Читать книгу The Duchess of Rosemary Lane - B. L. Farjeon - Страница 7

The moon shines on a rippling brook in Springfield, and the summer flowers are sleeping. But even in sleep the foxglove lights up the underwood, and the clover retains the sunset's crimson fire. It is a beautiful and peaceful night; an odorous stillness is in the air, and

"the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold."

The shadows of gently-undulating branches and the delicate traceries of the feather-grass--so subtly sensitive that in the stillest night its bells are tremulous; mayhap in response to fairy whisperings--are reflected in the stream which reflects also the shadow of Nelly Marston, who is bending low to look at her fair face in the depths made luminous by stars. As with sparkling eyes she stoops lower and lower in half-sportive, half-earnest admiration of herself, her face rises in the water to greet her, until the smiling lips of flesh almost kiss their shadow.

As she gazes, another shadow bends over hers, blotting the fairer vision, and a strong arm is thrown around her waist.

"Why, Nelly--Miss Marston! Are you about to play Ophelia in my aunt's pretty brook?"

The girl starts to her feet, and swiftly releases herself from his embrace. Not far from them, but unseen by either, stands the gardener's son, watching them. Their breasts are stirred by emotions which bring an agitated pleasure to them; his is stirred by darker passions.

"I was simply," replies Nelly, with burning blushes in her face, "bending over the water to--to----"

And pauses for lack of words.

Mr. Temple assists her.

"To look at your pretty face, or perhaps to kiss yourself, as a spirit might. Labour thrown away, Miss Marston, and most certainly unprofitable, if what the poet says is true:

"Some there be that shadows kiss;

Such have but a shadow's bliss."

Nelly Marston regains her composure.

"We did not expect you to-night, Mr. Temple."

"Then I should be all the more welcome," he answers gaily. "I am starving, Nelly----"

She checks him by a look.

"I beg your pardon. Miss Nelly Marston, I am starving with hunger. I have not had a morsel of food in my mouth since the morning."

"There will be no difficulty in reviving your fainting soul, Mr. Temple," she says, with a desperate attempt to imitate his light manner; "but Lady Temple must not know you are here. 'Miss Marston,' she said to me this afternoon, my nephew will be absent for some time. He will write to me regularly. Directly his letters arrive, let me have them. If I am asleep place them at once by my side.'"

Mr. Temple, a handsome, graceful man, not less than thirty-five years of age, interposes with a merry laugh.

"I posted one to her ladyship three hours ago, twenty miles from this spot."

"All the more reason," says Nelly Marston seriously, "why she should not know you are in Springfield."

He tries to stop her remonstrance by, "Now, my dear Mother Hubbard!" but she will not listen to him.

"Lady Temple unfortunately magnifies the smallest trifles into serious vexations. She is very, very fretful"--this with a little weary sigh--"and the doctor says it is most important she should not be annoyed in any way. Mr. Temple, if she suspects you are in the house to-night, she will never forgive you."

"And houses, lands, and money," he rejoins, with a careless shrug of his shoulders, "would melt away into such airy distances that, though my limbs were quickened with mercury, I should never be able to overtake them. But what are all these when weighed against love----"

Flushed and palpitating, Nelly finds strength to interrupt him.

"Mr. Temple, I must not listen to you. I am not ignorant of the reason why your aunt sent you away--for you were sent, you know!" she adds, somewhat saucily.

"Oh, yes, I know I was sent away. I am sure I did not want to go."

"Twice to-day Lady Temple has spoken seriously to me--I leave you to guess upon what subject. Mr. Temple, you know what my position is. I am a dependent, without parents, without friends, without money. Sometimes when I look into the future, and think of what would become of me if I were thrown upon the world, I tremble with fear."

"And yet you have a strong will of your own," he mutters, not in the most amiable tone; but in another instant he relapses into his lighter mood.

There is a moment's hesitation on her part, as though her strong will were about to desert her; but she, also, succeeds in controlling herself.

"No, I am weak, very, very weak; but for my own sake I must strive to be strong. And now I will leave you, please. No; do not walk with me to the house. We shall be seen, and the servants will talk."

"Let them talk!" he cries impetuously.

She looks him steadily in the face.

"If they do, Mr. Temple, who will suffer--you or I?"

"You don't understand me, Nelly--nay, I will call you Nelly when no one is by to hear!--I will answer for their discretion; but indeed and indeed, we shall not be seen!"

While he speaks, she is walking towards the house, and he is by her side. After them, through the path where the shadows lie, steals the gardener's son, quivering with excitement. If he could but hear what these two were saying to each other! He loves Nelly Marston with all the strength of his nature. He not only loves her; he respects her. The very ground she walks upon is sacred in his eyes. Until lately he had fed hopefully upon small crumbs of comfort which the girl, wittingly or unwittingly, had given him. Nelly had spoken pleasantly to him; Nelly had smiled upon him as she tripped past him; Nelly wore a flower he gave her. But he had never found the courage to open his heart to her, she being in his estimation so far above him, and now he fears that a rival has stepped in, and that what he yearns for with all his soul is slipping from him.

"Mr. Temple," says Nelly, when they are near the house, "you said just now that you were starving of hunger. You had best bribe one of the servants, and get something to eat. Then I should advise you to quit Springfield, and not return till you are sent for."

"Should you!" he replies, defiantly and yet beseechingly. "Advice is a cheap gift. You would not send for me, I warrant."

"By what right should I?"

"Hungry for food I am," he says, "but I have another kind of hunger upon me which makes me regardless of that."

"Indeed!" she exclaims, with a pretty gesture of surprise.

"Nelly, you are merciless. You see that I am starving of love for you, and you systematically----"

She stays to hear no more, and gliding from him, passes into the house. But he, stung by her avoidance of him, steps swiftly after her, and before she is aware of his presence, stands with her in the sick chamber, where Lady Temple lies sleeping.

Within this man is working the instinct of our common nature. The more difficult to win becomes the prize--without question of its worth: the measure of difficulty gauges that--the more ardent is he in its pursuit, and the greater value it assumes. And being piqued in this instance, all the forces of his intellect come to his aid.

And Nelly? Well, loving him already, she loves him the more because of his persistence, and because of the value he by his recklessness appears to place upon her.

"O Mr. Temple," she whispers, deeply agitated, "how can you so compromise me? Go, for Heaven's sake, before she wakes!'

"On one condition," he answers, lowering his voice to the pitch of hers; "that you meet me by the brook in an hour from this."

"Anything--anything!--but go!"

"You promise, then?"

"Yes, yes--I promise."

He is about to seal the promise, she being at his mercy, when Lady Temple moves restlessly, and opens her eyes. He has barely time to slip behind the curtains at the head of the bed before the sick lady speaks.

"Is that you, Miss Marston?"

"Yes, Lady Temple."

"I thought I heard voices!"

"I have this moment come in."

"I went to sleep without taking my medicine, Miss Marston. Why did you let me go to sleep without it?"

"You fell asleep suddenly, Lady Temple, and I thought it best not to wake you."

"Give it to me now."

Nelly takes a bottle from a table at the head of the bed, pours out the medicine, and gives it to the sick lady. As she replaces the bottle, Mr. Temple, with unthinking and cruel audacity, seizes her hand, and kisses it. Lady Temple, with the medicine at her lips does not drink, but gazes suspiciously at Nelly, who cannot keep the colour from her cheeks.

"What sound is that?" asks Lady Temple. "What makes your face so red, Miss Marston?"

Nelly busies herself--her hand being released--about the pillows, and replies:

"You should not gaze at me so strangely. You are full of fancies to-night, Lady Temple."

"Maybe, maybe. Hold up the candle, so that I may see the room--higher, higher!"

Her inquisitive eyes peer before her, but she sees nothing to verify her suspicions, Mr. Temple being safely concealed behind the curtains.

"That will do, Miss Marston. Put down the candle--the glare hurts my eyes. Full of fancies!" she murmurs. "It is true I see shadows; I hear voices: I am not certain at times whether I am awake or asleep. But what I said to you to-day," she exclaims in a louder tone, "is no fancy, Miss Marston."

"There is no occasion for you to repeat it, Lady Temple."

"I am the best judge of that, Miss Marston, and I do not intend to be misunderstood. I tell you now, plainly, that I sent my nephew away because I saw what was going on between you."

"Lady Temple!" cries Nelly indignantly.

"You must not agitate me, Miss Marston. Oblige me by holding this glass while I speak. If you wish to leave the house, you may do so."

"It is so generous and good of you to threaten me!" says the girl scornfully; "knowing my position. If I had any shelter but this, I would not stop with you another day."

"You are only showing your ingratitude, Miss Marston, I do not threaten you, and I will not be contradicted. I promised your mother before she died that you should have a home here while I live, and I will not turn you away. If you go, you go of your own accord. I tell you again I know perfectly well what is stirring within that busy head of yours. You are like your mother, no better, and no worse, and I knew her well enough; never content, never content unless every man she saw was at her feet."

"And yet," says Nelly more quietly, "you have spoken slightingly of her more than once because she sacrificed herself, as you term it, for love."

"Yes, she was caught at last, and was punished."

"It was a happy punishment, then. She would not have changed her lot with yours, Lady Temple."

"She was punished, I tell you. As you will be, if you do not take care. You will live to prove it, if you are not mindful of yourself. You have a pretty face--psha! we are women and no one but ourselves hears what I say. I had a pretty face once, and I knew its power, and used it as you wish to do. But not with my nephew, Miss Marston, mark that! You have all the world to choose from, with the exception of my nephew. And you fancy you know him, I have no doubt--simpleton! You know as much as a baby of the world and of men of the world. Take an old woman's counsel--marry in your own station----"

"My mother was a lady," interrupts Nelly, with a curl of her lip, "and I am one."

"Pooh! Nonsense! You have no money. You are a poor girl, and no lady--as ladies go," she adds unconsciously uttering a truism in her attempt to soften the effect of her words. "There's the gardener's son. You can't do better than marry him. His father has been all his life at Springfield, and has saved money I hear. He is continually making you presents of flowers, and the housekeeper tells me----"

With a burning consciousness that these words are reaching other ears than her own, Nelly again interrupts her mistress:

"When you have finished insulting me, Lady Temple, I shall be glad to leave the room."

"You shall not leave the room till I am asleep. Marry whom you like except my nephew. If he marries you he is a beggar by it. I am tired of talking. I will take my medicine."

She empties the glass, and sinks back on her pillow. The medicine is an opiate, but even while she yields to its influence, she continues to murmur, in a tone so low that only Nelly now can hear her.

"Marriage, indeed! As if he means it, and as if, meaning it even, he dared to thwart me! A pair of fools! They will rue the day!"

Thus she mutters until sleep overpowers her, and she takes her theme with her into the land of dreams.

Mr. Temple steals from his hiding-place.

"She is in a sweet temper," he says in a whisper, placing his hands on Nelly's shoulders, and drawing her to him. "I was very nearly coming forward and spoiling everything; but I couldn't afford to do it. Nelly, I want to know about that gardener's son."

She yields to his embrace for a moment, then draws away.

"I can tell you nothing now. Go, for my sake, lest she should awake."

"For your sake, then. Do not forget. In an hour, by the brook."

"I ought not to come."

"You have promised," he says, in a louder tone.

"Hush--hush!" she entreats. "Yes, I will come."

Before the hour has passed, he has appeased his hunger, and is standing by the brook, waiting for Nelly. The night is most peaceful and lovely, and Mr. Temple, as he smokes his cigar, pays homage to it in an idle way, and derives a patronising pleasure from the shadows in the starlit waters. His thoughts are not upon the graceful shapes, although his eyes behold them. What, then, does he see in their place? Do the floating reflections bear a deeper meaning to his senses than they would convey under ordinary conditions? Does he see any foreshadowing of the future there? No. His thoughts are all upon the present, and what he beholds is merely tinged with such poetry as springs from animal sentiment. He may trick himself into a finer belief, but he cannot alter its complexion. He is in an ineffably pleasant mood, and his pulses are stirred by just that feeling of pleasurable excitement which sheds a brighter gloss on all surrounding things. At the sound of a step behind him he smiles and his heart beats faster. "It is Nelly," he whispers. But when he turns, and confronts the gardener's son, the smile leaves his face.

"I ask your pardon, sir," says the young man, "can I have a word with you?"

"Ah!" says Mr. Temple, with a look of curiosity at the young fellow, "you are the gardener's son."

"Yes, sir."

Mr. Temple regards the intruder attentively, and says, rather haughtily:

"You have selected a singular time for a conference."

"I must speak to you now, sir."

"Must?"

"If you please, sir."

"By-and-by will not do?"

"By-and-by may be too late, sir."

Mr. Temple looks at the gardener's son still more earnestly.

"Attend to what I am about to say, young man. You have lived all your life at Springfield, I believe?"

"I was born here, sir."

"Have you an idea as to who will be the next master of this estate?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you wish to continue on it?"

"That's as it may be, sir."

These questions have been asked with a perfect consciousness of the subject which the gardener's son wishes to approach, and have been so worded as to have an indirect bearing upon it. The answer to the last, spoken with manly independence, conveys to Mr. Temple the knowledge that the gardener's son is not ignorant of their bearing, and the tone in which it is given, although perfectly respectful, does not please him.

"I must request you," he says, with a masterful wave of his hand, "to choose some other time for your confidence."

"You expect some one, perhaps, sir."

Mr. Temple smiles complacently. In the few words that have passed, the battle has been fairly opened. He determines that it shall be short.

"As you seem resolved," he says, taking out his watch and consulting it, "to force yourself upon me, I will give you just five minutes. Now, what have you to say?"

He is aware that he is taking the young fellow at a disadvantage by his abrupt method; but, being a lawyer, he is not nice as to the means of gaining an advantage.

"It is about Miss Marston," says the gardener's son, after a slight pause.

"What of that young lady?"

"I don't know whether I have a right to speak----"

"That is candid of you."

The arrow misses its mark.

"But it may be," proceeds the young fellow, "that I have, for the reason that I love her."

His voice trembles, but his earnestness imparts power to it.

"I am obliged to you for your confidence," observes Mr. Temple, watching for Nelly Marston as he speaks, "unsolicited as it is. A pretty young lady generally inspires that passion in many breasts."

"But not in all alike," quickly retorts the gardener's son.

"That is fair philosophy. Proceed."

"You speak lightly, sir, while I am serous. It stands in this way, sir. People are beginning to talk----"

"People will talk," interrupts Mr. Temple, with malicious relish; "as in the present instance."

"And Miss Marston's name and yours have got mixed up together in a manner it would grieve her to know."

"You forget, in the first place," says Mr. Temple haughtily, with an ominous frown on his face, "that Miss Marston is a lady; and in the second, you forget to whom you are speaking."

"Truly I am not thinking of you, sir," replies the gardener's son quietly and simply, "I am thinking of her. A young lady's good name is not a thing to be lightly played with."

"Therefore," says Mr. Temple impatiently, "I would advise you to take that very lesson to heart, and to tell those persons who are, as you say, making light of her good name--you are evidently acquainted with them--that it will be wise for them to choose other topics of gossip. I cannot acknowledge your right to address me on this matter, and this conversation must come to an end. Young ladies nowadays are perfectly well able to take care of themselves, and as a rule choose for themselves. We rougher creatures are often more sensitive than they, and more particular on certain points. And now let me tell you, my man, it is a dangerous thing for you to seek me out at night and address me on such a subject in the tone and manner you have assumed. You are speaking to a gentleman, remember. You----"

"Are not one," interposes the gardener's son, with sad significance; "I know it, sir."

"I will waive that, however, and say this much to you. If Miss Marston had constituted you her champion and had authorised you to speak, I should be willing to listen to you. But that is not the case, I presume, and I wish you goodnight."

The gardener's son twines his fingers convulsively. Were Mr. Temple his equal in station, it would have fared ill with him, smarting as the man is with passionate jealousy and the sting of unrequited love. He controls himself sufficiently to say,

"I must ask you one question, sir. Do you remain at Springfield?"

"No; I leave to-night, and I shall probably be absent for weeks. Ah, I perceive that answer is satisfactory to you. I see a lady approaching. Shall you or I retire?"

The gardener's son, casting one glance at the advancing form, walks slowly away, and his shadow is soon swallowed up by other shadows, among which he walks in pain and grief.

Nelly Marston is in no holiday humour; she is trembling with shame at the thought of what passed in the sick-chamber of her peevish mistress, and she approaches Mr. Temple with downcast head. Love and humiliation are fighting a desperate battle within her breast, and she does not respond sympathetically to her lover's glad greeting. He uses his best arts to soothe and comfort her; he addresses her by every endearing title, saying she is dearer to him than all the world, and beseeching her to throw all the rest aside. She listens in silence at the first, as he pours this sweet balm of Gilead upon her troubled soul. He is in his brightest mood, and his speech which tells the oft-told tale flows sweetly and tenderly. They stand beneath the stars, and he calls upon them to witness his love, his truth, his honour. Every word that falls from his lips sinks into her soul, and her heart is like a garden filled with unfading flowers. Humiliation and unrest melt into oblivion, never more to rise and agonise her. He loves her; he tells her so a hundred times and in a hundred ways. He will be true to her; he swears it by all the beautiful signs around them. Fairer and more lovely grows the night as he kisses away her tears. The moon rises higher in the heavens and bathes them in light. Softly, more tenderly he speaks, and she, like a child listens, listens--listens and believes, and hides her blushing face from him. Ah, if truth lives, it lives in him--in him, the symbol of all that is good and manly, and noble! She is so weak, he so strong! She knows so little, he so much! The sweet and enthralling words he whispers into her ears as her head lies upon his breast, form the first page of the brightest book that life can open to her; and the sighing of the breeze, the sleeping flowers, the hushed melody of the waving grass, the laughing, flashing lights of heaven playing about the dreamy shadows in the waters of the brook, are one and all delicious evidences of his truth, his honour, and his love.

"I love you--I love you--I love you!" he vows and vows again. "Put your arms about my neck--so! and whispers to me what I am dying to hear."

"You are my life!" she sighs, and their lips meet; and then they sit and talk, and, as she gazes into the immeasurable distances of the stars, she sees, with the eyes of her soul, a happy future, filled with fond and sweet imaginings,