her mother's criticism of thebook: light, perhaps, but witty, and with a little tang of harmlesssatire that always took his fancy. But she was not there. He sighedimpatiently; was it possible he was a little bored?
A quick step sounded on the gravel walk, a swish of skirts.
"It is Louise Morris," she said, "I'll meet her at the gate."
After a short conference she returned.
"Will you excuse me, please?" she said, quite eagerly for her. "Motherwill be down soon, anyway, I am sure. Louise's brother is back; he hasbeen away in the West for six years. Mother will be delighted--she wasalways so fond of Jack. Louise is making a little surprise for him. Hemust be quite grown up now. I'll go and tell mother."
A moment later and she was gone. Mrs. Leroy took her place in thewindow, and imperceptibly under her gentle influence the cloud fadedfrom his horizon; he forgot the doubt of an hour ago. At her suggestionhe dined there, and found himself, as always when with his hostess, athis best. He felt that there was no hypocrisy in her interest in hisideas, and the ease with which he expressed them astonished him evenwhile he delighted in it. Why could he not talk so with Jane? Itoccurred to him suddenly that it was because Jane herself talked rarely.She was, like him, a listener, for the most part. His mind, unusuallyalert and sensitive to-night, looked ahead to the happy winter eveningshe had grown to count on so, and when, with an effort, he detachedthis third figure from the group to be so closely allied afterChristmas-tide--the date fixed for the wedding--he perceived that therewas a great gap in the picture, that the warmth and sparkle had suddenlygone. All the tenderness in the world could not disguise that flash offoresight.
He grew quiet, lost in revery. She, following his mood, spoke less andless; and when Jane returned, late at night, escorted by a tall, bronzedyoung ranchman, she found them sitting in silence in a half-light,staring into the late September fire on the hearth.
In the month that followed an imperceptible change crept over the three.The older woman was much alone--variable as an April day, now merry andcaressing, now sombre and withdrawn. The girl clung to her mother moreclosely, sat for long minutes holding her hand, threw strange glances ather betrothed that would have startled him, so different were theyfrom her old, steady regard, had not his now troubled sense of someimpalpable mist that wrapped them all grown stronger every day. Heavoided sitting alone with her, wondering sometimes at the easewith which such tete-a-tetes were dispensed with. Then, struck withapprehension at his seeming neglect, he spent his ingenuity in delicateattentions toward her, courtly thoughtfulness of her tastes, beautifulgifts that provoked from her, in turn, all the little intimacies andtender friendliness of their earlier intercourse.
At one of these tiny crises of mutual restoration, she, sitting alonewith him in the drawing-room, suddenly raised her eyes and lookedsteadily at him.
"You care for me, then, very much?" she said earnestly. "You--you wouldmiss--if things were different? You really count on--on--our marriage?Are you happy?"
A great remorse rose in him. Poor child--poor, young, unknowingcreature, that, after all, was only twenty-two! She felt it, then, thestrange mist that seemed to muffle his words and actions, to hold himback. And she had given him so much!
He took her hands and drew her to him.
"My dear, dear child," he said gently, "forgive a selfish middle-agedbachelor if he cannot come up to the precious ideals of the sweetestgirlhood in the world! I am no more worthy of you, Lady dear, thanI have ever been, but I have never felt more tender toward you, moresensible of all you are giving me. I cannot pretend to the wild love ofthe poets you read so much; that time, if it ever was, is past for me.I am a plain, unromantic person, who takes and leaves a great deal forgranted--I thought you knew that. But you must never doubt--" He pauseda moment, and for the first time she interrupted him nervously.
"I never will--Clarence," she said almost solemnly; and it struck himfor the first time that she had never called him by his name before. Heleaned over her, and as in one of her rare concessions she lifted herface up to him, he bent lower than her forehead; what compelled him tokiss her soft cheek rather than her lips he did not know.
Unexpected business summoned him to New York for a fortnight the nextday, and the great city drew him irresistibly into its noisy maelstrom.The current of his thoughts changed absolutely. Old friends and new tookup his leisure. His affairs, as they grew more pressing, woke in hima keen delight in the struggle with his opponents; as he shook handstriumphantly with his lawyer after a well-earned victory he felt yearsyounger. He decided that he had moped too long in the country: "We mustmove into town this season," he said to himself.
He fairly ran up the cottage steps in the gathering dusk. He longed tosee them, full of plans for the winter. Hannah met him at the door:the ladies had gone to a dance at the Morrises'; there had been aninvitation for him, so he would not intrude if he followed.
Hastily changing his clothes, he walked up the street. Lights and musicpoured out of the open windows of the large house; the full moon madethe grounds about it almost as bright as the rooms. He stepped up onthe piazza and looked in at the swaying couples. Lady Jane, beautifulin pale blue mull, drifted by in her young host's arms. She was flushedwith dancing; her hair had escaped from its usual calm. He hardlyrecognized her. As he looked out toward the old garden, he caught aglimpse of a flowing white gown, a lace scarf thrown over a head whosefine poise he could not mistake.
A young man passed him with a filmy crepe shawl he knew well. Thecolonel stepped along with him.
"You are taking this to Mrs. Leroy?"
"Yes, colonel, she feels the air a little."
"Let me relieve you of it," and he walked alone into the garden with thesoftly scented cobweb over his arm.
She was standing in an old neglected summer-house, her back to the door.As he stopped behind her and laid the soft wrap over her firm whiteshoulders, she turned her head with a startled prescience of hispersonality, and met his eyes full. He looked straight into those softgray depths, and as he looked, searching for something there, he knewnot what, troubled strangely by her nearness and the helpless surrenderof her fastened gaze, a great light burst upon him.
"It is you! it is you!" he said hoarsely, and crushing her in his arms,he kissed her heavily on her yielding mouth.
For a moment she rested against him. The music, piercingly sweet, droveaway thought. Then she drew herself back, pushing him blindly from her.
"No, no, no!" she gasped, "it is Lady! You are mad--"
"Mad?" he said quickly. "I was never sane till now. When I think of whatI had to offer that dear child, when I realize to what a farce of loveI was sacrificing her--oh, Alice dearest, you are a woman; you must haveknown!"
She raised her head; an unquenchable triumph smiled at him.
"I did know!" she cried exultantly. Suddenly her whole expressionchanged, her head sank again.
"Oh, Lady, my child, my baby!" she moaned, all mother now, andbrokenhearted.
"You must never tell her, never!" she panted. "You will forget; you--Iwill go away--"
"It is you who are mad, Alice," he said sternly. "Listen to me. For allthese weeks it has been your voice I have remembered, your face Ihave seen in imagination in my house. It is you I have missed fromus three--never Lady. It is you I have tried to please and hoped tosatisfy--not Lady. Ever since you told me you would not spend the winterwith us I have been discontented. Why, Alice, I have never kissed her inmy life--as I have kissed you."
She grew red to the tips of her little ears, and threw him a quickglance that tingled to his fingers' ends.
"You would not have me--oh, my dear, it is not possible!" he cried.
She burst into tears. "I don't know--I don't know!" she sobbed. "It willbreak her heart! I don't understand her any more; once I could tell whatshe would think, but not now."
"Hush! some one is coming," he warned her, and taking her arm he drewher out through a great gap in the side of the little house, so thatthey stood h
idden by it.
"Then I will tell him to his face what I think of him!" said a youngman's voice, angry, determined, but shaking with disappointment. "Tohold a girl--"
"He does not hold me--I hold myself!" It was Lady's voice, low andtrembling. "It is all my fault, Jack. I bound myself before I knewwhat--what a different thing it really was. I do love him--I love himdearly, but not--not--No, no; I don't mean what you think--or, if I do,I must not. Jack, I have promised, don't you see? And when I thoughtthat perhaps he didn't care so much, and asked him--oh, I told you howbeautifully he answered me, I will never hurt him so, never!"
"It is disgusting, it is horrible; he is twenty-five years older thanyou--he might be your father!" stormed the voice.
"I--I never cared for young people before!"
Could this be Lady, this shy, faltering girl? Moved by an overmasteringimpulse, the man behind the summer-house turned his head and lookedthrough the broken wall.
Lady Jane was blushing and paling in quick succession: the waves of redflooded over her moved face and receded like the tide at turn. Her eyeswere piteous; her hair fell low over her forehead; she looked incrediblyyoung.
"Of course," said the young man bitterly, "it is a good match--a finematch, You will have a beautiful home and everything you want."
She put out her hands appealingly. "Oh, Jack, how can you hurt me so?You know I would live with you in a garret--on the plains--"
"Then do it."
"I shall never hurt a person so terribly to whom I have freely given myword," she said, with a touch of her old-time decision.
Colonel Driscoll felt his blood sweeping through his veins like wine. Hewas far too excited for finesse, too eager--and he had been so willingto wait, once!--for the next sweet moment when this almost tragedyshould be resolved into its elements. He strode out into the open spacein front of the little house.
"My dear young people," he said, as they stared at him in absolutesilence, "I am, I am--" He had intended to carry the matter offjocularly, but the sight of the girl's tear-stained face and the emotionof the minutes before had softened and awed him. His eyes seemed yet tohold those gray ones; he felt strangely the pressure of that soft bodyagainst his.
"Ah, my dear," he said gently, "could you not believe me when I told youthat my one wish was to make you happy as long as I lived? Happiness isnot built on mistakes, and you must forgive us if we do not always allowyouth to monopolize them.
"She has always been like a dear child to me, Mr. Morris"--he turned tothe other man--"and you would never wish me to change my regard for her,could you know it!
"Go with him, Lady dear, and forgive me if I have ever painedyou--believe me, I am very happy to-night."
He raised her softly as she knelt before him weeping, and kissed herhair.
"But there is nothing to forgive," he assured her.
They went away hand in hand, happy, like two dazed children for whomthe sky has suddenly but not--because they are young--too miraculouslyopened, and the shrubbery swallowed them.
He turned and strode back into the shadow. Mrs. Leroy sat crouching onthe fallen timber, her head still bent. Stooping behind her, he drew hertoward him.
"They have forgotten us by now," he whispered, "can I make you forgetthem?"
The Courting Of Lady Jane Page 3