Heriot's Choice Part 52

'You see I am disposed to shelter myself beside it. Miss Lambert, I need not ask you--you know my trouble.'

'Your trouble? Oh yes; Arnold told me.'

'And you are sorry for me?'

'More than I can say,' and Mildred's voice trembled a little, and the tears came to her eyes. With a sort of impulse she stretched out her hand to him--that beautiful woman's hand he had so often admired.

'Thank you,' he returned, gratefully, and holding it in his. 'Miss Lambert, I feel you are my friend; that I dare speak to you. Will you give me your advice to-night, as though--as though you were my sister?'

'Can you doubt it?' in a voice so low that it was almost inaudible. A slight, almost imperceptible shiver pa.s.sed over her frame, but her mild glance still rested on his averted face; some subtle sadness that was not pain seemed creeping over her; somewhere there seemed a void opened, an empty s.p.a.ce, filled with a dying light. Mildred never knew what ailed her at that moment, only, as she sat there with her hands once more folded in her lap, she thought again of the dark, sunless pool lying behind the gray rocks, and of the grewsome cavern, where the churned and seething waters worked their way to the light.

Somewhere from the distance Dr. Heriot's voice seemed to rouse her.

'You are so good and true yourself, that you inspire confidence. A man dare trust you with his dearest secret, and yet feel no dread of betrayal; you are so gentle and so unselfish, that others lay their burdens at your feet.'

'No, no--please don't praise me. I have done nothing--nothing--that any other woman would not have done,' returned Mildred, in a constrained tone. She shrank from this praise. Somehow it wounded her sensibility.

He must talk of his trouble and not her, and then, perhaps, she would grow calm again, more like the wise, self-controlled Mildred he thought her.

'I only want to justify the impulse that bade me follow you just now,'

he returned, with gentle gravity. 'You shall not lose the fruit of your humility through me, Miss Lambert. I am glad you know my sad story, it makes my task an easier one.'

'You must have suffered greatly, Dr. Heriot.'

'Ah, have I not?' catching his breath quickly. 'You do not know, how can you, how a man of my nature loves the woman he has made his wife.'

'She must have been very beautiful.' The words escaped from Mildred before she was aware.

'Beautiful,' he returned, in a tone of gloomy triumph. 'I never saw a face like hers, never; but it was not her beauty only that I loved; it was herself--her real self--as she was to others, never to me. You may judge the power of her fascination, when I tell you that I loved her to the last in spite of all--ay, in spite of all--and though she murdered my happiness. Oh, the heaven our home might have been, if our boy had lived,' speaking more to himself than to her, but her calm voice recalled him.

'Time heals even these terrible wounds.'

'Yes, time and the kindness of friends. I was not ungrateful, even in my loneliness. Since Margaret died, I have been thankful for moderate blessings, but now they cease to content me: in spite of my resolve never to call another woman my wife, I am growing strangely restless and lonely.'

'You have thought of some one; you want my advice, my a.s.sistance, perhaps.' Would those churning waters never be still? A fine trembling pa.s.sed through the folded fingers, but the sweet, quiet tones did not falter. Were there two Mildreds, one suffering a new, unknown pain; the other sitting quietly on a gray boulder, with the water lapping to her very feet.

'Yes, I have thought of some one,' was the steady answer. 'I have thought of my ward.'

'Polly!' Ah, surely those seething waters must burst their bounds now, and overwhelm them with a noisy flood. Was she dreaming? Did she hear him aright?

'Yes, Polly--my bright-faced Polly. Miss Lambert, you must not grow pale over it; I am not robbing Aunt Milly of one of her children. Polly belongs to me.'

'As thy days so shall thy strength be;' the words seemed to echo in her heart. Mildred could make nothing of the pain that had suddenly seized on her; some unerring instinct warned her to defer inquiry. Aunt Milly!--yes, she was only Aunt Milly, and nothing else.

'You are right; Polly belongs to you,' she said, looking at him with wistful eyes, out of which the tender, shining light seemed somehow faded, 'but you must not sacrifice yourself for all that,' she continued, with the old-fashioned wisdom he had ever found in her.

'There you wrong me; it will be no sacrifice,' he returned, eagerly.

'Year by year Polly has been growing very dear to me. I have watched her closely; you could not find a sweeter nature anywhere.'

'She is worthy of a good man's love,' returned Mildred, in the same calm, impa.s.sive tone.

'You are so patient that I must not stint my confidence!' he exclaimed.

'I must tell you that for the last two years this thought has been growing up in my heart, at first with reluctant anxiety, but lately with increasing delight. I love Polly very dearly, Miss Lambert; all the more, that she is so dependent on me.'

Mildred did not answer, but evidently Dr. Heriot found her silence sympathetic, for he went on in the same absorbed tone--

'I do not deny that at one time the thought gave me pain, and that I doubted my ability to carry out my plan, but now it is different. I love her well enough to wish to be her protector; well enough to redeem her father's trust. In making this young orphan my wife, I shall console myself; my conscience and my heart will be alike satisfied.'

'She is very young,' began Mildred, but he interrupted her a little sadly.

'That is my only remaining difficulty--she is so young. The discrepancy in our ages is so apparent. I sometimes doubt whether I am right in asking her to sacrifice herself.'

A strange smile pa.s.sed over Mildred's face. 'Are you sure she will regard it in that light, Dr. Heriot?'

'What do you think?' he returned, eagerly. 'It is there I want your advice. I am not disinterested. I fear my own selfishness, my hearth is so lonely. Think how this young girl, with her sweet looks and words, will brighten it. Dare I venture it? Is Polly to be won?'

'She is too young to have formed another attachment,' mused Mildred. 'As far as I know, she is absolutely free; but I cannot tell, it is not always easy to read girls.' A fleeting thought of Roy, and a probable childish entanglement, pa.s.sed through Mildred's mind as she spoke, but the next moment it was dismissed as absurd. They were on excellent terms, it was true, but Polly's frank, sisterly affection was too openly expressed to excite suspicion, while Roy's flirtations were known to be legion. A perfectly bewildering number of Christian names were carefully entered in Polly's pocket-book, annotated by Roy himself. Polly was cognisant of all his love affairs, and alternately coaxed and scolded him out of his secrets.

'And you think she could be induced to care for her old guardian?' asked Dr. Heriot, and there was no mistaking the real anxiety of his tone.

'Why do you call yourself old?' returned Mildred, almost brusquely. 'If Polly be fond of you, she will not find fault with your years. Most men do not call themselves old at eight-and-thirty.'

'But I have not led the life of most men,' was the sorrowful reply.

'Sometimes I fear a bright young girl will be no mate for my sadness.'

'It has not turned you into a misanthrope; you must not be discouraged, Dr. Heriot; trouble has made you faint-hearted. The best of your life lies before you, you may be sure of that.'

'You know how to comfort, Miss Lambert. You lull fears to sleep so sweetly that they never wake again. You will wish me success, then?'

'Yes, I will wish you success,' she returned, with a strange melancholy in her voice. Was it for her to tell him that he was deceiving himself; that benevolence and fancy were painting for him a future that could never be verified?

He would take this young girl into the shelter of his honest heart, but would he satisfy her, would he satisfy himself?

Would his hearth be always warm and bright when she bloomed so sweetly beside it; would her innocent affection content this man, with his deep, pa.s.sionate nature, and yearning heart; would there be no void that her girlish intellect could not fill?

Alas! she knew him too well to lay such flattering unction to her soul; and she knew Polly too. Polly would be no child-wife, to be fed with caresses. Her healthy woman's nature would crave her husband's confidence without stint and limit; there must be response to her affection, an answer to every appeal.

'I will wish you success,' she had said to him, and he had not detected the sadness of her tone, only as he turned to thank her she had risen quickly to her feet.

'Is it so late? I ought not to have kept you so long,' he exclaimed, as he followed her.

'Yes, the sun has set,' returned Mildred hurriedly; but as they walked along side by side she suddenly hesitated and stopped. She had an odd fancy, she told him, but she wanted to see the dark pool on the other side of the gray rock, Coop Kernan Hole she thought they called it, for through all their talk it had somehow haunted her.

'If you will promise me not to go too near,' he had answered, 'for the boulders are apt to be slippery at times.'

And Mildred had promised.

He was a little surprised when she refused all a.s.sistance and clambered lightly from one huge boulder to another, and still more at her quiet intensity of gaze into the black sullen pool. It was so unlike Mildred--cheerful Mildred--to care about such places.