JOY FOR DRUSILLA.
Joy trickled in her tears, joy filled the sob
That rocked her heart till almost heard to throb;
And paradise was breathing in the sigh
Of nature’s child, in nature’s ecstacy.—BYRON.
While Alexander Lyon paced the floor of his study, trembling with shame
and anger, Drusilla sat in her little chamber, smiling with delight. The
same event that thrilled his soul with a sense of wrong and
mortification, filled her heart with joy. She was not to go back to
school. She was to stay home with him; and this was all sufficient to
her happiness. She neither knew, nor guessed, nor cared why she had been
declined, as a pupil by Mrs. Irving. She had a vague impression that the
school was full, or the staff of teachers incomplete; but she was too
entirely absorbed in the happy thought of being at home for good with
him, to speculate about the reason why she was so.
During the last twelve months, while in attendance upon her late
benefactress, and also while with her lost mother, Drusilla had had the
entire charge of Alexander’s wardrobe. To keep it in perfect order was
with her a labor of love. So, on this morning, when she was so
unexpectedly and joyfully reprieved from banishment, she sat down with
her little work-basket beside her, and occupied the hours in darning
small holes in silk and lambs-wool socks; and so neatly she darned, that
it would have required sharp eyes to have found out where the recent
rents had been. She worked and sang at her work, for her heart was
overflowing with happiness.
Ah! even her mother was for the moment forgotten.
Late in the afternoon she was sent for to join Mr. Lyon at dinner.
She merely smoothed her hair and put on a fresh collar and pair of
cuffs, and then went down into the dining-room.
There had always been kindness and gentleness in his manner to her. But
now, as he arose to meet her, there was a tenderness in his expression
that she had never seen before.
“My poor child! You are smiling; I really believe you are glad to be
back at home,” he said, as he placed her in her chair.
“Indeed I am, very glad,” answered Drusilla, truthfully.
“Well, then—so am I,” said Alexander, smiling on her; and then adding,
in a lower tone—“It is fate; who can resist it?”
He helped her to the most delicate morsels, from each dish. And to
please him she tried to eat a little; but, in truth, joy as surely takes
appetite away as grief does; and added to her joy in being at home was a
strange, vague presentiment of something about to happen, something
imminent and momentous. All the spiritual atmosphere around her seemed
as full of this, as the air before a storm is full of electricity.
Alexander ate no more than she did. And neither spoke often or much.
At length, when they had lingered some time over the dessert, he arose
and said:
“My child, are you too shy to withdraw, and are you waiting for me to
dismiss you? Go, then, into the drawing-room, and presently I will come
to you there, and you shall give me a cup of tea,” and so saying he
opened the door, and held it open for her to pass out.
“Mr. Alexander—you _are_ glad I am not going back to school, are you
not?” she inquired, doubtfully and anxiously, as she paused in the
doorway and raised her beautiful beseeching eyes to his face.
“Yes! by all my hopes of happiness, I am glad!” he suddenly exclaimed;
and then he added—(“I am always glad to have my fate decided for me,”)
and then again laughing lightly, he said—“There, go away, little love! I
will join you presently.”
Drusilla went to the drawing-room; but she did not sit down; she walked
slowly up and down the room, strangely perturbed by that presentiment,
of which she could not yet know whether it was to be one of joy or great
woe.
Alexander remained in the dining-room alone; not drinking wine, or
smoking cigars; neither of these small vices affected him. He was simply
trying to commune with himself; a difficult task to one so unused to
self-examination as Mr. Lyon. He had always loved his beautiful pet,
more than he had ever loved any other living creature; and always, as he
supposed, in a fatherly, or elder brotherly sort of fashion. But lately
this pure love had burst forth into a fierce passion. From the hour in
which he had soothed her sorrow, and hushed her to rest on his bosom,
and gazed on her sleeping beauty, he had longed to make that beauty his
own forever. True, from the very first, he had combatted this passion.
From the very moment that he found himself contemplating the beautiful
girl with other feelings than became the brotherly love he professed for
her, he put her from his arms, and tried to put her from his heart, and
made arrangements for placing her entirely out of his sight and out of
his way, in the safe refuge of her school. How and why she was rejected
by the principal of that school, the reader already knows.
The very fact of rejection threw her back upon his hands, while the
cause of it appealed to his manhood in her behalf.
When sinners can find no other excuse for sin, they plead fate.
Alexander, sitting and gazing dreamily into the lights and shadows of
his glowing coal fire, said to himself that fate had set itself against
his union with Anna, and fate had thrown Drusilla into his arms. He
recalled the facts that his wedding with Anna, twice fixed, had been
twice stopped by the hand of death; that Anna did not love him, and did
love Richard Hammond: that he himself did not love Anna, but loved
Drusilla; that Drusilla loved him, and had most innocently suffered
reproach and injury on his account; that he had striven to overcome his
passion for the beautiful orphan, even to the extent of taking her to
school with the full intention of leaving her there, but that she had
been repulsed and thrown back upon his charge.
He had decided that in all this was the irresistible hand of fate. This
and many other arguments he used to persuade himself that it would be
altogether right for him to give up his cousin Anna, and take to his
bosom the beautiful orphan Drusilla.
And this would have been right, if he had only chosen to do it in the
right way. If he had written to his betrothed and told _her_ all that he
told _himself_, there is no doubt that she would have gladly released
him from his engagement; and then if he had asked Drusilla to be his
wife, and had married her in the face of all the world, his course would
have been upright and honorable. But he did none of these things.
Alexander Lyon was proud, and he wished to satisfy his love, without
sacrificing his pride, so he resolved that his marriage with the late
housekeeper’s daughter, should be a strictly secret one.
Having made up his mind, he arose and walked into the drawing-room,
where he found Drusilla still slowly pacing up and down the floor.
“Why, you restless little creature! One would think your thoughts had
been as perturbed as my own. Come, now! tell me truly, what you are
dreaming of,” said Alexander, possessing himself of her hand, and
drawing her down by his side on the sofa.
Something in his look and manner, something that she had never seen
there before, startled and almost terrified her. For the first time, in
all their association, a swift, hot blush swept over her face and neck,
crimsoning both, so that Alexander, already half mad with love, thought
her more beautiful and bewitching than ever.
“Come now! of what were you thinking?” he persisted.
“Indeed, I do not know; I have forgotten;—of nothing, I believe; I was
not thinking; I was—trembling,” faltered the girl.
“Trembling, my darling? Why should you tremble? No evil shall come near
you while I live,” said Alexander, tenderly. “Come, tell me why you were
trembling?”
“It was—but you will laugh at me?”
“No, indeed, my sweet——”
“It was with a sort of presentiment that oppressed me,” said Drusilla,
in a tone deepened with awe.
“A humming-bird is said to tremble before an approaching storm, though
no cloud be in the sky. You are as sensitive as a humming-bird, my pet;
do you tremble at an approaching storm?” smiled Alexander, gently
caressing her.
For the first time in her life, she shrank from him, yet immediately
wondered at and reproached herself for doing so.
“Come, my love, is it a good or evil presentiment that overawes you so?”
“I do not know even _that_ much. I have felt all the evening as if
something was hanging over me—I cannot tell what. Yes, the air is full
of electricity,” she said, and stopped and shuddered.
“My child, superstitious people say that dreams and presentiments go by
contraries. If you dream of a death, it is a sign of a wedding; if you
have a foreboding of evil, it is a sign some good is about to happen to
you.”
“But I do not know whether _my_ foreboding is of good or evil,” she
said, softly smiling.
“I will tell you, then, my darling. It is of _both_, since it
foreshadows love and marriage, Drusilla,” he answered, gravely.
She started slightly, shrank a little, and raised her eyes timidly to
his face, but dropped them instantly, and blushed beneath the ardent
gaze with which he was regarding her.
“Drusilla,” he said, panting and speaking low, “do you know how I love
you?”
Had he asked her this question a week before, speaking in his usual
tone, she would have answered him promptly and sweetly and calmly.
But now she only trembled very much, without being able to utter a word.
“Do you know how I love you, Drusilla?” he panted low, stealing his arm
around her waist.
“Oh, don’t, sir! please don’t!” gasped the girl, frightened at his
caress.
“Don’t what, my darling?” he whispered, drawing her closer to his heart.
“Oh, don’t! let me go, please!” she faltered, gently trying to free
herself.
“‘Don’t let you go, please!’ I don’t intend to, my beautiful darling,”
said Alexander, passionately pressing his lips to hers.
At that moment the door was pushed gently open by Dorset, who entered
with the tea tray, and stood still in astonishment.
“What the—?—What do you want here?” angrily demanded Alexander barely
able to repress an oath, as he saw Dorset and hastily released Drusilla.
“If you please, sir, it is the tea tray,” said the old man, in growing
wonder.
“Hang the tea tray! What do you mean by bringing it here before it is
wanted?”
“Beg pardon, sir, but it is nine o’clock, when I allers brings it.”
“Then why don’t you knock before entering a room? You servants are
perfect vandals in your rudeness.”
“Please, sir, I never was used to knock in the old Madam’s time, so I
did not know as I was expected to do it now; but beg pardon, sir, I will
allers knock for the future.”
“Put the tray down and go.—No, stay and wait,” growled Alexander,
beginning to feel conscious that if his kiss was an indiscretion, his
fuss with the old man’s interruption of it was a still greater one.
Dorset obediently sat the tray down on the table, arranged the tea
service, bowed, and stood waiting.
“Drusilla, my little daughter, you must preside,” said Alexander, trying
to give a paternal aspect to his affection for the orphan.
Drusilla, blushing deeply, took her place at the table and poured out
the tea.
Alexander purposely kept his old servant in waiting until they had
finished. Then he bid Dorset remove the service.
As soon as he found himself alone with Drusilla, he saw that the girl
was trembling excessively.
“Don’t be alarmed, dear love, and don’t distrust me,” he said, drawing
his chair beside her. “I asked you just now if you knew how I loved you.
You did not reply, but I will answer the question for you. No, Drusilla,
you don’t know how I love, for I love you so much that I wish to make
you my own forever and ever. Drusilla, you must be my wife, never to be
parted from me again.”
She looked up in his face, her arched brows, dilated eyes and parted
lips expressing amazement, delight, and even terror.
“You will be my wife, Drusilla?” he whispered, drawing her towards him.
And then her overwrought heart found relief in tears, and she wept
freely on his bosom. When at length she ceased to sob, and grew quiet,
he bent his head down to hers and whispered:
“All this means ‘yes,’ does it not, my own?”
“But—but—Miss Anna!” murmured the girl, scarcely trusting her voice to
speak.
“Oh, Miss Anna——” He nearly uttered an oath consigning his cousin to
perdition, but he caught himself in time, and added: “Miss Anna and
myself are parted (by a hundred miles of space,”) was his mental
reservation the first.
“She has broken with you, then?” said Drusilla, who never dreamed of
such a possibility as _his_ breaking faith with any one.
“Yes, she has, (in effect,”) was his mental reservation the second.
“Oh, how could—how could she do it?” inquired Drusilla, incredulously;
for to her fond, worshipping heart, it seemed that any woman who could
break faith with Alexander must be insane or lost.
“She loves Richard Hammond’s little finger more than she does my
immortal soul! (Come that is wholly true, at all events,”) he added
mentally.
“And you are grieved at this?” murmured the girl, mournfully.
“I! I grieved at it? I never was so glad of anything in my life! My
child, I never loved Anna except as a cousin. She never loved me in any
other than a cousinly way. We were betrothed by our parents—a sure
process to prevent our ever falling in love with each other. Ours was to
be ‘a union of hands and a union of lands,’ but not ‘a union of hearts.’
We really never wished to marry each other. She loved Richard as well as
she can love anybody, and I—I love you as I never loved any other. Come,
my darling, you are to be mine forever.”
“But Mr. Alexander—a poor girl like myself—your late housekeeper’s
child—only half educated, too—I am not fit to be your wife,” she said,
raising her meek eyes to his face, and then suddenly dropping them.
“Not fit to be my wife! If you are not, it is only because you are so
much too good for me!” vehemently exclaimed Drusilla’s lover, and he
spoke the truth.
“Oh no! Oh no! please do not say such things to me. I am but a poor,
ignorant child, of very humble position. You are a gentleman of rank and
wealth. Indeed, sir, it is not suitable——”
“Drusilla! You do not love me!” he exclaimed, as if he had been charging
her with a great sin.
A year before, she would have thrown her arms around his neck, and amid
tears and caresses, she would have assured him that she loved him more
than all others on earth. But she could make no such protestations now,
though her love for him had in this year grown and strengthened, until
it absorbed her whole being. She could only raise a quick and quickly
withdrawn deprecating glance to his face.
“Come, that means that you do love me a little. If so, let me be the
judge of your fitness to be my wife,” he said, looking tenderly down on
her bowed face.
“I know you must be the best judge,” she meekly admitted.
“Then, it is a settled thing. You are to be my own,” he whispered.
“If you think that a poor girl like myself can comfort you for the loss
of Miss Anna—”
“Bosh! I beg your pardon, little love. But I don’t need comfort for the
loss of Miss Anna. I require congratulations rather. Didn’t I tell you
that I never was so glad of anything in my life? And didn’t I give you
half a dozen reasons of being glad of it? I want you to be my love and
joy. Come, darling, will you be my wife? Try to answer—”
She stooped and whispered—
“I will be anything you wish me to. If you should tell me to go and be a
nun, I would go and be one.”
He was not more than half pleased with this answer, which he did not
understand.
“So you only consent to marry me because I ask you to do it; and not
because you love me, or because to do so would make you happy?” he
asked.
Again her shy, soft eyes were lifted to his face with a pleading glance
and then cast down.
“Answer me, Drusa,” he said.
“It would make me happy to do anything you should ask me to do; for I
love to feel that I belong to you, to do your bidding; and that you have
a right to dispose of me as you please,” she murmured, in a very low and
timid tone, hesitating and blushing to utter her own pure thoughts.
“This is devotion, this is submission, but it may not be the love that
makes happiness. Drusilla, apart from all this—your pleasure in pleasing
me. Will it make you in yourself happy to be my wife and spend your
whole life by my side?” he earnestly inquired.
“As happy as an angel in Heaven,” she aspirated, in a low and fervent
tone.
He caught her closer to his bosom and pressed her there; he pressed
kisses on her lips, her cheeks, her brow; he called her by every
endearing name——
There came a gentle, discreet knock at the door.
“Well! Who’s there? Come in!” said Mr. Alexander impatiently, as he
gently put Drusilla off his knee.
The door opened and Dorset appeared.
“What now? I really believe you are wantonly trying my temper!”
exclaimed Alexander.
“If you please, sir, I thought maybe you had retired, and I came to rake
out the fire and turn off the gas, as usual, before going to bed
myself.”
“What! at _this_ hour?”
“Beg pardon, sir, but this is the usual hour.”
Alexander looked up at the clock on the mantle-piece, and saw with
surprise, that it was past eleven.
“My little daughter, I have kept you up too late. You must go to rest
now. Good night,” he said, taking a bedroom candle from the side table,
lighting it, and putting it in the hands of Drusilla, who immediately
withdrew.
She went to her room in a delirium of joy, every nerve thrilling, heart
beating, brain whirling with joy. To be Alexander’s wife! It was a
Heaven of Heavens she had never dreamed of. She dropped on her knees
beside her bed, and fervently thanked God for her great happiness.