The Crown of Life Part 61

"Why, you make music of it! I never knew how musical it sounded. Hush!

look at that thing of light and air!"

The dragon-fly had flashed past them. This way and that it darted above the shining water, then dropped once more, to float, to sail idly with its gossamer wings.

Piers stole nearer. He sat on a stone by her side.

"Irene!"

"Yes. I like the name when you say it."

"May I touch your hand?"

Still gazing at the dragon-fly, as if careless of what she did, she held her hand to him. Piers folded it in both his own.

"May I hold it as long as I live?"

"Is that a new thought of yours?" she asked, in a voice that shook as it tried to suggest laughter in her mind.

"The newest! The most daring and the most glorious I ever had."

"Why, then I have been mistaken," she said softly, for an instant meeting his eyes. "I fancied I owed you something for a wrong I did, without meaning it, more than eight years gone by."

"That thought had come to you?" Piers exclaimed, with eyes gleaming.

"Indeed it had. I shall be more than half sorry if I have to lose it."

"How foolish I was! What wild, monstrous folly! How could you have dreamt for a moment that such a one as I was could dare to love you?--Irene, you did me no wrong. You gave me the ideal of my life--something I should never lose from my heart and mind--something to live towards! Not a hope; hope would have been madness. I have loved you without hope; loved you because I had found the only one I could love--the one I must love--on and on to the end."

She laid her free hand upon his that clasped the other, and bowed him to her reasoning mood.

"Let me speak of other things--that have to be made plain between you and me. First of all, a piece of news. I have just heard that my brother is going to marry Mrs. John Jacks."

Piers was mute with astonishment. It was so long since he had seen Mrs.

Jacks, and he pictured her as a woman much older than Eustace Derwent.

His clearest recollection of her was that remark she made at the luncheon-table about the Irish, that they were so "sentimental"; it had blurred her beauty and her youth in his remembrance.

"Yes, Eustace is going to marry her; and I shouldn't wonder if the marriage turns out well. It leads to the disagreeable thing I have to talk about. You know that I engaged myself to Arnold Jacks. I did so freely, thinking I did right. When the time of the marriage drew near, I had learnt that I had done _wrong_. Not that I wished to be the wife of anyone else. I loved n.o.body; I did not love the man I was pretending to. As soon as I knew that--what was I to do? To marry him was a crime--no less a crime for its being committed every day. I took my courage in both hands. I told him I did not love him, I would not marry him. And--I ran away."

The memory made her bosom heave, her cheeks flush.

"Magnificent!" commented the listener, with a happy smile.

"Ah! but I didn't do it very well. I treated him badly--yes, inconsiderately, selfishly. The thing had to be done--but there were ways of doing it. Unfortunately I had got to resent my captivity, and I spoke to him as if _he_ were to blame. From the point of view of delicacy, perhaps he was; he should have released me at once, and that he wouldn't. But I was too little regardful of what it meant to him--above all to his pride. I have so often reproached myself. I do it now for the last time. There!" She picked up a pebble to fling away.

"It is gone! We speak of the thing no more."

A change was coming upon the glen. The sun had pa.s.sed; it shone now only on the tree-tops. But the sky above was blue and warm as ever.

"Another thing," she pursued, more gravely. "My father----"

Piers waited a moment, then said with eyes downcast:

"He does not think well of me?"

"That is my grief, and my trouble. However, not a serious trouble. Of you, personally, he has no dislike; it was quite the opposite when he met you; when you dined at our house--you remember? He said things of you I am not going to repeat, sir. It was only after the disaster which involved your name. Then he grew prejudiced."

"Who can wonder?"

"It will pa.s.s over. My father is no stage-tyrant. If _he_ is not open to reason, what man living is? And no man has a tenderer heart. He was all kindness and forbearance and understanding when I did a thing which might well have made him angry. Some day you shall see the letter he wrote me, when I had run away to Paris. In it, he spoke, as never to me before, of his own marriage--of his love for my mother. Every word remains in my memory, but I can't trust my voice to repeat them, and perhaps I ought not--even to you."

"May I go to him, and speak for myself?"

"Yes--but not till I have seen him."

"Can't I spare you that?" said Piers, in a voice which, for the first time, sounded his triumphant manhood. "Do you think I fear a meeting with your father, or doubt of its result? If I had gone merely on my own account, to try to remove his prejudice and win his regard, it would have been a different thing; indeed, I could never have done that; I felt too keenly his reasons for disliking me. But now! In what man's presence should I shrink, and feel myself unworthy? You have put such words into my heart as will gain my cause for me the moment they are spoken. I have no false shame--no misgivings. I shall speak the truth of myself and you, and your father will hear me."

Irene listened with the love-light in her hazel eyes; the face she turned upon him brought back a ray of sunshine to the slowly shadowing glen.

"I will think till to-morrow," she said. "Come to the Castle to-morrow morning, and I shall have settled many things. But now we must go; Helen will wonder what has become of me; I didn't tell her I was going out."

He bent over her hand; she did not withdraw it from him as they walked through the bracken, and beneath the green boughs, and picked their way over the white stones of the rushing beck.

At the road, they parted.

An hour after sunset, Piers was climbing the hillside towards the Castle, now a looming shape against a sky still duskily purpled from the west. He climbed slowly, doubting at each step whether to go nearer, or to wave his hand and turn. Still, he approached. In the cottages a few lights were seen; but no one moved; there was no voice.

His own footstep on the sward fell soundless.

He stood before the tower which was inhabited, and looked at the dim-lighted windows. To the entrance led a long flight of steps, and as he gazed through the gloom, he seemed to discern a figure standing there, before the doorway. He was not mistaken; the figure moved, descended. Motionless, he saw it turn towards him. Then he knew the step, the form; he sprang forward.

"Irene!"

"You have come to say good-night? See how our thoughts chime; I guessed you would."

Her voice had a soft, caressing tremor; her hand sought his.

"Irene! You have given me a new life, a new soul!"

Her lips were near as she answered him.

"Rest from your sorrows, my dearest. I love you! I love you!"

He was alone again in the darkness, on the hillside. He heard the voice of the far-off river, and to his rapturous mood it sounded as a moaning, brought a sudden sadness. All at once, he thought amid his triumph of those unhappy ones whom the glory of love would never bless; those, men and women, born to a vain longing such as he had known, doomed to the dread solitude from which he by miracle had been saved.

His heart swelled, and his eyes were hot with tears.

But as he went down to the dale, the calm of the silent hour crept over him. He whispered the beloved name, and it gave him peace; such peace as follows upon the hallowing of a profound pa.s.sion, justified of reason, and proof under the hand of time.