when she, his idol of to-night, his
idol for evermore, had seemed to him only a pretty school-girl in a
muslin frock. Was she the same Daphne? Was he the same Edgar? She who
now was a goddess in his sight. He who wondered that he could ever
have cared for any other woman. The disciple of Condillac, when he
sits himself down seriously to think out the question whether the
rose which he touches and smells is really an independent existence,
or only exists in relation to his own senses, was never in a more
bewildered condition than honest Edgar Turchill when he remembered how
devotedly, despairingly, undyingly, he had once loved—or fancied that
he loved—Madoline.
‘Romeo was the same,’ he told himself sheepishly, having taken to
reading Shakespeare of late, to curry favour with that fervid little
Shakespearian, Daphne; ‘madly in love with Rosaline at noon—over head
and ears in love with Juliet before midnight. And critics say that
Shakespeare knew the human heart.’
Sleep that night was impossible for the master of Hawksyard. Happily
there was but a brief remnant of the night left in which he need lie
tossing on his sleepless couch, staring at the brown oak panels, where
the reflection of the night-lamp glimmered like a dim starbeam in a
turbid pool. Cold wintry dawn came creeping over the hills, and at the
first streak of daylight he was up and in his icy bath, and then on
with his riding-clothes and away to the stable, where only one sleepy
underling was moving slowly about with a lantern, calling drowsily to
the horses to stand up and come out of a warm stable, in order to be
tied to a wall and have pails of water thrown at them in a cold yard.
To saddle Black Pearl with his own hands was but five minutes’ work,
and in less than five more he was clattering under the archway and off
to the nearest bit of open country, to take it out of the mare, who had
not done any work for a week, and was in a humour to take a good deal
out of her rider. Edgar this morning felt as if he could conquer the
wildest horse that ever was foaled—nay, the Prince of Darkness himself,
had he been called upon to wrestle with him under an equine guise.
A hard gallop over a broad expanse of flat common, where the winter
rime lay silver-white above the russet sward, quieted horse and rider;
and, after a long round by lane and wood, Edgar rode quietly back to
Hawksyard between ten and eleven, just in time to find his mother
seated at breakfast, and wondering at her own dissipation.
After this unusually late breakfast Mr. Turchill went to look at his
horses—a regular thing on a non-hunting morning. ‘I took it out of the
mare,’ he said, as Black Pearl stood reeking in her box, waiting to
cool down before she was groomed.
‘Indeed you have, sir,’ answered his head man—a faithful creature, but
not ceremonious with a master he adored. ‘You don’t mean hunting her
to-morrow, I suppose?’
‘Well, yes, I did, if the weather allows. Don’t you think she’ll be
fit?’
‘I think you’ve pretty well whacked her out for the next week to come.
She won’t touch her corn.’
‘Poor old woman!’ said Edgar, going into the box and fondling the
beautiful black head. ‘Did we go too fast, my girl? It was as much your
fault as mine, my beauty. I think we were both bewitched; but I must
take the nonsense out of you somehow, before you carry a lady.’
‘You didn’t think of putting a lady on that mare, did you, sir?’ asked
the groom.
‘Yes, I do. I think she’d carry a lady beautifully.’
‘So she would, sir; but she wouldn’t carry the same lady twice. There’d
be very little left of the lady when she’d done.’
‘Think so, Jarvey? Then we must find something better for the
lady—something as safe as a house, and as handsome as—as paint,’
concluded Edgar, whose mind was not richly stocked with poetical
similes. ‘If you hear of anything very perfect in the market you can
let me know.’
‘Yes, sir.’
It seemed early in the day to think of buying a horse for a wife who
was yet to be won; but, encouraged by those few words of Daphne’s,
Edgar saw all the future in so rosy a light that, this morning,
freshened and exhilarated by his long ride, he felt as secure of
happiness as if the wedding-bells were ringing their gay joy-peal over
the flat green fields and winding waters. He was longing to see Daphne
again, to win from her some confirmation of his hope; and now as he
moved about the poultry-yard and gardens he was counting the minutes
which must pass before he could with decency present himself at South
Hill.
It would not do for him to go there before luncheon. Everybody would
be tired. Afternoon tea-time would perhaps be the more agreeable hour.
It was a period of the day in which women always seemed to him more
friendly and amiable than at any other time—content to lay aside the
most enthralling book, or the newest passion in fancy-work, and to
abandon themselves graciously to the milder pleasures of society.
The afternoon was so fine that he went on foot to pay his visit, glad
to get rid of the time between luncheon and five o’clock in a leisurely
six-mile walk. It was a delicious walk by meadow, and copse, and
river-side, and although Edgar knew every inch of the way, he loved
nature in all her moods so well that the varying beauties of a frosty
winter afternoon were as welcome to his eye and spirit as the lush
loveliness of midsummer; and he was thinking of Daphne all the way,
picturing her smile of greeting, feeling the thrilling touch of her
hand, warm in his own.
Madoline, or Sir Vernon, would ask him to dinner, no doubt; and then,
some time during the evening, he would be able to get Daphne all to
himself in the conservatory, on the stairs, in the corridor. His heart
and mind were so full of purpose that he felt what he had to say could
be said briefly. He would ask her if she had not repented her cruelty
that night in the walnut walk; if she had not found out that true love,
even from a somewhat inferior kind of person, was worth having—a jewel
not to be flung under the feet of swine. And then, and then, she would
lift up those sweet eyes to his face—as she had done last night—and
he would clasp her unreproved in his arms, and know himself supremely
blest. Life could hold no more delight. Death might come that moment
and find him content to die.
It was dusk when he came to South Hill, a frosty twilight, with a
crimson glow of sunset low down in the gray sky, and happy robins
chirruping in the plantations, where the purple rhododendrons flowered
so luxuriantly in spring-time, and where scarlet berries of holly and
mountain ash enlivened the dull dark greenery of winter. The house
on the hill, with its many windows, some shining with firelight from
within, others reflecting the ruddier light in the sky, made a pleasant
picture after a six-mile tramp through a somewhat lonely landscape. It
looked a hospitable house, a house full of happy people, a house where
a man might find a temporary haven from the cares of life. To Edgar’s
eyes the firelight shining from within was like a welcome.
‘Miss Lawford at home?’ he inquired.
‘Not at home,’ answered the footman with a decisive air.
Now there is something much more crushing in the manner of a footman
when he tells you that his people are out than in that of the
homelier parlour-maid who gives the same information. The girl would
fain reconcile you to the blow; she sympathises with you in your
disappointment. Perhaps she offers you the somewhat futile consolation
implied in the fact that her mistress has only just stepped out, or
comforts you with the distant hope that your friend will be home to
dinner. She would be glad if she could to lessen your regret. But the
well-trained man-servant looks at you with the blank and stony gaze of
a blind destiny. His voice is doom. ‘Not at home,’ he says curtly; and
if, perchance, there be any expression in his face, it will be a veiled
scorn, as who should say, ‘Not at home—to you.’
But Edgar was in a mood not to be daunted by the most icy of menials—a
Warwickshire bumpkin two years ago, but steeped to the lips in the
languid insolence of May Fair to-day.
‘Is Miss Daphne Lawford at home?’ he asked.
The footman believed, with supreme indifference, as if the presence or
absence of a younger daughter who was not an heiress were a question
he could hardly stoop to contemplate, that Miss Daphne Lawford might
possibly be found upon the premises; and he further condescended to
impart the information that Miss Lawford had driven to the Abbey with
Mrs. Ferrers and Mr. Goring to see the improvements.
‘I’ll go and find her for myself,’ said Edgar, too eager to wait for
forms and ceremonies; ‘I daresay she is in the morning-room.’
He passed the servant, and went straight to the pretty room where he
had been so much at home for the last ten years. There were no lamps or
candles; Daphne was sitting alone in the firelight, in one of those low
roomy chairs which modern upholsterers delight in—sitting alone, with
neither book nor work, and Fluff, the Maltese terrier, curled up in her
lap.
Her eyelids were lowered, and Edgar approached her softly, thinking she
was asleep; but at the sound of his footfall she looked up, gently,
gravely, without any surprise at his coming.
‘I hope that you are better—quite well, in fact; that you have entirely
recovered from your fatigue last night,’ he began tenderly.
‘I am quite well,’ she answered almost angrily, and blushing crimson
with vexation. ‘Pray don’t make a fuss about it. Waltzing so long made
me giddy. That was all.’
Her snappish tone was a cruel change after her sweetness last night.
Edgar’s heart sank very low at this unexpected rebuff.
‘You are all alone,’ he said feebly.
‘Unless you count Fluff and the squirrel, yes. But they are very good
company,’ answered Daphne, brightening a little, and smiling at him
with that provoking kindness, that easy friendliness, which always
chilled his soul.
It was so hopelessly unlike the feeling he wished to awaken.
‘Madoline drove to the Abbey with Aunt Rhoda and Mr. Goring directly
after luncheon. The new hot-houses are finished, I believe, at last. I
have been horribly lazy. I only came down an hour ago.’
‘I am glad you were able to sleep,’ said Edgar. ‘It was more than I
could do.’
‘I suppose nobody ever does sleep much after a ball,’ answered Daphne.
‘The music goes on repeating itself over and over again in one’s brain,
and one goes spinning round in a perpetual imaginary waltz. I was
thinking all last night of Don Ramiro and Donna Clara.’
‘Friends of yours?’ inquired Edgar.
Daphne’s eyes sparkled at the question, but she did not laugh. She only
looked at him with a compassionate smile.
‘You have never read Heine?’
‘Never. Is it interesting?’
‘Heinrich Heine? He was a German poet, don’t you know. As great a poet,
almost, as Byron.’
‘Unhappily I don’t read German.’
‘Oh, but some of his poetry has been translated. The translations are
not much like the original, but still they are something.’
‘And who is Don— Ra——what’s-his-name?’ inquired Edgar, still very much
in the dark.
‘The hero of a ballad—an awful, ghastly, ghostly ballad, ever so much
ghastlier than Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene, and the worms
they crept in, and the worms they crept out, don’t you know. He is
dead, and she has jilted him, and married somebody else; and he has
promised her on the eve of her wedding that he will come to the wedding
feast: and he comes and waltzes with her, and she doesn’t know that
he is dead, and she reproaches him for wearing a black cloak at her
bridal, and she asks him why his cheeks are snow-white and his hands
ice-cold, and they go on whirling round all the time, the trumpets
blowing and the drums beating, and to all she says he gives the same
answer:
“Said I not that I would come?”
That awful ballad was in my mind all night, and when I did at last fall
asleep, I dreamt I was at the ball again, and instead of Stratford Town
Hall we were in an old Gothic palace at Toledo and—and—the person I was
dancing with was Don Ramiro. His white dead face looked down at me, and
all the people vanished, and we were dancing alone in the dark cold
hall.’
She shuddered at the recollection of her dream, clasping her hands
before her face, as if to shut out some hideous sight.
‘You ought not to read such poetry,’ said Edgar, deeply concerned. ‘How
can people let you have such books?’
‘Oh, there is no harm in the book. You know I adore poetry. Directly
I was able to write a German exercise, I got hold of Heine, and began
to spell out his verses. They are so sweet, so mournful, so full of a
patient despair.’
‘You have too much imagination,’ said Edgar. ‘You ought to read sober
solid prose.’
‘“Blair’s Lectures,” “Sturm’s Reflections,” “Locke on the
Understanding,”’ retorted Daphne, laughing. ‘No; I like books that take
me out of myself and into another world.’
‘But if they only take you into charnel-houses, among ghosts and dead
people, I don’t see the advantage of that.’
‘Don’t you? There are times when anything is better than one’s own
thoughts.’
‘Why should you shrink from thought?’ asked Edgar tenderly. ‘You can
have nothing painful to remember or think about; unless,’ he added,
seeing an opening, ‘you feel remorseful for having been so cruel to me.’
He had drawn his chair close to hers in the firelight—the ruddy,
comfortable light which folded them round like a rosy cloud. She sat
far back in her downy nest, almost buried in its soft depths, her eyes
gazing dreamily at the fire, her sunny hair glittering in the fitful
light. If she had been looking him full in the face, in broad day,
Edgar Turchill could hardly have been so bold.
‘I did feel very sorry, last night, when you were so good to me,’ she
said slowly.
‘Good to you! Why, I did nothing!’
‘You are so loyal and good. I saw it all last night, as if your heart
had suddenly been spread open before me like a book. I think I read you
plainly last night for the first time. You are faithful and true; a
gentleman to the core of your heart. All men ought to be like that: but
they are not.’
‘You can have had very little experience of their shortcomings,’ said
Edgar, his heart glowing at her praise. And then, emboldened, and yet
full of fear, he hastened to take advantage of her humour. ‘If you can
trust me; if you think me in the slightest measure worthy of these
sweet words, which might be a much better man’s crown of bliss, why
will you not make me completely happy? I love you so truly, so dearly,
that, if to have an honest man for your slave can help to make your
life pleasant, you had better take me. I know that I am not worthy of
you, that you are as high above me in intellect, and grace, and beauty,
as the stars are in their mystery and splendour; but a more brilliant
man might not be quite so ready to mould himself according to your
will, to sink his own identity in yours, to be your very slave, in
fact; to have no purpose except to obey you.’
‘Don’t!’ cried Daphne. ‘If you were my husband, I should like you to
make me obey. I am not such a fool as to want a slave.’
‘Let me be your husband; we can settle afterwards who shall obey,’
pleaded Edgar, leaning with folded arms upon the broad elbow of her
chair, trying to get as near her as her entrenched position would allow.
‘I like you very much. After Madoline there is no one I like better,’
faltered Daphne; ‘but I am not the least little bit in love with you. I
suppose it is wrong to be so candid; but I want you to know the truth.’
‘If you like me well enough to marry me, I am content.’
‘Really and truly? Content to accept liking instead of love; confidence
and frank straightforward friendship instead of sentiment or romance?’
‘I do not care a straw for romance. And to be liked and trusted——well,
that is something. So long as there is no one else you have ever liked
better——’
The face turned towards the fire quivered with the passing of a strong
emotion, but Edgar could only see the thick ripple a of golden hair
making a wavy line above the delicate ear, and the perfect outline of
the throat, rising out of its soft lace ruffle like the stem of a lily
from among its leaves.
‘Who else is there for me to like?’ she asked with a faint laugh.
‘Then, dearest, I would rather have your liking than any other woman’s
love: and it shall go hard with me if liking do not grow to love before
our lives are ended,’ said Edgar, clasping the hand that lay inert upon
Fluff’s silky back.
The Maltese resented the liberty by an ineffectual snap.
‘Please, don’t—don’t think it quite settled yet,’ cried Daphne, scared
by this hand-clasp, which seemed like taking possession of her. ‘You
must give me time to breathe—time to think. I want to be worthy of
you, if I can—if—if—I am ever to be your wife. I want to be loyal—and
honest—as you are.’
‘Only say that you will be my wife. I can trust you with the rest of my
fate.’
‘Give me a few days—a few hours, at least—to consider.’
‘But why not to-day? Let it be to-day,’ he pleaded passionately.
‘You must give me a little while,’ answered Daphne, smiling faintly at
his impatience, which seemed to her something childish, she not being
touched by the same passion, or inspired by the same hope, being, as it
were, outside the circle of his thoughts. ‘If—if—you are very anxious
to be answered—let it be to-day.’
‘Bless you, darling!’
‘But don’t be grateful in advance. The answer may be No.’
‘It must not. You would not break my heart a second time.’
‘Ah, then you contrived to mend it after the first breakage,’ retorted
Daphne, laughing with something of her old mirth. ‘Madoline broke it
first, and you patched it together and made quite a good job of it, and
then offered it to me. Well, if you really wish it, you shall have your
answer to-night. I must speak to Lina first.’
‘I know she will be on my side.’
‘Tremendously. You will dine here, of course. And I suppose you will go
away at about eleven o’clock. You know the window of my room?’
‘Know it!’ cried Edgar, who had lingered to gaze at that particular
casement under every condition of sky and temperature. ‘Know it? Did
Romeo know Juliet’s balcony?’
‘Well, then, at ten minutes past eleven look up at my window. If the
answer be No, the shutters will be shut, and all dark; if the answer be
Yes, the lamp shall be in the window.’
‘Oh, blessed light. I know the lamp will be there.’
‘And now no more of this nonsense,’ said Daphne imperatively. ‘I am
going to give you some tea.’
‘Put a dose of poison in it, and finish me off straight, if the lamp is
not going to shine in your window.’
‘Absurd man! Do you suppose I know any more than you what the answer is
to be? We are the sport of Fate.’
The door was opened gently, as if it had been the entrance to a sick
man’s chamber, and the well-drilled footman brought in a little folding
table, and then a tea-tray, an intensely new-fashioned old-fashioned
oval oaken tray, with a silver railing, and oriental cups and saucers
_à la Belinda_—everything strictly of the hoop-and-patch period. These
frivolities of tray and tea-things were one of Mr. Goring’s latest
gifts to his mistress.
Not another tender word would Daphne allow from her lover. She talked
of the people at the ball, asked for details about everybody—the girl
in the pink frock; the matron with hardly any frock at all; the hunting
men and squires of high degree. She kept Edgar so fully employed
answering her questions that he had no time to edge in an amorous
speech, though his whole being was breathing love.
Madoline and Gerald Goring came in and found them _tête-à-tête_ by the
fire. They had made a _détour_ on their way home, and had deposited
Mrs. Ferrers at the Rectory. It was the first time Gerald had seen
Daphne since the ball.
‘Better?’ he inquired, with a friendly nod.
‘Quite well, thanks. I have not been ill,’ she answered curtly.
Mr. Goring seated himself in a shadowy corner, remote from the little
group by the tea-table.
‘Shall I ring for more tea, or have you had some at the Abbey?’ asked
Daphne, with a businesslike air.
‘We had tea in Lady Geraldine’s room,’ answered Madoline. ‘I wish you
had been with us, Daphne. It is such a lovely room in the firelight.
The houses are all finished, and Cormack has filled three of them
already. Such lovely flowers! I can’t imagine where he has found them.’
‘Easy to do that kind of thing when one has a floating balance of
fifty thousand or so at one’s bankers,’ answered Edgar cheerily. ‘My
wife will have to put up with a few old orange-trees that have been at
Hawksyard for a century.’
The tone in which he uttered those two words ‘my wife,’ startled
Gerald out of his reverie. There was a world of suppressed delight and
triumph in the utterance.
‘He has been asking her to marry him, and she has relented, and
accepted him,’ he thought, hardly knowing whether to be glad or angry.
Was it not ever so much better that she should reward this faithful
fellow’s devotion, and marry, and be happy in the beaten track of
life? He had told himself once that she was a creature just a little
too bright and lovely for treading beaten tracks, a girl who ought to
be the heroine of some romantic history. Yet, are these heroines of
romance the happiest among women? Was the young woman who was sewn up
in a sack and drowned in the Bosphorus happy, though her fate inspired
one of the finest poems that ever was written? Was Sappho particularly
blest, or Hero, Heloise, or Juliet? Their fame was the fruit of
exceptional disaster, and not of exceptional joy. The Greek was wise
who said that the happiest she is the woman who has no history.
Sir Vernon Lawford came in while they were all talking of hot-houses,
and asked for a cup of tea, an unusual condescension on his part, and
which fluttered Daphne a little as she rang the bell for a fresh teapot.
‘Don’t trouble yourself, my dear. Give me anything you have there,’ he
said, more kindly than he was wont to speak. ‘So you were too tired to
show at luncheon. Your aunt says you danced too much.’
‘It was her first ball,’ pleaded Madoline.
‘Yes; the first, but not likely to be the last. She is launched now,
and will have plenty of invitations. A foolish friend of mine told me
that Daphne was the belle of the ball.’
‘She was,’ said Edgar sturdily. ‘I saw two old women standing on a
rout-seat to look at her.’
‘Is that conclusive?’ asked Sir Vernon good-humouredly, and with a
shrewd glance from Edgar to his fair-haired daughter.
‘I think people must have been demented if they wasted a look upon me
while Lina was in the room,’ said Daphne.
‘Oh, but every one knows Lina,’ answered her father, pleased at this
homage to his beloved elder daughter. ‘You are a novelty.’
He was proud of her success, in spite of himself; proud that she should
have burst upon his Warwickshire friends like a revelation of hitherto
unknown beauty—unknown, at least, since his second wife, in all the
witchery of her charms, had turned the heads of the county twenty years
ago. That beauty had been a fatal dower—fatal to her, fatal to him—and
he had often told himself that Daphne’s prettiness was a perilous
thing; to be looked at with the eye of fear and suspicion rather than
that of love. And yet he was pleased at her triumph, and inclined to be
kinder to her on account thereof.
They seemed a happy family-party at dinner that day. Madoline was full
of delight in the improvement of her future home—full of gratitude
to her betrothed for the largeness with which he had anticipated her
wishes. Edgar was in high spirits; Daphne all gaiety; Sir Vernon
unusually open in speech and manner. If Gerald was more silent than the
others, nobody noticed his reserve. He had been quiet all day, and when
Madoline had questioned him as to the cause, had owned to not being
particularly well.
Later in the evening they all adjourned to the billiard-room, with
the exception of Daphne, who pleaded a headache, and bade every one
good-night; but about an hour afterwards, upon the stroke of eleven,
Madoline, who had just gone up to her room, was startled by a knock
at her door, and then by the apparition of Daphne in her long white
dressing-gown.
‘My pet, I thought you went to bed an hour ago.’
‘No, dear. I had a headache, but I was not sleepy.’
‘My poor darling; you are so pale and heavy-eyed. Come to the fire.’
Madoline wanted to instal her in one of the cosy armchairs by the
hearth, but Daphne slipped to her favourite seat on the fleecy white
rug at her sister’s feet.
‘No, dear; like this,’ she said, looking up at Madoline with tearful
eyes; ‘at your feet—always at your feet; so much lower than you in all
things—so little worthy of your love.’
‘Daphne, it offends me to hear you talk like that. You are all that is
sweet and dear. You and I are equal in all things, except fortune: and
it shall not be my fault if we are not made equal in that.’
‘Fortune!’ echoed Daphne drearily. ‘Oh, if you but knew how little I
value that. It is your goodness I revere—your purity, your—’
She burst into tears, and sobbed passionately, with her face hidden on
her sister’s knee.
‘Daphne, what has happened—what has grieved you so? Tell me, darling;
trust me.’
‘It is nothing; mere foolishness of mine.’
‘You have something to tell me, I know.’
‘Yes,’ answered Daphne, drying her tears hastily and looking up with
a grave set face. ‘I have come to ask your advice. I mean to abide by
your decision, whichever way it may fall. Edgar wants me to marry him,
and I have promised him an answer to-night. Shall it be “Yes” or “No?”’
‘Yes, of course, my pet, if you love him.’
‘But I don’t; not the least atom. I have told him so in the very
plainest straightest words I could find. But he still wishes me to be
Mrs. Turchill; and he seems to think that when I have been married to
him twenty years or so I shall get really attached to him—as Mrs. John
Anderson, my Jo, did, don’t you know? She may have cared very little
for Mr. Anderson at the outset.’
‘Oh, Daphne,’ sighed Madoline, with a distressed look, ‘this is very
puzzling. I don’t know what to say. I like Edgar so much—I value him so
highly—and I should dearly like you to marry him.’
‘You would!’ cried Daphne decisively. ‘Then that settles it. I shall
marry him.’
‘But you don’t care for him.’
‘I care for you. I would do anything in this world—yes,’ with sudden
energy, ‘the most difficult thing, were it at the cost of my life—to
make you happy. Would it make you happy for me to marry Edgar?’
‘I believe it would.’
‘Then I’ll do it. Hark! there’s the outer door shutting,’ cried Daphne,
as the hall-door closed with a hollow reverberation. ‘Edgar will be
under my window in a minute or two. I’ll run and give him my answer.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘A lamp in my window is to signify Yes.’
‘Go and put the lamp there, darling. May it be a star for you both,
shining upon the beginning of a bright happy life!’
A few minutes later Edgar, standing in the shrubbery walk, with
his eyes fixed on Daphne’s casement, the owner of them unconscious
of winter’s cold, saw the bright spot of light stream out upon the
darkness, and knew that he was to be blest. He went home like a man in
a happy dream, scarce knowing by what paths he went; and it is a mercy
he did not walk into the Avon and incontinently drown himself.