Gertrude Warden

“ Lord Carthew said at last. “Have I a rival?”
Stella flushed deeply, but answered on the instant.
“No, no! How could you possibly have? I have hardly spoken to a man before, except Sir Philip, and the doctor, and my teachers. No, it isn’t that I love any one else, but—but——”
“But you don’t love me? Well, that would be impossible. There is nothing about me to make a beautiful young girl fall in love at first sight. But, my dear Miss Cranstoun, you have certainly beauty enough for two!” ”

“ In Lorin's sitting-room a cheery fire was burning, and Laline drew old Mr. Wallace's arm-chair towards the blaze, while she herself stood with one hand on the mantelpiece and one foot on the fender, looking earnestly down into the glowing coals.
"What a slip of a girl you are, to be sure, my dear!" remarked Alexander Wallace, as he noticed the graceful but unduly slender outline of her figure in its severely-cut blue-serge gown. "It's time you had some one to look after you and make life pleasanter for you! And what is the exact day you have fixed for the wedding?" ”

“ And my eyes have seen what yours have not: your sister, my bonny Clare, as she lay dying in my arms, making me swear on her child’s head that I would punish Philip Cranstoun. ‘He swore he would break my pride,’ she said, with the death-rattle in her throat. ‘Mami, break his. Disgrace is worse than death to him. He has brought death upon me; bring disgrace upon him.’ I seem to hear her voice now, and to see her glazing eyes light up for the last time as she said the words.”
She sat still for a while, staring into the flaming logs over the outstretched figure of James Carewe. ”

“ I know every secret of her heart, and there is not one thought hidden there which would not shame you by its purity!"
"I would not disturb your belief in Lina for the world," observed her niece, a little red spot of anger forming itself in the whiteness of her cheeks; "but, on a subject like this, we may each keep our own opinion, may we not? I myself am very fond of Lina."
"That is not true! You hate her, and are bitterly envious of her!"
"I! Envious of her!"
The white eyelids and yellow lashes were scornfully lowered over the angry eyes. ”

“ You have never felt the bitter loneliness of being without a friend to love you among enemies? When I have been feeling tired, ill, and worn out, I have said to myself, ‘I must not give way; I must not die until my Stella is happily provided for.’ I could not die and leave you with him. But now if, as Lord Carthew suggests, the marriage takes place almost immediately—and, indeed, what is there to hinder it?—I shall have my mind at peace, knowing that you will be safe under the protection of a good man’s love. ”

“ I do like having a handle to my name!”
“Sir Philip,” said Claud, turning sharply toward the Baronet, “this is not Stella. Who is it?”
“Your wife and Sir Philip Cranstoun’s daughter,” she cried, rising to her full height, and filling herself a brimming glass of champagne. “And I’ve let most people know all about me and my relations since I came here, I can tell you. Luncheon-parties, tea-parties, supper-parties, every day—rare old time; not a man but envied you your luck for having such a daughter, Sir Philip Cranstoun, and such a wife, my Lord Carthew!” ”

“ But the oddest little prick of vexation came to her as she spoke. In spite of her dread of her husband, and her terror lest he should recognise in her the lost Laline, she had been strangely interested in him that afternoon. His gentleness and geniality she knew to be a sham, his agreeable manners merely things he assumed and dropped at will. None knew better than she that Wallace Armstrong was a man without honour, principle, or remorse—one who would lie and cheat and drink and swear, who would strike an old man and deceive a friendless girl—a creature in whom no truth was to be found. ”

“ It is impossible to imagine any one more gentle and kind than mamma. She suffers a deal, and bears it beautifully. Her heart constantly troubles her, yet she must be in terrible pain before she utters a complaint. I am not a bit like her, I am sorry to say,” she added, humbly. “I shall never have her gentleness, her patience and resignation. When I am angry, I hate—mamma is incapable of hatred. I don’t know how I should have lived at all but for her constant kindness.”
Tears suddenly gathered in Miss Cranstoun’s eyes. Hastily brushing them away, she turned to Lord Carthew with a sweet smile. ”

“ But you shall go with me to-morrow, if you like. I knew that Wallace Armstrong's spirit was too fine to assimilate with that of Clare. Her destiny will lead her, late in life, to the arms of some stout and bald-headed stock-broker. When he is asleep, after dinner, she will flirt with his clerks or his partner, and be very happy; but you—life holds something very different in store for you. I suppose you must dree your weird. But remember, once you let love come into your life, trouble—terrible trouble—will come too!"
Secretly, Mrs. Vandeleur was very curious to see Laline and Wallace together. ”

“ Stella’s shining dark-blue eyes seemed to be gazing at him from every corner, and with her voice they haunted his dreams, from which he awoke with outstretched arms to meet the empty air. He had never meant to fall in love with her or with anybody, and it angered him to think that even incessant occupation and bodily activity could not stifle the constant pain at his heart. To a man of his essentially manly and practical nature, it seemed little short of contemptible to be thus dominated by a hopeless feeling of love for a woman, particularly now that she had become the wife of his friend ”

“ Your good men who go to church on Sunday and stick to their desks so many hours on weekdays don't know the meaning of the word passion. Lorin has everything in life—why should he want you too? Good women like you are sent into the world to redeem bad men like me, not to carve beef and mutton for such estimable citizens as my cousin Lorin. A good woman whom I loved and who loved me might do what she liked with me; and, Lina, from the moment when yesterday you ran into my arms, I have loved you and longed to hold you there again! ”

“ Now be frank with me, Miss Grahame. What could have made you hate me even before we had ever met, unless it was Lorin's account of me?"
"I had heard about you from others," she answered, in a confused tone, averting her face from him. "I—I have a horror of people who drink. I had seen things about you in the papers——"
"Oh, I don't pretend to be a saint!" he broke in. "My life is my own—it's of no value to any one but myself; and what I do with it is no one's concern but my own. My flawless cousin is perpetually playing guardian angel to me. ”

“ Netherbridge,” she added, suddenly, while big tears rolled down her cheeks. “I may have been silly when I married, but I tried my utmost for over a year to love Sir Philip, and to please him, but he is more a fiend than a man, I think, and I would rather die than see a child of mine grow up resembling him. It is all these thoughts which, together with my awful anxiety for my father and Jim, are breaking my heart, and ruining my health. It is hate, and terror, and misery, and cruel, cruel anxiety, which make me starve myself and hope to die. ”

“ Sir Philip he swears, and the witch she shrieks with laughter. Then suddenly she stops, lifts her finger, and rolls out the most awful curse a body ever heard. William’s wife said it made her cold to her bones to listen. The woman cursed his whole life and all that he did. He should lose wife and child, she said, his name should become a scoff and a byword throughout the land; he should be wretched at home and hated abroad; no one should ever love him again; and she would live, if it was for fifty years, to laugh at him, as he lay dying in a miserable hovel, deserted and alone. ”

“ In reality Laline was neither foolish nor specially weak-minded, only abnormally sensitive to influences to which a coarser nature would have been impervious. Looking into Wallace Armstrong's bold bright eyes, in the depths of which a scornful smile was lurking, the young girl seemed to read there, better than any fortune-teller could inform her, a will, selfish, resolute, and cruel, a nature attracted by and yet strongly antagonistic to her own, a personality she might grow to fear and even, it might be, to hate, but which she would never be able to regard with indifference. ”

“ Hiram Carewe, sir, a man of forty-one, a gypsy fellow, against whom more than one could bear witness he was a confirmed poacher, as was his precious son, James Carewe, who is now starting his five years. But you never heard anything like the savage way in which he turned upon Sir Philip when he saw him in the witness-box. ‘You murdered my father,’ he shouted out. ‘You, Philip Cranstoun, liar, and coward! Your men are liars and perjurers, too. You know right well what father and I came to the Chase for, and that we never struck a blow but in self-defence. ”

“ No woman has ever loved me like that. The women I have known have been fools, or worse. But as you nestled in my arms for those few seconds and I smoothed your hair, I understand what a woman like you might make of a man like me."
Instinctively he moved one step towards her, and as instinctively Laline put up her hand, as though to ward him off, and drew a step farther away from him. He saw the action and frowned impatiently.
"Why should you hate me as you do?" he asked, in tones of passionate anger. "Can you not love my cousin without hating me? ”

“ You should by rights be tramping from door to door at the heels of some filthy caravan, selling brooms, and stealing chickens, with a hedge to sleep under, and the police on your track! Do you know what you are—you, with your white face, and your defiant airs and graces, who do not consider an earl’s son good enough for you, but must needs disgrace yourself by a servant-girl flirtation in the corridor with a man who will make your folly a smoking-room jest? You think yourself a duke’s grandchild, a Douglas by descent, and daughter to my wife, Lady Gwendolen. ”

“ That she would do this sooner or later he took as a foregone conclusion, sharing, as he did with most men, the idea that any woman married to him was bound in time to love him. But meanwhile he did not care to meet the long trustful gaze of her soft dark eyes; and it was almost with a feeling of vexation that this afternoon, as he strolled down the pier, smoking a cigar, with his hands in his pockets and his straw hat tilted over his eyes to protect them from the sun, he found himself face to face with Laline, and saw the look of pleasure on her face as she recognised him. ”

“ Do you know what that wonderful little old lady of yours told me when she first saw me? She said—I remember her actual words—'You are capable of going to the greatest lengths of what people would call folly for the sake of one you love. You like many people, you love very few. But where you love it is a passion, a religion!'"
"Did she tell you anything else?" asked Laline, deeply interested.
"Yes. She predicted that I was on the eve of a new experience which would alter the whole course of my life. Why, Lina, that was loving you!" ”

“ Hilary’s brows darkened as she uttered the gamekeeper’s name, and he recalled what Lord Carthew had said of Stella’s extraordinary conduct toward him on her wedding journey.
“Are you on such close and confidential terms with this Lee, then, may I ask, that you entrust letters and messages to him?”
Stella’s dark-blue eyes opened wide in what looked like innocent surprise.
“Close and confidential terms?” she repeated. “Why, he is the gamekeeper! I hardly ever see him, and I shall never forgive him for hurting you. Surely, Hilary, you are not going to be jealous of the servants?” ”

“ Disdaining women of his own rank as silly, and those of a lower position in life as coarse and vulgar, nature had suddenly revenged herself upon him for his indifference to the other sex by inspiring in him a mad love for his sister’s beautiful gypsy protégée. In the height of this he had married her, and his passion had cooled almost as rapidly as it had grown hot. Instead of a docile and humble tool, he found a proud and self-willed girl, who seemed in no way impressed by his extraordinary condescension and kindness in making her Lady Cranstoun. ”

“ I can't pretend to interest myself in tomes and ledgers and bills-of-exchange any more than I can talk twaddle in a drawing-room over sloppy tea, or play lawn-tennis with a lot of prim bread-and-butter misses without a word to say for themselves. If I think a woman pretty, I tell her so; if I feel inclined to make love, I do so. I am made to lead my own life, to eat and drink and walk and sleep and fight and make love, and perhaps get drunk and get sober again, but it must be in my own way. No one can drive me, and no one presumes to pity me. ”

“ Do you dream much and vividly?"
"Constantly. And by day as well as by night, I am ashamed to say!" Laline answered, laughing. "I am a born dreamer."
"You are just the person I want!" exclaimed Mrs. Vandeleur, a touch of restless excitement showing itself in her voice and manner. "My niece Clare cannot dream. A dreamer—a day-dreamer—must have a pure white soul, must be untouched by the world, and far above all monetary considerations. What is your age? ”

“ She was fully resolved of one thing: that no man but Hilary Pritchard should be her husband; but she would never come to him with a stain upon her name.
Then, again, her reflections were disturbed by the memory of the gentle lady who believed her to be her daughter. How could she possibly desert her under any circumstances? Whatever the amount of her obligation toward Sir Philip, Stella realized that the love and duty she owed to Lady Gwendolen were none the less, but rather the more, urgent, should there, indeed, be no blood relationship between them. ”

“ Her nature was not meant to tend towards independence and mistrust of others. Love had been a necessity to Laline as a child; she had loved her mother intensely, and had felt her loss as irreparable. Torn from the refined seclusion of her early home, she had tried to adapt herself to the impecunious Bohemianism of her father's house, and had tried also very hard indeed to love her father. Had Wallace Armstrong not shown himself in his true colours on his wedding morning, she would in all probability have grown much attached to him, in spite of his sullen temper and dissipated habits. ”

“ He glanced at her quickly, and then at the faces of the women behind her. The idea which possessed their brains entered his also, and he asked himself whether grief and harsh treatment could have temporarily deprived his daughter of her reason.
As Sir Philip led the bride along the terrace toward the church door, a murmur of admiration ran through the crowd. Her face had lost its pallor; through the tulle veil a bright color showed in her cheeks, and contrasted with the intense purple-blue of her restless, gleaming eyes. Two persons her gaze sought in the crowd about the doors. ”

“ It is always easier to learn evil than good. But, Laline, [Pg 291] with all my heart, bad as I may have been, I pitied you for the hardness of your life at Boulogne, and I meant to make you happy. In your pure eyes I read my last hope of salvation; and, though I won you by a trick, I never meant you to regret your bargain. I meant to reform—I should have reformed, but your desertion maddened me; and, since you left me, I have gone from bad to worse. Listen, Laline—I am your husband, but I renounce a husband's right to your obedience! ”

“ Even while answering her polite inquiries, Claud’s eyes involuntarily travelled to the face of Miss Cranstoun, who, dressed in a girlish dinner costume of ivory silk, sat beside Dr. Morland Graham. In the lamplight she looked even more attractive than in the half-obscurity in which he had before seen her. Her cheeks had but little color as contrasted with the vivid scarlet of her lips, but to Lord Carthew’s keenly observant eyes, this pallor, and the extraordinary brightness of her eyes, suggested in no way ill health, but rather a vivid and ardent nature under strong repression. ”

“ These thoughts tortured Laline; and through the long hours of the night she lay awake, torn by conflicting sentiments of pity for Lorin, pity for herself, and pity for her husband. Towards morning she had half decided on flight as the sole way out of her difficulties, until the thought of a confession to old Alexander Wallace of all but the name of her husband suggested itself as an alternative course.
Throughout the wakeful hours she strove to fight down the insidious temptation to hold her peace and fulfil her engagement with the man she loved. ”

“ They were standing near the open door, when suddenly Stella turned, laid her two small hands lightly upon Hilary’s sleeve, and looked up in his face, her own pale, but transfigured into more than its usual loveliness by passionate feeling.
“Was it only a dream?” she breathed rather than said. “Or do you love me?”
Mortal man could hold out in pride no longer. In an instant he had gathered her up in his arms, and was covering her cheeks, her eyes, and her lips with close, hot kisses, while he murmured incoherent words of love into her ear. ”

“ Suddenly blowing out the candle, she fumbled in her pocket, and then thrust into Stella’s hand what appeared to be a small silver coin strung on a piece of dirty red silk cord.
“When you want my help,” she said, “give this to Stephen Lee, and I will save you. You shall marry the man you love, and live a life of freedom and happiness, as a Romany doxy should; and the black lord and the gray wolf may go hang together. Good-night, my pretty. Beenship rat. And remember old Sarah!” ”

“ In colouring, too, the girls offered a marked contrast. Laline's complexion was of a pinky fairness, varying from cream to a rose-flush in her cheeks, which came and went with the least excitement. Her voice was lower in pitch, and of a more contralto quality than that of Clare, who to the silvery sweetness of Mrs. Vandeleur's tones added a touch of caressing "Irish blarney" in her intonation.
"I should so very much like to help Aunt Cissy in her work!" resumed Miss Cavan. "And it seems rather hard that I can't just because I am rather plump, doesn't it? ”

“ Stella threw a shilling to the boy who held Black Bess, and with very slight assistance from him, vaulted into the saddle and turned the mare’s head in the direction where her master lay. Black Bess flew like an arrow from a bow, and the journey occupied even less time than in coming. The blood rushed over Stella’s face and neck as she saw, standing in the courtyard of the inn, watching her ride up, the tall, massive figure of Hilary Pritchard, with one arm in a sling, the sun shining on his yellow curls. ”

“ Armstrong, that you know absolutely nothing about me."
"It seems impossible," he said, thoughtfully, "and yet I suppose it is true, as facts go, and that I must have seen that face so like yours, with floating hair, in my dreams. But facts are the least important things in this world, Miss Grahame. It is only by reading between the lines of the facts of his life that we really know any man. A bare summary of events teaches us nothing. We live outside, or, rather, inside of what happens to us."
"Now you are talking like Mrs. Vandeleur," said Laline, interested in spite of herself. ”

“ The Chase is gloomy and dreary and prison-like, and I am often very lonely; but it is a thousand times better than to be married to the man who has the highest title and the largest fortune among those who may condescend to take notice of me,” she went on, bitterly. “Why, if I could stoop to such a marriage, there would not be a scullery-maid at the Chase, or a cottager on my father’s property, who would not have the right to despise me!”
“But you might meet some one among these men of rank and wealth whom you might like,” suggested Lord Carthew. ”

“ Much as I love Wallace—and he is like my own son to me—I hope not. A good woman might be the making of Wallace, I do believe, but her heart might be broken in the process. He's a wild harum-scarum fellow, and——"
"Do you think for one moment," cried Laline, indignantly, "that I would break off my engagement with Lorin in order to marry your other nephew? I have seldom met any one I dislike so much as he in all my life!" ”

“ In all his life he had thought but little of love for women, and now that the feeling overmastered him, he was inclined to question its authority, as well as to fly into paroxysms of jealousy without sufficient reason. He was not in the least conceited, and rather overrated Lord Carthew’s higher mental endowments, together with his eloquent tongue, high rank and wealth, when pitted against his own dower from nature of bone, and muscle, and manly beauty. He knew that Carthew loved Stella, and it would have seemed very natural to him that his passion should be returned. ”