An Algonquin Maiden Part 11

"Rose," demanded Helene, in a low aside, but with a tragic countenance, "you surely are not going to leave me?"

The girl laughed as she accepted Mr. Elmsley's proffered a.s.sistance from one vehicle into the other. "Why, you are quite a grown woman,"

observed that gentleman, apparently much impressed by her mature proportions, "and it seems like only the other day that you were seven years old, and used to kiss me when we met."

"Well, I'll kiss you again," replied the saucy Rose, adding after a moment's pause,--"when I am seven years old."

"I warn you, Mrs. Elmsley," said Edward, shaking his head with doleful foreboding, "that girl knows how to look like the innocent flower she is named after, and be the serpent under it."

"Did you know," said his slandered sister, addressing the same lady, and indicating the pair she had basely forsaken, "those are the very two that were with me when I was so badly hurt last summer. Do you wonder that I am glad to escape from them?"

The party drove off amid jests and laughter, while the young ladies, applying their lips once more to a leaf of gra.s.s-ribbon each had in her hand, produced such sounds as, according to their father, might, Orpheus-like, have drawn stones and brickbats after them, but from a murderous rather than a magnetic motive.

"I wonder if Rose is really nervous," said Edward, breaking the silence that bound them after the departure of the others.

"I think she is really nonsensical," said Rose's friend, not very blandly.

"Are you then so sorry to be left alone with me?"

The young lady evaded the question, but became extremely loquacious.

She intimated that almost any companionship, or none at all, could be endured on this beautifully melancholy autumn day, and called his attention to the leaves underfoot, which had grown brown and ragged, like the pages of a very old book on which the centuries had laid their slow relentless fingers. In a burst of girlish confidence she told him that always, after the wild winds had stripped from the shuddering woodland its last leaves, and the pitiless rains had washed it clean, the spectacle of bare-branched trees, standing against the gentle gloom of a pale November sky, reminded her of a company of worldings, from whom every vestige of earthly ambition, pride and prosperity had fallen away. "Anything," she said to herself, "_anything_ to keep the talk from becoming personal."

"I can understand that," said Edward, "but the influences of unworldliness--I was almost saying other-worldliness--are nowhere felt as in the woods. Sometimes they exert a strange spell upon me. The petty pride and shallow subterfuges of fashionable life are impossible in nature's solitudes. Don't you think so?"

"Yes;" a.s.sented Helene, not seeing whither her unthinking acquiescence might lead her.

"That is why I dare to ask you why you have been so cold and formal towards me, so unlike your old self, for the last three months?"

No petty pride could help her now, no shallow subterfuges come to her aid. She had declared that they were impossible here. She could not turn her face away from his truth-compelling gaze. Why had Rose left her alone to be tortured in this dreadful way? How could she confess to him that jealousy and wounded vanity had caused the change in her demeanour? "I cannot tell you," she said at last. She had turned paler even than usual, but her eyes burned.

"I am sorry to have given you pain," he said almost tenderly, and then the confession broke from her in a little storm of pent-up emotion.

"It was because I ceased to respect you! How could I respect a man who would allow a wild ignorant creature to caress his hands and hang upon his words?"

He turned a face of pure bewilderment upon her. "If you mean the Algonquin girl, Wanda," he said, "she has never treated me otherwise than with indifference, anger and contempt." He explained the scene of which Helene had been an involuntary witness, and the proud girl felt humiliated and belittled. But he was too generous and perhaps too clever to allow her to suppose that he attributed her coldness to weak jealousy. That would have placed her at a disadvantage which her pride would never have forgiven.

"So you believed me to be a vain contemptible idiot," he said, "Then you did perfectly right to scorn me." He drove on furiously, with tense lips and contracted brow. She had misjudged him cruelly, but he would not descend to harsh accusation. Helene was decidedly uncomfortable. "I have never scorned you," she said. "It was because I believed you superior to the folly and weakness of ordinary men that it grieved me to think you were otherwise."

"It grieved you," he repeated in a softer tone. "Hereafter I wish you would confide all your griefs to me the moment you are aware of them."

"To tell the truth, I don't expect to have any more." She laughed her old joyous friendly laugh, and he stretched his arm across her lap to adjust the robe more closely to her form. Her att.i.tude towards him had completely changed, concretely as well as abstractly, for now she sat cosily and contentedly by his side, instead of perching herself a yard away, and allowing the winter winds to emphasize the coldness that had existed between them. This wonderful improvement in the mental atmosphere made them oblivious to a change in the outer air until Helene remarked upon the peculiar odour of smoke about them. This increased until it became almost stifling. Evidently the blazing brush heap, lit by the hand of some thrifty settler, had extended further than he was aware of. The smoke blew past them, and they were in the midst of that vividly picturesque spectacle--a fire in the forest. The flames ran swiftly up the dry, dead limbs, turning trees into huge blazing torches, and the light underbrush beneath them took on beautiful and fantastic shapes of fire. The gray sky was illumined with fiery banners, while, like scarlet-clothed imps at a carnival, the flames leaped and danced among the twigs and smaller branches.

The hot breeze blowing on her cheek filled Helene with sudden alarm, and Edward urged the horse to a quicker pace. But the frightened creature needed no urging. With a great shuddering leap he sprang forward as though a thousand fire-fiends from the infernal regions had been after him. Helene uttered a half-suppressed shriek, and clung strenuously to Edward's arm. Suddenly he gave a loud gasp of dismay.

On the road directly before them a pile of brush had caught the blaze and stretched before their startled eyes like a burning bridge. All attempts to stop or turn around were useless. The horse was wholly beyond control. For a moment they were enveloped in smoke and flame, shut into a fiery furnace, from which an instant later they emerged from danger, but with a badly singed steed and an unpleasant odour of fire upon them. Edward had pushed Helene to the bottom of the carriage, and flung the robe over her. Now he drew her trembling, and sobbing a little, back to his side. She was shaking excessively, and in order to restore her equanimity there was clearly nothing else to be done but to hold her closely in his arms, let fall his face to hers, and breathe in her ear every word of sympathy and comfort that came to his mind. She lay weakly with closed eyes upon his breast, while the excitement in her pulses gradually died away. When she opened her eyes the short November day was nearly at its close, and York was in sight. She drew away to her own corner of the seat, not with any visible blushes, for her complexion never lost its warm whiteness, but her eyes glowed, and her lips were 'like a thread of scarlet.'

"I am glad Rose was not with us," she said, feeling a pressing need to say something, and in default of anything better to say, "as she is even more nervous than I am."

"Yes, I am _very_ glad she was not with us," a.s.sented Edward, with an unusual amount of brotherly fervour, while he turned his horse in the direction of the only available hotel in the Capital, where the wearied travellers were content to rest for a few days before setting out in search of a new home.

CHAPTER X.

YORK AND THE MAITLANDS.

There are difficulties in the way of one who would describe an event after an immortal poet has given it a setting in lines that a worshipping world will not willingly let die. A tree, it is said, is never struck by lightning more than once, and it is safe to suppose that a subject is never illumined by the rays of heaven-descended genius without being as thoroughly exhausted. Nevertheless, with our tame domestic lantern, let us endeavour to throw a little prosaic light over the details of a scene that has been irradiated by the imagination of a Byron.

It was one of the events of the season to the social world of that foreign town, but to us it is one of the events of the century. On an evening in June, 1815, in the city of Brussels, the d.u.c.h.ess of Richmond gave a ball on so magnificent a scale that even the gray heads of society's veteran devotees were a little turned, and the chestnut and golden pates of their juniors tossed sleeplessly on their pillows for several nights preceding it. After all, humanity is perpetually and overpoweringly interested in nothing except humanity.

On the evening appointed there was a vast beautiful throng, moving through halls as beautiful and more vast; there was the witchery of soft lights and softer sounds, of odours and colours that enchant the senses; there were banks of flowers, each of whose tiny blossoms yielded its dying breath to make the world sweeter for an hour, and among them, under the starry lights, in warm human veins, flowed a thousand streams; very blue, not so blue, and even common crimson. But all flowed faster than usual, perhaps the better to warm the lovely bare shoulders and arms, or to paint the sweet cheeks above them in the vivid hues of glad, intense young life. Intermingled with the costly robes and flashing gems on the ideal figures of fair women, gleamed the brilliant uniforms of brave men. "A thousand hearts beat happily"--with one exception. This was in the possession of the second daughter of a duke. She was even then remarkable for her beauty and for a certain imperious, condescending grace. The gay throng of which she was a part was no more to her than so many b.u.t.tercups and daisies; and these sumptuous apartments, so far as they concerned her, might have been a series of green meadows. At last her indifferent glance, travelling over the room, encountered an object that faintly flushed her cheek, and brightened the eyes, whose orbit of vision was now limited to the circle immediately about her. Cold indifference had changed to throbbing impatience. Ah, why did he not come! With whom was he lingering? She dared not look up lest her glance, like a swift, bright messenger, should tell him all her heart, and draw him magnetically to her side. No, he must come of his own choice, and quickly, else her mood would change. Soft strains of music arose, melting, aching, dying upon the air. Her heart melted, ached, and apparently died also, for it turned cold and hard as she glanced at her watch, and saw that it was more than a minute, nearly _two_ minutes (two eternities they seemed to her) since she began to be glad that she had come.

The next instant her long-lashed lids were raised in spite of herself, and she confronted a singularly tall and attractive-looking gentleman, whose face, from its pensive sadness, had a certain poetic charm. He begged the honour of the next dance with her. She regretted that he was too late. He looked disappointed, but ventured to name the next one. She was sorry, but it was impossible. Had she room for him anywhere at all on her list? She shook her head prettily but inexorably. The handsomest coquette and the plainest school-ma'am have this in common, that they detest and punish tardiness. The young man was overpowered by his sense of loss. It was small comfort to stand and look at the beautiful girl. When the gates of paradise are closed against one it matters little whether they are made of gold or of iron. Inwardly he bestowed some very hard names upon himself for imagining that that peerless creature would be allowed to await a willing wall-flower his languidly deferred appearance.

Again those heavenly strains rose and throbbed upon the air. It was maddening. The keenness of his disappointment gave his face an intensity of ardent expression that certainly did not detract from its charm in the eyes of the girl who at that instant glanced up into it.

The next moment he was pressed aside--very decorously, very courteously, even apologetically pushed aside, but still compelled by an insinuating patrician hand to make room for its owner, a gentleman whose extremely lofty t.i.tle had already drawn the homage of a hundred admiring pairs of eyes upon him, and whose prevailing expression was a haughty consciousness of accustomed and a.s.sumed success. The young lady whom he now honoured with a request to dance did not think of his t.i.tle, nor of his condescension, nor of him. She declined with characteristic indifference on the plea that she was already engaged, and turning placed her hand on the arm of Sir Peregrine Maitland, whose suddenly bewildered and enraptured heart, if it had never before given its a.s.sent to the time-worn proposition that all is fair in love as well as in war, certainly could not hesitate now. Perhaps the triumphs of the ball-room are not less thrilling than those of the battle-field. "Why were you so cruel to me a moment ago?" he murmured, looking down into eyes that but too clearly reflected the happiness of his own.

"For the same reason that I am kind to you now," she responded like a flash.

He did not ask her the reason. Perhaps he was intuitively and blissfully aware of it. Did ever maiden discover a more demurely daring way of telling her lover that she loved him?

But now, caressed by little wafts of perfume, and half-dazed by the blaze of lights and colours around and above them, they were drifting as on a tide upon soft swelling waves of music. In liquid undulations of sweet sound they floated insensibly down the windings of the waltz, nor dreamed of danger till the note of warning came. It was a prodigious note--nothing less than the boom of a cannon--and the signal for instant, perhaps life-long, separation.

"Who could guess, If ever more should meet those mutual eyes?

Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise."

But, as we know, two pairs at least of those mutual eyes were destined to meet again, and meet as gladly and warmly as when their owners danced together on the evening before the battle of Waterloo. But the chill atmosphere of a father's disapproval lay between them. It is reasonable to suppose that the fourth Duke of Richmond and Lennox was not so susceptible to the charms of pensive and picturesque young gentlemen as was his wilful daughter. Among the names on a list of invitations to a party given by the latter appeared that of Sir Peregrine Maitland, which, coming under the cold parental eye, was promptly erased. At the same time he inquired of his daughter why she permitted that undesirable gentleman to hang about her skirts--why she did not let him go. The response was that after this decided slight he probably _would_ go; she added with a little sigh that she did not know where. The duke profanely and contemptuously mentioned a locality which shall be nameless. The young lady made no reply. She believed in division of labour, and in former domestic affairs of this sort her stern parent had invariably said what he pleased, while she contented herself with merely doing what she pleased.

Proverbially, actions speak louder than words, and the present case was no exception, for while the echo of her father's speech did not go beyond the walls of the apartment they were in, her own rash performance, which was a direct consequence of it, was a few days later noised abroad through all Paris. This was an evening call at the lodgings of Sir Peregrine Maitland. She came in unannounced, flushed, eager, defiant, lovely, letting fall the rich train of her robe, which she had caught up in a swift flight through the streets, and throwing off her enveloping cloak, which scattered a shower of sparkling drops on brow and bosom, and beautiful bare arms, for a light shower had fallen. "They would not let you come to me, so I have come to you,"

she declared with a daring little laugh. "I have run away from my guests. There is a houseful of them and they tire me to death.

Everyone tires me to-night except you." The gentleman stood before her speechless with bewilderment. "I believe," she said with a little pout, like a spoiled child, "that you are not glad to see me."

"Glad to see you," he repeated, "dearest, yes! But not in this way, at this time."

She turned aside, but the drops that glittered on her cheek now were not caused by the rain. Her shimmering silken robes seemed to utter continuous soft whispers of applause to her nervous yet graceful movements. Altogether she was an incongruous object in the unhome-like bareness of a bachelor's apartments. "You are not very cordial, monsieur," she remarked in a cold tone, as she stood with her back to him, staring hard at an uninteresting picture above the mantel-shelf; "it seems to be a pleasure to you to receive an evening caller, but not exactly a rapture." She smiled her old imperious smile as she threw herself into a tired-looking chair, while her host, with very obvious reluctance, sank into one just opposite. For an instant her beauty smote upon his brain. He leaned forward until his face touched the lapful of rare old laces that flowed wave-like from waist to knee on the dress of the girl he loved.

"Darling," he murmured, "it is a rapture"--then he suddenly drew himself very far back in his chair--"but not exactly a pleasure!"

She rose again and moved restlessly about the room. He stood pale, speechless, waiting for her to go--a waiting that was almost a supplication. "How could you have the courage to come to me," he breathed as she drew near him.

"Because I hadn't the courage to stay away from you. I am brave enough to do, but not to endure."

"My poor love! if this escapade becomes public you will have enough to endure."

"I do not care for the world." She stood facing him with the absolute sincerity and trust of irresistible love. "I care for you," she said.

He took the little jewelled hand and reverently kissed it. "Ah, don't do that!" she cried, drawing it away with a quick impatient frown. He drew away, supposing that he had offended her, while she, giving him the puzzled incredulous look that a woman must give a man when she discovers, not that his intuitions are duller than her own, but that he has no intuitions at all, continued her tour about the room.

"Sweetheart," he said, following her, but not venturing to lay a finger upon her, "you _must_ go." His voice was earnest and very tender.