Ralph Wilton's weird Part 22

"Not asked you--bosh!--"

"Moncrief," interrupted Wilton, "will you take some more kidney, or ham, or coffee, or anything?"

"No, thank you; I have breakfasted well."

"Then go, will you? like a good fellow. You are partly right. I am in a pickle. You shall know all about it one of these days, but I cannot tell you just now. I have an appointment at--that is, I must be at Kensington at twelve."

"At twelve! Bless my soul, man, it is scarcely half-past ten now."

CHAPTER IX.

The afternoon of the same day was lowering, bleak, and drear, as a young girl, in a long black dress fitting close to her slight figure, and relieved at throat and wrists by a plaiting of white c.r.a.pe, entered a small sitting-room at the back of one of a row of brand-new residences in the cardboard, Tudor style, inlaid with colored bricks, and further relieved by oriel windows.

The young lady carried a cup full of violets, and set it upon a table which had been moved into the window. It was crowded with materials for watercolor drawing. A very graceful design suited to a portfolio lay partly colored where the light fell strongest.

The young lady, or rather Ella Rivers, stood looking at her work for a few minutes, and then sitting down, with a deep sigh, took up her brush, first bending lovingly over the violets until her face touched them.

She was exceedingly pale--the pallor of thought and sorrow. Her eyes, which looked larger than they used--perhaps because she had grown thinner--had a weary, wistful expression, which gave pathos to the quiet sadness of her face and figure. The last month had tried her sorely. The sudden, fatal illness of Donald had caused her immense bodily fatigue and real sorrow. She had grown to love the afflicted, wayward boy, even more than she knew; and he could not bear her out of his sight, finally breathing his last in her arms. Then, not understanding the terms which existed between Wilton and the Fergusson family, Ella never doubted that he was aware from the first of poor Sir Peter's bereavement and the consequent removal of the family. His silence under such circ.u.mstances, the absence of any attempt to seek her out, was, to her, conclusive evidence that his sudden, violent affection for herself had pa.s.sed away.

Arriving at this conviction showed her how fondly, although unconsciously, she had hoped for his constancy. When Wilton astonished and agitated her by his unexpected avowal, she had most truly told him that she did not love him, that his truth or constancy was not essential to her happiness. His frank kindness, and the interest he had shown in her art and her conversation, had touched and diverted her. Feeling keenly the insurmountable barrier of caste, which her reason scornfully resented, the possibility of a man of his grade being her lover never crossed her mind. Moreover, the habits of her life accustomed her to men as companions, as friends, almost as playfellows, but never as lovers. Wilton was therefore to her at first an agreeable, intelligent, though mistaken man, blinded to the great truths of his age by his position and his profession, but who, under higher direction, might have been worthy the friendship of her father, Diego, and the rest of the exalted society who pa.s.sed their lives propagating theories of political perfection and escaping the police.

After the wonderful interview by the cairn, where he had shown that, although past the boy-lover period, he was ready to cast all consideration for rank and riches to the winds for her sake, she had estimated him very differently. From his first words of love she shrunk with an agony she could not express, so certain was she that they must mean insult; but when his letter told her the depth and sincerity of his affection, and she listened to the magic of his earnest pleading, she felt bewildered and almost frightened at the ardor of the feeling she had evoked. She could not quite believe him. She trembled at the idea of his hurrying into the irrevocable, which he might afterward regret; and the more she felt her heart inclined to yield, the more resolutely she held to her determination, for both their sakes, to test the reality of his affection.

But when he was gone, when she was left alone with the memory of his persuasive voice--of his bold brown eyes, softened into tenderness--of the pa.s.sion which glowed through the earnest respect of his manner--whatever of indifference she had felt or a.s.sumed in their interview fast faded away, or rather warmed into real interest, and trembling, half-fearful liking. Then the question of his constancy a.s.sumed an absorbing importance. The perpetual struggle in her mind to resist the delightful suggestions of hope kept the subject constantly before her; and the bitterest trial she had ever known was the gradual fading away of the hopes that had formed themselves in spite of her, when week after week slipped past and no tidings reached her from Ralph Wilton. Of course he knew that she must leave Brosedale, and must also know that under no circ.u.mstances would she take the first step toward the renewal of their intercourse.

Working round this dreary circle of thought, she sat motionless, pencil in hand, too absorbed to notice the entrance of a woman of a certain age, who by her costume evidently aimed at the higher appellation of a lady. She wore a handsome plum-colored silk, a tint which appears to be the especial favorite of publicans' wives and aspiring landladies. Her head--a high, narrow, self-a.s.serting sort of head--was perched on a long, thin neck, and adorned with a scanty screw of hair on the top, secured by a high tortoise-sh.e.l.l comb, while the front tresses were disposed in short, wiry ringlets, painfully suggestive of steel springs, and carefully regulated by ancient contrivances called side-combs. These locks vibrated when she moved; and as her walk was a succession of jerky sinkings and risings, the ringlets had an active time of it. Her features were regular and good, but somewhat neutralized by a faint expression of constantly turning up her nose, which was anything but _retrousse_, as if in contemptuous indignation at the futile efforts of the world in general to take her in. This personage paused as she was half across the little room, and looked very sharply at its occupant's profile, which was turned to her.

"Anyways, you ain't breaking your heart with hard work," she exclaimed, in a tone which would have been painfully acute but for a slight indistinctness caused by a melancholy gap where pearly front teeth ought to have been.

Ella started at her voice, and a large tear, which some time, unknown to her, had hung upon her eyelashes, fell upon the edge of her paper. She looked at it dismayed; half an inch nearer, and it would have played havoc with her colors. She hastily placed her handkerchief on the fatal spot, and, turning toward the speaker, said, absently: "Working! Yes, Mrs. Kershaw; I am succeeding tolerably with this design; I am quite interested in it."

"And that is the reason you are crying over it--eh?"

"Crying! Oh, no"--smiling a little sadly--"I am not crying."

"Something very like it, then," said Mrs. Kershaw, advancing to the table and looking critically at Ella's work. "It's a queer thing," she remarked, with high-toned candor. "What is it for?"

"Oh, the cover of a book, or--the back of a portfolio."

"Well, I suppose it's my ignorance; but I can't see the beauty of it.

Why, there's dozens and dozens of things just like that ready printed in all the shops; and you don't suppose hand-work can hold its own with machine-work? Why don't you paint a house, and a tree, and a cow--something sensible-like--that would set off a nice, handsome frame?

I wouldn't mind buying such a picture myself; my first floor is a trifle naked for want of pictures."

"O Mrs. Kershaw!" exclaimed Ella, smiling, this time more brightly, for she was amused at her friend's notions of art; "I a.s.sure you an original design is not to be despised. If I can but find favor with--"

"Ay, that's just it. It would take a heap of bits of pictures to make a living. I must say I think you was a fool not to look out for something steady right off, when the ladies as could have recommended you was here; this will be hard work and poor work."

"Nevertheless, I am determined to try it," said Ella, firmly, though sadly. "You cannot tell the imprisonment a great house is to me; besides, you forget poor Sir Peter Fergusson's generosity. I can afford to board with you for six or eight months, and then, if all my efforts to earn my bread by my art fail, I can still ask Miss Walker's help. I am not in your way, good friend, am I?"

"Well, no. I am not that selfish, like many, as would try to keep you here when it would be better for you to be away; but you are not like other girls, the place is different when you are in it; and the trifle you pay is more than the trifle difference you make. It was about yourself--what is best for you--I was thinking."

"Do not think of me," returned Ella, placing her elbow on the table and resting her head on her hand despondently; "I am so weary of myself."

"Now there is something come to you quite different from what used to be. And you are that pale and thin, and don't eat nothing. There's some of those grandedees" (such was Mrs. Kershaw's p.r.o.nunciation) "been talking nonsense, and you have been, and gone, and been fool enough to heed them, in spite of all the talking to I gave you before you went to Sir Peter's. They are all alike. If you was a hangel, with a wing sprouting out of each shoulder, and as beautiful as--as anythink, the poorest sc.r.a.p of a gentleman among them that hadn't as much gumption as would earn a crust costermongering would laugh at the notion of putting a ring on your finger. No, no; as much love as you like without that. I knows 'em, the proud, upsetting, lazy lot, I do;" and Mrs. Kershaw stopped with a jerk, more for want of breath than lack of matter.

"You need not distress yourself," returned Ella, with a smile of quiet scorn. "No one insulted me at Brosedale; and I _did_ keep your good advice in mind. I am depressed, nor can you wonder at it when you think of the sad scenes I went through with poor Donald."

"Well, well, anyhow you won't open your mind to me, though I fancy I am your best friend, and your only friend into the bargain, though I say it as shouldn't," retorted Mrs. Kershaw, with some asperity.

"You are, indeed," said Ella, sweetly. "So instead of quarrelling with me for not telling you a romantic tale, tell me some of your own affairs; any one about the rooms yet?"

"I believe," said Mrs. Kershaw, a shade less severely--"I believe I'm let."

This startling announcement did not in the least move Miss Rivers from her gravity; she merely observed, sympathetically, "I am very glad."

"This morning, when you was out, a lady and gentleman called, and looked at the rooms, and made rather a stiff bargain. They said they would call again; but the gentleman gave me his card, and that looked like business."

"I suppose so. I went over to Kensington this morning to see the postman. I thought it was as well to tell him our new address, in case there might be a letter for me."

"A letter for you!" repeated Mrs. Kershaw, in a sharp key, with a sudden nod that set her ringlets dancing. "I thought Miss Walker knew we was moved."

"She does; still it is possible some old friend--"

"Hoh!" said Mrs. Kershaw, ironically. "Are you sure it ain't a new friend--a Scotch friend? I know I haven't no right to ask, but--"

"Ah, suspicious one!" interrupted Ella, laughing. "If none of my father's old friends seek me out, no one else will."

"There's the front-door bell!" cried Mrs. Kershaw, excitedly; "that's the lady and gent come back about my first floor"--a pause ensued, a rapid but heavy tread, and the opening of the door was heard.

The next moment that of the room in which they were was flung violently open, and the "girl" announced a "gentleman for Miss Rivers."

Whereupon a tall figure seemed to fill up the door-way, and for a moment Ella felt dizzy and blinded with astonishment, with mingled joy and terror, as Colonel Wilton entered and stood still.

"Hoh!" said Mrs. Kershaw; "do you know this gentleman, or is he after the apartments?"

"I know him. I--" faltered Ella.

"Hoh!" again said Mrs. Kershaw, and, turning back, walked straight out of the room with dignity.

Wilton closed the door after her, and, advancing to the agitated girl, exclaimed, with a tinge of sternness, "Ella, have you hid from me purposely?"

"Hid from you? No; you knew where to find me when poor Donald died."

"Which I first heard of in Ireland two days ago."

"Two days ago!" faltered Ella, the truth dawning on her. "I thought you would have known of it directly. I thought you did not write because you did not wish to see me again. I--oh, listen to me, understand me!"