Mabel's Mistake Part 15

Before he reached the balcony, all was still there, but certainly the sound of a closing door had reached him, and the plants at one end of the balcony were vibrating yet.

"Ah, she is teasing me," thought the boy, and his heart rose with the playful thought. "We'll see if Lady Lina escapes in this way."

He opened a door leading from the balcony, and entered a room that had once been occupied by General Harrington's first wife. It was a small chamber, rich in old-fashioned decorations, and gloomy with disuse. The shutters were all closed, and curtains of heavy silk darkened the windows entirely. Still Ralph could see a high-post bedstead and the outlines of other objects equally ponderous. Beyond this, he saw a female figure, evidently attempting to hide itself behind the bed drapery.

Ralph sprang forward with his hands extended.

"Ah, ha, my lady-bird, with all this fluttering I have found you!"

There was a quick rush behind the drapery, which shook and swayed, till the dust fell from it in showers. Again Ralph laughed, "Ah, lapwing, struggle away, I have you safe."

He seized an armful of the damask drapery as he spoke, and felt a slight form struggling and trembling in his embrace. Instinctively his arms relaxed their hold, and with something akin to terror, he whispered:--

"Why, Lina, darling, what is this? I thought that we loved each other.

You did not tremble so, when I held you in my arms yesterday!"

A smothered cry, as of acute pain, broke from beneath the drapery, and then, while Ralph stood lost in surprise, the curtains fell rustling together, and the faint sound of a door cautiously closed, admonished him that he was alone.

"Lina, dear Lina," he called, reluctant to believe that she had left him so abruptly.

There was no answer, not even a rustle of the damask.

He was alone. When satisfied of this, the young man found his way to the light again. But for the terror and evident recoil of the person who had evaded him, he would have considered the whole adventure a capital joke, in which he had been famously baffled; but there was something too earnest in that struggle and cry for trifling, and the remembrance left him with a heart-ache.

When Ralph came back to the breakfast-table, he found Lina seated in his mother's place. A faint color came into her cheek as she saw him, but otherwise she was calm and thoughtful. Nay, there was a shade of sorrow upon her countenance, but nothing of the flush and tumult that would naturally have followed the encounter from which she was so fresh.

Spite of himself, Ralph was shocked. The delicacy of a first pa.s.sion had been a little outraged by the rude way in which he and Lina had just met, and struggled together, but her composure wounded him still more deeply. "So young, so innocent, and so deceptive," he thought, looking at her almost angrily, "I would not have believed it."

Lina was all unconscious. Full of her own sorrowful perplexities, she experienced none of the bashful tremors that had troubled her in antic.i.p.ation. That interview in Mrs. Harrington's room had chilled all the joy of her young love. Thus she sat, pale and cold, under the reproachful glances of her lover.

And General Harrington was watching them with his keen, worldly glances.

A smile crept over his lips as he read those young hearts, a smile of cool quiet craft, which no one remarked; but there was destiny in it.

Altogether the breakfast was a gloomy meal. There was discord in every heart, and a foreshadowing of trouble which no one dared to speak about.

For some time after his father had left the table, Ralph sat moodily thinking of Lina's changed manner. A revulsion came over him as he thought of his singular encounter with her that morning, and with the quick anger of youth, he allowed her to rise from the table and leave the room without a smile or a word.

James saw nothing that was pa.s.sing. Self-centred and thoughtful, he was scarcely conscious of their presence.

Lina sought Mrs. Harrington's chamber, but found it perfectly quiet, and the lady asleep. Then she took a straw hat from the hall, and flinging a mantilla about her, went out into the grounds, ready to weep anywhere, if she could but be alone.

CHAPTER XV.

THE STOLEN JOURNAL.

Ralph saw Lina pa.s.s, from the breakfast-room window, and his heart smote him. What had she done, poor, dear girl, to warrant his present feelings? What evil spirit possessed him to think ill of her, so pure, so truly good, as she was?

Ralph took his hat and followed Lina through the grounds, up to a hollow in the hills, where a great white pine tree sheltered a spring that sparkled out from its roots, like a gush of diamonds. It was a heavy day, not without flashes of sunshine, but sombre heaps of clouds drifted to and fro across the sky, and the wet earth was literally carpeted with leaves beaten from their branches by the storm. Amid all these dead leaves, and within the gloomy shadow of the pine, Lina sat alone weeping. She heard Ralph's tread upon the wet foliage, and arose as if to flee him, for with all her gentleness, Lina was proud, and his presence made her ashamed of the tears that her little hand had no power to dash entirely away.

"Lina," said Ralph, holding out his hand, rejoiced by her tears, for he longed to think that she was offended by his rudeness in the dusky room, "Lina, forgive me. I was a brute to wound you with my rough ways."

Lina turned away and sobbed. "It was not that, Ralph. You were only silent, not rude. But I have seen your mother this morning. Oh, Ralph, she will never consent to it--we must give each other up."

"What did she say? Tell me, Lina, tell me!" cried Ralph, full of emotion.

"She said nothing, Ralph, but her face--for a moment it was terrible.

Then she fainted!"

"Fainted, Lina!--my mother?"

"I thought her dead, she looked so cold and white. Oh, Ralph, if my words had killed her, what would have become of us?"

"Lina, you astonish me. My mother is not a woman to faint from displeasure. It is the effect of her accident. You should not have spoken to her now!"

"I could not help it. Indeed, I was so happy, and it seemed right and natural to tell her first of all."

"But, what did you tell her, darling?"

Lina looked up, and regarded him gratefully through her tears.

"I don't know--something that displeased her--that almost killed her, I am afraid."

"Don't cry, don't, Lina--it will all come out right."

"No, no--I feel it--I know it--we must give each other up. The very first hint almost killed her, and no wonder. I did not think of it before--so much kindness made me forget. But what am I? Who am I, to dare equal myself with her son?"

"What are you, Lina!" said Ralph, and his fine face glowed with generous feelings. "What are you! An angel! the dearest, best!"

Lina could not help being pleased with this enthusiasm, but she cut it short, placing her hand upon his mouth.

"It is kind of you to say this, but the facts--oh! these facts--are stubborn things. What am I but a poor little girl, who wandered from, no one can say where, into your house, a miserable waif, drifted by chance upon the charity of your parents! I have no antecedents beyond their kindness--no name, save that which they gave me--no past, no future. Is it for me to receive affection from their son--to climb ambitiously to the topmost branches of the roof-tree that sheltered my happiness and my poverty?"

And this was the girl he had dared to think coa.r.s.e and forward in not blushing at the liberties he had taken. This fair, n.o.ble girl, who, with all her delicacy, could utter such true, proud thoughts. For the moment, Ralph would have dropped on his knees, and asked her pardon in the dust.

But, beware, young man--he that doubts a beloved object once, will doubt again. When you could, even in pa.s.sing thought, judge that young creature wrongfully, it was a break in the chain of confidence that should bind true hearts together. Ralph! Ralph! a jewel is lost from the chain of your young life, and once rent asunder many a diamond bead will drop away from that torn link.

"Believe me," said the youth, burning with enthusiastic admiration of the young creature before him, "These proud words slander the n.o.blest heart that ever beat in a woman's bosom. My mother loves you for yourself. All the better that G.o.d sent you to her unsought, as he does the wild flowers. Lina, the pride which reddens your cheek, would be abashed in her presence."

"It is not pride, Ralph, but shame that such thoughts should never have presented themselves before. I have dreamed all my life; up to this morning, I was a child. Now, a single hour has surrounded me with realities. The whole universe seems changed since yesterday."

Lina looked drearily around as she spoke. The hill-sides were indeed changed. The boughs, twelve hours before, so luxuriously gorgeous, were half denuded of their foliage. The over-ripe leaves were dropping everywhere through the damp atmosphere. A gush of wind shook them in heavy clouds to the earth. All the late wild flowers were beaten down and half-uprooted. Nature seemed merely a waste of luxurious beauty thrown into gloomy confusion, among which the high winds tore and rioted.

Lina was chilled by these winds, and drew her shawl closely, with a shivering consciousness of the change. The young man's ardent hope had no power to rea.s.sure her. The subtle intuition of her nature could not be reasoned with. Sad and disheartened, she followed Ralph slowly homeward.

A few hours after the scene we have described, the governess was half-way up the hill, on which the house of her nurse stood. She had walked all the way from General Harrington's dwelling, and her person bore marks of a rough pa.s.sage across the hills. Her gaiter boots were saturated with wet, and soiled with reddish clay. Burdock burs and brambles clung to the skirt of her merino dress, which exhibited one or two serious rents. Her shawl had been torn off by a thicket of wild roses, and she carried it thrown across her arm, too much heated by walking to require it, though the day was cold.