He took her face in his hands and turned it up to him, but paused as her
lips nearly met his.
"Do you? Why, don't you know, dearest?" he asked tenderly.
"Yes, ah! yes, I do," she said, and the tears sprang to her eyes as
their lips met. "It was because I loved you that I was so sorry when you
went; that every hour and day was a misery to me, and seemed to hang
like lead; it was because I loved you that I could not think of anything
else, and--and all the world became black and dark, and--and--I hated to
be alive. It was because--because of that, was it not?"
He answered with the lover's mute language.
"And--and you love me! It seems so wonderful!" she murmured, looking at
him with her eyes, now deep as violets and dewy with her tears. "So
wonderful! Why--why do you?"
He laughed--the laugh that for the first time in his life had left his
lips.
"Have you no looking-glass in your room, Nell?" he asked. "You beautiful
angel! But not only because you are the loveliest----"
She put her hand to his lips, her face crimson; but he kissed it and
laid it against his cheek.
--"You are not only the loveliest woman I know, but the sweetest, Nell,"
he said. "No man could help loving you."
"How foolish!" she breathed; but, ah! the joy, the innocent pride that
shone in her eyes! "You must have met, known, hundreds of beautiful
women. I never thought that I--that any one could care for me----"
"Because there's not a spark of vanity in my Nell, thank God!" he said.
"See here, dearest, you speak of other women--it is because you are
unlike any other woman I have ever known--thank God again!--because you
are so. Ah, Nell! it's easier to love you than to tell you why. All I
know is that I'm the happiest man on earth; that I don't deserve----"
His voice grew grave and his face clouded. "The best of us doesn't
deserve the love of the worst woman; and I, who have got the sweetest,
the dearest----Ah, Nell! if you knew how bad a bargain you have made!"
She laid her face against his hand, and her lips touched it with a kiss,
and she laughed softly, as one laughs for mere joy which pants for
adequate expression.
"I am satisfied--ah, yes! I am satisfied!" she whispered. "It is you who
have made the bad bargain--an ignorant girl--just a girl! Why, Dick will
laugh at you! And mamma will think you are too foolish for words."
He looked down at her--he was sitting on the bowlder now, and she was on
the sand at his feet, her head resting against him, his arm round her.
"Mrs. Lorton knows nothing about me," he said. "I'm afraid, when she
knows----"
His words did not affect her. In a sense, she was scarcely noting them.
This new happiness, this unspeakable joy, was taking complete possession
of her. That his lips should have touched hers, that his arm should be
round her, that her head should be resting against him, his kisses upon
her hair, was all so wonderful that she could scarcely realize it. Would
she awake presently and find that she was in her own room, with the
pillow wet with the tears that had fallen because "Mr. Drake Vernon" had
left Shorne Mills forever?
"Does she not?" she said easily. "She knows as much about you as I do,
and I am content. But mamma will be pleased, because she likes you. And
Dick"--she laughed, and her eyes glowed with her love for the boy--"Dick
will yell, and will tease me out of my life. But he will be glad,
because he is so very fond of you. What do you do to make everybody like
you so much, Mr. Vernon?"
"Oh, 'Drake, Drake, Drake'!" he said.
"Drake," she murmured, and he stifled the word on her lips with kisses.
"I'm by no means sure that Mrs. Lorton will be pleased," he said, after
a moment. "See here, Nell--I never saw such hair as yours. It is dark,
almost black, and yet it is soft and like silk----"
"And it is all coming down. Ah, no, you cannot coil it up. Let it be for
a moment. Do you really like it? Dick says it is like a horse's mane."
"Dick is a rude young scamp to whom I shall have to teach respect for
his sister. But Mrs. Lorton, dearest--I'm afraid she won't be pleased. I
ought to have told you, Nell, that I'm a poor man."
"Are you?"
She nestled a little closer, and scooped up the sand with her disengaged
hand--the one he was not holding--and she spoke with an indifference
which filled Drake to the brim with satisfaction.
"Yes," he said. "I was not always so poor; but I am one who has had
losses, as Shakespeare puts it."
"I am sorry," she said simply, but still with a kind of indifference.
"Mamma said you must be rich because you--well, persons who are poor
don't keep three horses and give diamond bracelets for presents."
She spoke with the frankness and ingenuousness of a child, and Drake
stroked her hair as he would that of a child.
"Yes, that's reasonable enough," he said. "But I've lost my money
lately. See?"
She nodded, and looked up at him a little more gravely.
"Yes? I am sorry. I suppose it must have seemed very hard to you. I have
never been rich, but I can imagine that one does not like losing his
money and becoming poor. Poor--Drake!"
"Then, you don't mind?" he inquired. "You don't shrink from the prospect
of being a pauper's bride, Nell?"
She laughed.
"Why should I?" she said simply. "We've always been poor--at least,
nearly since I can remember; and we have always been happy, Dick and I.
Now, it would not have been so nice if you had been very rich."
"Why not?" he asked, lifting a tress of her hair to his lips.
She thought for a moment.
"Oh, don't you see? I should have felt that you had been foolish to--to
love me----" There was an interlude. Should he ever grow tired of
kissing her? he asked himself. "And I should have been afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"Well, that you would be ashamed of me when you took me into the society
of fashionable people, and----Oh, I am very glad that you are not rich!
That sounds unkind, I am afraid."
"Nell," he said solemnly, "I have long suspected that you were an angel
masquerading as a mere woman, but I am now convinced of it."
She laughed, and softly rubbed her cheek against his arm.
"And I have long suspected that you were a rich man and a 'somebody'
masquerading as a poor one, and I am delighted to hear that I was
mistaken."
He started at the first words of her retort, but breathed a sigh of
relief as she concluded.
"Poor or rich, I love you, Nell," he said, with a seriousness which was
almost solemn, "and I will do my level best to make you happy. When you
are my wife----"
The blood rushed to her face, and her head dropped.
"That will be a long time hence," she whispered.
"No, no!" he said quickly, passionately. "I couldn't wait very long,
Nell. But when you are my wife, I will try to prove to you that poor
people can be happy. We shall just have enough to set up a house in some
foreign land."
She looked up at him gravely.
"And leave mamma and--Dick? Yes?"
The acquiescence touched him.
"You won't mind, dearest--you won't mind leaving England?"
She shook her head.
"How cold and cruel I have become," she said, as if she were communing
with herself. "But I do not care; I feel as if I could leave any one--go
anywhere--if--if--I were with you!"
She moved, so that she knelt beside him, and her small brown hands were
palm downward on his breast; her eyes shone like stars with the light of
a perfect love glowing in them; her sweet lips quivered, as, with all a
young girl's abandonment to her first passion, she breathed:
"Do you think I care whether you are poor or rich? I love you! Do you
think I care whether you are handsome or ugly? It is you I love. Do you
think I care where I go, so that you take me with you? I could not live
without you. I would rather wander through the world, in rags, and
starving, cold, and hungry, than--than marry a king and live in a
palace! I only want you, you, you! I have wanted you since--since that
first day--do you remember? I--turn your eyes away, don't look at me; I
am so ashamed!--I came down to you that night--the first night! You were
calling for water, and I--I raised you on my arm, and--and oh! I was so
happy! I did not know, guess, why; but I know now. I--I must have loved
you even then!"
She hid her eyes on his arm, and he kissed her hair reverently.
"And every day I--I grew to love you more. I was only happy when I was
with you. I wondered why. But I know now! And you were always so kind
and gentle with me; so unlike any other man I had met--the vicar, Doctor
Spence--and I used to like to listen to you; and--and when you touched
me something ran through me, something filled me with gladness."
She paused for breath, her eyes fixed on his face, as if she were not
seeing him, but the past, and her own self moving and being in that
past.
"And then you went, and all the happiness, all the gladness, seemed to
go, and--bend lower--I--I can only whisper it--the night you went I
flung myself on the bed and--and cried."
"My Nell, my dearest!" was all he could say.
"I cried because it seemed to me that my life had come to an end; that
never, so long as I should live, should I know one moment of happiness
again. It was as if all the light had gone out of the sky, as if the sun
had turned cold--ah! you don't know!"
"Do I not, dearest?"
"And then, when I saw you to-day, all the light and warmth came rushing
back, and I knew that it was you who were my light, my sun, and that
without you I was not living, but only a shadow and a mockery of life."
Her hands fell from his breast, her head sank upon his knees, she sobbed
in the abandonment of her passion.
And the man was awed by it, and almost as white as herself. He gathered
her in his strong arms and murmured passionate words of love and
gratitude and devotion.
"Nell, Nell, my Nell! God make me more worthy of your love!" he said
brokenly, hoarsely.
She raised her head from his knees and offered him--of her own free
will--her sweet lips, and then clung to him with a half-tearful,
maidenly shame.
"Let me go!" she said.
* * * * *
The light that never was on earth or sky beamed on the _Annie Laurie_ as
it skimmed toward the jetty.
Nell sat in the stern, and Drake lay at her feet, his arms round her,
his face upturned to hers.
God knows he was grateful for her love. God also knows how unworthy he
felt. This love is such a terrible thing. A maiden goes through the ways
of life, in maiden meditation fancy free, pausing beside the brook to
pluck the flowers which grow on its bank, and thinking of nothing but
the simple girlish things which pertain to maidenhood. Then suddenly a
shadow falls across her path. It is the shadow of the Man, and the love
which shall raise her to heaven or drag her down to the nethermost hell.
A glance, a word, and her fate is decided; before her stretch the long
years of joy or misery.
And, alas! she has no choice! Love is lord of all, of our lives, of our
fate, and none can say him nay. No one of us can elect to love a little
wisely, or unwisely and too well.
But there was no doubt, no misgiving, in Nell's mind that night. She had
given herself to this man who had fallen at her feet in Shorne Mills,
and she had given herself fully and unreservedly. His very presence was
a joy to her. It was a subtle delight to reach out her hand and touch
him, though with the tips of her fingers. The gates of paradise had
opened and she had entered in.
How short the hour seemed during which they had sailed toward the jetty!
She breathed a sigh, which Drake echoed.
"Let me lift you out," he pleaded. "I want to feel you in my arms--once
more to-night!"
She surrendered herself, and, for a moment, her head sank on his
shoulder.
They walked up the hill almost in silence; but every now and then his
hand sought hers, and not in vain.
She looked up at the starlit sky in a kind of wondering amazement. Was
it she?--was it he?--were they really betrothed? Did he really love her?
Oh, how wonderful--wonderful it was! And they said there was no real
happiness in this world.
She could have laughed with the scorn of her full, complete joy!
They entered The Cottage side by side, and were met by Dick, with
half-serious indignation.
"Well, upon my word, for a clear case of desertion, I never----Why
didn't you wait for me? I've got a couple of gulls, and----What's the
matter with you, Nell? You look as if you'd found a threepenny piece."
"Just in time for supper," simpered Mrs. Lorton.
Drake took Nell's hand and led her into the light of the lamp, which
illumined the night and perfumed the day.
"I've brought Nell back, Mrs. Lorton," he said, with the shyness of the
newly engaged man, "and--and she has promised to be my wife."