The Law and the Lady, Page 2

  CHAPTER II. THE BRIDE'S THOUGHTS.

  WE had been traveling for a little more than an hour when a changepassed insensibly over us both.

  Still sitting close together, with my hand in his, with my head onhis shoulder, little by little we fell insensibly into silence. Had wealready exhausted the narrow yet eloquent vocabulary of love? Or had wedetermined by unexpressed consent, after enjoying the luxury of passionthat speaks, to try the deeper and finer rapture of passion that thinks?I can hardly determine; I only know that a time came when, under somestrange influence, our lips were closed toward each other. We traveledalong, each of us absorbed in our own reverie. Was he thinkingexclusively of me--as I was thinking exclusively of him? Before thejourney's end I had my doubts; at a little later time I knew for certainthat his thoughts, wandering far away from his young wife, were allturned inward on his own unhappy self.

  For me the secret pleasure of filling my mind with him, while I felt himby my side, was a luxury in itself.

  I pictured in my thoughts our first meeting in the neighborhood of myuncle's house.

  Our famous north-country trout stream wound its flashing and foaming waythrough a ravine in the rocky moorland. It was a windy, shadowy evening.A heavily clouded sunset lay low and red in the west. A solitary anglerstood casting his fly at a turn in the stream where the backwater laystill and deep under an overhanging bank. A girl (myself) standing onthe bank, invisible to the fisherman beneath, waited eagerly to see thetrout rise.

  The moment came; the fish took the fly.

  Sometimes on the little level strip of sand at the foot of the bank,sometimes (when the stream turned again) in the shallower water rushingover its rocky bed, the angler followed the captured trout, now lettingthe line run out and now winding it in again, in the difficult anddelicate process of "playing" the fish. Along the bank I followed towatch the contest of skill and cunning between the man and the trout.I had lived long enough with my uncle Starkweather to catch some of hisenthusiasm for field sports, and to learn something, especially, of theangler's art. Still following the stranger, with my eyes intently fixedon every movement of his rod and line, and with not so much as a chancefragment of my attention to spare for the rough path along which I waswalking, I stepped by chance on the loose overhanging earth at the edgeof the bank, and fell into the stream in an instant.

  The distance was trifling, the water was shallow, the bed of the riverwas (fortunately for me) of sand. Beyond the fright and the wetting Ihad nothing to complain of. In a few moments I was out of the water andup again, very much ashamed of myself, on the firm ground. Short as theinterval was, it proved long enough to favor the escape of the fish. Theangler had heard my first instinctive cry of alarm, had turned, and hadthrown aside his rod to help me. We confronted each other for thefirst time, I on the bank and he in the shallow water below. Our eyesencountered, and I verily believe our hearts encountered at the samemoment. This I know for certain, we forgot our breeding as lady andgentleman: we looked at each other in barbarous silence.

  I was the first to recover myself. What did I say to him?

  I said something about my not being hurt, and then something more,urging him to run back and try if he might not yet recover the fish.

  He went back unwillingly. He returned to me--of course without the fish.Knowing how bitterly disappointed my uncle would have been in his place,I apologized very earnestly. In my eagerness to make atonement, I evenoffered to show him a spot where he might try again, lower down thestream.

  He would not hear of it; he entreated me to go home and change my wetdress. I cared nothing for the wetting, but I obeyed him without knowingwhy.

  He walked with me. My way back to the Vicarage was his way back to theinn. He had come to our parts, he told me, for the quiet and retirementas much as for the fishing. He had noticed me once or twice from thewindow of his room at the inn. He asked if I were not the vicar'sdaughter.

  I set him right. I told him that the vicar had married my mother'ssister, and that the two had been father and mother to me since thedeath of my parents. He asked if he might venture to call on DoctorStarkweather the next day, mentioning the name of a friend of his, withwhom he believed the vicar to be acquainted. I invited him to visit us,as if it had been my house; I was spell-bound under his eyes and underhis voice. I had fancied, honestly fancied, myself to have been in loveoften and often before this time. Never in any other man's company hadI felt as I now felt in the presence of _this_ man. Night seemed to fallsuddenly over the evening landscape when he left me. I leaned againstthe Vicarage gate. I could not breathe, I could not think; my heartfluttered as if it would fly out of my bosom--and all this for astranger! I burned with shame; but oh, in spite of it all, I was sohappy!

  And now, when little more than a few weeks had passed since that firstmeeting, I had him by my side; he was mine for life! I lifted my headfrom his bosom to look at him. I was like a child with a new toy--Iwanted to make sure that he was really my own.

  He never noticed the action; he never moved in his corner of thecarriage. Was he deep in his own thoughts? and were they thoughts of Me?

  I laid down my head again softly, so as not to disturb him. My thoughtswandered backward once more, and showed me another picture in the goldengallery of the past.

  The garden at the Vicarage formed the new scene. The time was night. Wehad met together in secret. We were walking slowly to and fro, out ofsight of the house, now in the shadowy paths of the shrubbery, now inthe lovely moonlight on the open lawn.

  We had long since owned our love and devoted our lives to each other.Already our interests were one; already we shared the pleasures and thepains of life. I had gone out to meet him that night with a heavy heart,to seek comfort in his presence and to find encouragement in his voice.He noticed that I sighed when he first took me in his arms, and hegently turned my head toward the moonlight to read my trouble in myface. How often he had read my happiness there in the earlier days ofour love!

  "You bring bad news, my angel," he said, lifting my hair tenderly frommy forehead as he spoke. "I see the lines here which tell me of anxietyand distress. I almost wish I loved you less dearly, Valeria."

  "Why?"

  "I might give you back your freedom. I have only to leave this place,and your uncle would be satisfied, and you would be relieved from allthe cares that are pressing on you now."

  "Don't speak of it, Eustace! If you want me to forget my cares, say youlove me more dearly than ever."

  He said it in a kiss. We had a moment of exquisite forgetfulness of thehard ways of life--a moment of delicious absorption in each other. Icame back to realities fortified and composed, rewarded for all thatI had gone through, ready to go through it all over again for anotherkiss. Only give a woman love, and there is nothing she will not venture,suffer, and do.

  "No, they have done with objecting. They have remembered at last thatI am of age, and that I can choose for myself. They have been pleadingwith me, Eustace, to give you up. My aunt, whom I thought rather a hardwoman, has been crying--for the first time in my experience of her. Myuncle, always kind and good to me, has been kinder and better than ever.He has told me that if I persist in becoming your wife, I shall not bedeserted on my wedding-day. Wherever we may marry, he will be thereto read the service, and my aunt will go to the church with me. Buthe entreats me to consider seriously what I am doing--to consent to aseparation from you for a time--to consult other people on my positiontoward you, if I am not satisfied with his opinion. Oh, my darling, theyare as anxious to part us as if you were the worst instead of the bestof men!"

  "Has anything happened since yesterday to increase their distrust ofme?" he asked.

  "Yes."

  "What is it?"

  "You remember referring my uncle to a friend of yours and of his?"

  "Yes. To Major Fitz-David."

  "My uncle has written to Major Fitz-David."

  "Why?"

  He pronounced that one word in a tone so utterly unlike
his natural tonethat his voice sounded quite strange to me.

  "You won't be angry, Eustace, if I tell you?" I said. "My uncle, as Iunderstood him, had several motives for writing to the major. One ofthem was to inquire if he knew your mother's address."

  Eustace suddenly stood still.

  I paused at the same moment, feeling that I could venture no furtherwithout the risk of offending him.

  To speak the truth, his conduct, when he first mentioned our engagementto my uncle, had been (so far as appearances went) a little flighty andstrange. The vicar had naturally questioned him about his family. He hadanswered that his father was dead; and he had consented, though not veryreadily, to announce his contemplated marriage to his mother. Informingus that she too lived in the country, he had gone to see her, withoutmore particularly mentioning her address. In two days he had returnedto the Vicarage with a very startling message. His mother intended nodisrespect to me or my relatives, but she disapproved so absolutelyof her son's marriage that she (and the members of her family, who allagreed with her) would refuse to be present at the ceremony, if Mr.Woodville persisted in keeping his engagement with Dr. Starkweather'sniece. Being asked to explain this extraordinary communication, Eustacehad told us that his mother and his sisters were bent on his marryinganother lady, and that they were bitterly mortified and disappointed byhis choosing a stranger to the family. This explanation was enough forme; it implied, so far as I was concerned, a compliment to my superiorinfluence over Eustace, which a woman always receives with pleasure. Butit failed to satisfy my uncle and my aunt. The vicar expressed to Mr.Woodville a wish to write to his mother, or to see her, on the subjectof her strange message. Eustace obstinately declined to mention hismother's address, on the ground that the vicar's interference would beutterly useless. My uncle at once drew the conclusion that the mysteryabout the address indicated something wrong. He refused to favor Mr.Woodville's renewed proposal for my hand, and he wrote the same day tomake inquiries of Mr. Woodville's reference and of his own friend MajorFitz-David.

  Under such circumstances as these, to speak of my uncle's motives wasto venture on very delicate ground. Eustace relieved me from furtherembarrassment by asking a question to which I could easily reply.

  "Has your uncle received any answer from Major Fitz-David?" he inquired.

  "Yes.

  "Were you allowed to read it?" His voice sank as he said those words;his face betrayed a sudden anxiety which it pained me to see.

  "I have got the answer with me to show you," I said.

  He almost snatched the letter out of my hand; he turned his back on meto read it by the light of the moon. The letter was short enough to besoon read. I could have repeated it at the time. I can repeat it now.

  "DEAR VICAR--Mr. Eustace Woodville is quite correct in stating to youthat he is a gentleman by birth and position, and that he inherits(under his deceased father's will) an independent fortune of twothousand a year.

  "Always yours,

  "LAWRENCE FITZ-DAVID."

  "Can anybody wish for a plainer answer than that?" Eustace asked,handing the letter back to me.

  "If _I_ had written for information about you," I answered, "it wouldhave been plain enough for me."

  "Is it not plain enough for your uncle?"

  "No."

  "What does he say?"

  "Why need you care to know, my darling?"

  "I want to know, Valeria. There must be no secret between us in thismatter. Did your uncle say anything when he showed you the major'sletter?"

  "Yes."

  "What was it?"

  "My uncle told me that his letter of inquiry filled three pages, and hebade me observe that the major's answer contained one sentence only. Hesaid, 'I volunteered to go to Major Fitz-David and talk the matter over.You see he takes no notice of my proposal. I asked him for the addressof Mr. Woodville's mother. He passes over my request, as he has passedover my proposal--he studiously confines himself to the shortestpossible statement of bare facts. Use your common-sense, Valeria. Isn'tthis rudeness rather remarkable on the part of a man who is a gentlemanby birth and breeding, and who is also a friend of mine?'"

  Eustace stopped me there.

  "Did you answer your uncle's question?" he asked.

  "No," I replied. "I only said that I did not understand the major'sconduct."

  "And what did your uncle say next? If you love me, Valeria, tell me thetruth."

  "He used very strong language, Eustace. He is an old man; you must notbe offended with him."

  "I am not offended. What did he say?"

  "He said, 'Mark my words! There is something under the surface inconnection with Mr. Woodville, or with his family, to which MajorFitz-David is not at liberty to allude. Properly interpreted, Valeria,that letter is a warning. Show it to Mr. Woodville, and tell him (if youlike) what I have just told you--'"

  Eustace stopped me again.

  "You are sure your uncle said those words?" he asked, scanning my faceattentively in the moonlight.

  "Quite sure. But I don't say what my uncle says. Pray don't think that!"

  He suddenly pressed me to his bosom, and fixed his eyes on mine. Hislook frightened me.

  "Good-by, Valeria!" he said. "Try and think kindly of me, my darling,when you are married to some happier man."

  He attempted to leave me. I clung to him in an agony of terror thatshook me from head to foot.

  "What do you mean?" I asked, as soon as I could speak. "I am yoursand yours only. What have I said, what have I done, to deserve thosedreadful words?"

  "We must part, my angel," he answered, sadly. "The fault is none ofyours; the misfortune is all mine. My Valeria! how can you marry a manwho is an object of suspicion to your nearest and dearest friends?I have led a dreary life. I have never found in any other woman thesympathy with me, the sweet comfort and companionship, that I findin you. Oh, it is hard to lose you! it is hard to go back again to myunfriended life! I must make the sacrifice, love, for your sake. Iknow no more why that letter is what it is than you do. Will youruncle believe me? will your friends believe me? One last kiss, Valeria!Forgive me for having loved you--passionately, devotedly loved you.Forgive me--and let me go!"

  I held him desperately, recklessly. His eyes, put me beside myself; hiswords filled me with a frenzy of despair.

  "Go where you may," I said, "I go with you! Friends--reputation--Icare nothing who I lose, or what I lose! Oh, Eustace, I am only awoman--don't madden me! I can't live without you. I must and will beyour wife!"

  Those wild words were all I could say before the misery and madness inme forced their way outward in a burst of sobs and tears.

  He yielded. He soothed me with his charming voice; he brought me back tomyself with his tender caresses. He called the bright heaven above usto witness that he devoted his whole life to me. He vowed--oh, in suchsolemn, such eloquent words!--that his one thought, night and day,should be to prove himself worthy of such love as mine. And had he notnobly redeemed the pledge? Had not the betrothal of that memorable nightbeen followed by the betrothal at the altar, by the vows before God! Ah,what a life was before me! What more than mortal happiness was mine!

  Again I lifted my head from his bosom to taste the dear delight ofseeing him by my side--my life, my love, my husband, my own!

  Hardly awakened yet from the absorbing memories of the past to the sweetrealities of the present, I let my cheek touch his cheek, I whispered tohim softly, "Oh, how I love you! how I love you!"

  The next instant I started back from him. My heart stood still. I putmy hand up to my face. What did I feel on my cheek? (_I_ had not beenweeping--I was too happy.) What did I feel on my cheek? A tear!

  His face was still averted from me. I turned it toward me, with my ownhands, by main force.

  I looked at him--and saw my husband, on our wedding-day, with his eyesfull of tears.